The New New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium

You weren't supposed to notice that, so I could quietly stick the line-up above the sisters' profile and pretend it was always there. But now that random.org is working again, I can say that the next three characters will be Akyuu, Yumemi, aaaand... Miss Medicine Melancholy! Weird. If we get Kogasa next, something's definitely up.

Gonna see a tsukumogami witch hunter attacking them with a whip, saying they should've accepted the end of their unnatural existence instead of prolonging it with unnatural magicks.

Hmm. Joking aside, could there be a problem with Gensokyan youkai being powered by the outside world? Does that muck around with the Border, so that if too many tsukumogami are punching holes in it for their own purposes, we might see a tear or two? Is there a danger of "contaminating" Gensokyo with too many outside influences?

Interesting. If ZUN was aware of such a group, wonder why he went with a duo instead of a trio? To try and keep the Tsukumos distinct from the Prismrivers? Did he want a red-blue oni dynamic instead of something more complex? Was having the Tsukumos share a stage already pushing it, and there just wasn't room for a third character?

Depending on how common the encyclopedia you looked at is, it's also surprising the fandom hasn't stolen your thunder and designed a shamisen character by now.

Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown"

Well, I'm not sure if they are actually usually grouped together or not. Just in that particular book I read. I don't really come across many books about youkai.

In a book I read, there was a sort of prejudice that enchanted sentient objects had for accidental sentient objects.

I wonder if there is a vice versa in Gensokyo but I sort of doubt it.

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That made me think, how does Raiko's outside power work? I'm not too clear on that. Depending on the details, my late arrival point about Raiko(that I still don't know how to put into words properly) might be completely off.

Since Benben and Yatsuhashi got survival tips from Raiko, I imagine them saving other tsukumogami from their fates Elite Beat Agents style.

Don't youkai need human fear to exist? Tsukumogami need something to keep them alive and Raiko might have found something hat allows her to exist outside the mallet.

"Thanos is a happy guy! Just look at the smile in his face!"

They need belief. Fear and faith and other specific emotions are just gravy.

A Drum Master cult.

"ALL HAIL RAIKO-DONKO!"

Anything left to say here?

They have laser strings.

Ahem.

Unlike the other Tsukumogamis we've seen, such as Kogasa and Raiko, Yatsuhashi isn't alongside her object self, but is her object self. She plays herself with laser strings. I find that fascinating.

...We only got two pages out of them. Aww.

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Well, they're twin sisters who appear in the same stage (giving them as individuals less characterization time), and if they aren't Satellite Characters in canon, they're almost bound to be in fanon.

Plus they aren't even a year old yet.

Plus I already wrote a fairly involved writeup on them recently in the previous compendium.

It's a shame, since I really do like Yatsuhashi. Benben I could take or leave, I suppose but I love Yatsuhashi's design. The whole "I am myself" thing is really interesting.

Like is it because the Koto that made her is basically just completely rotted away or something? Maybe she's just more detatched from it than the other Tsukumogami (I mean, Benben is literally shackeled to her biwa). Maybe she's just confident enough that she can just be herself. Like, literally. She believes in herself so much that she doesn't need anything else to remain alive.

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

Maybe she thought her original body was too heavy to bring along so she just brought the strings only?

And Benben's biwa doesn't have a handle either.

I'm wondering if their designs aren't visual shorthand for their nature. They're not like Kogasa or Medicine, youkai carting around their original forms, they're incomplete. Not fully separated. Benben's only got the bottom half of her instrument, Yatsuhashi just has the strings of hers (must be why she's the younger sister).

Guess if you wanted you could take this "half-formed" angle in some gruesome directions, but I don't.

Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown"

Now I'm imagining them looking up to Kogasa.

Ohhh maybe the tsukumogami is actually the item and not the person, and see, the person is the item. Like the Shikaisen thing, only... in reverse.

The item becomes a person while the spirit within becomes the... item. So then Yatsuhashi and Benben have their items incomplete because they were birthed by C section or whatever. And Raiko's technique was like life support.

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

Let me examine this

So you're saying (using Kogasa as an example) that the umbrella didn't come to life and manifest a human form for transport and communication, but that the umbrella itself turned into the human body who then turned her spirit into an umbrella?

On the subject of Shikaisen and tsukumogami, how does that relationship work? Could Tojiko's original pot be walking around somewhere? What happened to the spirit of Futo's plate when she did her thing?

And finally, Raiko: "she abandoned her old taiko drum for a new drum kit and drummer". just how does that work? That would be like Kogasa abandoning her umbrella, it should not be possible (I realise the circumstances* are different and that tsukumogami often come into being due to being abandoned). And just what happened to Raiko's old drum?

\*Just reminded me of Mewtwo's famous

from the first Pokémon movie, I feel it applies here in some way.

edited 16th Feb '14 6:01:18 AM by Impostermetaknight

That's what I was getting at, yes. It's out there, but amusing enough to entertain the thought.

My guess is that since the item in question is given a full proper burial (In place of the Shikaisen, recall), the spirits within are more than content and won't become tsukumogami.

It's some sort of soul-movey-dealie, so perhaps its not too far removed from the Shikaisen ritual (Though that one doesn't really move the soul, I guess, but still.) What's odd is that Benben and Yatsuhashi don't abandon their instruments like Raiko did, yet they still get outside world power. Weird. maybe they improved on the process?

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

It could be that they merely heard about the process from Raiko but haven't gone through it themselves ... yet.

Or, since I haven't actually played Double Dealing Character (or any other Touhou game, for that matter), I could be way off-base and they explicitly said they had done it in-game.

The Living Guildpact rules that coffee is an acceptable substitution for rest as specified in subsection … whatever.

Hm. I think its been pointed out that Tsukumogami are... kinda technically Kami rather than youkai...

So I guess that explains the power source switching thing. Not much different than Kanako becoming a god of technology. they just... started drinking from a different pool of faith. And the water's all new-age or whatever but hey, it's water and you need that stuff to live, you know? Raiko was the one who lead them to water. Still, while Raiko got hers from the vidja games, where are the Tsukumos getting it from? As far as I know, there's no "koto hero" game that's burst out in popularity.

Maybe they're just drinking from the pool of "music is magic"? Since hey, I could buy that. Music does amazing things... So maybe there's enough faith in music to keep the Tsukumos alive.

edit: Annnnnd I just wrote a thing kind of involving Yatsuhashi. Emphasis on the kind of cause its also a crossover with Puella Magi Madoka Magica... kind of (it's spoiler free for that series I guess, and features a relatively unlikely protagonist). Geez, honestly it's just odd.

edited 21st Feb '14 10:58:15 PM by Antimatter625

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

Instead of focusing on the number of pages, maybe we should say we talked about the Tsukumos for over a week and feel proud of that?

Next will be Yumemi, followed by Medicine and - I'm not fudging these! We just keep getting tsukumogami! - Kogasa Tatara.

Memory of Gensokyo Hieda no Akyuu

Appearance:

Themes: "Japanese Saga,"*

"Child of Are"*

A bit of a curveball. The image in this song is a mysterious girl, something of a specialty of mine. I thought I'd give it a mysterious atmosphere, but it all cleared up by the main melody - see, a curveball. It sounds doubly nostalgic since listening to it reminds me of RPG dungeons, seriously.

Write-up:
If the Hakurei bloodline contains youkai-fighting power, the Hieda clan embodies knowledge, a power of its own. For a thousand years, the Hieda have maintained records of Gensokyo and its denizens, providing information so that the land's humans could no longer live in fear of the unknown.

Though saying this is a family project would be misleading - instead the original author of the Gensokyo Chronicles has been reincarnating every two to three generations to update the record. Akyuu is the ninth of such Children of Miare, blessed with a photographic memory, as well as the memories of her previous incarnations viz a viz the Chronicles. She's already updated Gensokyo's history and even found the time to host a symposium discussing its political and religious climate, but Akyuu has noted the problem of writing a youkai-fighter's compendium in a time when most human-youkai interactions come in the form of non-lethal spell card duels. As such, she's willing to exaggerate youkai's power if they request it, to make for a more exciting read.

Akyuu's work shows a snarky side to the young chronicler, as well as a love of puns and footnotes. She also likes red tea, synthesized music, and youkai punk rock groups.

Relationships:

• Reimu Hakurei (good enough relations for the Hakurei Shrine to host a party celebrating Akyuu's birth)
• Keine Kamishirasawa (study buddy)
• Yukari Yakumo (knew in a past life?)
• Kosuzu Motoori (fellow bibliophile)
• Eiki Shiki (part-time boss)
• Fujiwara no Mokou (complicated)

Interpretations:
"I am Akyuu"
by Clarste

"Akyuu of the Heida Clan"
by diamite

"Ninth Memory"
by Otherarrow

See also first two compendiums.

edited 19th Feb '14 11:45:05 PM by Tacitus

Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown"

Huh. maybe I should pay more attention to the queue. Coincidentally, I wrote something about Akyuu last night, and I am not going to do it again. So I'll just copy-paste it:

I am Akyuu.

I suppose I should start with the facts. It is said that she is the reincarnation of the famous Hieda no Are, author of the Kojiki. The Kojiki is an ancient document compiling the various disparate Shinto beliefs into one pantheon and origin story, most likely to give the Emperor of Japan the proper authority. Incidentally, Hieda no Are lived in roughly the same era as Toyosatomimi no Miko and Fujiwara no Mokou, give or take a generation. These names would have been well-known among the Imperial Court.

Anyway, mythology doesn’t really work the way it is usually taught. There isn’t one “Greek myth” or one “Japanese myth”. There are just stories, monsters, gods. One town worships one god, who’s always made their harvests bountiful, while another town might worship another god, who’s been their protector ever since they repelled that invasion. When travelers go between towns, they exchange stories. I like to imagine that in some pub somewhere, it inevitably boils down to “my god could totally beat your god in a fight”. And that’s how it starts. The story of how one god beat another god in a duel (but he was totally drunk and wouldn’t have lost in a fair fight!).

The Kojiki is not that story. It’s the story written a hundred years later when all the local gods are all tangled up and no one’s sure why they should care that some local lord claims to be the great grandson of the sun. I mean, my second cousin is the daughter-in-law of the mountain, so what? Hieda fixed that. Hieda created a world, a truth. Hieda collected all the disparate and contradictory stories, and tied everything together into an elegant and meaningful truth that could be taught to future generations. Hieda gave birth to a mythology.

And it is said that Hieda continues that work nine incarnations later. Now named Akyuu, she’s a young woman who seemingly leads the Human Village in some capacity. She has a few close friends, but is rarely seen leaving her mansion. Supposedly due to her frailty. Most of what we know about her comes through her work.

And it’s a great work; I can’t recommend it enough. Perfect Memento in Strict Sense and Symposium of Post-mysticism are both great reads containing tons of interesting information about the characters and settings in Gensokyo. But what truly stands out is the writer. She’s snarky, skeptical, sarcastic, and dry, but above all else she’s curious. She wants to know about this world as much as we do, she wants to put together the stories into something coherent. She’s writing as a way of exploring, as a way of visiting the places and people she’ll never meet herself. She’s not just documenting the facts she hears, she’s an active participant in a dialog with the world.

She questions everything she hears, as she’s writing it down. She points out the contradictions and the exaggerations, as she spreads the same. She knows that the most important thing isn’t the details, but to have a picture that makes sense. To put everything together in a way that explains everything. To write something that the reader can understand and appreciate. To create a world that can be believed in.

And I will always appreciate her for that. For creating mythology, and for creating Touhou.

edited 18th Feb '14 9:33:08 AM by Clarste

Add to relationships

• Fujiwara no Mokou (reincarnation of her father if you believe a crackpot theory that "Hieda no Are" was just an alias of his)

I've seen a few fanworks play with it.

Akyuu was in Super Touhou Wars for one or two stages. She had terrible stats and only one attack, but it came with a Dynamic Kill animation if you actually managed to KO something with it.

Touhoumon treats her as a Smeargle equivalent IIRC.

edited 18th Feb '14 11:01:23 AM by Prime32

Ahh, we are at Akyuu already.

Wahh, I have a ton of stuff to do on another site and I can't focus on this now. It's not fair.

Sorry. Wait for me, OK?

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Akyuu: A sound Flandre makes.

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