The Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium

Awful, and also awesome.

Since my horrible shipwreck pun was pointed out, does anyone have anything to add on our shipping discussion?

I generally prefer Murasa/Byakuren, but I see a LOT of Ichirin/Murasa on Danbooru. Since I dunno a lot about Ichirin, could someone shed some light on how this kind of pairing might/would go?

She's just dating her to get close to the shy Unzan? I dunno man.

Murasa would probably be the more aggressive partner anyway.

I actually had to look up Ichirin to see who she was because I know next to nothing about the UFO characters other than Nazrin and Byakuren.

It says her occupation is "Guardian of the Palanquin Ship". Murasa is a ship's captain. It's a ship-based ship! The best ship of all!

It also seems she decided to be the guard without asking anyone so she might even be the aggressive one. Oh what a tangled web we weave when we first practice love tropes-eve.

Is there any proof that Byakuren rising out of the sea on her Palanquin Ship didn't also save the crew?

No real proof that I can see. Although if the sailors did live, Byakuren's youkai relocation would have been discovered sooner since they would have seen her give Murasa a job rather than exterminate her.

It's possible that not everyone believed them ("No, seriously! She made a ship out of light! And no, I don't know how I turned up here."), or she modified their memories somehow, or it was one of the many incidents that led to her being sealed away.

If Murasa appears in the next tasofro fighter, I expect her to steal a whole ton of moves from May.

She's definitely had a pretty depressing past, so it's a good thing Byakuren saved her.

You know, speaking of being sealed in the Makai, I remember a Youtube comment I saw somewhere where the guy speculated about Byakuren forgetting her own plight to console other youkai unfortunates sealed in there, and that her actions so impressed the inhabitants of Makai, including Shinki's "daughters", that even after she was unsealed, a shrine dedicated to her was erected where she had been sealed.

If there's another fighter, and the UFO crew appears in it, I wonder how long it'll take for the internet to reproduce a Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure fight using Sakuya vs Ichirin.

edited 1st May '10 10:08:04 AM by Enlong

is Ketsu anchor based of a meme or is that just IOSYS shenanigans?

^^^^ I don't think it would be hard to believe she did that. In a world full of various youkai and magic, it doesn't seem like it would be completely unbelievable that a monk make a ship of light.

And the other, memory-wipey possibility...I dunno, that seems even more not good/creepy/something to me. What else might she have used this for? How often did she wipe people? What if she used this for some more dastardly deads for the good of the people? It opens up an entirely new but equally disturbing number of moral questions as letting the crew drown.

Generally, I think that the crew drowned and that Byakuren simply isn't incorruptly pure or pacifistic. In an age where exterminating youkai was high and being found to help them would surely result in some bad things, she made some tough descisions that sometimes costs lives.

Although, the other option that was presented, that it was one of the incidents that began to lead to Byakuren's sealing, is interesting. But I don't really agree with it. It's plausible, though.

Most of the shipping I've seen for Minamitsu is Nue, since they apparently have some sort of past together. And Byakuren, because the entire UFO cast is shipped with Byakuren.

Yeah, Nue and Murasa is pretty popular too.

I think it works pretty well, too. Usually.

^^ Okay, I guess a boat of light is more believable in Gensokyo than it would be here, but it might not be something you'd expect a human monk to pull off. After all, isn't Marisa notable because she's a powerful human magician? There aren't that many humans who can do stuff like that.

I guess I like the idea of a pragmatic, occasionally cruel messiah figure, too, though. Guess it depends on how she ran her campaign, eh?

edited 1st May '10 4:27:06 PM by Durazno

Byakuren knowingly sacrificing innocent people strikes me as extremely unlikely. There's plenty of possibilities for how she could've gotten away with it, including the crew simply being too intimidated by her glorious display of power to dare talking, or perhaps even being thankful for saving them on the ship, if they didn't see through her plan... Or hell, were they in on it? The ship wasn't armed, right?

The idea of them being in on it is another likely explanation. After all, Byakuren presumably had to have some people on the inside to not be discovered for a singificant length of time. Since we don't know a lot about the incident, I'd say most of the possibilities presented as possible, so I guess it's all on how you choose to think of Byakuren. Hm, I wonder what most people think, and if there's a corrolation to their view on her...

Also, ^^, while Marisa is a very powerful magician, she's powerful in a different spectrum than Byakuren. Marisa seems to have mostly speced her magic in the "Giant Fucking Lasers" class, while Byakuren is in a different type. So that's why Marisa can't make that, which only halfway through typing this I realize isn't why you said that at all. XD But yeah, I guess it might be rare for there to be such a powerful monk/magician, but Byakuren seemed to be pretty well known as being at least a certain amount of powerful, given that she was sent to exterminate Murasa and presumably any other youkai she saved. It might not be unreasonable for them to think "Well, this monk used a new power we've never seen before, maybe we should give it a small look" in reply to the ship claim. Of course, since it might seem outlandish, it probably wouldn't be a huge search, so I guess Byakuren could have just hidden any offensive evidence.

There's clearly different kinds of magic anyway. There's youkai magic, shinto magic, as well as whatever kind of magic Marisa uses. Buddhist magic isn't much of a stretch.

This is sort of very off-topic but I wonder how Byakuren got sealed in the first place and what led up to it. If she is powerful enough to raise/create a boat made out of light, then she could have put up a beast of a fight. Either she went quietly, they tricked her somehow, found someone even stronger, or she put up a beast of a fight and left the fear of Hijiri in them for years after.

Probably went quietly. It's in the interest of her goals for humans siding with youkai to not be seen as dangerous.

Even if she didn't, I'd imagine that whoever sealed her would have been in a group. Most likely comprised of various other youkai exterminators, since now she would be recognized on the youkai side instead of the human side. Given that they would be being sent to face such a strong monk, they would have been quite strong themselves.

Another possibly, which I got from a combination of bored thinking and reading Byakuren's profile...

"This youthful monk who'd suddenly appeared... Her youth and her magic made her extremely popular among humans. "As long as Byakuren is here, we don't have to fear youkai anymore. We don't need to live in fear of the night anymore."

And so the gap between her wishes and the expectations gave birth to a terrible tragedy."

Perhaps what happened is that Byakuren willingly revealed herself to everyone, trying to use herself as a mediator between the two, and betrayed the expectations of the humans. Since she didn't see that coming, they quickly sealed her, possibly on the spot depending on who she revealed it too, before she had much of a chance to do much. Or maybe even temporarily went along with it to backstab her later.

Of course, we can't really be sure any way. So this is all my mind being idle speculation.

Kinda like how the Jews were all expecting Jesus to destroy the Roman government and bring about a kingdom of God on earth, and when he didn't live up to their expectations, they crucified him.

Ahahaha. Youkai Jesus indeed.

edited 1st May '10 7:59:40 PM by Zudak

I wonder if Jesus would have been able to fire around lasers and death bullets and crap.

I kind of like to imagine he would have and done it while asking for a bottle of water, then turning it to wine and swirling it in a vaguely badass manner.

Oh man, the more I think about, the more I think it was probably intentional. Only instead of only being sealed for three days, it was like hundreds of years or something.

Well, it seems that she was actually hoping that the youkai-human conflict would resolve itself while she was gone. When you first let her out her reaction is something like: "Still?! Really? /sigh"