The New New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium

Medicine Melancholy:

A sentient doll who is also dangerously poisonous. Hates humans, but is very immature.

She wants to become a doll liberator. But right now, it's probably akin to a kid throwing a tantrum after being treated badly. Does she even have a plan for how this operation's gonna work out? Nope. In fact, Eiki chews her out for thinking such a thing when she's so inexperienced.^note Thank you wiki, because I've yet to even get Medicine as a playable character. I wonder if she'll forget doll liberation as she matures...

Medicine's someone who fights at full power always. I guess that means she dishes every single type of poison in her arsenal at once, to the point where the poisons are indistinguishable. That's dangerous. Who knows what you'll be afflicted with. Even having Acquired Poison Immunity won't help!^note because the 'poison' could be paralysis, blindness, inflammation, etc. I can imagine her becoming an assassin specialized in poisons. In short, she uses Debuffs.

As the good book says, do not pursue her if she runs away. It could be a ploy to end you. Or she has no plans at all and is just scared. Whatever the case, she will end people. Or leave them in a bad state for an extended period.

Hmmm... I don't know, but I can see Medicine getting along with humans well way down the road. But if she sees dolls being treated like dirt by humans... There might be problems. Does that mean...she'll especially hate children? *Gulp*.

That's quite the origin story.

edited 9th Mar '14 12:52:34 PM by Diamite

I'm working on a first-person write-up for Medicine and I realised that in my mind she sounds almost exactly like a more homicidal Parsee. All full of bitter thoughts and jealousy except hers is directed at a specific target (humanity) as opposed to being against everyone in general.

Parsee is nihilistic while Medicine is misanthropic. I don't really know of any words to describe Parsee though.

Does she really have all kind of poison in her arsenal? I thought it was all just suzuran/lily of the valley poison.

See, that's the only reason why she was able to beat Yuuka in her route in Po FV. Medi's going all-out, while Yuuka was holding back not to harm her flowers (and also probably because she's looking down on her...like she does to everyone else).

I was under the impression that she was strongest while using poison from the Lilies of the Valley on the hill, but can use other poisons at a diminished effect.

Maybe because she's still newborn by Youkai standards and as a result she hasn't really come into her power to manipulate poisons yet so she isn't quite good enough for the complicated stuff.

Kids generally treat their toys with some love and care. Roughly, at times, but I think she'd recognize they were treating the dolls 'well'. Except that jerk kid who breaks off the head of some poor little girl's doll to bully her. That guy is dead meat.

edit:Word wrap you are my enemy.

The Potential of Poison

So, In regard to using Medicine as a villain, oh goodness did I ever take that and roll with it. She's one of the primary antagonists of A Satori's Tale. In it, Eirin treats her pretty terribly (largely because she's too dangerous to leave unchecked), which ends up reinforcing Medicine's antagonism towards humans to an extreme level (While at the same time educating Medicine). She then escapes and causes huge trouble with pretty much the worst timing ever.

Now, Medicine's got one of those powers that's deliciously vague. 'Manipulation of Poison' Consider, then, that nearly anything is toxic in large enough quantities, and you've got a Reisen-level gamebreaking power. Especially with the wordplay of poisonous attitudes and the like, and she could be a serious threat.

Only, just like Udonge, Medicine's young; she has no idea of these possible applications of her powers. Given some time and experience and proper education, she could become a perfect panacea or an incurable blight. Obviously, Eirin's probably shooting for the former, but whether Medicine will agree depends a lot on Eirin's own morals. My impression of those wasn't very positive, ergo she was a villain in A Satori's Tale.

I love Medicine though... she really is the prototypical Tsukumogami. Abandoned, awoke, venged at humans. We don't see this level of hate in the other Tsukumogami, and it's not entirely clear why. Probably cause they were abandoned in storage or something instead of a poisonous field.

I really think she'd bear an undying hatred towards Alice if she learned how disposable Alice treats her dolls as. That is, loading them with gunpowder and using them as suicide bombers. Once that came out, I think their relationship would be soured pretty much forever.

Unless, of course, Medicine realizes that dolls awakening as Tsukumogami is the exception rather than the norm. Which might in turn cause her to experience an identity crisis. Either she'd work towards making sure dolls become Tsukumogami more often than not (Which, considering they're made by abandoning them... the only way I can see her doing this in a way that would fit within her moral fibers is to first kill or otherwise relocate their owners, then guard their place of abandonment while they 'mature')... or she would give up on her doll crusade and possibly be very sad upon realizing there wouldn't be any others like her.

Because if there aren't, then no one's gonna be willing to get too close to her. She's just too dangerous to even be around.

The implication (and my headcanon) behind her creation is that some poor unnamed infant got abandoned with a doll they'd been meant to have or grown to love. That doll was supposed to have been a symbol of childish joy and innocence, but instead would have been a painful reminder of the child the parents had abandoned... so it was left with the child. It became Medicine and we know the rest.

Now, Akyuu says that part of the reason kids were abandoned there was a hope that they'd be picked up and raised by youkai (eventually becoming youkai in their own right). And one theory I've got is that this is exactly what happened. The poison preserved the child's body over the long years, until the doll awakened as a tsukumogami. And there just happened to be this small body loaded with poison right as she woke up. So in a sense, her parents got their hope fulfilled, and that kid is now basically half of Medicine Melancholy. There are holes like for serious in this theory (age of the kid, mostly), but it's kinda heartwarmingly heartwrenching.

I do like how she's kinda been 'poisoned' against humanity in a way or bears a 'poisonous' attitude. It fits, obviously. Also, the name Medicine Melancholy is... well, basically perfect. In addition to referencing Ray Bradbury's work (which I really can't see a connection to apart from name... but also in that collection of short stories is Fever Dream, which seems to fit her much, much better... I'd say my Satori Tale version of Medicine was heavily influenced by this work... if I had known it existed before writing that), it touches on both her depressing birth and the idea that "Medicine" and "Poison" can easily refer to the same thing.

So she's got a lot of ways she could go and a ton of potential, as well as an interesting backstory, instant drama in the form of the Alice conflict, and clear motivations and goals, delusional though they are. How she ages and what she becomes will be able to say a lot about the world she'll be growing up in, whether that world is just Eientei or Gensokyo in general.

edited 10th Mar '14 6:34:16 PM by Antimatter625

I wonder if Medicine's power will develop as she gets older? Like most of the older Youkai have control over the more metaphysical aspects of their dominion. Would Medicine one day be able to poison the spirit or the mind as well as the body, to instil hatred or fear as well as cause multiple organ failure?

EDIT: Her name suggests to me, now having read A Medicine for Melancholy, that maybe all she needs really is a hug. From someone who doesn't fear her poison, whose willing to touch her, embrace her, accept her.

edited 11th Mar '14 12:07:30 PM by shiroimahotsukai

Finally read Lily of the Valley, and eeeesh.

Well, what else would she do?

Actually, that raises a good question - if Medicine is a tsukumogami, does she have a "purpose" like Kogasa, whose diet consists of jump scares? Or is she not that specialized? Though you'd think a poison-soaked ambulatory doll would make a perfect "your job is to spread sickness" monster.

Hmm? So would this jealousy be the result of her life as a doll, subject to others' power without being able to move on her own? And it's persisted even after she's become ambulatory?

Perhaps it's the field that's more significant? The dumping ground for the unwanted, where the weak are willfully forgotten and left to die? A loooot of bad juju could build up in such a place. Maybe there's more than toxic flora corroding Medicine's mind.

Oooh, that's delightfully creepy.

Come to think of it... it's hard to tell with the ZUN art, but a lot of fanart likes to make the bigger part of the binary system that is Medicine the doll, with metal joints, wooden limbs, etc. So even if "Su-san" isn't the mummified evidence of infanticide, this raises the question of what the little girl is. We've got Kogasa as a tsukumogami with a youkai girly body who carries around her "real" body. I like the idea of Medicine reversing this trend, as further evidence of how warped and poisoned she is.

Alas, this wouldn't be good for narrative purposes. If someone puts on a hazmat suit, gives her a nice hug, and convinces Medicine that humans are ok, then she's a youkai who's alright with humans, but can't hang around them due to Power Incontinence. A redundant Hina, in other words.

That the doll is the larger of the two, and Medicine's the little sptrie-looking thing? It'd certainly be an interesting perspective.

And speaking of perspective, Such a thing could also explain why the large-girl-body would have ball joints anyway; Medicine as a doll simply understands "this is what bodies are like." It's not like she's a master of human anatomy.

Yeah, but then we've got another Yamame.

So a thought that came to mind was a mindset in older eras (And honestly, fairly sensible by today's standards)... Poison was illegal because it is a tool of murder. Unlike a sword, it can't be used even for self defense. So if you possess poison, clearly you intend to kill something with it. Maybe not people, but a rat or something is going to die or at the very best suffer a terrible amount.

And I wonder how much this sort of thinking influences her own mindset. If she's seen as the 'youkai of poison', those values might be projected onto her and define her existence, kinda like how Oni are traditionally viewed as honest so it's a huge part of who they are.

The idea of Poison being used as medicine is a more recent idea by far... I suspect before the discovery that microbes were unhealthy, the idea was nonexistent...

Though it does remind me that poisons were used as cosmetics... (Foxglove/Belladona/call-it-whatever). And that Blowfish is such a popular dish because of that tingling the very dangerous and often fatal toxin causes as it goes down. So it's not like poison hasn't seen recreational or other non-murder purposes in the past, but... well, I'm fairly certain the idea that it's a tool for murder is probably more widespread.

Indeed. We've been operating under the assumption she's a tsukumogami (Which is likely), but she could be a possessed doll rather than an awakened one. Or something halfway between. Some spirit saw the humanoid body and was like "yoink!" Doesn't explain the doll that follows her though. Unless its the ousted artifact spirit of the doll forced to watch on as a vengeful kid possesses its body.

Even if she's a tsukumogami though, listening to the silent cries of the abandoned children on the hill might have altered her mental state a touch. While the other Tsukumogami may have a hate born of loneliness (Which was easily enough alleviated once they had bodies), Medicine's grudge might go far beyond mere loneliness and into outright vengeance.

Though having said that... hmmm. Perhaps 'lonely' isn't right for her, but 'socially immature' fits to a t. She's like a kid raised outside of society. She doesn't know how to hold back because she's never had to. She doesn't really understand what she does because she can't empathize because to her, everyone else is a doll... a being that doesn't have a mind of its own. POFV may be the first time in her entire life that something has happened to challenge that view.

Pepper spray could be considered a poison that is used for self-defense without murderous intent.

There's also botox, which is short for botulinum toxin.

As for Medicine Melancholy herself, I once mentioned months ago in the main Touhou thread that my headcanon speculates that Medicine might've been the independently moving doll that Alice mentioned seeing in her Bohemian Archive interview, which inspired her quest to make an independently moving doll of her own. Although my suggestion that Alice could achieve her goal by just letting one of her dolls become a tsukumogami was shot down by saying that it then wouldn't truly be her creating it, I could still imagine Alice wanting to do some research on tsukumogami like Medicine to figure out what makes them tick.

Hmmm Medcine seems to come off a s a rebellious kid who has a temper tantrum. Alice could try to research tsukumogami although Kogasa and Kokoro wouldn't make good research subjects. Medicine might but then there is the whole poison thing.

Honestly, Alice, there's no shame in asking Mom how she did it.

Thus setting up ensuing hilarity if she ever catches someone taking a bath! Brilliant!

But an antagonistic, aggressive Yamame, rather than a fun-loving plague-spewer who'd never use her powers for evil wait a minute, what's this about humans having different flavors depending on their disease?

Guess we'll know for sure if Medicine ever catches "Su-san" trying to hire an exorcist.

Man these are fun, creepy Medicine theories!

Poisoning humans with these melodies... Are you a genius, Medicine?

Mystic Doll
Poison Panic
Flower Tune
Poisonous Piano
Poison of Grand Chaos
Poison in the Sengoku Era
Fantasy Poison
She's purity
Wandering Doll
Poisonous Garden
Techno Poison
Toxic Medicine

That Tutti Sound remix was... I kept catching snatches of something from a Square RPG. Very creative, though I think dBu might have won the competition again. All I'd add would be the one with the Nutcracker Suite opener and WAVE's cover.

I was trying to find some nice and creepy Medicine pics, and it turned into an unnecessarily large picdump instead. Oh well.



The old profile pic, which I used for this iteration because I don't like the new pic
Not so melancholy
Ah, the Devil of Decline track pic
She doesn't seem dangerous...
Ink spots?
Confidence
Expressionless
Posing for a cover, I'd guess
Onikobe Rin
Not officially a Persona!
So who's the third?
Wait a minute...
Giving herself a present
Red vs Blue
Is Alice homesick, or just regular sick
Not certain about this
Probably one of the few characters Rumia wouldn't have an appetite for
Solidarity in the rain
Role reversal
Often depicted as getting along
...with some notable exceptions
Their act's a real... killer
Village errand
Snow and purple fog
Sunflowers, sunny smile
Medi and Su-san at the lake
Clouds
Pink and purple sky
Sunset
Full moon
Lavender moon dance
Print quality
Watching the moon...
...watching you
Happy watercolor
Doll in the lilies
Happy together
Learnin' you some Russian
Almost, but not entirely unlike, Mary Poppins
Green glow
Just needs a hug
Gathering light
Doll in the rain
See, it's appropriate for her to have freakishly oversized eyes
And look how happy she is!
Doll stance
Disappointed raven
A doll her age ought to be in pretty bad condition
Huh, and "emaciated" tag
Here are some creepy dark pics
(GURO WARNING) Guess she doubles as a defoliant
Oh, this complements that infamous Yuuka pic
One way to deal with her
And some people think SHE's creepy
Su-san trying to chill
It might be nice to have a smaller double of yourself when the weather's nasty
Cute lil' misanthrope
All are one in melancholy

edited 15th Mar '14 11:17:35 PM by Tacitus

The True Alice Game.

Well it's been a week, so does anyone have any last medicinal or melancholy thoughts before we all pretend to be surprised by our next discussion topic?

Uhhh nope, none that I can think of.

Yeah I got nothing.

Well that took longer than I wanted. Next up will be Bhava-agra, followed by Letty and... lordy, random.org likes the very low or very high numbers, I may need to switch to a new randomizer... Kurumi!

But first, while it would be ironic to surprise everyone and not talk about her, it's

Kogasa Tatara

Stages and Music:

The One-Eyed Monster Lurking in the Clouds ~ The Spring Clouds
BGM: "The Sealed Cloud Route"
Boss Theme: "Beware the Umbrella Left There Forever"

Unidentified Flying Fantastic Object ~ The Night Sky
BGM: "UFO Romance in the Night Sky"

A Straight Line Paradise ~ Myouren Temple Cemetery
BGM: "Let's Live in a Lovely Cemetery"

Spellcard Motif: Umbrellas and the Weather You Use Them In
Spellcards: (UFO, DS, TD)
Surprising Rain "Guerrilla Typhoon," Large Ring "Hello Forgotten World," Umbrella Sign "Parasol Star Memories," Rain Sign "A Rainy Night's Ghost Story," Umbrella "Super-Water Repelling Bone-Dry Monster," Monster Sign "A Forgotten Umbrella's Night Train," Umbrella Sign "Lightly Falling Large Raindrops," Umbrella Sign "One-legged Return Hit," Rainbow Sign "Over The Rainbow," Rainbow Sign "Umbrella Cyclone"

Write-up:
A forgotten umbrella who went unused until she awakened as a karakasa obake, now Kogasa exists only to terrorize humans as revenge for their abandonment of her. She is not very good at this.

Kogasa tries, bless her heart - she's gone from drifting at random to nighttime ambushes to haunting the Myouren Temple cemetery for maximum scare value, and has been studying ghost stories in hope of improving her technique. But she's just so fundamentally good-natured, and to her dismay good with children, that the biggest threat she poses to most Gensokyans is making them feel so bad that they pretend to be scared. That time she used her power of surprise to break the fourth wall and shock the player as a powerful EX-stage midboss was probably a one-off thing.

The net result of all this is a good deal of popularity (28th in the last ranking) and arguable status as the latest umbrella-twirling "youkai moe~" Kogasa is usually lumped in with the Myouren crew for obvious in-story and meta reasons, though it's also common to see her adventuring across Gensokyo to interact with the rest of the cast in search of scares. This occasionally ends quite badly for her, but such is life at the bottom of the totem pole.

Relationships:

• Yoshika Miyako (did not get along)
• Myouren Temple (current stomping grounds)
• Nue Houjuu (UFO's fellow odd woman out)
• Sanae Kochiya (fandom's abuser/shipping target/both)

See also the first two Compendiums.

edited 17th Mar '14 9:42:19 PM by Tacitus

Kogasa is they type who gets discouraged real easy but she doesn't give up and always seem pick herself up. Kogasa now haunts the cemetery where she seems fairly successful as scaring humans. Kogasa is different than most youkai that she seems more interested in scaring humans rather than eating them.

Kogasa is a umbrella tsukumogami who feeds on the fear of others! To this end, she lurks around the shadows, ready to pounce when they least expect it and strike at there deepest insecurities for maximum fear potential.

...Except OK, not really. Kogasa is more of a cheery girl than a horrifying monster, and her "pouncing" is more align to juvenile pop scares than actual attacks. Despite her status as an abandoned tool, she is good natured and friendly, and regularly goes into the Human Village, where she is popular with children (she tried to become Mary Poppins once you know, though this amounted to basically attempting to surprise children and she got branded a deviant)

Kogasa seems to suffer from self esteem problems; as she doesn't really know where she is going in her life, and Akyuu stats that the biggest problem associated with her is the sight of seeing her sad, so at least pretend to be scared. She seems to have found some minor success in the scaring business after moving to the Myouren Temple Graveyard, but she ran afoul of Yoshika soon enough. (Tropers Note: Kogasa Tatara is not officially affiliated with the Myouren Temple)

edited 18th Mar '14 7:41:36 AM by Otherarrow

Kogasa Tatara:

An umbrella tsukumogami that puts her all into giving humans a good scare. Results vary. Despite this, she's very good-natured.

Kogasa, in the past, was an unorthodox 'babysitter' because used the profession to scare children. It must have made her some quick and juicy fear cash. And she acted like this before/after the Scarlet Mist Incident^note I'd like to think before, since the year's just starting. Perhaps she gave up that profession because of the wanted posters of her being created. But despite that, her friendship level with humans is high. Maybe she laid low doing occasional scares before resurfacing in UFO. That way, the humans wouldn't remember her past transgressions?

In TD, when Yoshika blocked her path forward, she asked Reimu/Marisa/Sanae/Youmu to take care of her, since they are extermination professionals.^note She must've known they were going to steamroll her as well, though It just made me think that Kogasa isn't above asking/pleading for collaborations for her scare tactics. Like using fairies in her schemes...

But at the moment, the Myouren Graveyard is currently the best place to bag herself some fear cash. Ooooh, it can be good business! Humans go to the Myouren Temple. Her friendship level with humans is high. Maybe Kogasa can do occasional Test of Courage events whenever the temple holds something big. I don't know, her PR level's high or something?

If you're not scared, a sad umbrella you will make. Scary. Being an abandoned tool's enough sadness already. So pretend to be surprised at whatever non-scary surprises she throws at you. Fake fear also supports her living.^note And it makes her happy, yes.

So, In touhou Pocket Wars (well, some game in that series anyway), there's a scene featuring Kogasa. The protagonist is basically a real world Touhou-gacha-obsessed Otaku who falls into Gensokyo through a gap. And while looking around, is surprised by Kogasa.

What happens then was an interesting description that really stuck with me. Basically, what I got out of it is that Kogasa feeds on surprise. Like she eats it, and it goes away and she gets sustenance. Right, fair enough... but the whole 'getting your surprise eaten' was surprising so she eats that surprise too. And she's eating something. In essence, she turns part of your mind into surprise and then eats that part. While a person could perhaps recover from a few noms, if one loses control of their reactions, Kogasa will slurp it all up, leaving the victim a hollow shell, if that.

Now, is that how it works? Probably not, but it rubbed me the right way and tickled my fancies.

I am pretty sure if that was possible, Akyuu would know about it and she wouldn't be considered nearly as harmless.

Just...mostly harmless.

Also, how do you notice your surprise being eaten anyway?

edited 18th Mar '14 5:35:11 PM by Otherarrow

Its like when you're surprised, your brain produces little comical sweatdrops that fly off your head and Kogasa uses her giant tongue to slurp them up.

Do you lose anything by being a meal to Kogasa? Is there some psychic thingie that she eats that you then have less of? If she overgrazed on you, would you become so blase and so full of sangfroid that someone could randomly naked in front of you and you would go "eh." Could Kogasa remove from you the very ability to give even a single shit?

Or even if her victims get jaded in the short run, is this something, some resource the replenshes in the long run. She drinks your surprise but then your metaphorical bone marrow produces more?

Or perhaps you would be no more affected than if a non-umbrella were startling you. Nothing lost from you but something gained for her. How is that possible? If you surprise someone, even if you don't physically gain something, you can feel better. Your brain gets you high on chemicals and improve your mood. Maybe its something like that.

Or perhaps psychic sweat drops and the tongue thing.