The New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium!

OK, time to get this off my chest.

Cirno's use of 'Eye' instead of 'I'. Why. Just...why. Yeah, 'atai' is a childish pronoun, but surely it can be overlooked here BECAUSE SHE'S A FRACKING CHILD!!!. So...why? Why? WHY? It looks RIDICULOUS!

Also, I have never seen a child refer to themselves as 'eye' instead of 'I'.

Furthermore, Komachi and Orin both use 'atai', and they're definitely not children. So why is their usage not mocked, huh? I put it down to them both being formidible opponents. People are scared on them.

Way to pick on A LITTLE GIRL, Touhou fans.

edited 10th Sep '11 1:46:38 PM by asterism

Heart of Stone

On the upside, it seems to being falling out of favor.

I mostly limit her bad grammar to "Me & my friends" and the like.

edited 10th Sep '11 1:48:54 PM by Pulse

I sure said that!

Translation can get lazy. You have to translate the spirit and not just the letter. If she uses atai, a childish pronoun, then translate her dialogue to sound childish. Don't just misspell the word since in Japanese its a legitimate word.

Its okay to misspell the words if the character mispronounces it though. Tangentially, I do love the Yotsuba manga.

edited 10th Sep '11 1:49:09 PM by Bocaj

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And then repeatedly during the Seiga fight

Someone drew her, other people thought she was cool, and she briefly became a fad. No particular work that she's associated with

edited 10th Sep '11 2:06:05 PM by Hylarn

Re: Fire Cirno: Hmm. I can see that. Since you mention Youkai Mountain was based on a volcanic mountain range, do you think it is a volcano? (Maybe an inactive one?)

OK. Thanks. I was wondering if there was some major fanwork comic or something I missed somewhere.

I never got the "eye" thing either. Yes, I know the whole "atai" thing, but, well, she isn't the only one who uses that. And having her say "eye" just looks stupid. You can write childishly without writing stupidly.

...And I still don't think Cirno is that stupid anyway. Childish and proud, yes, but don't confuse that for stupid.

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She doesn't exactly die, she just falls over and can't get up.

Then Seiga's all 'I WILL SAVE YOU, ZOMBIE SLAVE!' and rushes over to rescue her and then you shoot her in the face, and then you all dance to Gu Yuan Xian, because it's such a catchy tune.

Heart of Stone

Youkai Mountain is an active volcano

I wonder if it'll ever erupt.

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And if it does erupt, will it erupt at the same time as it does in the outside world?

She's classically trained in the art of faking death. Classically... trained.

I remember back when I joined this thread and got jumped for using "eye". I'm not talking about yelling over the internet, I was danmaku'd by sheer will to prove me wrong.

edited 10th Sep '11 2:11:32 PM by Horselesshorseman

I have no horse, and I must ride. I accomplish unlockments.

Given that Youkai Mountain has a mountain god currently living at the top, I'd say an eruption is not likely. I think Ci LR mentions that there's a god living inside the mountain whose job is basically to stop it from erupting.

Heart of Stone

Unfortunately, thanks to years of the "eye" treatment, my first mental image of Cirno is't a child at all, but a sixty-year old mentally disabled womanchild, kinda like Tingle.

Fandom memes are curses occasionally.

Edit: By the way, I just remembered that Cirno appears to be wearing just socks on her feet in Guignol Quest. A lot of Touhou characters seems to just be wearing socks or at least some sock-esque footwear. Like Ran. I guess you don't have to worry about dirty socks so much if you can fly.

Anyway, I only mention it because everybody else that's playable in the game wears some manner of shoe, sandal or clog.

edited 10th Sep '11 6:25:59 PM by Bocaj

Forever liveblogging the Avengers

I just thought that Cirno had short legs or a long dress.

That awkward moment where Kyoro is one of Satan's Generals.

Possibly a compromise between her otherwise being portayed as barefoot or wearing socks and shoes with about equal frequency

I assume they're socks since they change color.◊

That makes an alarming amount of sense.

edited 10th Sep '11 7:27:00 PM by Bocaj

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The one odd discrepancy in fanart is the portrayal of Byakuren as wearing black boots bound with the white straps, when it's clear from her in-game art that those are socks (you can see her toe outline)

Well, you can hardly blame Byakuren for that. Its not like they gave her time to grab her shoes before they locked her up.

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Like a Snowball Rolling Uphill

Cirno's a fun character because of where she is and where she's going.

She's the fairy that doesn't play by the rules, who defies conventions and expectations. Fairies are supposed to be tied to a specific bit of nature; Cirno goes where she wants. Fairies are supposed to hang around stronger youkai to give the protagonists something to shoot at and get power-ups from; meanwhile other fairies follow Cirno around. Fairies are supposed to be weak; Cirno's higher on the nonexistant power tiers than some youkai, and has tangled with some of the premier forces shaping Gensokyo's future. She doesn't always win these scraps, but the fact that she's even in the running says volumes.

Cirno's a rebel, though it's not like she's making a stand against The System or anything, she just does what she wants. While Gensokyo is grappling with the nature of the relationship between humans and youkai, Cirno is over there reminding Marisa that even fairies can be underestimated. Reimu comes up with a protocol to duel with danmaku - Cirno obligingly makes her own cards, then figures out a way to freeze her opponent's bullets. She's the hero of her own story, not somebody's flunky or a cog in a machine.

Cirno's a child, physical age aside. She hasn't had the proper schooling to have an Int score that isn't embarrassing, and the ways she picks fights and reaches conclusions means her Wis can't be too high either. But her Cha has got to be something - Cirno is a blazing (freezing) star of self-confidence. She's brash, arrogant, eager to prove herself against mighty foes. Each day is another epic adventure in her life story, full of cataclysmic battles with sinister witches, unless she feels like beating her record for most frozen frogs.

Cirno's an underdog. Out of all the myriad fairies inhabiting Gensokyo, she alone has made a name for herself battling the likes of Reimu and Marisa. And losing. She is, after all, only a fairy. But she (for the moment anyway) still has a fairy's regenerative immortality, so each defeat is only a temporary setback before she's back for annuver go. She doesn’t know when she’s beaten, she doesn’t know when she’s winning, either, she has no sensory apparatus known to mankind, she can't be reasoned with because her vocabulary isn't all that great, and she won't stop, ever, until she gets what she wants or forgets or takes too many beatdowns or loses interest and wanders off to go do something else. She's an unstoppable, elemental force and also an easily-distracted, simple little girl. At least for now.

That's the question, isn't it - what will Cirno be like in another sixty years? At the moment she's an exceptional, nigh-legendary fairy, but will she stay that way for long? She seems to be steadily increasing in power, stepping beyond the bonds of fairyhood into places that've got the Yama disgruntled. Could she break through to youkaidom, something previously unheard of? Or is she too tied to her identity as the strongest fairy? Would she consider giving up her immortality a worthy trade if it meant evolving into a "higher" being, or would she continue to regenerate as a youkai simply because she expects to? Will her great powers instill her with some sense of maturity, or will she maintain her childishness as a way to cope with her long life a la Remilia?

Guess it's up to ZUN, of course. He'd probably prefer to come up with new sets of antagonists instead of revisiting one of the first Windows-era characters again and again, but he cares enough to give Cirno her own game. Whether that's just bowing to her popularity or an indication that he has more in store for her remains to be seen.

edited 10th Sep '11 11:36:15 PM by Tacitus

Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown"

Put some bold text on that and you win the prize, no contest!

I have no horse, and I must ride. I accomplish unlockments.

Well done. You know Faw is going to want you to slap a title on that.

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A Spirit as Strong as an Arctic Glacier

---

The Misty Lake was buzzing with activity. The local fairies (the few capable of stringing more than three thoughts together, anyway) were hard at work, building fancy ice sculptures and finding pretty objects to decorate the doors of their cabins. Today was the last day of fall.

"Which means that tomorrow will be the first day of winter!"

Cirno was heading this operation, though, unfortunately for her, the only fairies both interested in these preparations and capable of staying on-task consisted entirely of herself and her best friend, the wind fairy creatively named-

"Daiyousei! Have you found any cool rocks or shells?"

"Just, um, j-just this-"

"Oh, COOL! It's perfect!"

Cirno nabbed the stone from Daiyousei's hands, her eyes almost glowing.

"I gotta get to making some really great statues if I'm gonna beat this!"

Cirno scooped up some water from the lake, freezing it in just the right spots, creating a hairbow out of the ice, the excess water trickling off. Cirno, however knew the she would-

"...Need more sizing. It isn't big enough yet."

"Um... ah, Cirno, is th-this going to be u-useful?"

Daiyousei had started to bring in some southerly winds, trying to keep the statues cold, and had accidentally taken a bucket from the Scarlet Devil Mansion, which laid to the north.

"Ohh, that'd be a BIG help! Thanks, Dai! You're so awesome!"

Dragging bucket after bucket from the lake to the cliff-face entrance to her home on the shore, Cirno made a pair of life-sized statues of herself and Daiyousei, their hands raised and held open, the two of them holding the stone Daiyousei had found.

Daiyousei, meanwhile, had been writing a message on the ground in all the various small objects she had found laying around the shore.

"Dai, I think we're done! Look at this masterpiece, Dai! Only the strongest in Gensokyo could have made it, and only with the second strongest helping her!"

The pair looked upon the statue Cirno had made, the light refracting so that their eyes glowed in a thousand different colors, the blue and green swirled stone Daiyousei had found radiating in the exact colors of the hair of the two living fairies, the message on the ground reading out-

WELCOME BACK, LETTY

Cirno whispered into her friend's ear-

"You're the best friend anyone could ask for. Thank you, Dai."

The older girl hugged Daiyousei from behind, and ran inside their home, the younger one following close behind, freezing cold from today's efforts, but feeling warm inside, knowing that the two of them could do anything, all because-

"Cirno's so strong..."

---

A fluffy exploration of Cirno's non-battling hobbies and personal bits.

Yes, Cirno and Dai live together. No, they aren't romantically involved yet.

Yet.

Cirno's just very tactile.

edited 11th Sep '11 12:17:56 PM by Pulse

I sure said that!

What do you think about this idea about Cirno which prevails in some doujin works as a subversion?

In fact the idea has a website by that name.

Again, I suspect she has average human intelligence, though noticeably hampered by her own childishness and arrogance. (She is still a kid after all. Average child intelligence?) However "average human intelligence" is equal to "genius fairy intelligence". It's how you look at it.

This was adorable. I liked it. Also, Cirno making ice sculptures (of herself of course, sometimes Dai or Letty) seems like a hobby she'd have.

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'Look at my sculpture! Doesn't it radiate a sense of POWER and MAJESTY! FEEL IT! FEEL THE MAJESTY!'

'It's just a sculpture of you...'

'I KNOW! I'm powerful, beautiful and AWESOME. Go on. Touch it. FEEL MY AWESOME MAJESTIC AWESOMENESS!'

'It's cold...'

'It's made of ice, dumbass. Of course it's cold.'

edited 11th Sep '11 10:11:26 AM by asterism

Heart of Stone