The New New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium

Maybe she's moved onto a series of textual adventures, full of humor and hijinxes and doggone good fun

You would know a bit about that, wouldn't you, hmm? Textual adventures starring Kotohime? Hmm?

I've read a bit of them. They're doggone fun

Fine, I'll plug my fanfic. (new readers are advised to skip the first chapter, it's a proof-of-concept short story more than anything.)

Back in the first compendium I ended up comparing Kotohime to Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, and I pretty much ran with that for my interpretation of her. Kotohime has a couple of advantages over His Imperial Majesty, however, in that she can back her claims with arcane firepower, and more importantly lives in an eastern wonderland full of magic and monsters. So if she claims to be a policewoman undercover as an ordinary magical princess, this isn't much stranger than a shrine maiden riding around on a flying turtle, or a pair of teenage academics from another dimension, or an eternally youthful witch visitng from the outside world who just wants to run a magic shop. Which doesn't mean that these other characters can't single Kotohime out as "the weirdo" amongst them, but that's more their assessment of her personality than her vocation.

At any rate, the most important thing is, as Sanae put it, in Gensokyo you can't let yourself be held back by common sense. And it's a land shaped by belief. So it ultimately doesn't matter whether or not Kotohime is a real policewoman, or a genuine princess. If she believes herself to be one (or both), and devotes all her energy to the idea, what's the difference? Beyond other people's willingness to play along, anyway.

But all that manic determination to live out her fantasies, combined with the magical land she lives in, might make Kotohime a low-scale reality warper, which would make it easier for others to get swept up in her escapades. And probably helps her get back home in one piece, in the event she gets in over her head.

edited 21st Sep '17 1:17:21 PM by Tacitus

It's also worth mentioning that a large part of her theme is bombs/explosives - they feature prominently in both her spell attacks and her boss summon. And her actual bomb/screen-clear is "Princess Smile", a name open to wide interpretation, but probably along the lines of "if I don't worry about the bullets then I won't get hit by them".

So, she seems to be a long-ranged fighter who doesn't want to get her hands dirty.

She is fighting in her nice robes. But yeah, crazy or not, Kotohime is the only native (with the possible exception of Rikako) to recognize the electricity in the "ruins," and knows a mnemonic to remember the first ten elements of the periodic table. Chemistry and (electrical) engineering, in other words, just what a princess-cop needs to maintain a supply of explosives.

It's hard to believe there's only a single piece of fanart on Safebooru of her with her bombs.

I'm not sure what to make of "Princess Smile." Well, I know what I made of it, I interpreted it as a blast of raw Charisma, but I'm curious what ZUN intended us to make of it.

...Huh, looking through the other spell card bomb attacks in that game, Reimu's got a "Spirit Attack" that's a similar flash of white with an image of her face appearing on screen. Now's the part when the criminal and the detective pursuing her have their Not So Different moment.

Kotohime:

A policewoman(?) of high social standing who was one of the participants in Yumemi's contest. Quite kooky^note Or maybe that's what she wants you to think.

Explosive Royalty:

It is said that Kotohime is quite insane. Heh, on the contrary. I mean, someone who knows her way around bombs has to have some sound intellect. ...Wait, she knows some chemistry, doesn't she? Then I wouldn't be surprised if she made her own bombs.

Also, perhaps Kotohime's acting insane because if she shows her true self, she thinks she wouldn't be able to connect with others so casually. She has been maintaining this personality ever since she started practicing it at home amongst her servants. And well, she finds this to be quite the fun experience, one she wouldn't mind keeping up for eternity.

...Huh. I suppose that in itself could be considered insanity.

Kotohime is an extreme version of chunni?

She's sort of like if a chuuni did have a Mystic Eye or whatever, except they thought it had been given to them by the Lords of the Outer Gate when in actually they just belong to a lineage of strong mages who can shoot arcane beams from their eye as an inheritable ability. She is exactly as magical and special as she thinks she is, she's just deluded about the context for that specialness. Or something?

She's disguised as a lunatic who thinks she's a policewoman disguised as a princess. Layers within layers, wheels within wheels.

Remember, Wisdom and Intelligence are two different ability scores. ...Except as of Fifth Edition the rules for insanity use a Sanity score that is independent of either. So it's not the best comparison.

They seem to have little floral patterns on them, something I don't think comes standard. I also doubt, if Kotohime still lives with her family, that they'd approve of her setting up a munitions factory in the garage, so she probably has a workshop hidden somewhere. Or else there's an unseen Q-style character out there who acts as Kotohime's supplier/enabler. Which in retrospect would make for a pretty fun plot bunny.

Hmm, interesting angle, a more serious take on the "layers within layers" joke, that she thinks acting like a lunatic offers her best chance of having something close to normal human interaction. Which would raise questions about what Kotohime's "true" persona was like and how bad it would be at getting along with others if the one that earns her remarks like "you're a weirdo" is an improvement over it.

edited 23rd Sep '17 12:56:06 PM by Tacitus

It could be that there was nothing particularly wrong with her original persona, except that she was convinced it's terrible. People are good at that.

Might be an inversion of Bored With Insanity, then? Kotohime could either be one of those village girls in the background of HM, or she could make a splash. Which is to say a series of explosions.

Anyhoo, picdump. I'm pleased that there's been some good 'uns since the last compendium. And a teaser for an untranslated story involving Rikako, which intrigues me.

Your move, creep. ♥
Little, rabbit, little rabbit princess
Maniacal cheer
And now a very special message from Kotohime
She's probably as good with that flute as she is at policework
Two personas and two cars
Christmas with Chiyuri
Why bug lady, though?
What, is she a hall monitor?
I'll admit, this pic is the biggest reason I team her up with Meira in my stories
Justice served
A challenger appears
A do-it-yourself confrontation
And then there were ponies
Aglow with the beauty of danmaku
Master Spark?
She's the cop on the left, not the cat on the right
Someday this may be translated
This too
Looking serious as part of a lineup, ironically enough
Presumably she just broke through a skylight
Grayed out
From the colors I'd say this is Player 2 Kotohime
Colorful robes
Justice rains from above
Evil is gonna get jitte'd in a sensitive place
Truly a princess-policewoman
Not pictured: Reimu Hakurei
The lead-up to the above
Crap, she's packing!
Among the flowers
A moment of calm

Freeze! And listen to these tunes.

Hidden Mania
Princess Random
Maniac’s Gamble

edited 26th Sep '17 11:19:26 PM by Diamite

If Kotohime is a princess pretending to be a cop, where did Kotohime get her "training" from?

Heh, what training? The most policewomanly thing we've seen her do is put Reimu behind bars, which isn't exactly rocket wizardry. Functionally Kotohime isn't much different from vigilantes like Reimu and Marisa (on a good day). Or the other people in that "tournament," for that matter.

Maybe claiming to be a cop is just another way to try to find legitimacy for her behavior, like presenting herself as a princess. Put her in another situation and she might claim to be something else - "why yes, I am a doctor disguised as a policewoman disguised as a princess, now give me that defibrillator!"

Huh, that first techno-y remix reminded me of Robo's theme for some reason. Weird how they kinda sync up when you play them right.

I guess Kotohime is just really insane.

Or maybe she constantly reinvents herself to fit her current situation, so she might be an elegant princess one moment and a stern policewoman at another, as a form of "super-sanity."

Any last maniacal thoughts before we move on to some sort of tapir thing?

Mine is that I appreciate how Kotohime adds a bit of spice to Gensokyo's human population. For the most part we don't hear a lot about them, since that would distract from the main characters as champions of the muggles, and there's so many weird youkai and post-humans to meet and fight. But Kotohime - and Meira, and Rikako, and Rika - all show that Reimu and Marisa aren't the only mundanes who can contend with whatever threat is facing Gensokyo this week, and they can be just as unique and/or weird as some of the beings they fight.

Makes me wish there was a "Human Village cast herd" to complete with all the other power blocs, not like the A-listers, but maybe the equivalent of the Great Lakes Avengers or something? ...Wait, would that make Kotohime the equivalent of Squirrel Girl? Maybe we shouldn't go there, she's already fine as Emperor Norton.

edited 29th Sep '17 6:55:13 PM by Tacitus

Daikuma and Koinu could join

And the three girls from Hopeless Masquerade. We named them Momo, Mizuno and Nouko, didn't we?

Yeah I think so

Well, let's leave Kotohime to sorting her underwear collection or whatever. Coming up will be Marisa, Eientei, and looks like Hatate. But first, hope you're not having one of those weird dreams, 'cause it's

Doremy Sweet

Appearance:

Stage: Apollo Meridian ~ Dreamful Path
''Secret Passageway
BGM: "The Mysterious Shrine Maiden Flying Through Space"^note The third stage theme. It looks like space, but it's actually the mental world. So it is an 'all just a dream' twist, in a sense. The fairies and phantoms wandering around are the dreams of said creatures in reality. It's mischievous of them to spread barrages of danmaku even in dreams.
Theme: "Eternal Spring Dream"^note Doremy Sweet's theme. It gives off a strong sense of foreboding. I wrote this with thoughts of "I want you to be wary from here on out," "I want you to have a nightmare," and so on. Even if you have a nightmare, it'll be fine if you pray to change it. Pray to Doremy.

Spellcard Motif: Color-Coded Dreams
Sample Spellcards: (LoLK)
Dream Sign "Scarlet Oppressive Nightmare," Dream Sign "Indigo Three-Layered Dream of Anxiety," Dream Sign "Ochre Labyrinthine Confusion," Dream Sign "Azure Dream Catcher," Dream Sign "Losing Oneself in a Dream," Moon Sign "Ultramarine Lunatic Dream," Butterfly "Butterfly Supplantation," Super-Express "Dream Express," Crawling Dream "Creeping Bullet"

Write-up:
A youkai who can consume and create dreams. Doremy monitors the Dream World, that shared reality that all dreamers of all worlds visit, and makes sure the only disturbances are visitors good-naturedly shooting danmaku at each other. But she was forced into the role of gatekeeper when Sagume convinced her to recreate the Lunar Capital in the Dream World, giving its inhabitants a refuge while a bunch of icky fairies ran around the real one. Doremy got fed up with this and helped someone who had bodily entered her realm reach the real Capital, and later reappeared to warn them of a greater threat within the Dream World.

She can also base spell cards on the fears of curtain fire shooters, and apparently developed a really nice line of pillows by sleep-talking with less violent dreamers. Not bad for someone who spends most of their time snoozing.

Relationships:

• Sagume Kishin (???)

Seriously though, how'd the one-winged egret talk her into shunting the Lunar Capital's population into a dream world? Do the Lunarians have diplomatic relations with the major powers of adjacent dimensions? Or was this a more personal relationship like that giselebon comic I read once? Just how many movers and shakers of the supernatural world does Doremy know from meeting them in their dreams? And what dirt does she have on them after seeing those dreams?

I mean, at least with satori they have to be close to you to read your mind, but with baku you don't have a choice, get some good REM sleep going and bam, you're in their zone.

Perhaps Doremy is similar to Satori in that she cannot help herself due to her nature as a baku. I wonder what is her relationship with Yuuka as she lives in the dream world?

Well, we probably can't cast Doremy as a simple oneirophage who is regularly disturbed by dreamers showing up whenever she tries to hit the buffet, she's more of a parasite whose victims are always guaranteed to come to her lair. Though depending on how she behaves it might be more of a symbiotic relationship, like those birds that clean crocodile's teeth. Except she's cleaning your brain of nightmares or something. And again, you're coming to her, so she's more of a dentist? Flossing the nightmares out from between your brain-teeth? This metaphor's breaking down, eject, eject!

So we've got Doremy's "Dream World," the canon-est of such offerings, which most beings access when dreaming, but with quirks such as you can enter it with your physical body and use it as a shortcut to get somewhere else, and it's possible that your "dream self" might swap places with you in the real world if you have too good a time dreaming. Then there's the "Fantasy World" in Lotus Land Story, accessed via the Lake of Blood and containing Yuuka's mansion, which might be dangerous for a human to physically remain in ("In a few hours, you'll become a mist of atoms. ♥"). And there's also the -getsus' "Unnamed Dream World" from that game's EX-stage, which is purple. How to reconcile all this...

We can cast the Dream World as something sort of like the Astral Plane, a transitive dimension you visit by constructing a new, temporary body to move around in it, which you control instead of your slumbering body. If you wanted to explain how this can connect to the Earth, the Moon, and more, you could say it's the sea of potentiality that all those other places exist in like landmasses. The baku patrol this sea, helping dreamers construct their dreamscapes and tearing them down (eating them) when they're no longer needed, to keep from cluttering the place up.

Because if you let a dream exist for too long... ahah, perhaps that's what the LLS Fantasy World is, one or more dreams that solidified, tumbled through dreamspace, and eventually crashed into Gensokyo, releasing a tide of troublesome youkai. As for Yuuka... yes, one of those dreamers who got trapped in the Dream World! She slumbered for too long back in the day, got trapped in a dream, and decided to slumber there too, enjoying a nice big fantasy mansion until these two brats showed up. But in the end she was able to return to Gensokyo, so that's good. Or bad.

And yikes, that means there was a Dream!Yuuka running around Gensokyo for a while. Yuuka with all the breaks off. There's your Ultimate Sadistic Creature from fanon, right there.

As for Mugetsu and Gengetsu's Dream World, well... if you want your own demiplane, your options can be limited - hermits seem to be the only ones who were able to figure out the trick with the infinite space within a crack in the floor, and Makai is magical and mutable but currently ruled by Shinki, who might not want any rivals. But the Dream World could be an alternative, a highly morphic space any dreamer can get to, and you can even enter it physically with the right preparation. You'd just be competing with the baku for control of this territory.

So, after dealing with a planar breach of sorts, a chunk of Dreamland that wound up in Gensokyo, perhaps Reimu and Marisa got sidetracked on the way out, entered the Dream World proper, and blundered into the part of it that a pair of demonic siblings had claimed for themselves. Or if you want to give them some connection to the main plot, have the -getsus be responsible for that rogue bit of dreamscape showing up in Gensokyo, and/or its creation in the first place.

And I really wasn't expecting this to turn out into an essay, but here we are. I'm a sucker for cosmology, I suppose.

Doremy Sweet:

A baku youkai that watches over the dreams of all. Very calm.

I wonder if Gengetsu and Mugetsu's world is a pocket dimension in Doremy's Dream World. I suppose they got into a fight one day and before they ripped each other to shreds, Doremy allowed them to create their own world that wouldn't be monitored by her. Which would explain why she never detected Reimu when she stumbled into the Getsu's domain. But what about when Reimu dueled Yuuka in her dream house? Hmm... I guess Yuuka's strength interfered with Doremy's insight or something.