Baring hearts for years
Problem for kogasa is that she already carries that true appearance around.
I write some fanfiction. Satori's Tale is done... but I'm not.
And that we've seen "classic" youkai show up from time to time. Wasn't Kogasa's umbrella implied to have been modified to look scarier though?
Formerly G.G.
That reminds of that theory where Kogasa was the umbrella and the Tatara was the girl or maybe the other way around. There were other theories where the umbrella possessed the girl or the girl was just a 'fake' body.
"Thanos is a happy guy! Just look at the smile in his face!"
Funny but not helpful
Youkai looking childish may tie into the fact that youth is often and weirdly demonized in Japanese society and/or the fact that all children are monsters. But possibly the first one.
edited 27th Mar '14 9:27:02 AM by Bocaj
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One Winged Egret
Demonized? Isn't it usually idealized? Although in terms of youkai that's the same thing.
Funny but not helpful
Its both which is why its weird.
Its because of the large generation gap. All the people on the old side of the gap blame the youth for everything. And then you get stuff like video games where everyone is seventeen and someone who is thirty is considered an old fart.
edited 27th Mar '14 10:22:37 AM by Bocaj
Forever liveblogging the Avengers
One Winged Egret
Everyone always blames the youth for everything. Archaeologists find stone tablets blaming the youth in 2000 BC. Every single generation in the history of humanity has thought that the next generation was going to ruin everything.
Funny but not helpful
Its especially notable in Japan. A translator's note in the back of a manga told me so.
Forever liveblogging the Avengers
One Winged Egret
I think the cult of youth is notable in this context. A generation gap isn't mutually exclusive with a cult of youth anyway. The older folk think they they were awesome back when they were 17 years old. The world would clearly be better if the current idiots stepped aside and let the good generation relive their 17 year old selves again.
Funny but not helpful
When the good generation unlocks the secret of eternal youth, we'll let them.
Keep at the chemistry sets, you fogies!
Forever liveblogging the Avengers
This. Cannot. Continue.
Well, any last surprises from anyone, or is it time to leave worldly concerns behind and go to heaven?
Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown"
We are already doing Sariel?
But yeah. I think Kogasa is one of those characters who are pretty well established, and thus no one really has that much to talk about with her in context to this thread.
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This. Cannot. Continue.
So after this we'll talk about Letty, Kurumi, aaaaaand Yoshika! Must've bumped into her while we were visiting Kogasa in the cemetery.
Theme: "Bhava-agra As Seen Through a Child's Mind"
Write-up:
It's a land of enlightenment that can be reached by scaling a mountain full of monsters.
It's a paradise of carefree leisure given to ascetics who should have no use for it.
If you want to go there, you don't deserve admission.
Bhava-agra is one of several heavenly realms floating above the world of mortals, and presumably one of the lowest, since you can reach it via Youkai Mountain. Once a keystone torn from the Earth in immeasurably ancient times, now it is home to those who have attained nirvana, either departed souls judged favorably by the yama, or Celestials who have lived the life of an ascetic hermit long enough to ascend without dying. There they spend their endless days enjoying good food, music, go, or fishing, though occasionally Celestials have been known to show up on Earth, say something to confound the mortals, and just as quickly depart.
It is by most accounts a paradise, but other sources cast a different light on Bhava-agra. One resident who got in thanks to blatant nepotism became so fed up with the place that she started an Incident to stave off ennui. There have also been claims that Heaven is full and access through nirvana has been put on indefinite hold, but Yukari Yakumo insists that this is a filthy lie - so who do you trust, the Ministry of Right and Wrong or a particularly devious youkai?
Interpretations:
"A Land Above the Clouds"
by Antimatter 625
See also the previous compendium.
edited 29th Mar '14 10:05:59 PM by Tacitus
Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown"
Rainy Echoes
Kogasa's the most hard-working umbrella in existence. And now, at the Myouren Temple, it seems to be finally paying off. Perhaps, then, it was a good thing that she was abandoned. She was able to gain her current form, gain awesome magic powers, and she met(and tried to startle) a lot of people along the way. Under this sky of blue...
And so, with that said...
Electronic Cloud Route
Classy UFO
To the Cloud
Cemetery of Funk
Piano Cloud Route
Stormy Cloud Route
Mysterious Cloud Route
SURPRISE~!
This. Cannot. Continue.
Yeah, that was pretty appropriate.
Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown"
Heaven. Heaven is a place. A place where nothing, nothing ever happens.
With that reference out of the way...yeah, that about sums it up. A paradise split off from the world long ago, Heaven is the final reward for those who have gained enlightenment. A paradise where they can live in pleasure forever.
...Putting on my Alternate Interpretation hat, I wonder about that though. Is Heaven the final reward, or is it merely the last temptation: one final fulfillment of desire to overcome on one's ascent to Nirvana?
Regardless, Heaven is occupied with Celestials and other such beings, who spend there days in leisure, though they occasionally descend to Earth to cause trouble. Part of that may be because enlightenment isn't the only way into Heaven, blatant nepotism can do the job too.
Sources say it's full up, while others say it isn't.
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.
edited 29th Mar '14 5:39:28 AM by Prime32
I don't see the relevance.
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Baring hearts for years
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
From what I gathered, Nirvana is just a sort of 'staging point'; a state where one is freed from desires but not delusions. Once they free themselves from those as well, they're truly 'free'.
Which will let me segue nicely into how I see Heaven of Touhou:
A Land Above the Clouds.
A place removed from earth, where those living within are free of Earth's impurity and struggle for survival. Heaven is a land without want, though it is hardly a land of plenty. Heaven is full, because its purpose requires space to spare. It's much like the moon, but in this case, created by 'the system' rather than an independent colony.
So say Yukari pops up there and sees a population density lower than Australia and she's like "Right, if that's 'full', I'm a monkey's uncle. And I'm female so that's a big hint."
And yet, allowing any more into heaven would cause it to become too crowded for people to live without want. Then it would become a struggle all over again and desires would find their way back into the hearts of Celestials, and then it would just be a chunk of rock floating above Earth.
No, it's sparsely populated because it needs to be to serve its function. By providing all that a celestial needs, the celestials are free to pursue higher and more spiritual goals, eventually transcending and freeing themselves from the wheel of reincarnation.
This is rare. Vanishingly rare. Yet it is one of the few endpoints of an otherwise eternal cycle (Others include being cut down by Youmu for instance). It's the only true way to move on, and if population problems are already beginning to arise and prompting a netherworld expansion, that really suggests it's truly needed.
Creating another Heaven would be problematic though, if Eirin's word is to be taken at face value (She says she wasn't there to see it so maybe it's just conjecture on her part.) Since creating it made pretty much everything die.
Obviously, There are some jerks taking up space, like Tenshi. Unenlightened folk don't belong in heaven because, well... it's not meant to entertain. It might be pretty to look at, but that's about it. Going back to the analogy with the moon, let us not forget that once Kaguya had tasted Earth's desires, she found them far more fitting for her constitution than the perfection of the moon. Tenshi's much the same. She doesn't belong with celestials because she didn't earn that title. She's as out of place as an idiot in Yale, and for much the same reason. She doesn't get it.
edited 29th Mar '14 8:04:05 AM by Antimatter625
I write some fanfiction. Satori's Tale is done... but I'm not.
No, I got that, mostly. The point is I don't see the relevance to what I was saying.
My speculation was that the Celestials haven't achieved Nirvana, because they fell to the last temptation. After a lifetime (or more) of freeing themselves from desire, Heaven grants all of their remaining desires at once as a final test, and the Celestials who remain in Heaven instead of ascending further are the ones who failed, the ones who figured "this is just my reward for being so enlightened", the ones who were content with stopping right before the end, because, hey, eternal paradise. If that makes sense.
This also explains the decidedly unenlightened things Celestials, even non-Tenshi ones, are reported to be doing, such as conning earthbound men, hoarding Heavenspace for themselves, and just generally fucking with people.
But this is just a theory I came up with on the fly, and not really one I am commited too. Sorry for the trouble.
edited 29th Mar '14 8:53:04 AM by Otherarrow
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Funny but not helpful
Its good to see that injustice is basically built into the system and that networking is on a karmic level more important than merit. So nice.
Forever liveblogging the Avengers
Formerly G.G.
Celestials are conning earthbound people out of their place in heaven? Wow!
"Thanos is a happy guy! Just look at the smile in his face!"
Baring hearts for years
I think they didn't 'fall' to the last temptation, they simply haven't surpassed it yet, is my thinking. It's like they beat the main game, but they're still trying the extra stage.
Celestials doing uncelestials things I figure mostly people like Tenshi who got there not through Merit but through connections.
You mentioning "earthbound people" makes me think of chrono trigger. And I'm wondering now how much Zeal and Heaven/Moon were inspired by the same principles. I guess there aren't a whole ton of similarities... maybe between Zeal and the Moon, but not Zeal and Heaven.
Which makes me wonder what sets the Moon apart from Heaven. I guess it has to do with the direction of advancement being more communal in Lunarian society instead of the individual advancement of heaven or something?
I write some fanfiction. Satori's Tale is done... but I'm not.
Main Character
One is a barren hunk of rock in space.
The other is not.
There's also that old
that Gensokyo's youkai have a "true" appearance more on par with the old storybooks, but some sort of filter has been applied to the demiplane to make them much more human-looking. When she's not encouraging humans to wet their pants, Kogasa works tirelessly in her secret lab to tear down this magical effect, so that she will one day be able to demand her victims soil themselves.
Strobe masks... vaguely unsettling... premonitions of Kokoro...
Might be the same reason we don't paint the underside of fighter jets purple. Though fighter jets aren't usually towing an eggplant-ish parachute, so it may not be the best comparison.
The "self-consciously avoiding the same color as her tacky umbrella" explanation probably works better, but again raises the question of why, if Kogasa is concerned about her appearance, and lives to scare people, she hasn't tried dressing and accessorizing to maximize jump scares.
On the other hand, she has to coordinate with that hair of hers. Hmm. A hatless Touhou's life is troubled.
Oh yeah! Something about that video reminded me of
"Live in a Lovely Cemetery" is just an awesome song.
Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown"