heads up: this is outright going to be an incoherent stream of thought
so the wikiās timeline is wild, i think we can all agree. inasmuch as the manga vaguelyĀ support the idea that each game happens roughly when itās released, thatād still put reimu at her early thirties, minimum, if we assume she was 16 during eosd. this doesnāt really have much to do with the rest of this itās just incredible to think about (i generally assume a slightly compressed timescale so that itās been like... ten years since eosd, tops. canon canāt harm me. you canāt prove aya knows what the date is)
ANYWAY so my game theory is essentially that reimu took on the title of shrine maiden before eosd, but only just before. the Vampire Incidentā¢ caused by remilia was solved byĀ āthe shrine maidenā (and yukari), but given everything i feel like that wasnāt reimu bc like. weāre talking pre-spellcards and the implication is that a 16 year old beat up a 500 year old vampire. so if we accept that that was reimuās mum then it snaps the next few games into focus
reimum (official name) sets up the spell card rules. remilia immediately starts the scarlet mist incident, and reimu goes to resolve it bc her mum just fought a fucking vampire (and possibly an army of youkai??? the pmiss article that mentions the vampire incident says that remilia gathered a bunch of followers too) to the near-death and like. theoretically itās non-lethal now. itās fine
reimu manages to not get murdered by the house full of people who are still very much trying to murder her (someone please close whatever spell card rule loophole sakuya is using). this is seen as a great success, so yukari suggests to reimum that she should retire. but she wants to know that reimuās gonna be okay, so yukari goes and visits a friend whoās already thinking up an incident of her own
so pcb happens. yukari rips a hole in the border of gensokyo + the netherworld to (kind of but not really) threaten gensokyo + give reimu a taste of what itād mean for someone as powerful as yuyuko to want to do real harm to it. demonstrate why being a shrine maiden is Importantā¢. it almost backfires, really badly, but itās fine. everything turns out okay
yukari goes to take a nap and gets woken up by ran telling her that the shrine maidenās kid beat up her shikigami and also her and now sheās gonna beat up yukari. reimu is not only confident and capable but can neither be stopped nor killed
so reimum retires. itās really emotional. she goes to explore the outside (the original conceit of the fic was gonna be that she visits on reimuās birthday which feels plausible. we donāt actually know when that is, so). i feel like this paints her in a worse light than i see her which is just that the hakurei shrine maidens are all just... fantasy nature. you feel
and then a bunch of random people from the moon straight-up steal the moonĀ and yukariās like Hey Reimu Iām Gonna Help You And Make Sure You Donāt Die Or Anything Because Itās Your First Solo Incident and reimuās just i have already fought a goddamn vampire and also your weird ghost wife and also you. itāll be fine and yukariās just No Iām Helping and she does help, kind of.
i jsut realised that jokingly calling this a game theory isnāt as funny when iām talking about actual video games. itās fine. i donāt think iām gonna change anyoneās minds or create some Revolutionary New Take iāve just had all this bubbling in my head for a few days and wanted to share it
