hm. I noticed a few commonalities between Aka Yakumo and Oil Fire (besides the "hornyposting which is also sillyposting and vice versa" element). The first is anxiety.

Tsukasa Kudamaki is constantly feeling anxious because she has no idea how to handle a stable and halfway-healthy relationship as equals, because she can't believe that Sanae is voluntarily giving her the companionship and shelter she wants and doesn't know if this goodwill will ever dry up, and of course because she lives with her girlfriend and her girlfriend's moms, who are Actual Gods and could make life nasty for Tsukasa if she displeases them enough that Sanae can't or won't stop them (especially while she's still in hiding from her bungled assassination-attempt on Reimu).

Aka, meanwhile, is constantly feeling somewhere between 5% and 30% of the "WHAT THE ACTUAL SHIT? WWWWHAT?" which the original Aya would feel if she saw us (or at least Yukari) posting about "the good little bird in journalism". She doesn't consciously know why, of course, or even really what she's feeling, but that's just how the bird who vaguely resembles Renko crumbles.

The second commonality is that it's all worth it, at least in their minds. Tsukasa genuinely is happy with Sanae, and her surprise at the fact that she can actually feel love is matched only by her surprise that the one she's fallen for is this dorky autistic Gundam fan in her thirties who's exactly stupid enough that she's immune to Tsukasa's manipulations. Sanae doesn't know how to fix Tsukasa, and Tsukasa doesn't know how to make Sanae worse; they just rub off on each other, in a small way.

And on the other side, one must imagine Aka Yakumo happy -- she was chosen because a tengu is the second-biggest-prize after a nine-tailed fox, in terms of making a beast-youkai into a shikigami, and she's good at what Yukari wants her to do, which means she gets all the praise from Lady Yukari that she's been programmed to deeply need, and she only occasionally screws up enough to get whacked umbrella-ways. ... Also because she was programmed to be happier now.

The third commonality is that both participants in each concept are pathetic -- one of them is pathetic as part of who she is (Sanae, Aka), and the other is being pathetic (Tsukasa is never not being pathetic but takes pains to define herself in literally any other way, and Yukari who is allowing herself to become so obsessed with a bird who looks vaguely like Renko that she makes her into a shikigami and gives her an actual "good little bird in journalism" award).

So we have two different varyingly-horny concepts about a failwoman and walking-disaster-woman, one of whom feels like she's on a knife's edge all the time and the other of whom is barely aware of how much of a disaster she is, finding Happiness (of a sort). I don't know what my point is here.

I had a dream that a next touhou game inexplicably had Aka as one of the protagonists and she's like :) I am being so useful right now and aren't I amazing except that carefuly reading the ending revealed Yukari didn't send her to do it, she just concluded that her current orders also included current incident solving for some reason. I have no idea how ic it would be for Aka but I had a blast with this dream so thank you.

Also dream aka's profile did not explicitly say that she was aya so nobody could agree if that was aya or just a conveniently similar tengu.

shikigami are fairly autonomous and this is absolutely something that's already in aya's nature to do. actually aka would probably be more prone to incident solving than aya bc she has combination of aya's "oh i love to poke around in peoples' business" and aka's "i need to fulfil my responsibilities of maintaining gensokyo's stability"

Is Yakumo Aka real, or is it a fan thing?

It's a fan AU based on a canon event - in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, both Yukari and Ran offer Aya the choice to become one of their shikigami. Aya turns them down - Aka is a "what if she didn't", or "what if she agreed later" situation.

"My dear ones are going up My Silver once more. I wonder if there's something I can do before they leave?"

Should she pack them something? Send them off with a shikigami as her mother had when she asked them to enter the Mansion?

Shikigami Aya

Commission for @NeoAyaya, ty for the request!

I've seen a lot of discussion about Yukari proposing to Aya that she become her Shikigami (in Bohemian Archive in Red), but I'm not sure I've seen mention of the fact that in the very next interview, Ran also asks Aya if she'd like to be her Shikigami.

the one thing about the popular aka yakumo consensus that i disagree on is that she has her original personality. if that was the case, she’d basically be one of okina’s douji. shikigami are essentially entirely overwritten with something brand-new!

now, she does have a personality that resembles aya shameimaru’s. and most of aya shameimaru’s memories, except the unimportant ones. and she certainly thinks that she’s the original aya shameimaru with a few changes.

of course, that’s just because yukari reassembled the bits and pieces she found most appealing in aya’s original personality. aya 1.0 is mostly gone, except for when she has a memory overflow due to unexpected circumstances. but she still goes ayayayaya!

aya wasn’t too keen on being a shikigami

but yukari changed her mind

<^v^>

I do not consider myself an Aya poster. I mean sure, she's my best character in both Spell Bubble and Hisoutensoku. I liked Red/Unread and all of the Aka posting. Yes, I own a newsboy cap. Who doesn't?

But I happen to be starting a new job today, one which, for the first time for me, involves writing for a living. Being a little nervous about that is natural. But whichever entity is responsible for me having an unusually realistic, near-lucid dream last night in which the first question out of my new boss' mouth was "so how much do you know about shikigami?" can fuck right off.

What do you think are Itadori and Fushiguro’s greatest personality strengths and weaknesses? Why? What do you love about their dynamic? Sorry if you've answered these questions before.....

P.s

If you want to answer the questions above with Atsushi/Akutagawa's or Cheng Xiaoshi/Lu Guang's dynamics, I don't mind....😁

hello!!! sorry this took me so long to get to i have been procrastinating on answering this cause i cannot be normal and give one paragraph answers. thank u for the questions :)

🩷🐾 itafushi:

i think yuuji's greatest strength is definitely his compassion and perserverance! he is just so so kind and always thinking about others, even strangers. e.g. at the detention centre when he wanted to bring the dead bodies back, at the station when he paid respects to the person who was killed by that grasshopper curse, how he cheers nanami on when he's feeling anxious and so on. even when hes lost and lost and lost, he gets back up to keep fighting. hes really incredibly strong both physically and mentally and I LOVE YUUJI. his weakness is arguably also his kindness. he lacks the brutality to live in jjk's world (put him in a romance anime now) and that hinders him a lot. he constantly blames himself and that makes it easier for people like mahito or sukuna to tear him down :( for megumi, i think his greatest strength is his intelligence. my boy is SO clever. we always watch him analyse a situation quickly and hes able to guess the opponent's ct, and then counteract that. he also uses his own ct in really cool ways like combining shikigami, storing things in shadows, or even blending himself into the shadow <3 his weakness, which is kind of mentioned in canon, is how much he doubts his strength. he lets other people do the job. he tends to summon mahoraga when things get tough. he has a lot of potential thats acknowledged by really strong characters like sukuna and gojo, but he holds himself back, and i think he loses battles because of this itafushi my loves... i love that they care SO much for each other. they have their whole 'save me' thing going on which is great. also black cat x goldren retriever dynamic is always a fav. i love that they have SUCH faith in each other and never give up on the other and how they're always protecting each other (dont tell itadori & dont you dare say that to fushiguro). gege give them their happy ending now please

🐉🐯 shin soukoku:

i think atsushi's greatest strength is that he chooses kindness. a little different from yuuji who is inherently kind. atsushi grew up tortured and bullied and has every right to be cruel, to lash out, and we have seen his strength. he is able to kill. but atsushi chooses to be kind and forgiving. he has his sassy moments but hes gentle to kyouka, he loves dazai and the agency, he shares a sort of understanding with akutagawa and so on. id say his weakness is his uncertainty. i mean definitely not his fault! but hes new to this world, and in bsd it's be quick or be killed. he also tends to throw himself in the line of fire due to his regenerative abilities so thats not great either sjfsks akutagawa's strength imo is his determination. he is often compared to a dog, in the way that he is fierce and sinks his fangs into things he wants. in beast, it’s especially clear how much he cares for gin and how far he will go for them, the fact that he’d do ANYTHING. he keeps his promises, like the one with atsushi, where even as a vampire he managed to refrain himself from killing aya and anyone else. thats insanely impressive and i think it’s a really overlooked part of his character! however, his weakness, to me, is the way he sees himself. i read a post about how easily akutagawa dehumanises himself, referring to himself as a dog, a murderous beast etc. i think a part of his jealousy towards atsushi stems from this factor. because atsushi is this shiny, perfect version of him, and he is a monstrous dog from the slums (and he also has dogs on his dislikes list so that makes me go hmm). sorry i dont know where im going with this but i think basically akutagawa needs to recognise his strength in order to BE stronger, and thats part of the reason why he remains stuck in this cycle of hatred and anger with himself—he cannot see his own worth, and that makes him bitter. i love my dear sskk they are INSANE. they have everything—enemies to lovers, yin and yang symbolism, not so different after all trope, funny sassy moments, HUGE angst moments (this isnt you!!!), horny vampire bites etc. their development across the series continues to be the best of all time in my opinion. akutagawa going from this terrifying, horrible beast in atsushi’s eyes, to being one of his guiding lights (asking him to look out the door where dazai is pointing). and atsushi going from the source of akutagawa’s bitter jealousy and fury to the person he gave his life for. they are WONDERFUL i love them sm

🩵💛 shiguang:

CHENG XIAOSHI MY BELOVED. i think his strength and weakness are the same—his bleeding heart. cxs is shown time and time again throughout the series to be so empathetic towards everyone. i think him being able to feel the emotions of the person he’s possessing symbolises this more than anything. he’s had a rough childhood—lost his parents, shunned for being different by other kids, other adults shitting on him etc, and yet he remains so kind. his speech with emma really made me cry. the way he was delivering chen xiao’s messages as well was so heartfelt. he cares so much for qiao ling and lu guang too. also the way he so easily extended a hand to invite lg to play bball with him and his friends! cxs is just so sweet despite everything i love him cxs’s bleeding heart is a huge source of his meltdowns. lg tells him time and time again that he cannot change the past, but cxs tries and tries and tries. the earthquake episode really stuck out to me with how devastated cxs was about failing, when there was really nothing he could do. then he blames himself. he falls apart and starts giving up. he loves too hard, empathising with strangers, and then he gets caught up with the emotions and fucks some stuff up (sending emma’s parents that text message), which as we can see created a butterfly effect to the entirety of link click lu guang’s strength imo is his sensibility! i think this is really important in link click, as we are showed that the key message/takeaway is to not change the past. to let things be as it is. lg understands this (though hes a hypocrite) and he is cxs’s guidance, helping him grieve, even lying to him when he has to in order to get cxs out alive. i think it takes a lot of strength to make your best friend hate you and lie to them the way he did (again, earthquake episode i am looking at u) lu guang’s weakness comes in the form of one person and that is cheng xiaoshi skfnsk. not even for shipping purposes cause this is canon. we see how he absolutely FREAKS OUT over the possibility of cxs dying. hes not as strong of a fighter as cxs is, but he went feral. he was throwing punches and yelling, which is really different from the cool demeanour that lg usually has! then we find out hes been trying to save cxs, going against HIS OWN RULES, things he know can fuck up the timeline, all for him. just one person. cxs makes him lose his sensibility (his strength!!) and it gets him into trouble pretty often shiguang means the world to me because they are so devoted to each other. they vibed one (1) time and became bffs of all time. cxs is gentle and teasing and annoying to lg because hes comfortable around him. lg does loosen up around cxs imo, and his willingness to break his own rules just for cxs!!! ahhhh!!!! i also love their dumb inside jokes and how theyre both so smart but also share one brain cell. they’ve been doomed from the start. i cannot wait to see where link click goes with them and how we will progress now knowing that lg has been breaking the laws of time askfjdb

I refuse to hang around with the dudebro Touhou fans who say "which 2hu would u fuk". I much prefer to hang out with the lesbian Touhou fans! Y'know, the ones who want Sanae to accidentally get Tsukasa pregnant in the process of giving her the worst dick known to man or youkai, and want to hollow out Aya and turn her into Yukari's newest and lowest-ranking computer --

how do Ran and Chen feel about Yakumo Aka?

Ran is Yukari's longest serving shikigami. She's also an expert in shikigami herself - and one who had also expressed an interest in making Aya her shikigami in the past. Ran is slightly off-put by some of Yukari's more unorthodox choices with Aka's programming, but merely chalks it up to Yukari's usual inscrutability. Ran deliberately does as little as she can to think about her master's taste in women, due to what that mean about her.

In terms of how they actually work together, they get along fairly well and collaborate easily. After a few weeks of Ran testing Aka to get her measure, they've become what could, from the outside, be regarded as good friends.

Chen adores Aka, mostly because Yukari instructed Aka to report on the citizens of Chen's kitty village and then hand that report to Chen each week. Chen refers to it as her own personal newspaper and thinks it makes her important. Yukari thinks it's extremely funny to make Aka do this. And Aka, of course, approaches it with the same desperate enthusiasm with which she approaches all of Yukari's more inane requests.

what if famous bird reporter aya shameimaru was not only a shikigami, but a really badly coded one?

Note that Ran also tries to recruit Aya to be a shikigami in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red. Is this her being a practiced wingfox, or does she also have thoughts about those squawks and caws?

The Demon Prince of the Momochi House | Momochi-san Chi no Ayakashi Ouji by Shouoto Aya - Chapter 54 ✦ Defy the Social Order! The Shikigami Revolt

ended up thinking about all this aka business while doing some late-night chores and tbh i don't think yukari *could* turn aya into a shikigami. it's just not possible to access aya's mind that way. she keeps her actual thoughts, feelings, and beliefs locked away too tight, under layers and layers of detachment and cynicism. there's no way to get admin privileges to install software there. she's too mentally and emotionally checked out of any and all situations to let her mind be taken over by computer programs even if she wanted it to happen.

sorry, yukari. maybe you can get reimu to dress up as renko if she's drunk enough.