splash-mob

ruby mage

@splash-mob

artist & photographer

  • she/her

hi! my name's ruby. i'm a trans artist & photographer trying my best to make stuff i like.

expect occasional art, and somewhat frequent posts about whatever else i'm into.

A small image of a plushie of Akita Neru

My most recent last.fm scrobbles

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splash-mob
@splash-mob

a wriggle question

for anyone with deep knowledge of older Touhou fan material, i just read about something and want to know if this is actually true or not.

i was looking through the Touhou Wiki for fun and took a peek at Wriggle Nightbug's Fandom section, and was surprised to see that this page claims that she was commonly made fun of in fan comics by being depicted as trans, or as a crossdresser. this is apparently because before Imperishable Night came out, people saw her in the game's demo and weren't sure what her gender was - so instead of being normal, people took this and made fun of it.

given that this was the internet in 2004, i guess i shouldn't be hugely surprised - but is anything even close to this still the case nowadays with this character? (or was this even real to begin with?)
i got into Touhou pretty recently (around July last year) so i haven't got much experience with fan-made stuff, especially not with anything from that era.

i took a brief look through the edit history of Wriggle's page, and the section mentioning this was added in July 2013. notably, the person who added this also changed all of Wriggle's pronouns on the page to he/him in the same edit - the edit after this changes that back, and leaves all of the Fandom section untouched.

the Fandom page provides no sources or references for any claims on the page, except for one regarding a Touhou reference in a different video game.

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in reply to @splash-mob's post:

renmerry
@renmerry

the touhou wiki is really bad at providing sources in general (like, tewi's page casually mentions she's achieved enlightenment? huh?) so it doesn't surprise me there aren't any for this.
the claim at least has some basis, i know the pv for iosys' Danzai Yamaxanadu! has a reference to wriggle's gender being ambiguous, but that dates it to 2010. i'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to fan content or doujinshi so this is the best i've got, sorry!

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tayl1r
@tayl1r

well, i’m not sure how deep i am in the wriggle lore. but my recollection is that fans initially thought wriggle was a boy because of their clothes, but i don’t think i would say she’s commonly presented as trans or a cross dresser. certainly in porn she’s been, err, kitted out. but that’s not a unique trait.

i have a wriggle fan anthology called Wriggle Life, that is 25 stories from different authors and published 2010. this would help more if i could read it, lol. but, from what i can tell flicking through, it’s mostly yuka x wriggle, hanging out with the stage 1-2 gang, and gags about their bum glowing. but i imagine that should show the general wriggle consensus

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SanneSakura
@SanneSakura

i've been in the touhou fandom for about 8 years now, and i've heard rumors about people being weird about wriggle like that, but i've never seen it myself. if it was true, it died out a long time ago. the fandom has changed a lot in the last 10 or so years, as far as i can tell.

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