The New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium!

Indeed- Those differences are mostly a product of circumstance. The key is why they wanted immortality and what they did after they got it, not the exact method they chose.

Miko was the crown prince, and I think she was a regent. That's basically an emperor.

Miko talks about there being youkai everywhere in her time. She seems rather familiar with them. Personally I think her pride would probably overpower her fear in this case. Or perhaps she'd be even more afraid of becoming a monster. It's the difference between becoming subhuman and becoming superhuman. In the worst case scenario, becoming a youkai might not even preserve her "self". Who's to say she wouldn't just become a monster possessing Miko's body? She certainly doesn't seem to think of youkai as things that can be treated human.

You're quite possibly correct. After all, Byakuren didn't really start sympathizing with youkai until after she'd become one and started saving them for her own selfish motivations.

I still think that Miko would have been likely to pursue that path if she knew a decent way to do it. I really don't think she would have cared about becoming a youkai, so long as she didn't die. (And yes, a spiritual death would probably have been a valid fear. Futo or someone else would probably still have been a test subject for the procedure).

Futo, youkai of Olde English, somehow.

Thing is, youkai are clearly individuals, with personalities and hopes and dreams and stuff, in the Touhouverse. If you're around people long enough, you generally care more and more about their plights- It's not that unbelievable that Byakuren could have come to the same conclusion herself whether she had become a Magician by then or not.

Possible (After all, Sanae seems kind of accepting of some youkai and may well go that route. Heh, she's so conflicted right now), but extremely unlikely.

Let's not forget Byakuren spent a literal lifetime exterminating Youkai without a second thought. She didn't give a damn about them except as fundraisers and enemies until she was staring at death's door.

Then she changed her tune and was like "Hey wait, they don't die of old age, do they?" Ker-transform! Byakuren was motivated by fear; death had been stalking her, but the death of her brother made her realize that death was much closer than she had thought. She was suddenly faced with her own mortality, and opted to become a youkai.

Miko, on the other hand, really didn't seem to be afraid of death, as much as her ego was threatened by the fact tht she would die. No matter what Miko did in life, if she died in the end, how would she be different from any other corpse?

There's a saying that goes something like "King or peasant, the worms don't care." I think Miko was disgusted that the same fate awaited her as awaited everyone else. After all, she was special! A genius! She was above becoming worm food... then she wouldn't need to be remembered for her achievements; she could keep making more... she could live on in more than just memories.

If, instead of Seiga, a youkai (say, a Hakutaku; one of the youkai that are seen as benefactors) approached Miko with a way to accomplish exactly what she'd been seeking (death-avoidance), I think Miko would have jumped on that boat so hard it'd risk sinking.

Alas for everyone (except Seiga. She got probably a few decades of lulz out of the incident), Seiga got to her first.

And yeah, I can see the counterpoint... that perhaps Miko was too attached to her humanity to discard it like that, but... she thought it beneath her to die. That's not someone who prides themselves on their humanity.

While I do think she thinks of herself as special, I don't think it follows that everyone else deserves to be mortal. The little "the land is unchanged since the time of the gods, the seas are still filled to the brim, so why is it that humans have to accept death?" thing kind of implies to me that it's not just an ego-trip. I mean, her motivation is essentially egotistical (she thinks she's the best ruler they're ever gonna get), but her motivation is basic transhumanism. Overcoming death is just another path to self-improvement. If other people want to do it to, that's also fine. That's not the part that makes her special. She was special before she conquered death, and she'd still be special even if everyone else was also immortal.

edited 10th Jan '13 3:47:11 PM by Clarste

Also that is basically what Taoism seeks in humanity, to try and reach for immortality and self improvement.

It's what ZUN's Taoism seeks for humanity. Real Taoism is simply to follow the Tao as interpreted by your background, situation and experience. This includes dying when your time is up.

edited 10th Jan '13 4:21:04 PM by Recon5

Remember that Taoism has both a religious movement and a philosophical movement, in the religious aspect you aim to reach for immortality, like illumination in Buddhism.

True, but the immortalization and deification of specific Taoists is part of the religious baggage the movement has acquired over time similar to what happened with Buddhism. The original 'immortality' of Taoism is similar to that of Buddhism, which is to become one with and indistinguishable from an abstract over-concept. Certainly not what Miko was trying to achieve.

Well Miko at that time was basically avoiding death to become a Hermit, Also Miko is trying to become a celestian now that humanity seems to has moved on, which in my opinion is another step to reach the true immortality that Taoism teach. Her journey is far from over.

edited 10th Jan '13 4:48:11 PM by asellus111

The Taoist religion is a synthesis of several things, stacked up layer by layer through time. A very rough timeline:

Starting from 2000 BCE: ancient Chinese mythologies, pre-sciences and philosophies

Probably 600 - 200 BCE: the Taoist philosophy

Some time BCE: a mythology of immortal hermits and their magical islands (such as Penglai / Hourai) was developed in the eastern coast area now known as Shandong Peninsula

500 - 200 BCE: Shandong Peninsula became a center of science and intellectual activities

221 BCE: the First Emperor of Qin united China, creating China's imperial system; he would send Xu Fu out in search of Penglai/Hourai and the elixir of immortality; despite his intention, his empire wouldn't last very long

202 BCE: Han dynasty founded; its rulers believed in Taoism as the guiding philosophy for their rule, until...

134 BCE: a scholar proposed to elevate Confucianism into China's de facto state religion

Around 1 CE: Buddhism spread into China, and also introduced China to the idea of monastery system

184 CE: the Han dynasty was nearing its end; the Yellow Turban rebellion was started as a Taoist religion movement; you may know them from any number of Three Kingdom stories

Meanwhile: a prophet founded the Taoist religion that lived on to this day; he, his son and grandson ruled a region of Southwestern China with their theocracy

200 - 600 CE: Taoism developed and matured through social turmoil; people began to perceive Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism as "the Three Religions", and often synthesized them in their personal beliefs

600 - 1200 CE: this period is often considered the peak of Chinese civilization; Taoism was venerated by rulers

edited 10th Jan '13 6:01:52 PM by atrican

That would mean that Seiga brought Miko a heavily syncretized version of Taoism. Byakuren likewise would have been exposed to a heavily syncretized Buddhism, possibly different from the one Miko promulgated. I wouldn't be surprised if there was at least a little dodgy stuff in that particular framework of rituals.

edited 10th Jan '13 6:08:53 PM by Recon5

That's not the point though. The point is that no ideology is developed in a vacuum; everything is a synthesis. Taoism happens to be a combination of Chinese mythologies, sciences and magic, Taoist philosophy, the legends of immortal hermits, philosophy inspired by Buddhism, plus the monastery system from Buddhism.

edited 10th Jan '13 6:46:19 PM by atrican

I'll have to disagree here. You can spend a life time killing and wouldn't care for the Youkai, because you did not understand them. It is easy to kill what you objectify. When Byakuren became a Youkai, she is forced to think in Youkai shoes and thus she changed her mind about them.

Reimu is clearly better at this than Byakuren, as she does not need to be a Youkai to recognize this.

Miko, I don't quite know. Youkai are supposed to be evil, so it is a thing to be destroyed.

If you believe yourself to be in disagreement with me, then I don't think I was clear. I was saying that before becoming a youkai, Byakuren didn't sympathize with them. After becoming a youkai it took a bit of time, but she did. I agree that a huge part of why Byakuren began to sympathize with them was because she was one, not merely because she needed youkai to still be a thing.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say about Reimu. I don't think she has any real sympathy towards Youkai, if that's what you're getting at. She sees them much like Byakuren did when Byakuren was a youkai hunter. Fundraisers or enemies (in general). Emphasis on the first for Reimu... she tends to be willing to overlook youkai as long as money's involved.

The exception are those youkai that are beneficial to humans. Hakutaku, Okuriinu, Zashiki Warashi (Lycoans, too, though they're kinda just... pretty much human anyway, so killing them is probably a touchy issue). Reimu seems reluctant to hunt/exterminate them... because the humans don't want them gone.

Which ties into Miko perhaps being tempted. If a Hakutaku or similar beneficent youkai appeared to her and offered her youkai-dom to escape from death, I really think Miko would have been on board (After throwing someone else on, first, to make sure it's safe, of course. Even beneficent Youkai can be misinformed, after all).

Even benevolent youkai like Hakutaku aren't human though. In a certain sense, you could say they don't even have free will. A Hakutaku is a wise being that gives advice to benevolent rulers, which certainly sounds nice and all, but it can't do anything else. It's not a person, it's a symbol. From another perspective, it's just something that shows up to mark wise rulers who were already wise in the first place. It has no choice in the matter, and certainly no motivation. It's not a doer or an agent of any kind, it's a natural law.

Hmm... to put this in perspective, being a youkai is like being a robot. At some level they're always "just following their programming". They could have any kind of personality written on top of that, but the core is just a "purpose" that they cannot deviate from, or even consider deviating from. Now, personally I believe that sufficiently advanced robots can be people, but this is hardly a noncontroversial idea. So while youkai might seem perfectly sentient or even sapient to a lot of people, other people might believe that no matter how they act, at their core they still aren't people, and they can't be people. Miko strikes me as someone who would believe that. It's not about being good or evil, it's about being a person. Human. Is becoming an existence less than human any better than dying?

What about magicians?

What about magicians?

edited 11th Jan '13 8:33:34 AM by Clarste

Do they have robot central purposes?

Beep boop

edited 11th Jan '13 8:38:47 AM by Bocaj

Of course they do. They have "obsessions" that turned them into youkai in the first place. I mean, it's perfectly possible to remain a human magic-user, but the people who go the full distance are those obsessed enough with accomplishing something to throw away everything else, including their humanity. Alice is trying to make her living doll and Byakuren is trying to protect the existence of youkai. Both of them live their lives entirely around these purposes. Byakuren's actually an interesting case because originally she had an ulterior motive, but she's since lost that and continues her purpose with a new justification. I'm not saying her Becoming the Mask backstory is false per se, but from a certain perspective the idea of keeping a single purpose even as your personality changes around it is central to the whole theory.

edited 11th Jan '13 8:48:51 AM by Clarste

Patchy was born as a magician and already a youkai so was she born with a purpose or did she gain one by the time she cast the spell to stop aging?

What about partial youkai like Rinnosuke and Keine? Do they have central purposes?

Also, it would be possible for a sufficiently advanced robot or youkai to argue that humans have such core directives as well. It could be that telling a hakutaku not to advise a wise ruler is like telling a human not to pull her hand out of a fire - strictly possible, but deeply unpleasant and her every instinct screams against it.

When a human comes up and says, "You're not a person because whatever quirks or aspirations you layer atop it, at your core you're just a force of nature that appears to guide wise rulers," the hakutaku replies, "And whatever quirks or aspirations you layer atop your core, you're just a social animal. You're a tiny part of a force of nature that covers the Earth with your eating, screwing, squabbling brethren. Don't get on my case because my mandate is more specific."

(I'm not arguing against Clarste here, but the comparison is interesting to me.)

edited 11th Jan '13 9:10:47 AM by Durazno