The New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium!

What does an Alice do when her specific obsession is achieved? Someone like Byakuren has an ongoing forever goal. But what does Alice do if she actually does achieve an independent doll?

Barely relevant

I'm actually also on board with the 'youkai have a core directive' idea. I simply disagree that Miko isn't so vain as to discard her humanity to live forever. She's already willing to devote herself to being the absolute ruler of a country; why not make it official as her youkai purpose? It's not like anyone better's going to come around.

The point I was getting at with the Hakutaku was simply that Miko wouldn't immediately discard whatever they said, which would give a medium for her to learn of such a transformation.

Byakuren's hardly the first Youkai to change her purpose, but we've seen that it's a rare and rather extreme thing. Shou becoming an avatar, Kyouko becoming a Yamabiko (And then giving up on the 'being an echo' purpose), Koishi closing her third eye, Unzan becoming Ichirin's protector, Murasa becoming a ship ghost rather than a drowned ghost (Though she seems to have gone back... hard to say with her).

Byakuren seems to love collecting these folks. Perhaps they give her comfort that maybe youkai are able to move beyond a single purpose (onto a different single one, generally, but still), something she perhaps now fears.

Should it even be possible, why stop with an intelligent doll? She could make a whole society of dolls, or possibly start finding a way to transfer consciousnesses between bodies, or what have you. She's really kind of shelved the living doll idea for the moment from what I understand (to pursue Goliath Doll), but she'll find something new to obsess over.

Magician youkai are mad scientists, basically.

edited 11th Jan '13 10:58:48 AM by Antimatter625

Frankly I think it's a contradiction to discard the self to preserve the self. You seem to have a very different idea of what she thinks her "self" is. While she certainly thinks of herself as a good ruler, perhaps the best, she doesn't define herself by it. She didn't pursue immortality so that she could rule forever. She pursued immortality because she didn't want to die, and might as well rule forever while she's at it. Note that when informed that ruling wasn't necessary she immediately came up with a new goal. It's just not that important to her, certainly not something to devote her entire existence to.

Which is actually a way of saying she's way more selfish than you're thinking. If the people don't want their perfect ruler, she's fine with letting them rot, because from her perspective she's doing them a favor. There are certainly personal advantages one obtains through rule, but she's been taking that sort of thing for granted for so long that she doesn't even think about them.

edited 11th Jan '13 11:09:05 AM by Clarste

I see her as a bit too much of a snake to believe her on that "oh, no ruler needed? nvm, then. Hermitage for me!" bit.

She went through an awful lot of effort to ensure her place as Japan's immortal king. Few people can work their entire lives on a project, then change their minds and decide "Nah, I guess it's not that important."

Miko may be an exception, if only because she spent hundreds of years sealed away (yet apparently awake for at least a portion of it... given her senses and her modern fasions, I'm inclined to believe Miko was fully conscious for the vast majority of her sealing). That's a lot of time to regret past actions or change who you are. In that time, she may well have lost her motivation to be a ruler (For the most part, anyway)... after all, she only spent one lifetime seeking rulership, but several sitting around contemplating just what got her sealed in a mausoleum. (And tuning in to nearby radio stations/peasant chatter, I guess?)

I still think that way back when, she did define herself as "The destined perfect ruler" enough to become a youkai for that purpose. Once Seiga came along, Miko probably wouldn't have (After all, she already had a method to live forever!)...

But if Seiga hadn't stuck around long enough to help Miko with the Shikaisen ritual... I think Miko would have been desperate enough to once again consider becoming a youkai to fulfill her self-appointed destiny.

Edit: And now, of course, Miko's like "Psh, screw youkai. I don't need them! I'm already immortal."

edited 11th Jan '13 11:22:19 AM by Antimatter625

It seems that youkai magicians have a lot more flexibility.

Perhaps, but only because "magic" is an awfully big/vague purpose. Whatever Alice moves on to, her whole life will still revolve around magic. I doubt she could ever properly 'retire', any more than Yamame could stop spreading disease.

edited 11th Jan '13 1:03:25 PM by Antimatter625

Hmm...in the case Miko didn't found Taoism, I also think she would have looked everywhere, but becoming a Youkai would have been to lower herself too much for the crown prince. She was someone born and raised to rule a country after all.

My best bet is that like many rulers of the past, she would have tried to make her own dynasty strong and be immortal in the face of her descendants. .

edited 11th Jan '13 4:31:47 PM by asellus111

Patchouli being youkai by birth is not canon.

Also, the great emperors in much of Chinese history wanted to become immortal, without exception. They may not want to keep ruling, but this is hard to tell.

edited 11th Jan '13 5:33:28 PM by atrican

True, Miko wasn't the first ruler to question human mortality, but in any case she found Taoism and when Miko was resurrected, she wasn't a mere Hermit but a Saint, something that ancient Youkai like Nue think is an alarm ring to go Oh, Crap! mode.

edited 11th Jan '13 5:58:57 PM by asellus111

Would that be a mistranslation of 生粋? Looks like it's slightly different on touhouwiki now.

I think that Patchouli being a natural-born youkai is canon, but I can't back up this statement. Even if this is not true, it's clear that some types of youkai can reproduce. In a manga with the Three Fairies, they get into a misunderstanding with a tengu egg, even wondering if the egg didn't belong to a cat youkai. How would a youkai child be? Would she be like a robot kid, following the same directive of their parent unities (to use robo-terms)?

And, as for Chinese emperors trying to reach immortality, I don't know, perhaps there must exist something like a secret order, like the Assassins that offs dictators that start researching on how to become youkai? I mean, Miko is not the type that seemed to be a ruthless dictator, even considering Values Dissonance. But this is just my mind drifting away.

Edit: I say this because there should be more of people reaching immortality from those methods, especially dictators that, in a certain way, already lost their humanity when they embraced wanton killing. Becoming a youkai would be a logical step.

edited 11th Jan '13 7:35:45 PM by RN452

Problem with most dictators whom we know pursued immortality is that they spent too much time on wanton killing and indulgence and had to do the supernatural stuff post-haste. That allowed them to be strung along by wrinkled old geezers and shining maidens who had apparently spent their whole extended lives on getting the rituals right, which naturally turned out badly.

Well, becoming a Youkai is basically turn into something that shouldn't exist in the first place, because Youkai are born from the dreams and nightmares of humanity.

Also even to become Youkai Magician is not the perfect and golden route, and even Marisa a human that also want to reach immortality clearly ignore this path, because there is something wrong in it.

edited 11th Jan '13 8:05:51 PM by asellus111

Well, no path is perfect. Just because it's not for her doesn't mean that there's "something wrong with it."

Well in the karma aspect a Youkai is even lower than a worm... Hell has a reason for that unless you start to question everything as Seiga.

I think there is "something wrong with it". Setting aside whether or not it's actually worse to be a youkai, that's almost definitely the common perception. Characters are going to be making decisions based on this. This is why Alice is a loner, and why Byakuren is a heretic. A youkai is simply not a human. Inhuman. Subhuman. The enemy. You can call that racism or whatever and try to dismiss it, but that's how things are. It's not what a reasonable person would consider a valid choice.

edited 11th Jan '13 8:38:57 PM by Clarste

Marisa is lazy. Studying to be a youkai takes a lot of hard work. Training to be a hermit takes a lot of hard work. She quit that after a week, I think.

Considering how famed Marisa is for her hard work, she sure seems work adverse when it comes to becoming immortal. She may not even want to be immortal, deep down.

Reasonable and Marisa are odd concepts to imagine together.

edited 11th Jan '13 8:41:42 PM by Bocaj

Wut!? Marisa is not lazy, heck she is the opposite of Reimu. Read her profiles.

Yes, as I mentioned.

When it comes to becoming immortal she suddenly gets a case of the downright lazies.

With presumably anything else she does her usual 110% effort and some lasers thing. But she tried the Taoist thing and gave up. Considering her usual work ethic she is lazy when it comes to immortality.

She already lives alone in the Forest of Magic and almost all of her friends that we know about are either youkai, part-youkai or Reimu. Other humanish youkai, including Alice and Byakuren, are at least cautiously accepted by the humans of the village. I just wouldn't expect Marisa to be using that metric when considering the inherent value of youkaidom.

edited 11th Jan '13 8:59:38 PM by Durazno

Well whether she wants to follow that route is not her priority obviously, also standing with the Hakurei Miko as equals is not an easy task either.

edited 11th Jan '13 9:11:18 PM by asellus111

Yes, but that's not relevant to the discussion.

Well..maybe, but don't ever call Marisa lazy again.

Marisa sure is lazy when it comes to becoming immortal.

So very, very lazy.

I cannot believe how much she half-asses it as if in a lazy manner.

Oh... Well this proves that there is no reason to try to argue with you.