Touhou

I rather assumed that the story would handle the tag mechanic by way of the whole Perfect Possession thing. Tagging in or out is your main character being possessed or released.

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Yes, that's the story justification for it. But will this apply to playing the story? If so, will the pairs be set? And if they are, will they be based on anything in particular?

For the record, gameplay gimmicks like weather and the occult balls have never applied in the story at all.

This is pretty definitively the most active talk/discussion we've had in as long as I can remember Really cool, shows how impactful and good dat chapter was!

I won't even try to match all the well-thought-out and passionate posts that we've had these last pages; just gonna state that I've really enjoyed readin' them. Lots of interest and passion in the fate of Little Suzy, and the conclusion of FS (which, I agree, is probably coming). I am gonna say this one point, though, which I have been saying for probably literally years now:

Suzy is N O T going to die. This would be a turn of events only fitted for grimdark fanfiction or ASOIAF, and utterly unprecedented by anything in the history of Touhou (and NO, the Fortune Teller does not count! That was a monster/cautionary tale of the week, an impressive one, yes, but not the cute little girl Main Char of a huge manga series!). Yes, I am aware that some sort of confrontation/problem between her and Reimu is very likely, a lot of foreshadowing on that one. But there's a gigantic range of possible outcomes of that apart from instant murder. Some of those outcomes may indeed be tragic/bittersweet, I could see that. Some sort of alienation between those two, up to possible exile or another form of permanent separation.

Yes, the last chapter was indeed a huge turn towards a dark tone, but it will never escalate beyond a certain point. This is still Touhou, the lighthearted, silly, having-tea-with-your-enemies franchise. It would be plenty "dark" enough for the general pleasant tone of Touhou if, say, a friendship ended.

As to Suzy becoming playable (and this finale working towards that, be it due to youkaification or possession or whatever), yes, I've been absolutely convinced that this will happen for many months now.

Well, if Kasen became a playable character in U Li L, there's no reason Kosuzu will not. She already has a theme, no?

edited 28th Mar '17 3:56:51 AM by ninryu

Kosuzu can't fight though. She's a wimp. That's the main reason.

Like that's ever stopped anyone.

Well yeah, Clarste , obviously, she is now. That's the whole point of the speculation on how her story will end, what's gonna happen next, and how conveniently the end of FS might coincide with the release of the ULIL Thing. For her to become playable, some kind of possession or youkaification has to take place; and the chances of that happening seem pretty good.

By "possession" I assume you mean something other than AoCF's plot? Or any previous instance of Kosuzu getting possessed?

A very justified question , considering I just slap that word on there without any thought or reason put behind it, indeed. I'll try to explain what I mean:

For Suzy to be playable in ULIL, she needs some sort of power boost to make it believable that she can now go toe-to-toe with all the Badasses of Gensokyo. I can see two ways to go about that:

A) Her becoming a Youkai. Straightforward, that would give her the same superhuman powers that all Youkai have. A very probable outcome of the FS story, with the fallout from it being still very unclear atm. Should this not happen, the only alternative I can see would be:

B) "Possession", which I should indeed more clearly label "Power Amplification through an external power" (and no, I sadly do not know anything about the Possession mechanic in the ULIL Expansion, because I'm a lazy bastard who never read about it ). What I imagine here is that some form of supernatural power/spirit/being/whatever attaches itself to Suzy in some way, which causes her/the amalgam of the two to be also supernaturally strong. This amalgamation could be permanent or a temporary, volontary power-up. it could be further split into two kinda categories:

a) The supernatural entity is very visible, and is actually the one doing the fighting; like Unzan's fists for Ichirin, for example. So it would be some kinda huge ghost thing or something like that, with Suzy being kinda a Marionette Master or Channeler.

b) It would look like normal Suzy, with the supernatural entity being inside her, empowering her body and giving her Super Strength, Speed and energy attacks; maybe with some visual indication that she's "possessed" still there, like an aura, or glowing eyes. I have seen this in many works of fiction: the pah-wraiths and prophets in DS 9, the female main character in the Akira movie... from what I've heard, there's also a girl in Battleborn and one in Jade Empire who's kinda like that.

There could be some sort of explanation on why this entity chooses Suzy, or why it might work very well with her, because of Suzy's long history of possessions.

I hope that cleared up what I meant

The "perfect possession" hinted at in the ULiL Reisen story is something completely different: it's trading places entirely with another being. In particular, the part that makes it "perfect" is that it swaps their bodies too. The example in the story was Reisen talking to Reimu who suddenly became a very confused Mokou for no explicable reason. Gameplay-wise, this means it's just a standard tag-team mechanic: press a button to swap out with another character.

A Kosuzu who was possessed by anyone or anything via this method would simply not be Kosuzu at all.

edited 28th Mar '17 6:29:41 AM by Clarste

You'd be playing as "other-being-in-Kosuzu's-body"?

Well, there are a -few- things special about Kosuzu's position. Being good friends with both Akyuu and Reimu (And Aya and Mamizou) is probably pretty unusual. I guess I'm saying her circle of friends/contacts is strange for a human villager, especially since she actually -knows- that some of them are youkai (As a side note, I'm always amused whenever Kosuzu doesn't take Akyuu's memory of ages seriously).

Why was Kosuzu so much more willing to ask Aya about the alliegances of youkai than she was asking Mamizou?

Hmmm... I suppose Kosuzu might have taken her books and run away to... well, become a youkai. In which case, I'm very curious what loophole Yukari's going to exploit. The most likely one is 'she wasn't a villager when she became a youkai since she left the village before she did so it's fine.' like Clarste suggested. In which case she'd obviously show up while Reimu was stressing out over having to kill Kosuzu (Or moments before she did) for best effect.

Alternatively, I dunno, I'm still kinda interested in the idea of her being a go-between for youkai and humans. Maybe for whatever reason (Intervention by Yukari to keep Reimu from needing to kill her, or maybe she gets cold feet partway through whatever change starts, who knows?) she simply doesn't become a full youkai, ending up something more like Youmu (That lineage started -somehow-) or the therianthropes. Some sort of edge case that's neither fully human, nor fully youkai.

I could possibly (As a rather darker ending) See her ending up becoming a part of her books, or possessing them or something (perhaps sealing herself away?). Not sure how that would stop Reimu from attacking her though.

I write some fanfiction. Satori's Tale is done... but I'm not.

And then she gets sent back one hundred years, perhaps through a time portal created by someone with great flaming eyebrows, and becomes a witch.

Still fearful of tanooks and mikos, she enters into allegiance with a vampire who promises to protect her. Of course, to change her fate she'll need to change her name...

So for one hundred years, the newly christened Ms Knowledge hunkers down with her books, hiding from the world in the devil's den.

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It helps that Aya was being nice and polite as opposed to losing her cool and threatening her.

edited 28th Mar '17 8:38:17 AM by Zansnae793

sounds legit to me

Heart of Stone

@Bocaj:

Well... kiiinda... it does sound a bit iffy.... but also not really, since Suzy would still be in control either way, so it's more of a two-in-one situation. You'd still be playing Suzy, just powered-up Suzy.

@Clarste: Oh, very interesting, thanks for the info! I get it now, what the "Possession" Theme means. I would still argue, though, that it could still be possible for my hypothetical powered-up-by-symbiosis-Suzy to be a char in the game. She'd do her thing, and the tag team thing would do its thing, seperately from each other. But yeah, youkaification would make it much easier.

True! She had already done her very effective threatening a while ago, when she revealed herself

Aya also comes across as somewhat more open about being a youkai, rather than sneaking around about it like Mami.

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Does this flaming eyebrows someone speak in a very hamtastic fashion?

I mean if you don't speak hammy and you have great big flaming eyebrows then what are you even doing with your life

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@Bocaj: And now Suzy gets shipped with Marisa.

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I'm sure Kosuzu's trust in Mamizou is broken since that tanuki has been lying from the start until the raccoon's out of the bag. Ayaya, meanwhile, has proven herself to be more honest about being a Youkai from the get go. Plus Mamizou still wants those Youma books, so that something unresolved between them.

Murdering time and space. Now on Twitter.

Who doesn't get shipped with Marisa?

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Junko?

Let's see if you can get past my Beelzemon. Mephiles, WARP SHINKA!

Probably the Moonbitches, cause nobody likes them.

I think they are also already married

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