What Len'en means to me

2026-05-08T10:55:38Z

For my first Dreamwidth post, I figured I would talk about the thing that has consumed my life ever since 2019, Len'en Project.

I was a wee lad of 14 when I first downloaded it (in September 2018 according to my old laptop), after seeing MegamanOmega upload a part of a Len'en playthrough. You see, like many Len'en fans (especially back in those days), I had discovered it through Touhou. I loved dodging things and all I wanted was more things to dodge (my Steam wishlist still feels the effects of this even now). So I downloaded it, played it for a bit, had some fun while being very confused about why the dialogue kept going off of the screen, and then proceeded to move on with my life.

However, like most young teenagers (do young teens still frame all of their media discussion around tvtropes page titles?), I was obsessed with tvtropes, and eventually came across the Len'en tvtropes page. Now, it was and probably still is very incorrect, but the broad strokes of "There is someone named Suzumi who wants to kill Tsubakura and the narrative has not revealed why" were enough to captivate me. This danmaku game had an overarching narrative?

I became obsessed, and was eventually forced to use my discord to join the Unreal World of Mugenri. Now, I have a lot of complaints about my time in that server, especially with the retrospect of one of the major players there at the time having been a predator, but I also made a lot of precious friends there and in other Len'en servers. I'd say I'm still making precious friends, though I am no longer in uwom itself.

There are a lot of things that, while I wouldn't say would've never happened if it weren't for Len'en, Len'en definitely encouraged me to do.

Len'en encouraged me to explore my gender. It has a cast of genderless characters that you're free to interpret at will, so what do you expect? Counting off of memory, I've met at least three other people who had Tsubakura to thank for their gender crisis. I really wanted to have a flat chest like them, though ironically I no longer headcanon them with one (a long time ago I kept having intrusive thoughts about misgendering a transmasc Tsubakura so I flipped the headcanon to transfemme so it wouldn't be misgendering anymore and now that's just my headcanon).

Len'en encouraged me to draw more. What can I say? I couldn't draw men well, and I couldn't draw boobs well, so Len'en was perfect for me. Though nowadays, I don't care that much if I don't know how to draw something.

Len'en encouraged me to write more. When I got here there were exactly four fanfics in the AO3 tag, and two of them weren't in English (by the time I posted my first fanfic, a fifth one had appeared, making mine the sixth). I was maddened by the lack of fanfic in this series with a lot of fanfic potential, so I started writing my own. I even created a whole server dedicated to Len'en fanfiction, though I stepped down from moderation at some point once I realized I was not up to the task (by which I mean the hubris of being a teenager wore off). It still exists though, in a semi-private capacity.

It's really funny comparing my earlier fanfiction to now. I was so obsessed with Tsubakura, and escapism was my primary goal. Nowadays I'm an Iyozane and Fumikado fan and I'm working through a lot of shit. Actually, to tell the truth, I'm currently splitting my writing time between original stories (that will not be attached to this username if I do post them) and a crossover fic for another series. But when I do go back to Len'en it's about Iyozane. I love Iyozane <3

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magicalmelancholy

What Len'en means to me