Of course, attempting integration of societies is fine, though in some instances there are of course natural limitations, and sometimes their cultures are just hard to reconcile with each other. The way of man is not the way of trolls, and all that.
One Winged Egret
Maybe it's not the best example, but that short story ZUN wrote about POFV from Yukari's perspective was somewhat enlightening. Even from inside her own head, her actions and thoughts don't make much sense. They're not quite random, and she seems to take it as seriously as she's able, but her train of thought just seems sort of illogical.
Then again, Yukari is a youkai among youkai.
Is Marisa the only interesting human Koishi found? Cause Faw's bio up there only mentions herTangentially, its interesting that the contrast between Satori and Koishi is that Koishi is the stronger fighter of the two but Satori is more emotionally resilient. And the species apears to be named for Satori in-universe. Come to think of it, it's gotta be weird to rely on your telepathy to read other minds all your life, and then suddenly are unable to rely on that power anymore. Since this was one of her natural powers before she closed her eye, it could be that she never learned how to read people non-telepathically like normal humans do. An incomprehensible reduction of many minds to just one: her own. But she enjoys it. Anyway, I think it's implied that everyone has something equivalent to the third eye, it's just that for Satoris it's much stronger. More than simply being unable to mind minds any more and being forced to rely on other senses, she can't rely on those other senses because closing her third eye is the same as rejecting the very idea of paying attention to other people at all. Reading faces and whatnot is merely an application of a nearly blind third eye. With it closed entirely even that is not possible. I think there's something much more realistic and sympathetic about Satori having no clue what she's doing. I think the reason that Koishi needs human contact, not animal or youkai, is because we're emotionally complex creatures. Animals, while cute and cuddly, have pretty simple emotions. You feed them, give 'em room and act nicely towards them, they are happy. They don't ask for too much. Us humans now, we need a lot more emotional contact. You know what, you could probably do a drug addiction analogy to Koishi. You could make a lot of analogies to Koishi, really. But... okay, yeah, I can see it.
The eye suffers the least. Seeing the inside of the eyelid allows it to see the subconscious—the core of a regular heart, where thoughts comes from— rather than the actual thoughts. The heart, however, suffers dearly. without exposure to other hearts, it becomes weak.Well, humans are special. Its even mentioned by Yukari in SA. I actually find that a good reason why meeting the PC had such an effect on Koishi. Meeting a human for the first time since her eye was closed, it would have been the first time she felt a youkai's instinct to use it. EXCEPT: Check this out. The symbol Koishi is given in the Grimoire of Marisa is a keyhole. One of Marisa's partners in SA is Nitori who wears a key. Clearly, it wasn't a human who changed her, it was a kappa. Its all there hidden in layers upon layers of clever symbolism. Nitori/Koishi OTP. CLEARLY. Reimu Hakurei - Part of a Balanced BreakfastI like the way you interpret her friendship to Marisa and her animosity towards youkai. Very intriguing.Lookit me I used a synonym for interesting
I feel that, to an extent, the kind of cheerful approach of Komachi's is practically a requirement for her job. Somebody who would be too serious would be unable to correctly cope with the mass amount of strong emotions, regret, stories and other such things one would meet while ferrying tons of people down the Sanzu. They would break down too easily, bogged down by taking all of the things she hears so serious and soon be overwhelmed by their own feelings on the matter. In a sense, taking it all serious is a death warrant, not to mention may even improperly prepare people for that of being judged. Now, a "humorous" person is another story. Humor is often used as a defense mechanism by keeping a distant stance on the world through an absurdist lense. Or something like that anyway.
I don't know if I should attempt to write about Koishi while I'm this sleepy, but maybe that is just the kind of state of mind you'd need to write about someone like her.
PS: This is neither here nor there, but Koishi's color scheme makes me think of the palette-swaps of the player sprites in Seiken Densetsu 3 to indicate that they changed classes and got more powerful.
Power is purple and turquoise.
edited 27th Dec '10 2:22:35 PM by Fawriel
Warning: The follow write-up is written without much pre-planning or coherence because the writer deemed it only fitting for this character. Caution is advised.
Nobody.
A dreamer who believes in true love! They keep talking of it in songs and stories! Oh, how nice it must be to feel this, this love! Sister, where is this love? Why is all we ever get, hate? Hate. Hate hate hate HATE
The elder sister Satori was more resilient than her younger sibling. She was content with her house and her pets and her lively Koishi keeping her company. Koishi, however, suffered from a severe case of optimism. Idealism, if you will. Love-sickness for love. Thirst for all the adventures this outside world has to offer. She cannot quench this thirst in this cage, this cage within a larger cage! She can burst free! She can burst free of the cage of her existence as an outcast, and then she'll burst free from this house, from this land, and then the whole world will be hers to take, why, she will grow to the size of the sky just to embrace all of the world in her arms, so says she with her heart aflame and in tears.
So said she, and took the knife.
Things don't work that way, Koishi.
Koishi.
Why did you kill yourself?
Your body is still alive. Your brain is still working. But this Koishi isn't the one I grew up with. Oh, sister, if your soul is still around, if I can somehow make you return to the way you were. I want to give you all the love and all the happiness this world has to offer, so please. Please. Please come back to me...
The eye was shut, and thus was the heart. What remained of Koishi was superficially everything but the opened third eye, and yet, Koishi herself is gone. Without the heart, the feelings, the part of the soul that binds her to this world, what is left is a raging intellect with memories of what it means to be a person.
It would be wrong to say that she is inhuman, or inyoukai, as it were. But her regard for the people around her. Her self-control. Her desires and dreams. All of these dissipated into all cardinal directions. She wanders around aimlessly, acts erratic, sleeps in the mud, won't hold a coherent conversation, eats things she finds on the ground, lets herself drop without warning, goes for days without food. Even an animal has instincts and a social nature, but Koishi, the intelligent beast, has no such things. There exists the world, and there exists her. Her two eyes see the world, but the world is something apart from her. A movie, a simulation, shadowplay. There is so much to do. What does this do. What do these people say. What do these kinds of creatures act like. She wanders. She watches.
It's not that she is dangerously insane. She is harmless. A hedonist, a slave to her freedom, but at the same time, practically unaware that the world around her is something that can be changed by her. Like the player character in a game world, she wanders to discover everything, losing interest as soon as gaining it, not expecting the "game" to give her anything that it doesn't give her on its own. She is harmless. But she is no longer the Koishi her sister loved. Satori can no longer read her mind. She cannot talk to her. She often won't see her for weeks upon weeks.
The young Koishi, bursting with life and love, thinks herself lucky, as though she has gained what she dreamt for – the love of everyone, the ability to venture wherever she wants to, the ability to embrace the whole world. Yet what she gained is indifference, as people can barely sense her presence anymore; the prison of freedom, as she can go wherever, but has no reason to be in any one place; and the only thing filling her life, observing the world through a looking glass, making connections, taking notes, creating formulas for the AI of this artificial world in front of her, in her never-resting magnificent and lonely brain.
What will happen after she meets that human, that person who broke the patterns she created, that creature who seems like more than another NPC... that thing that might be another... one like her?
Return from that odyssee, Koishi. Absolute freedom is not for the living.
edited 13th Jun '11 2:11:33 PM by Fawriel
... I think I may have gone overboard a little there. I apologize if that was hard to read. I know I wanted it to sound a little disoriented, but with tiredness and music blasting through my headphones like that, it might have been too much.
You guys are inspiring, though, Jesus Christ.
That was pretty good actually. And so was Ruki's write up as well. Koishi's character seems to lend her to interesting analysis (though I suppose that's natural for a character whose based around psychology).
Funny but not helpful
My first impression is that I like the sort of narrative style you used.
Forever liveblogging the Avengers
It's very Koishi-esque.
Hooray!
I'm glad. I actually got tears in my eyes when I suddenly started writing from Satori's perspective, so it would've been pretty depressing if all that had been for naught.
Anyway, I guess I'll have to go on an art binge tomorrow to find some nice pictures of her, and... I guess I'll pray for gensoukoumuten to release more pages for his new doujin centering around Satori and apparently her search for Koishi... Neeeeed. Neeeeeeed more pages.
In much less dramatic news things, Koishi appeared in a bunch of M-1 videos. With Orin, Judging of the Orin sketch, With Satori.
edited 27th Dec '10 4:10:03 PM by Fawriel
Funny but not helpful
I might have a write-up later but I dunnae if I have anything to add, insane Nitori/Koishi shipping aside. In the meantime, I'm going to repost Karaagetarou's At Chireiden for the fifth time.
If we're doing recs, I have a fondness for Koishi the Loving Gourmet. One of the few stories that has Koishi act IC.
One Winged Egret
That was awesome Faw.
This. Cannot. Continue.
They can see her no problem, but they just feel like something's off, and subconsciously, they feel no desire to bond with this person they see, but don't feel in front of them, much like the person has no desire to bond with them, thus ensuring that no such thing will happen. Like the way you put that. Makes me wonder about Koishi's eyes - windows to the soul and all that, when you look into the eyes of a person (or a sufficiently intelligent animal) you get an "echo," a sense that there's an entity behind them. So if you look into Koishi's eyes, those of a person who has severed that connection, what would you see? An empty void? Something that looks like a doll's eyes, staring but lifeless? Or some sort of madness beyond even a lunar rabbit's lunatic eyes?
Come to think of it, it's gotta be weird to rely on your telepathy to read other minds all your life, and then suddenly are unable to rely on that power anymore. Since this was one of her natural powers before she closed her eye, it could be that she never learned how to read people non-telepathically like normal humans do. An incomprehensible reduction of many minds to just one: her own.Never even considered that. Was it jarring, you think, to suddenly find out which among that maelstrom of thoughts and desires were her own? How traumatizing was this act of self-discovery, and did it contribute to her behavior now? Does she hang around people in a futile attempt to recapture that earlier feeling, to drown out her own thoughts in the psychic equivalent of a noise machine? Or has she attempted to fill the void with a susurrus of her own impulses and half-formed thoughts?
Reimu is straightforward about what she wants and she doesn't really train her powers much, preferring that the incidents hone her skills to be sharp. Interesting angle there - what do Incidents mean to Reimu? I always assumed she thought of them as annoyances, but come to think of it, Incident-solving is her way to validate herself, to prove that she doesn't need to train, to reassert her dominance. And hey, maybe she'll pummel herself some new friends along the way.
The intelligent beast. The loveless seeker of love. They call her... Nobody.If anyone ought to be written through free-form stream-of-consciousness, it'd be Koishi. Well done.
I really ought to say something more than the equivalent of banging my goblet on the table and pompously shouting "Hear, hear!" So...
ZUN does a magnificent job of fitting his themes to his characters, so I try to get my sense for Koishi from "Hartmann's Youkai Girl." First off, it's broken - the tempo and tone lurches. It repeats, but is arrhythmic, lurching. It's fast and frenzied in parts, but it never goes anywhere, and slips into a sort of background noise, frantic but calming. There are moments when it seems to be building towards something, anticipation grows towards a climax, but it falls back into old patterns. But the pressure mounts, intensity builds, and then there is a moment of poignant clarity, a sustained melody that breaks free from the roiling chaotic accompaniment, but only for a moment. Then the cycle continues.
That's kinda what I think Koishi's mind is like. I'm tempted to suggest that there's a part of her aware of the magnitude of her folly and is trying to reassert herself, but keeps getting drowned out. Even though she's supposedly the only one in there.
I don't get the significance of her theme's reversibility, though. I know there's the whole reversed color thing going with Satori, but what does it mean when that sort of symmetry it applied to a character's music? Is it implying that an eye-opened Koishi would be just as weird? Is it an allusion to how her mind's folded in on itself?
Occurs to me that I'm asking more questions than offering concrete statements, as usual. Also occurs to me that the post-midnight, sleep-deprived, special frame of mind is a good time to try to get into Koishi's head.
Should probably bring up that Salad Fingers-esque take on her.
(considers a picdump, checks Danbooru search results for Koishi, sees 131 pages to sort through)
I miss the PC-98 guys already. Especially... now there's an idea. Koishi meets Kotohime. Be fun if she had some sort of insanity superpower that let her see Koishi.
Current earworm: "Mother - Outro"
"Justice!"
(considers a picdump, checks Danbooru search results for Koishi, sees 131 pages to sort through)
I miss the PC-98 guys already. Especially... now there's an idea. Koishi meets Kotohime. Be fun if she had some sort of insanity superpower that let her see Koishi.
I'll take a few dozen pages of fanart over a few dozen pieces in total any day of the week.
edited 28th Dec '10 12:18:13 AM by SuperDimensionman
^^That video is great.
My hat is my friend. It helps me relax.
Funny but not helpful
Koishi is close to unraveling the secrets of Gensokyo. Only one with her unique mind could grasp the truths behind the veil.
Forever liveblogging the Avengers
Good Egg
Koishi ~ Blinded Maiden
Imagine that everyone fears you, and you know that to be completely true. Imagine knowing every terrified, contemptuous, hate-filled, bitter thought that is directed towards you, that invariably appears whenever you do. You will never be loved while you can see beneath their skin to see the crawling filth within their hearts. Everyone tries to plaster over the ugliness and sin, hide it away, and they hate you because you can see it. And you can't take one more moment of it. Your sister loves her pets, and no one will ever ever love you.
One night, you made it so that no one would ever have to fear you again. Never ever never. And your sister walks in and sees the blood trickling down your forehead and you smile because everything's FIXED now and now you can't SEE all the hate and lies and fear.
But you can taste them now. You can't read the book blind but you can feel the pages and understand what's behind the words. And nothing changes nothing really changes because you still feel everything you were running from. So you keep running and running and running so long and so far, here and there and yonder and hither and home.
People can't see you, but you can't see them. So you grope along, trying to find what you lost, because then- then-
You don't know. You're scared of seeing everything again. The blind can't see if they won't open their eyes, and you WON'T NEVER AGAIN because if you can't feel you can't get hurt again and cry yourself to sleep at night when sister isn't listening because everyone hates you-
Imagine that you're blind, wandering through a half-known world, free of everything except what's in your own head. And you can't feel...
A thing I wrote about Koishi. I can bang out a surprising amount of words on a touchscreen - I would have thought I'd go mad around the third paragraph, but it worked well.
Anyway, I knew nothing about Koishi other than those two sources I quoted, and instead of going by something boring like canon I just read your theories and winged it. (The style owes something to Faw, but I just wrote by ear.) I hadn't heard anything about Koishi locking down her soul when she closed her eye until I'd read this, so I ultimately ignored it as I wrote this.
(As you may have guessed, my Gensokyo isn't quite the Gensokyo of canon. To quote the little black rabbit, there are as many Gensokyos as people imagine. But I would appreciate it pointed out if something I wrote goes past canon into insanity.)
So. There's my Koishi. Poor blind Koishi.
edited 28th Dec '10 7:17:03 PM by Raz_Fox
Time keeps dragging on.
literary masochist
Something about the format makes me feel wary about actually writing a writeup, like there's a sense of finality that I don't want to establish because I really don't know everything about the character I'm writing for, and there's bound to be something that'll make me change some opinion of mine one way or the other. Except editing the writeup I'd already written would be somehow, you know, bad?
Semi-tangential ramble over. Back to composing.
This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...
I don't even know that much about the girl and you guys are inspiring me to do a write up too.
(considers a picdump, checks Danbooru search results for Koishi, sees 131 pages to sort through)This is why I didn't think she was that unpopular (as well as why I don't usually go looking for pics of Touhou characters except on days when I'm monumentally bored. I look for music remixes more than character fan art).
This. Cannot. Continue.
Aaaaand here's the artdump. Lots of good Koishi art, and a lot of good weird Koishi art. She must have that affect on people.
- Seems happy enough
- Not happy at all
- I can't really tell
- Uniform rose design
- Fossils
- Red roses, blue roses
- I don't know
- Impulsive cooking
- Ruffles
- Forgot something
- Vivid green eyes
- Neon hearts
- Wandering in the woods
- Like the doodle on the third eye
- Not quite a full riot of colors. Maybe a hubbub
- Blue roses
- Tarot
- Glowing ground
- Balloons
- With Flan
- And then you scroll down and see the blood splatters
- More blood, and tears
- Bubbles are acting weird
- Soft n' blurry
- Realistic or Uncanny Valley?
- Memory lane
- Visiting the Moriya shrine
- Fancy
- Sketchy
- Ready!
- Love the colors here
- Wink
- Determined
- Cosmic
- It occurs to me that you could photograph her without realizing it until the pictures developed
- Spontaneously a flutist
- Garden of the blue flowers.
- Again with the blue flowers
- Hallway
- Against the sky
- Soft
- Glow
- Love the texture
- Sky and sparkles
- Columns
- ...I'm not sure
- Reminds me of that Flan/Remi pic
- That moment
- Earned the "acid trip" tag
- Embryo's dream
- Embryo's dream, take two
- Censoring
- Intricate
- pretty much anything by this f7(eiki) guy (unless he is a she)
- How I imagine she ends up after wandering around for days. No idea about the hornets, though
- Eyes in shadow
- Checkers
- Big ol' eyes
- Monochrome watercolors
- That's a lot of blood
- Album cover?
- Thorny
- Stare
- The implications are pretty disturbing
- Lost one eye, gained some more
- Apparently if she opens her eye again, she becomes a psychopath
- See what I mean?
- ...or she's just creepy
- Mazeran is, again, awesome
- Teeth
- Eeeeesh
- More f7(eiki)
- Transformation?
- Taking a page out of Utsuho's book
- An art piece of a piece of Koishi
- A face that reminds me of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
- Exploitable
- I just like her costume
- Unhappy parallels
- Took me a while, too
- You're doing it wrong
- Goddammit
There's two predominant fanon versions of Koishi: The cute, affectionate girl that happily lets the target of her feelings (usually Satori) know how she feels, and the batshit insane one that does horrible things to people (usually Satori). The former is more common in doujin, the latter in stand-alone pictures.
Neither are at all supported by canon, and I frankly have no idea where they came from.
edited 29th Dec '10 12:50:10 AM by Hylarn
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Wow, that's a lot of pics. At least I can skip two or three categories. *
Doesn't every character have a creepy/cool side? I've seen some disturbing interpretations while pic-surfing just today...
edited 29th Dec '10 1:08:16 AM by Customer
There's a bit of a difference between drawing a character looking cool, and drawing them tearing out their sister's heart.
I meant Darker and Edgier as in almost unnecessarily and absurdly so, but yeah, I see what you mean.
Well, I really suppose that'd depend on your views on what the balance is. I suppose I don't have much of an arguement, but putting it that way just seems a little racist to me somehow.