The Touhou Original Character Compendium

Uhm, yeah, I can. Want to shoot it my way via e-mail?

Can you PM me your E-mail Adress?

I make video games! Or plan to, anyway.

Went ahead and scaled it down to 50%. It would've been easy enough to get it to a small enough filesize without changing the image size, but that seemed like a little much, since it doesn't have a high level of detail and it would be scaled down automatically anyway...

Either way, that is surprisingly good. I've had my sketches colored a few times, and I think this one worked out the best.

What did you use to color it?

edited 7th Sep '10 3:38:47 PM by Fawriel

Adobe Illustrator, which is basically Photoshop, but with vectors. One of my classes focuses on the program, and I'm really liking it.

Also, I had some difficulty choosing what color to make the background, so I decided that her birthday is September 27.

edited 7th Sep '10 4:04:39 PM by XionGaTaosenai

I make video games! Or plan to, anyway.

Xion, I'm impressed by how you ended up with a clean, inked look. I can never manage that.

Also, be careful, Faw. If you rock too hard, we'll all be beating down your door to draw our dudes!

Concerning Kusari's annotated Perfect Momento:

Are you trying to kill us, Akyuu!? I'm on to you!

Tell that to my poor forehead! Will nothing appease this woman!? Must research. AVOID.

Avoid her by using Route 15 Route 7 Route 63 Just stay inside all winter.

DAMN IT.

edited 7th Sep '10 4:25:12 PM by Durazno

Encore, encore!

Forever liveblogging the Avengers

^^Humorous.

I imagine it's the vector graphics. They usually come out clean like that.

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

Well, two days with no discussion. Does anyone have more, or shall we move on?

Ah, couldn't think of anything to say in the end Ruki?

Not really. Honestly, though, I've just been really busy and stressed the past two days, I was barely at home at all two days ago and today was rough, and before then I was doing other stuff first. And I don't really want to hold anything up given I might not come up with anything and the conversation appears to have stalled.

I just realized that somehow, the colored Amber picture had its colors corrupted by my resizing. I have no idea why that happened.

Alright, let's move on to... Natsune Tsugunai! We await your write-up, Dr Pravd!

Also, I don't notice anything wrong with the colored picture.

I make video games! Or plan to, anyway.

I'm thinking once Natsune and Yamako go up, a first post linking to all would be a good idea. We'd be at 5 then, myes?

Alrighty. Be warned, I'm not totally clear on how formatting works for this, so...just figured I'd get that disclaimer out before I manage to create some horrible void of poorly structured text.

• Title: The Fox Smiling in the Dark

• Name: Natsune Tsugunai

• Bio (Here's where this formatting problem is probably about to hurt):

Natsune doesn't have a hugely established history in Gensokyo (by which I mean I'm not extraordinarily clear on its specifics). However, she is a very old kitsune, somewhere in the range of seven to nine hundred years. Her power is to lead others astray, though how this manifests is basically that she can craft illusions.

She did originally come from outside Gensokyo, though she didn't spend long there, and only one event happened that's terribly important to her character. When she was still young and new to the world, Natsune attempted to be like the others of her pedigree and trick a man, mostly for the fun of it. Unfortunately for her, that man turned out to be a sort of sage, who captured her and used her as a servant for a long period of time. It's hard to say how things really were, but Natsune would talk about this incident as if it was a long period of cruelty and misery.

By the time Natsune shows up in Gensokyo, having escaped from the sage's influence upon his death, she's found a goal for herself. She's resolved to reach the pinnacle of power among her kind: to become a nine-tailed fox youkai. Most of her lifetime is spent wandering Gensokyo trying to accumulate power and wisdom, usually by picking some hapless human or youkai of weak will and perfecting her power by playing games with them. These were mostly random and whatever she felt like: one person might be tricked into marrying a rich princess, only to find after the wedding that his wife's mansion was a decrepit house out in the forest and his possessions were all gone; another might simply be, through a complex chain of events strung along by the kitsune posing as different people, be induced to give up a trinket or bauble. The other thing Natsune took great pains to do was to hide from any youkai or human that was powerful enough to exploit her. She would not serve anyone ever again.

Were the kitsune to reflect on it, she might find that her experiences were fun. She did more in Gensokyo than outside of it, and testing her skill by seeing who she could twist, and bluffing those strong enough to easily crush her was stimulating. However, it was all done with the hopes that somewhere along the road to gaining nine tails, Natsune would gain actual power. However, at the end of the centuries-long road to becoming the pinnacle of what it meant to be a fox youkai, all she had to show for it was more masterful illusions and the experience to put them to good use.

What use was such a mastery if it meant that for all her age, she was bound to trickery? How would that protect her from the inevitable day that someone came calling to subjugate her?

After a good deal of time spent trying to answer these questions, when it's perhaps now the present time in Gensokyo, Natsune hits upon a solution, in her mind. After witnessing the events surrounding Mountain of Faith, and the goddess Kanako attempting to gain faith, the kitsune decided that there was a route to real power. She could try to use her illusions to convince people that she was a goddess. If she could get enough people to believe in her divinity, she could, perhaps, truly become a god. And what truer power is there than godhood?

With this in mind, she sets her mind on two goals: ways she can display "power" that will convince people she has it, and getting a priestess to extol her virtues.

Breaking out of expository dialogue mode, I do have some idea of what she'd be doing to achieve this goal of hers. There's this little theoretical game in my head where Natsune is both the final boss, and extra boss. Namely, as the final boss, she'd be playing the role of a goddess and milking the part for all it was worth. After being defeated, her secret would be exposed out near her home, where she'd use her powers to try to subdue her pursuer to keep them from telling anybody.

Without going into characters I could submit in future entries, Natsune would feel better after her plans fell apart, performing well in a spellcard duel using her own skills and, of course, tea. So she'd stop being all weirdly insecure about her powers and just be the character who hangs around trolling whoever she feels like.

• Physical Appearance:

Natsune has two appearances that are relevant. Her posing as a goddess, and her as she truly looks.

As a goddess, she definitely might have gone a little over the top. She wears a shrine maiden's outfit that's uniformly white. Over that, she wears what seems to be some odd mix between a white fox fur coat, and just tossing the fox over her shoulders, because the lining of the coat includes the head of the fox hanging on the bottom-left side of the coat, and nine (not terribly large) tails that make up the right side's lining. She wears a shroud over her head that has the effect of covering her eyes, as she takes the phrase of them being the windows to the soul a bit literally. Even so, a few locks of auburn hair droop down.

"Goddess" Natsune has red beads hanging down her neck. In one hand, she holds a staff with a metal ring at the top, from which several smaller rings hang. And on her back is...something. Some mass wrapped up in a very pale green cloth. ...Oh, and I guess she has sandals on, which probably goes without saying. She's tall and slender, with a sizable bust. Pretty much iconic of the stature you'd think a goddess would have.

However unnecessary that was, what Natsune actually looks like is as follows. Even when not using an appearance totally crafted by illusion, the fox youkai still wants to look threatening. As such, she wears a formal dark red kimono and a hakama that's darker still. Over the kimono, she wears a sleeveless black jacket with exaggerated shoulders.

She herself is basically the same stature as when she posed as a goddess, only with this seemingly unconscious effect of trying to keep herself lower to the ground. Natsune has long auburn hair that she keeps very well groomed, to the point it shines a bit. On top of her head are two fox ears, and she also has nine tails the same color as her hair. Under normal circumstances, they're not overly large, but if she's trying to impress someone, expect them to be floating ominously behind her. Finally, she has hazel eyes.

Admittedly, I kind of think that after she's beaten, she'd wear an outfit that's more colorful and fun, but I had a hard time coming up with anything for her to wear that would even sound remotely distinct. I'd totally love suggestions because whenever I think about it, I just come up with something vague.

• Personality:

It seems like her backstory covers it pretty well, but to try summing up and making it sound a bit more rounded out, it's something like this.

She's initially very insecure about what she got out of the super power lottery, and feels like that dooms her to being somebody's lackey, a position she's too proud to stand. However, that's not all she does. When she's not actively thinking about how she needs to address her lack of power, she's actually very cheerful. Natsune enjoys pulling jokes on anyone she's friendly with. She's slightly haughty, but this is possibly just an act that she keeps up out of force of habit.

As far as friends go, barring any weird comments I make about her relating with canon characters, she only has one really close friend, and a few youkai settled near her home that she's learned to get along with, with the understanding they don't try anything to spook her.

• Spellcards: (Only got three of these I have any confidence in throwing out there, but here goes)
  • Flurry Sign 'Foxfire Festival': Natsune forms four blue fires around whoever she's up against. They'll all proceed to spray out large numbers of flame bullets. The catch is that only certain flames are real and firing actual shots. The ones that aren't real are just firing off attacks that do no damage. Naturally, Natsune cycles which foxfires are real, and how many as the spellcard plays out. Presumably there would be some catch how you'd tell, but as far as in-story reasons, you'd have to go off of which flames were actually producing heat.
  • Corpse Sign 'Priestess Stuffed in the Well': Hemming the opponent between two walls of blue flames (that would in-story probably be more like blue flames that resembled stone walls), Natsune throws large groups of danmaku through the remaining space. While parts of the flame walls are real, Natsune's cheating and using some illusion powers to cover what she can't. Parts of the wall would look more transparent, and would serve as places to shelter from her attack. Between attacks though, moving would be vital as the fox youkai decided to cover up her wall's open points (in turn, exposing new ones).
  • Kitsune-ken 'Fox Beats Hunter': As a trick spurred on by pure desperation to win her danmaku battle, Natsune blankets almost all available areas of the arena in a horrific barrage of curtain fire. Obviously, trickery is at play. For the first phase of the card, all the bullets are fake, but the opponent still has to try seeing past the unreal to avoid Natsune's rushing attacks. For the second, Natsune's tired, but even more desperate to win. Now the bullets are a barrage of illusionary projectiles and all too real deathblows. It's all about picking out what's fake and what's not as the crafty youkai tries to put in her best effort to keep her secrets secret.

• Misc:
  • Ideally, Natsune's story is set with Youmu as the hero opposed to her. Her blade that slices through confusion makes me think she'd be the person most naturally suited to play with a trickster youkai.
  • Also ideally, I have this bizarre idea in my head that Cirno would resist serving this weird fox lady (after all, she is obviously the Strongest). This doesn't go so well, but Cirno would attach herself to whoever wanted to stop Natsune to save face.
  • Her theme song as final boss would be Divine Mantle ~ Inari on the Summit.
  • Her theme song as extra boss would be Overpowering Glamour ~ Chasing the Fox
  • I like to think she'd have a different theme later, like Yukari doesn't use Necrofantasia all the time, but I've stretched this out as is.
  • I'd imagine Natsune would have some kind of rivalry (one-sided or otherwise) with Ran. Something about how Natsune's the fox youkai who rebels at the thought of serving anyone in favor of finding her own strength, and Ran's a shikigami who's all about servitude and being really strong because of it. I'm hesitant to go as far as to say they're familiar with each other because it feels so weird for me to jam my OC into a canon character's backstory, but that's certainly a possibility.
  • Were Natsune to have met Ran before going about her plan, I happen to think she'd also have a sort of relationship with Yukari. Mostly just as a regular guest. Possibly ironically, probably after Natsune was beaten, she might just do a few odd jobs for Yukari.

________________

Anyways, I hadn't actually expected to win, so some of this stuff came out of nowhere. But hey, spontaneity leads to good ideas...right...?

No idea how good this looks or what there is there that looks worthy of discussion to you guys, but I wanted to just put it out there and see what I could learn about how to improve what I have.

edited 10th Sep '10 6:19:54 PM by DrPravd

"People are calling me stupid on the internet."

First thought: She opens up a fashion chain called "Natsune's Secret".

Oh, I'm sure that it'd get a good turn out up until people started realizing that half the time they thought they'd bought this sweet pair of pants they just had to have...but were just walking out of the store without any pants on.

"People are calling me stupid on the internet."

Really now, would the type of people shopping at Natsune's Secret really care about actually wearing pants?

Only if they didn't mind the intellectual game "Is the pretty lady behind the counter selling me what my eyes tell me she's selling me?"

edited 10th Sep '10 6:35:11 PM by DrPravd

"People are calling me stupid on the internet."

Ah, a well written description! I am left with only one question!

...

What are her vital statistics?

Ninja'd: It's all a front for the Girl's Love Escort Service.

edited 10th Sep '10 6:43:09 PM by WORLDTree

Given she's a master of illusion, maybe we would never know her true statistics.

DUN DUN DUN etc

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

...But yes, in all seriousness, what precisely do you mean? Like, height and weight? Or is there more to vital statistics that I'm not thinking of?

"People are calling me stupid on the internet."

It does say her Goddess-Bust is a lie.

NINJA'D: The bust, waist, and hip measurements, height and weight would be nice too!

edited 10th Sep '10 6:46:31 PM by WORLDTree

My first thought about the spellcards is that there has to be a visual way of distinguishing the illusionary bullets, or the playerbase will throw you off a cliff for the Fake Difficulty (or whatever the relevant trope is).

Easy enough for "Foxfire Festival", if you're cool with using differently-colored flames. Say, red, blue, maybe green and/or yellow as necessary. Then have some sort of signal as to which color to watch out for. Maybe some colored flame on or around Natsune.

For "Fox Beats Hunter", it may just be a simple matter of ligher and darker blues. And making sure that there's always enough objects on screen that the player has to make a real effort to sort out which ones are which.

Of course, the real challenge is getting the player to realize that some of the attacks are harmless in the first place, preferably without breaking the fourth wall. Otherwise...

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

Actually, from the description I was wondering if her illusions could become Hard Light or not...