The New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium!

She probably also has different faces in different places.

And who knows, perhaps even appearing differently for each person.

To tell the truth, I like to think of Yukari as an 11-dimensional monstrosity, with the body we see being a sort of avatar/pseudopod that she extends into the space that we can understand. She could be in Gensokyo and all of the other sealed realms simultaneously, that way!

Can it be said that any form would be true for Yukari? An Eldritch Abomination may have been an earlier form of Yukari, but for a reality warper, one who meddles with borders, does that really matter? She might just might screw with the border between truth and lies so that she was always how we see her.

It... just came to my attention that I, like, completely failed to explain the whole deal with ACIs!

I added this to the main post:

What this means is: Anyone reading this thread may formulate an essay, big or small, describing their view of a character. The form is entirely free. All it needs is a little summary/title of some sort that should be no longer than three lines at most. Think of it this way: If you were in charge of a big Touhou production, how would you do things, what would your vision be like? Nobody will complain and no canon will interfere with your image. Gensokyo is your oyster.

Sorry for this blatant oversight.

Well, in that case...

While Daiyousei works perfectly as a moe character, Koakuma and Momiji work better using their non-moe characterizations. While I have nothing against moe in general, it doesn't work so well with these two characters.

First of all, moe works better as a fairy trait than a youkai trait. From what I understand, youkai don't have much in the terms of parental authority figures (though it might be different in tengu society). So, they're pretty much on their own from the start and forced to defend themselves against stronger youkai and hateful humans. Faeries, in contrast, don't have to worry about death or attacks or, well, just about anything. So, one would expect fairies to be more moe than youkai.

Also, it lessens what one can do with the characters. In my opinion, moe characters work when they're paired with the right characters. Moe works better with Daiyousei because she's juxtaposed with the arrogant, Hot-Blooded Cirno. Koakuma is paired with Patchouli, who's pretty close to moe herself, so it doesn't work as well.

Oh. But, that was just a regular post you'd use in a discussion, wasn't it?

It's more like, you shouldn't argue for or against certain characterizations, but just write what you would write a character like... And it should be when the character is actually being discussed. The old rule about taking things one step at a time is still being adhered to. I mean, it's okay to derail every once in a while, but if there was no order, we'd just end up talking about everything and nothing. Which the general thread already does.

Hmm, I guess I should summarize the rules for this thread, too, shouldn't I?

I would add, too, that you might choose to interpret characters differently for different sorts of stories/games/pictures/whatever. For instance, there's a huge difference between the Alice I'd write for a serious story and the one I'd use for, say, the Imperial Drone Comes to Gensokyo, you know?

So some of the essays might go, "This isn't quite how I see Nitori in canon, but I have this project going, and for its purposes, I'm going to interpret her like so."

Does that work?

Hahahah, Imperial Drone, wut? The introduction of quadrants into Touhoulationships is just a horrible, horrible idea that I look forward to hearing more about.

A Rather Silly Place.

My interpretation of Gensokyo is kind of like Fawriel's. Just imagine a king standing on a hill, gazing over Gensokyo and saying "never mind, its a rather silly place."

And it is. Granted, there is danger underneath that silliness but its still rather silly. Vicious man-eating youkai wreathed in shadow stalk the night and bonk into telephone poles. A half-youkai schoolteacher protects the village from the heroine by hiding the village('s history) in her mouth. Incidents severe enough to get Reimu moving range anywhere from "endless winter threatens to destroy Gensokyo" to "there's too many flowers." The proud and feared race of Tengu occupy their time printing up yellow journalism. A different apparition stalking the night takes a break from the man-eating to run a con food stall. Vicious religious warfare is settled with danmaku like everything else and ends with tea served like everything else. A vampire invades the moon and then decides to have a pool party.

Gensokyo is a very, very silly place. With a little adjusting to fit the games' tone, Inaba of the Earth and Inaba of the Moon is how I visualize Gensokyo. A place where a moon princess bursting through your wall in an ox cart can be shrugged off as just another day in Gensokyo.

But its also a place where things happen. I know est verbotten, but with those templates, basically any kind of plot can be justified and a great deal of them could actually happen in canon Gensokyo. Its a place where things happen and things change but things stay the same. Gensokyo is changing. There's now a rival shinto shrine as well as a Buddhist temple. A vampire's mansion and a mooninite mansion have entered the power balance. But the tone of the land stays the same, helped by the Hakurei shrine maiden being a sort of moderating force, making sure that any new addition doesn't upset the board.

Gensokyo is a place where incidents get resolved. No matter what the problem is, you can probably solve it by beating up people in escalating levels of difficulty. If Gensokyo gets a modernized economy and starts suffering deficits or something, you can bet that beating up the inexplicable youkai version of Alan Greenspan will help somehow.

edited 5th Dec '10 1:29:55 PM by Bocaj

Well, in that case, I would characterize Koakuma as overly rebellious and Momiji as serious and focused on her work if I was doing a serious story.

Good!

> NOW GIVE IT A TITLE OF SOME SORT SO I CAN LINK IT. DO IT, BOY.

==>

edited 5th Dec '10 1:24:54 PM by Fawriel

Gensokyo, the land where you could ship an astronaut with a bunny girl and have it make some amount of sense.

Also:

>Boxcar: Title the post, be the alternate interpreter

edited 5th Dec '10 1:38:08 PM by Bocaj

You are the alternate interpreter! It's you.

The remarkable thing is how the silliness makes the whole thing work, rather than obstruct it. Few games can get away with a plot that, for example, boils down to "someone has stolen the moon", and yet in this franchise it's practically expected. I don't know how popular the games would be if they started taking themselves more seriously, actually.

The problem [with people who like dark interpretations of Touhou] is that [they're] grading society by life expectancy instead of resident satisfaction level.

I believe that Youkai still eat humans somewhat frequently (as often as you'd expect a predator species to eat a prey species), but I also believe that not being at the top of the food chain wouldn't be so bad. Especially when you can have friends among the same species that may eat you eventually. An awesome life that only lasts 45 years or so is still an awesome life.

Human instinct is to want to live as long as possible, and to want to be as powerful as possible. Very few people would be happy knowing that they may well get eaten at any time.

Then the obvious solution is to follow Kasen's advice, and become Hermits.

Yeah, I think "getting eaten at any moment" is in fact inherently going to lower life satisfaction. People don't like being on guard. Safety is a very important part of comfort.

If there was some kind of system where everyone over a certain age voluntary goes off to die then I can see a certain level of comfort deriving from predictability, but that's never been implied.

Dying unpredictably has long been a part of human existence. Animals far stronger than humans preying on them, likewise. The question is whether the paradisaical nature of Gensokyo makes it a nice life for a human despite this or whether the human village is like the warren of the shining wire where a charmed life comes of a conscious price, frequent sacrifices.

And for as long as its been a part of human existence we've also been trying to avoid it. We try to fight off predators or avoid them and even for things we didn't understand like disease we'd pray to whatever we could for good health. So I don't think that's a particularly good argument.

edited 5th Dec '10 7:50:24 PM by Clarste

Dying unpredictably has long been a part of human existence. Animals far stronger than humans preying on them, likewise. The question is whether the paradisaical nature of Gensokyo makes it a nice life for a human despite this or whether the human village is like the warren of the shining wire where a charmed life comes of a conscious price, frequent sacrifices.

And for as long as its been a part of human existence we've also been trying to avoid it. we try to fight off predators or avoid them and even for things we didn't understand like disease we'd pray to whatever we could for good health. So I don't think that's a particularly good argument.

That raises the question: what is it about Gensokyo that gives it that paradisaical nature, then? Abundant crop yields? Surely it takes more than that to make a paradise.

Ooh! That reference gives me all kinds of interesting ideas about Tewi!

EDIT: Double-ninja'd.

edited 5th Dec '10 7:52:21 PM by Durazno

Views of Gensokyo:

Normal Humans: Somewhat fear-filled world. However, it's a bit better than before, what with youkai being held accountable to the danmaku rule, so it's a living.

Capable Humans: As they are capable (i.e. imbued with powers), Gensokyo holds little fear for them. Gensokyo is a place to laze about until adventure comes.

Youkai: As they are the most powerful creatures in Gensokyo, they live a privileged life, though they must worry about being overcome by other youkai. Still, it's a bit annoying that they can't do whatever they want, less they risk pissing off the miko.

Faeries: Paradise, only with more being killed.

edited 5th Dec '10 8:09:34 PM by yarrunmace

Okay, fair enough. But if you think about it, despite the feudal level of society, they've got the best pharmacist in the world providing fairly good and cheap health care via bunny apprentice, they've got a system of rrrrrrrrrrurrrrrrrres set in place that lets them face the horrible man-eating beasts on a somewhat even playing field, they've got a pretty rocking afterlife that they know exists, most of the big threat youkai races have mellowed out or moved away, and they can fly without having to rely on special fairy dust (Buy 2 bags get one half off now at participating Tewi Marts).

Its not a perfect existence but its better than feudal living in the outside world and better in some respects than modern city living. Its not a perfect worry-free life for humans but its not a horrible cesspit of an existence either.

Edit: Tewi is basically Elahrairah and Bre'r Rabbit and the Black Rabbit of Inaba and dozens of other trickster icons. I have often thought starting just now that people would hate her less as a character if she had a Bre'r Fox character as a nemesis but as it is all of her tricksteryness falls on Reisen who isn't quite on par.

edited 5th Dec '10 8:01:16 PM by Bocaj

^ Not sure if all humans have the ability to fly. Reimu's special for the ability to fly and Marisa only flies via broom.

We've never seen a normal human fly. Reimu is explicitly given that ability post PC-98 and the other humans all have generic enough magic to allow such a thing.