By "silliness" I'm referring to Mamizou's disguises being effective and played straight in-universe even though the illustrations show it's obviously Mamizou (tanuki leaf, :3 face, etc). These "effective" disguises appear multiple times throughout FS and every time I wonder how no one ever realizes it's Mamizou. But it's Gensokyo so lol.On the bolded, I guess that'd make sense if the context was for a gag, but Marisa not recognizing Mamizou at all isn't played for humour. It's also worth noting that in her very first appearance, she uses the same disguise and Reimu doesn't recognize her at all until Mamizou formally introduces herself. There is a later example of the Kappa recognizing Mamizou when she sneaks into their hideout, but Nitori is pretty sure she went with an intentionally awful disguise in that case.
On the Touhou timeline, I've read that timeline page before lol. I can't believe it actually lines up with Forbidden Scrollery though. I didn't mention this in my post, but every new story/pair of chapters in FS usually explicitly shows which season the story takes place in.
As an example, Youkai Extermination December occurs right at the end of Autumn (the Aki sisters are shown dancing at the beginning, and Minoriko then starts to sneeze). Privately Published Night Parade Scroll occurs in Winter (Letty makes a cameo right at the start). And the last part I posted about begins with a Lily White cameo.
Still, I thought was just some visual flourish and I was also under the assumption things worked under cartoon time a la Simpsons or Sazae-san. The fact that they're not ageing physically even though time is actually, definitely passing, is really weird. I'd headcanon it as things physically ageing slower in Gensokyo but then I'm not sure how Sumireko would factor into things.
Tbh "real-time" and "cartoon-time" are not mutually exclusive. Even though I personally think Touhou is entirely real-time, I also don't see anything wrong in thinking it's in a permanent state of timelessness.