The Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium

Is that how it works? It doesn't just throw them back into circulation? What does it do if you say "both are unknown to me", then?

When I saw Nitori vs Momiji, I voted Nitori and never looked back.

I don't dislike Momiji, I just don't like people trying to make her all cute and cuddly and passive, which Touhou characters aren't, and definitley doesn't fit a slodier/guard like Momiji. In my opinion, Momiji is the most put-upon toon in the series, and I feel kind of sorry for her. I want her to get out of here, for her own good.

I make video games! Or plan to, anyway.

Hey, I like Momiji for her cute looks and badassedry (yes, I'm well aware that that's not a word).

"Who wants to hear about good stuff when the bottom of the abyss of human failure that you know doesn't exist is so much greater?"-Wraith

What, are you denying that someone can be cute and badass at the same time? It's like you're denying my very existence!

Besides, a guard is pretty much by definition supposed to be passive. Or, well, defensive. Same thing.

I thought that the latter completely eliminates them, but they still ended up showing in the final result, and I have no idea how Kurumi ended up underneath those I eliminated that way...

That's a Badass Boast waiting to happen.

The Genre, and Savvyness thereof, is a major factor in making morality debates a toughy. A lot of characters seem like bitches from what you see in canon, but, you know, you just gotta do some taunting before the battle, and the battle will take place. That's how it works!

Mokou has already received the capital punishment for that one.

Hundreds upon hundreds of times.

And she regrets it. So I think she's in the clear.

I went backwards through this debate and saw not a single mention of Shikieiki and this makes me a very disappointed Fawriel.

She may be unpleasant to have as a roommate, but she is the whitest in all of Gensoukyou!

Mystia and Kogasa are (potentially) kids, Tewi pretends to be even though she's smarter than everyone involved combined, and Meiling is their appointed badass hero who leads them to adventure.

In an attempt to get to the bottom of this, I took a look at the code, but the comments are in Japanese and I don't know Javascript, so I didn't really learn anything useful.

I think I read that one. Meiling dies during the second act, right?

It's weird how she's often portrayed as merciless in her moralizing, though from what I gather she's actually pretty patient.

Anyway, everyone on the naughty list receives an extra year in hell, I suppose.

Okay, so here's the plan!

As soon as I update the links in the first post, this thread is pretty much done. It was ultimately a huge success, but it also had flaws, and there's always room for improvement even in areas that were good!

For the next version, I want to improve informativeness by adding to the format of the profiles, up-to-dateness by adding to my own discipline, and most importantly... creativity!

What does that mean?

One of the weaknesses of this thread has been that it always seemed more like the participants were collecting data. Own ideas were often contributed, but were usually spins on ideas others brought up. I know that everyone here has their own ideas... So those are one thing that we will now try to collect!

Since the main thing that shapes a character is the setting, that is the first "character" we will start with... Gensokyo. Everyone can chime in to get their vision of the land of illusions out there!

So: The new Compendium will encourage people to contribute their very own versions of characters, however out there or in there they may be. These ideas will then be linked to from the character's profile, with a little blurb written by the idea's author to summarize it and make new readers curious for the whole thing! I could even add profiles for contributors to the (otherwise decidedly less humongous) main page of the new thread  ^*

where all their ideas are linked from. Might seem self-indulgent, but self-indulgence is the best indulgence!

What more? Well, most of the characters have pretty complete write-ups already. Many don't, and among those that have good write-ups, there are still going to be a few that could stand to be rewritten or have info added. But besides that, the main difficulty in providing information in an entertaining way is out of the way.

So that way, it will be easier to add new information! The profiles aren't supposed to be giant Touhou wiki posts, but they should be able to serve as starting points for gathering interesting information on characters with links to the wiki. The information you'd get from skimming a profile would be similar to what it currently is, but for the curious, links will let them know more! What information to add is one of the things to brainstorm about.

• What to add: I'm thinking that a link to the character's Touhou Wiki article might be worth adding to their name... Besides that, I think it'd be interesting to add a point where I summarize their spellcard theme, since those can offer interesting flavor  ^*
  ^{like Ran's military strategist theme}
  , and hottips containing ZUN's comments about the character's themes.
• What to get rid of: "Similar characters" might not be as useful as expected. The "Appearance/Voice" point never really took off the ground, with few exceptions where a voice can actually be found. Might be worth keeping in a changed form. Or...
• Appearance/Voice: The original point of the former half of this was to find a picture of the character that people see and think "yep, that's her". Perhaps we could combine this thread with the idea for a thread that discusses the pictures used in the Character Sheet. Of course, progress would be... slow.
• Contributing own ideas: What do you think of this idea? How do we best pull it off? As I currently envision it, someone who wants to contribute their very own idea of a character can write a post however long they please, so long as it's clear that it's supposed to be such a contribution  ^*
  ^{we probably need an actual term for these}
  . They will also write a short summary. Like, really short. Three lines at most, maybe less. This is so that the post doesn't get cluttered up. Also, making it short is good writing practice for really getting the essential info out there in an appealing way!
• Also: Should I make a new thread for this (the answer is yes), and should it go in Video Games this time, and... what should its name be?

edited 27th Nov '10 3:50:16 PM by Fawriel

I'm not sure if it should really be a new thread. Round II is just an expansion of the original thread's purpose, right? And if we move to a new thread, would this one fade into oblivion? Couldn't we just have a link to Round II in the initial post and keep on truckin'?

Having a form for in-depth interpretations with three-sentence-summaries is a great idea. I would move that we also have a form for descriptions of interactions as well, e.g. "this is how I see the relationship between Tewi and Kaguya." It'd be fun to get talking about groups of characters and interactions too, you know?

EDIT: Also, this opens the door to alternate universe interpretations as well, doesn't it?

edited 27th Nov '10 4:05:11 PM by Durazno

To the first two: yes, absolutely. To the third: I don't know. "Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium HD Remix"?

edited 27th Nov '10 4:24:50 PM by SuperDimensionman

Huh. Sure, why the hell not!

A form for descriptions of interactions... You'll have to explain to me how to go about that, sir.

Hmmm, sorta yes, sorta no. I think it'd be best to get a new start because as it is, things are pretty darn cluttered. Of course, that could be fixed simply by changing the OP, which would have to be done anyway.

Oh yeah, and by "three lines", I mean three lines worth of post space, not three sentences. Which is probably even less.

edited 27th Nov '10 4:39:34 PM by Fawriel

Sounds good, though I'm not great at writing.

I see what you mean about the new topic. It would be nice if it was still in this thread, but it really is very cluttered now.

If you need to overhaul the OP anyway, is there any reason not to start a new thread? If Round 2 really is supposed to be the Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium HD Remix, then you'll only end up with 211 pages of cruft between the OP and the meat of the thread if you keep using this one.

Yes yes yes. The spellcards are definitely a fun and important part of the characters, some moreso than others of course.

Well, I guess I don't mean a hard-and-fast form. I just mean something loose, like the format you have for describing characters. Really, it's as simple as adding "relationship, group or setting element" to your "give us a three line teal deer and then tell us about your chosen character."

edited 27th Nov '10 5:00:01 PM by Durazno

So Round Two will focus on our personal fanon, am I right? Oughta work, and would put the "Alternate" back in "Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium." But I wouldn't call all the fact-finding we've done a weakness - I for one started this thread recognizing only a handful of characters by sight, much less name, so having the "official" characterizations discussed was quite helpful. I'd recommend linking to characters' Round One posts during Round Two, so newcomers can browse the old thread and learn more about the subject.

Since we've already had some pretty spectacular picdumps for Round One, maybe in Round Two we should restrict ourselves to a half-dozen pictures at most, preferably just one that we think "defines" the character.

Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown"

Hmm, perhaps, perhaps not. I really thought at first that it would work to ask people to find those images that really shaped their perception of the character, or at least come very close to their mental image, but I guess that's not really something that can be expected of anyone. I mean, even I have only a couple characters where I could point you towards a certain source of my own mental image, and I think particularly much about that kinda thing.

That had little to do with the actual question. Well, it doesn't sound bad, but as it is, only Hylarn has consistently contributed picdumps, probably because they take a while to make... so the next best thing would be to have big picdumps and ask people which ones they think are best, which didn't work last time, but maybe that would change this time... I don't know!

What's the stance on discussing Character Sheet images here?

Ah, I didn't really mean to say that that isn't what the thread is about. It is, among other things. The weakness is that it occasionally lead to situations where people were "corrected" on their ideas, which would discourage actual alternate interpretations. Of course, there's some things that are actually canon, but What Measure Is A Non-Canon? So there needs to be a clear distinction between "this is what is canon or at least commonly accepted", and "if I wrote a story with this character, this is what she would be like".

Ah, just a point to add to the vague format of people's own essays? I didn't really plan to have any sort of format for those, but I guess a very loose one couldn't hurt... Or could it?

Hmm, it probably could, actually. I think I just read to much into your earlier post.

I came in quite late but I'd certainly like to post a few of my favourite pictures this time around. At least of the 15 or so characters I actively collect images of. I think you can really see someone's perception by the images they choose.

On another note, any chance of discussing two characters at a time rather than one? I haven't thought about how that would work so reject it if you will. Sometimes I felt it was just a bit slow especially if there was a string of characters I didn't care for much.

Hmm. I have to admit, I didn't really mind the slowness at times... Unless it was caused by my slacking.

Whether we want to discuss two characters at once, though, should be up to everyone to decide. As it stands, I would be against it for the start, since we should first see how active discussions will be with the new format... If things occasionally get too slow, we can still pack characters together on a case-by-case basis.

For sure. I don't want you to change things just for one person ;)

... Speaking of slowness caused by my slacking!

I'm sorry. Between university, drawing Trope-tan and a commission, thinking about my own artistic projects and other stuff, I kinda completely forgot about my mission here! Actually starting the new thread now would probably take so long that I wouldn't be able to finish my assignment in time, so... let's try to create a preview of the new format!

---

Thread title: Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium HD Remix New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium Brothers





Character Name

Appearance: [to be filled with popular picks after picdumps, though I can pick a first one myself, too]

Themes:
Fate Of A Forgotten Face  ^*

Spellcard Theme: Genericness
Notable spellcards:
0 ~ Power of Rei, Example Sign ~ Surprisingly Cool-Sounding Name
[the one in italics is a signature move, the potential others are listed for being awesome.]

Write-up:
Character name is a dime I'm gonna BLEEP the BLEEP out of her, that'll show 'em.

Relations:

• Marisa (harem)
• Reimu (shares a plane of existence with)
• Fairy maid (similarly generic)

Alternate Character Interpretations: ["ACI"?]
'In a world where everyone is CrazyAwesome, one character dares you to give a damn! She is the least interesting man in the world. She is Character Name.'
– by Enlong

'In a dystopian future, Character Name's genericness has turned into a black hole so massive that it tears apart ''whole universes'' and is even threatening to absorb the planetary mass known only as ''Your Mom''.'
– by Chagen46

'Character Name – myth or legend? In a description trying far too hard to sound intelligent and witty, Fawriel will get to the bottom of this mystery!'
– by Zudak for some reason

---

... Something like that!

edited 29th Nov '10 12:10:11 PM by Fawriel

Because I'm awesome, that's why.

What.

You nearly made me think I actually said that quote once.

"Who wants to hear about good stuff when the bottom of the abyss of human failure that you know doesn't exist is so much greater?"-Wraith

Hehe, I didn't actually read all the placeholders the first time, assuming that it was simply a generic template. I wonder what I would've said.

I would probably have made a joke so deviously subtle that no-one would realize I was making one. That seems like the kind of thing that I would do.