Alice and a doll implies 2girls now?

I must admit I have been wondering about whether Shanghai and Hourai count as girls or not. I need to search for solo pics sometimes, but is Alice really solo when she is accompanied by her dolls?

Why doesn't the Comment section of Danbooru not allow editing one's post?

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S1eth said:
Alice and a doll implies 2girls now?

The more I read this question, the more I ask myself three things:

1. Does it really matter all that much?
2. Does Shanghai and/or Hourai count as female characters?
3. Do Shanghai & Hourai even deserve a tag at all?

I always thought that the 2girls tag comes to be worthless when it comes to Alice and her dolls. And Shanghai and Hourai do most certainly deserve a tag of their own.

You can't really tell they are dolls just by looking at the picture. They are dolls only because they are supposed to be dolls. In this one there are strings, but they are not drawn very clearly attached to either Alice's fingers or Shanghai's body. In many other works there are no indication whatsoever. Given a different setting Shanghai could be considered a minigirl.

in some pics, Alice's strings to the dolls are explicitly shown. but in other works,Doujin artist like to give Shanghai and Hourai a mind of their own essentially making them the automatic dolls Alice always wanted. Heres a question, If Dolls dont deserve to be treated as people, then Robots shouldnt either right?

Mr_GT said:

Does Shanghai and/or Hourai count as female characters?

Maybe we should ask Aya, she knows how to get these things straight .

Mr_GT said:
3. Do Shanghai & Hourai even deserve a tag at all?

Ever since Tasofro/ZUN has been lazy, it is impossible to tell the dolls apart. Shanghai doll, Hourai doll, Crusader doll, Edo Explosive Pawn, Archer doll, etc. they ALL LOOK THE SAME.
See post #266215 (the original alphes drawing doesn't seem to be uploaded)

So unless the artist draws a gigantic doll (Goliath doll), draws a doll hanging itself (Hourai) or explicitly calls its name (in a comic), it's just "one of Alice's generic dolls". "Shanghai" is not a special doll, if it says "Shanghai" it could as well be "one of Alice's generic Shanghai dolls".

The only thing that stands in the way of this is the fanon, since 'they' seem to believe that Shanghai and Hourai are characters and therefore oftentimes display them as such. (Even the English touhou wiki has a character page for Shanghai and Hourai and as portrait, they used the pictures of the generic doll in Alice's portrait as if they knew it was supposed to be THE Shanghai doll and nothing else. In reality). The Fanon even invents original designs which they impose on "Hourai", such as the Koromo-like post #579146 or others (post #563238). Once such designs become popular, some fans might even think that it is really official (just like when "UNL" was spread among the English fandom by some guy as Hisoutensoku's English name)

Shanghai and Hourai dolls have had the red dress in IaMP and now they all wear the blue one. One tag for all of her dolls (except Goliath doll) should be sufficient.

S1eth knows his canon, but in this special case, I vote for tags based on the fanon.

Shanghai as a more or less independent character and Hourai as a separate design (or rather, a couple of separate designs) have brought a lot of extra value to fan works. At the same time, the more fans know the "truth" beyond the fanon the better.