The New New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium

Still not a whole lot of Sekibanki fanart, and she's not a real art-friendly character. It's the collar and cape, see, quite cool and dramatic, but doesn't lend itself well to good portrayals of the face and such. So a near-majority of artwork focuses more on the fact that she can detach her head, and there's only so many ways you can make that interesting.

But anyway:


Kind of a classic
Her cover identity
Her cool, charismatic secret identity
Annoyed
A vaguely impressionist style
You can adapt her costume
Embellish the whole thing
Pimp out the cape
Lose the skirt
Jazz up the collar
Or add a subtle creepy touch to it
Just imagine the wet sucking sound it makes
Spooky underlighting
One way to get around the collar
:P
Red mist
Makes a clattering sound as it flies around
There, fixed it
Her clone heads seem to lack personality
Persona!
Ryuuchi!
Onikobe Rin!
The glomp's weird cousin
The smile might distract you from her neckline
Horseless headless horsewoman (with a head)
Canal encounter
Maybe she'll get something better in return?
These two are commonly depicted together for some reason
Oh, that's why
Not sure what these two have to do with each other, though
...Oh, that's right
Big eyes
Dramatic pose
Faces of evil
Blue flames
Purple lights
Late autumn, early winter
Lurking in Gensokyo's sleepy hollows
Gensokyo still needs a beach
Dangerously relaxed
I'd buy one
A metaphor for ADHD
To the rescue?
Premature decapitation
Tremble, mortal, and despair
C'mon, he needs it to be viable on the battlefield
Summer can just go straight to hell
That's using her... yeah
The simple life
Falling back into bad habits
D'aww

edited 19th Sep '14 10:21:13 PM by Tacitus

These are tunes that exude the coolness of a dullahan.

Mythical Dullahan
Groovy Canal
Dullahan Beats
The Willow's Agent
Piano Canal
Rock Canal
Tension Under the Willows
Canal of Connections
Mystery of the Dullahan
Defiant Dullahan
Blithe Dullahan

Oh man, dat koto in the first remix...

Since we got nothing going on lately but media dumps, this is probably the time to share any last-minute Sekibanki thoughts before moving on to the great fairy.

Here's mine - I wanna see more of her, and it's nothing to do with her cape staying on or off. Sekibanki offers us a unique perspective of Gensokyo's humans, someone who lives in the Human Village without being a human herself - and while we might say the same about people like Keine, Sekibanki has the benefit of secrecy. She's Jane Goodall in a gorilla suit, more or less, able to observe humans in their natural habitat and comment snarkily on their behavior.

Also, the whole "middle-school syndrome" thing she has going on seems to indicate a youthfulness that leaves open the possibility of character development. Most other youkai characters seem rather set in their ways, and the humans... we can't even tell if Marisa and Reimu are aging. Having someone with the potential to grow as a person, rather than merely change circumstance, is pretty novel.

And I guess the icing is that the whole rokurokubi-nukekubi-dullahan confusion that proves how reliant youkai are on humanity. A Greek-Irish traveling writer mixes up some names and suddenly cute monster girls are exhibiting both traits of two related youkai. Wonder if she's frightened of gold, too?

edited 20th Sep '14 10:29:03 PM by Tacitus

Hmm, was hoping I wasn't the only one with unspoken Sekibanki thoughts. At any rate, let's move on. Next in the pipe are Captain Murasa, followed by Yuki and Mai, and it looks like... ah, a location, the Human Village. But first, please give a warm welcome to the greatest of the least.

Daiyousei

Appearance:

Stages:
Lake Elf ~ Water Magus
BGM: "Lunate Elf"

Misty Lake
BGM: "The Refrain of the Lovely Great War", "Year-Round Absorbed Curiosity"

After-Festival ~ Mysterious Cherry Blossom Path at Night
BGM: "Loose Rain"

Signature Attack: Kunai?

Write-up:
Just another fairy, albeit one stronger than average. She doesn't even have a proper name, "Great Fairy" is something the fans came up with and is more a classification than anything, separating her from the fey rabble without elevating her to the rank of boss character. Certainly no one worth getting excited about.

But much like the fandom latched on to Koakuma, this nameless midboss ended up becoming something more, though what this something is tends to vary from fanwork to fanwork. Sometimes Daiyousei is cast as the Great Fairy, lord of all fairykind, while at other times she's smaller than Cirno and tags along in her wake. She can probably be considered an auxiliary member of Team ⑨, though again her role in that grouping can vary from Only Sane Fairy to the butt of jokes. Her most consistent grouping is with Cirno, though of course the nature of this relationship varies enormously.

Why Daiyousei has been catapulted to stardom while other nameless midbosses continue to languish in obscurity is one of the great mysteries of Touhou. Your day will come, TD Stage One divine spirit midboss.

Relations:

• Cirno (BFF, Cool Big Sis, Cool Lil' Sis, love interest, underling?)
• The Three Fairies of Light (varies as much as the above)
• Lily White (tag-team partner)
• Letty Whiterock (went to the third Tori no Ichi with her and Cirno]]
• Team ⑨ (sometimes member)

See also the first two compendiums.

edited 22nd Sep '14 11:18:54 AM by Tacitus

Daiyousei is a bit of a sattelite character. She doesn't get much to herself. Usually when she's the focus of something it focuses on her relationship with another character - mostly Cirno.

That's not to say that I have nothing to say about her.

For one, I believe that she's an inhabitant of the lake, like Cirno, but the fairy of mist instead. Hence the teleporting around.

Don't know where she gets so many knives though. The cutlery shop in the village really should fairy-proof the place.

My other thought is that she was not involved in the Great Fairy War. Well, she was involved in it but not consciously. She was actually on her way to a date with Lily White, hence the bouquet she's carrying.

History doesn't record whether they ever got together or if they managed to talk about anything but SPRING but I'm pulling for those two crazy kids.

Time for a different version of Daiyousei!

She's an artificial fairy created by the Kappa (not Nitori though), explaining her unusually high IQ and general common sense compared to her peers.

Dai was more or less "born" mute, so explaining her frustrations is incredibly difficult for her to do...

And boy does she have a lot of them!

Between Mystia always trying to scam her out of her money, Cirno doing her best Leeroy Jenkins impersonation all the time, and Rumia being dumb as bag full of hammers, that leaves Extreme Doormat Wriggle as her co-straight man...

Years of putting up with their crap has left her something of a Silent Snarker towards the world in general.

Her ability is actually being a hive mind; every single Great Fairy out there is actually her!

Finally, don't ever get her mad enough to prank you.

She has a very dark sense of humor, and if you ever get her to the pointing of breaking...

You're as good as dead.

My god, she's extended her chilling reach into Hyrule.

Daiyousei:

A fairy who resides at the Misty Lake. Very meek.

Dai's a rarity among fairies. She fights with kunai and she loves teleport spamming like Lily.

She may be a fairy, but she's not one to look for trouble. Unfortunately, hanging out with Cirno will definitely bring trouble to her.

Dai's just another fairy...or is she? What if the current form we're seeing her as is just a Sleep-Mode Size of her true self, the Grand Fey of the Misty Lake? Overbearing power rests in this girl, she just doesn't want to use it.

While she may take part in Team 9's random hijinks, she might be good at concealing her snark. Maybe she's a "blogger" on the youkai grassroots network. ...Ah, perhaps one of her favorite pranks is acting all meek and shy to lower the guard of humans, then punking them when they expect nothing.

First, Daiyousei is mute. This is to make up for the fact that she is actually slightly smarter than most other fairies (or atleast has more common sense).

In her appearance in Fairy Wars, she suddenly carries around a banquet of flowers. Now considering her name can mean "Greater Fairy", power wise, she might be between Sunflower Fairies and the special fairies. The reason for her name is that she does like to see herself being better than most fairies.

Where does this interpretation of Daiyousei as smarter come from?

She is normally paired with Cirno. I imagine she started off as the straight woman, questioning the logic of Cirno's plans, and that became a defining characteristic of hers until she was the anti-nineball.

Though I suppose starting from the "leader of the fairies" angle might lead to the same destination.

"Your Daiyouseiness... pretenders have aspired to your throne," said a trembling doom fairy.
Daiyousei carefully swished some juice around in a bamboo cup. She had finally managed to break all of her nice glasses.
"I am the Great Fairy, by Nature chosen to be the leader of this unleadable race. Who would stand up to claim my place?"
"Its... its... the Three Fairies of Light!"
"Meh."
"Meh?" "Those three have the attention span of a Rumia taped to a Wriggle. It'll blow over. We have more important concerns! Bring me the Kaenbyou file!"
"Yes ma'am!"
"I'll find out how that monster is killing my people and turning them into abominations if its the last thing I dooooo!"

edited 22nd Sep '14 11:32:49 PM by Bocaj

So she's fooled by cosplay. Truly she is fit to rule the fairies.

The sad thing is that these two facts are not mutually exclusive. Wisdom is relative, after all.

Yeah, I really had no idea how sarcastic I was being.

Also, Daiyousei is out of nice glasses because she keeps dashing them to the ground and demanding "WHAT IS A FAIRY?"

Which her faithful doom fairy is at a complete loss to answer.

At least it isn't the pyromaniac fairy, Fudgebottom.

Oh spectacular, a fairy. This'l give the old brainbox a workout, as I was just thinking of fairy characterization. Unfortunately, given the time, this will have to wait.

Bocaj basically infested my Daiyousei headcanon since a long time ago so see his post for a rough of idea of how I view her (flowers for Lily included).

Associating her with Cirno does make sense; they're both fairies of Misty Lake, and they play hide and seek together (And probably other stuff). In my mind she 'gets' Cirno. I mean, remember when they play hide and seek in Sangetsusei?

Daiyousei is looking near the Hakurei Shrine. You know, nowhere near Misty Lake, where the game was being played. Meanwhile, Cirno is hiding in the Forest of Magic. You know, nowhere near Misty Lake. Because obviously who would think to look so far away?

Well, Dai does, probably because 'darn it, Cirno, you keep pulling stuff like this!' This alone is enough to convince me that Daiyousei is above the level of the typical too-dumb-to-live fairy. Basic pattern recognition may not sound like much, but among fairies, I'd put it as 'pretty rare'. I mean, sure, pretty much every named fairy has demonstrated that ability, but they've all been noted as being 'not quite gutter-level fairies', too.

Daiyousei is treading that line, is what I'm saying.

You know how in school anime, there are those one or two classmates of the protagonist that keeps recurring in the background? They have no characterization, maybe one or two spoken lines total in the entire anime, and have absolutely no impact of the plot. They can be replaced with anything else and there would be literally no difference.

But yet, they have caught the attention of the fans due to some reason. Maybe they have a striking physical feature. Maybe there's one minor scene that differentiates them from the other background characters? In any way, they somehow have gained a following among the fans. Fanon aplenty regarding their characterizations. And maybe even one or two FanFics have been written with them as the main character.

That's Daiyousei. She's just another fairy among the other nameless hordes of fairies. Yet because she got assigned once as a nameless midboss, fans began to treat her as a distinct character. She's Derpy Hooves. She's Poorfag. She's NTR-chan.

You're just making me wish people would characterize the Doom Fairy.

Probably because only a select few ever encountered any Doom Fairies besides the one in PCB Stage 4.

There are Doom Fairies? Hmmmmm....

Daiyousei seems to be the only sane man above the fairiees however if you left her to hert own devices, I don't know if she would that better than Cirno.

edited 24th Sep '14 9:25:56 AM by GAP

Bam.

edited 24th Sep '14 9:28:42 AM by Grounder

That made my mind derail and now I'm thinking of the doom fairy pontificating like VICTOR VON DOOOOOM