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Jan. 27th, 2011 02:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spottoTOUHOU HEADCANON!
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Headcanon is the fanon formed inside an individual's mind after being exposed to various types of media regarding their fandom of choice.
For example, if one reads a fancomic of a particular franchise from some medium, the fancomic may have certain interpretations of characters that the reader would adopt if they too agree with the content at hand and it would fit alongside the canon.
A big reason I fell out of the Hetalia fandom (besides the roleplaying stopping, probably) is that I really only liked a few characters from the series. The others never really pulled me in, and my favourite characters were relatively minor, so despite how big the fandom probably gets, I just couldn't stick with the fandom.
However, Touhou is much different. It is also different from Negima because that too I only like a handful of characters. There really hasn't been any fandom I've been in where I liked as many characters as I have Touhou.
I had the longest problem finding a favourite since it changed so often the first few weeks into this gargantuan fandom, and despite the fact that I have one now, it's not because the others before her became worse, it's just I like her EVEN more.
(This very much contrasts South Park when I found EVERY CHARACTER "okay" but couldn't figure out a true favourite, thus my short time discussing much of it on this blog.)
Since Touhou had tons and tons of characters, all with interesting intepretations of the characters, there was bound to be a very big favourite among them all. I did find one, her name is Koishi.
I think it's kind of ironic that I once said to Aoi-dono that the game with the characters I liked the least was SA, but at present I find the most interesting of the entire series. (In terms of gameplay I can't say because I refuse to play the next game until I finish EoSD which I am VERY BAD at, so...I did hear it's one of the most difficult though.)
To further emphasis on how much I didn't care about the SA cast, when I first found the manzai series I loved the first three...then I wondered why these random "no-name" characters flooded the fourth one. Hahahaha. Oh Spotto, so close-minded and ignorant you were a month ago... *is an idiot* (Well, I was introduced to Touhou through the fighting games, particularly IaMP so it's no wonder I didn't give a damn to anyone beyond PCB...)
But in the beginning, my first favourite, my VERY first...was probably Meiling. This was before I got interested in the fandom and just played IaMP over and over again. (As a side-comment, I really love IaMP's implementation of spell cards. The fact that it's limited to a specific time, and you have to press specific keys. At first this did annoy me as I had a very hard time actually getting the spell cards to WORK, but eventually they came to me quite easily. Sadly SWR and UNL takes away this part of IaMP that I really liked.)
Anyway I liked Meiling because she was bad at IaMP and she was mostly melee. I liked melee fighting, after all IaMP was very different from other traditional fighters so rather than the massive amount of bullets in the game I more focused on punches and comboes and such, which I suppose was Meiling...except she's really bad.
It got to the point that, at some point I was annoyed when people called her China. Of course I didn't actually know the origin and simply assumed people did it because there's no point to using her name and saying her country of origin (which probably isn't right somehow, as it is Gensokyo but eh) would demean her in a way....then I realized, after accepting that that it was pretty much the actual reason, that remaining stuck-up and preachy about it would help no one (especially since I found this "Gensokyo" place pretty bloody awesome) and time went on.
Once I DID get into the fandom it became Yuyuko. I remember when I was young and called every female in existence with pink hair retarded. Hahaha. I think it especially helps that I no longer care too much about colour. I used to only wear blue, black, brown, beige, etc. things...but now I have this big puffy pink coat that keeps me warm and I don't have to wear 5000 layers in the winter for. (My old jacket is not very warm nor very waterproof, or even windproof...what kind of coat is that!?)
But it's not so much about her character design (which I like, anyway...BESIDES THOSE DAMN FRILLS I CAN NEVER DRAW!!) but I really enjoyed her backstory, and how she's pretty much a cloudcuckoolander, except it's all a ploy and she's really a scheming brilliant strategist under it all...
Then I saw her turn into an extreme omnivore for everything in sight, which I didn't mind at first--it was rather amusing. Then it got somewhat tiresome unless there was some sort of subversion or SOMETHING different about it (or even making it MORE EXTREME by taking it up to eleven! THat's ALWAYS funny!) though from time-to-time it's still amusing.
Afterwards, I jumped around a bit (I liked Mokou a lot too, which means I'm kind of chronologically going through every game or something lol...in fact I loved Aya a lot for like two days after this!) then I found Suwako a pretty awesome character at MoF. (Only recently did I realize PoFV ISN'T a decimal game, which I had assumed all this time and thus never really included it in the "official not-spin-off line of games". [And I assumed Aya came from MoF not PoFV at this point >_> *stupid Spotto*])
After Suwako though, was tons of CAPTAIN MURASA LOVE *a certain deviantart user is to blame for this!* and well, Koishi either came here or during the Murasa phase and it's been like that since. So, why Koishi? Why her over all these other characters I like? It took me quite a long time to even establish a top-3 or anything like that (and NEVER ask me to rank them because I really can't do that with this fandom, it changes far too often, even the top four or five can interchange AT ANY TIME.) but Koishi claims this mountain!
Well, my initial impression with her was pretty amazing. There's this one PV with the best Kogasa-remix EVER (honestly the original arrange by ZUN sounds WRONG to me because of it) with a bunch of chibis of the entire cast (well, most that appeared in the windows games) and there's this one part in the middle where Koishi sticks her face at the screen...and it was the CUTEST.THING.EVER.
Of course it's a pretty popular video, so I first watched it when I didn't know many characters. I just saw them go by and then noted the ones I liked (like Yuyuko eating Mystia) and then THIS CHIBI STICKS HER FACE IN MY FACE AND SHE'S SO CUTE BUT WHO THE HELL IS SHE!?!?
The other initial impression was from that same *certain deviantart person* who did all those amazing Murasa things. He drew this comic and with an extreme interpretation of how fanon treats Koishi (like I said, up to eleven makes ANYTHING FUNNY.) turned her into a....penis-obsessed freak.
So, let's review here. I saw this ADORABLE THING SHOVE HER FACE INTO MY FACE.
And then she is obsessed with anything that looks remotely-phallic.
Wait, what!?
I'm sure that turns on many people's radars, probably wondering how a character like this is like. The obvious first-thought is that she's a complete pervert or something like that, but then I find out the reason.
...okay, well when I first read her backstory, I was actually kind of confused. (because Spotto is a moron like that) I was trying to get my head around...hmmm, subconscious. Yes, I subconsciously know what subconscious means, but it's hard for me to really...throw it out in words because the last time I took a psychology course was two years ago and I barely remember it.
But eventually I get the idea. Well kind of, the next big thing I saw of Koishi was this absolutely adorable doujinshi series that covers the SA backstory (oh my god it was so cute...gah) and the artist's interpretation of how she closes her third eye by ripping the artery-thing attached to her third eye to her head made a BOATLOAD of sense. In fact it was probably implied considering Satori has more of those vein things than Koishi and there's a very visible one attached to her head.
It could even explain why she wears a hat! Maybe she uses it to hide the wound or something, but anyway.
Anyway the doujinshi itself (also not finished) covers more of Satori and her pets than Koishi so far, but what I saw of Koishi was absolutely brilliant. Just how she handled the surface, shoving tomatoes in her mouth without even KNOWING what they were "GROWING SOMETHINGS!" and then not understanding the concept of "you should not take things that are not yours" and really, the entire thing...how clueless she was...it was just so...goddamned cute. Gah.
I mean I've SEEN characters not understand everyday things. They tend to be portrayed as serial killers and other psychotic folk, but Koishi had this...innocence about it, and I just found that not only heartbreaking (because she caused it herself since she didn't want to be hated by people. D: she even has a sad backstory *cry*) but just utterly, utterly...well, different.
And because Touhou is such an open-end type of game (which pretty much spawned all of this mass fanon stuff) there are other interpretations too, of Koishi. It's like I can look at some picture of Koishi depending on my MOOD...and everyone of them COULD WORK. That's brilliant. I am so amazed by the different contributions of people that define Koishi as a character...so much so. I mean I usually get annoyed at OOC things for the sake of being OOC being something of a "STAY CLOSE TO CANON!" person myself, but I mean...let me be honest.
The Touhou canon kind of sucks. Like, it's not BAD, but there really isn't that much to tell besides some descriptions or pieces of dialogue (and some manga too, but they're not much), it's not an RPG game with cutscenes to pull you into some story, it's a bullet-hell game and thus the gameplay is the emphasis, over everything else. Even so, the designs of the characters, the little tidbits that are given can be expanded, so it's not like you can just make something that seems very simple and straightforward and expect it to explode with people overnight. I think ZUN is some sort of genius managing that.
People always whine that they want a Touhou anime. I kind of want one too, but I think I'm starting to see why not having one is for the best, in terms of the fandom. I mean, if there was some official anime and it had Koishi in it and portrayed her in one specific way...isn't everything else OOC then? There's no longer that open-end ability with interpretation now. A series may become popular because of its characters and story, but if someone is satisfied with the characters and story so much, it will not give them much initiative to get their own creative juices going with said characters. (This explains why having amazing design but bad drawing skills helped as well for Touhou)
Anyway, fandom can get out of hand with some things, but it's not so much the fanon as a joke getting far too old. Yuyuko eating Mystia? Old. Yuyuko turning into a giantic whale-thing with razor-sharp teeth, sucking in everything in its sight like a ghost-black hole and dooming Gensokyo!? Funny. Even then there's only so many ways you can interpret that until it's kicking a dead horse....and there are many dead horses. I often see people seeing these types of things as "idiots who keep repeating old overdone jokes" but it's not IDIOTS who do it, it's people who are fairly new to the fandom, or those who barely touch on it and thus an occasional "Sakuya wears PADS-*knifed*" is funny to them, since they're not in an enviornment where it's repeated constantly around them.
For example, my friends who introduced me to Touhou like it for the gaming and music, but I don't think they care about the characters as much (or from what I've seen) so they do throw out the occasional "CIRNO IS THE STRONGEST!" joke. And it's not because they're idiots repeating the same joke, this is one of the few downsides with having such a massive fandom. I mean, if I repeated an in-joke that's getting really old in the Ventrilo servers over and over again, that'd feel like a pretty retarded joke at some point. For example (and only Souless would get this) simply saying "Cunchy is a babby" over and over again is not funny, however in certain contexts it might bring out a chuckle, like: "Did you learn fractions in school yet?"
Okay, so back to Koishi...I kind of trailed off there.
Also it's not simply just her backstory, or how cute she is. I love how her name sounds, I love that it's unique (I CAN TYPE KOISHI INTO GOOGLE AND ONLY GET THAT CHARACTER, KOISHI...okay I get stone furniture sometimes, but in terms of "ONLY THIS FICTIONAL PERSON HAS THIS AS A FIRST NAME" it's kind of nice, especially since there are TWO Kazumi Asakuras and both Kazumi and Asakura are quite common >___>) I love her character design (green is not my favourite colour, but it just looks so nice on people...) and, well...what's not to love?
In Hetalia I always felt like I needed to be interested in a country's history to like the country, I mean I did for some of them, but a lot of the characters didn't really make me start liking the country more than usual.
I also don't think I need to have a massive interest in psychology to like Koishi. She's associated with it a lot yes, but that's only one part of her. I don't particularly plan on writing for this fandom anyway (I write if I'm not satisfied with what the fandom has, this fandom has practically everything, so...) and I mean, if I do think up of some scenario I'll probably just write it out or something. (as in not a full-fledged multi-chapter story that spans more than 50,000 words because I WILL NEVER FINISH IT GRAH)
(If anything I'd do a MokouKeine PV with "My First Friend" because WHY DOESN'T IT EXIST WTF.)
But as for her character itself...it's somewhat complex, there are again, different interpretations of how she is like. In my opinion after she closed her third eye, she kind of...lost part of her mind--some people extend it to being an emotionless shell. (Except rather than just being expressionless, Koishi kind of reverts to an...instinctual-type person, who seems to be very aimless yet very carefree, smiling whenever. (Are they real smiles, true signs of happiness? Probably not.)) I've always been fond of the stepford smiler concept, but they've never been extended something...permanent. Like, those who are stepford smilers are people who smile and try to be happy, hiding what they are truly feeling inside (usually something terribly depressing). I feel Koishi WANTS to show what she's feeling, but simply cannot.
She is broken.
Yes, broken is the perfect way to describe her. Her mind is broken. That one doujin I read and mentioned above showed her as a rather clueless, adorable--seemingly harmless type of person with that kind of mind, not the "SHE WILL KILL EVERYTHING BECAUSE SHE FEELS NOTHING/IS COLD AND CRUEL ETC." that first comes to mind; however, her ability to manipulate the subconscious is a truly terrifying ability. That is where I think all those creepy, horror-type images and interpretations of Koishi I believe come from. (and I like those too, they amuse me.) Mostly though (and also backed up by canon) she uses this ability to be stealthy, to manipulate ones mind to not notice her. She isn't invisible, you just don't notice her. It's like when you're searching for your glasses or something and it's been on your head all this time. You can feel it on your head, yes, but you don't notice that feeling even though IT'S RIGHT THERE. (I don't think this was the best analogy, but whatever.)
But, instinctual--like an animal. Here's an example, in her subconscious...she is hungry. So naturally she needs to eat. Now a regular person would go out and buy food, or cook food, or go out and kill an animal and cook that animal, or harvest some crops and cook those crops. In a doujin that follows the canon rather closely, when Koishi gets hungry--she walks into other people's houses and eats their food. She does not see a problem with this whatsoever. Normal people would.
I mean it's just like "person A doesn't like person B, so A murders B. A does not understand what is wrong with this, since all A wanted was to not be in the presence of person B" however I think Koishi, the real Koishi actually likes quite a lot of people, or is capable of such. I'm sure being a satori (a youkai that can read others' minds...this is why she and her sister are hated) actually wanted people to like THEM, since they're hated so often, so I'm sure she herself would not be a hypocrite and would probably like a lot of people quite easily, perhaps even be gullible. So broken!Koishi might still has this one part of her left, perhaps she's lived that way for so long as a satori, that something like that is second nature to her, in other words...something she believes unconsciously--in her subconscious...instinctual. Therefore I don't think she'd really need to kill someone she doesn't like because she often likes people more often than not, and considering Gensokyo follows a white and grey morality..
Of course, that means if she didn't live in such a lighthearted world, it might be different, thus the different interpretations. I read an excellent fanfic that turns Gensokyo into a very dark place (as fanon enjoys doing, anyway) and Koishi does use her power for something very terrifying, something very chilling. She also becomes cold, almost emotionless. I love the story. It's VERY different to what I'm used to, but it also could work and so doesn't feel OOC.
At the same time I can also understand how odd or awkward or even difficult it might be to write her, so there are doujins that interpret her as a pretty cute little girl who wants friends, and closing her eye while still being rather tragic hasn't quite affected her as much of some of these other stories (after all in the canon itself she...SEEMS like a nice girl.) and that's fine with me too.
Anyway a person like that can be pulled to do many things for the lulz (trolling is an art, it is also amusing and part of the reason why I love some of the touhou characters) particularly Koishi's association with Freud. Now we all know that man once proposed a theory (I'm not entirely sure EXACTLY but it has to do with daughters or at least females being jealous of men because they own shwongs or something) and when that is pushed up to eleven, you get that comic I mentioned where Koishi is obsessed with anything phallic-shaped at ALL and she can do it so nonchalantly because of how she is, closing her third eye and everything. Comedy gold...and it works. If anything, I would call Touhou BRILLIANT, of all fandoms I've partaked in.
It can also mean things like: <"I heard that you do this to someone you love!" *kisses Satori on the lips*> Hilarity ensues, also massive amounts of fluff.
Also it's not just Koishi, Touhou has this ability to make me have a "favourite character of the day". For example, I did not give a damn about Nue whatsoever. When I got into the awesome UFO cast, everyone was pretty cool...except Nue. (too bad that doesn't rhyme unless you pronounce her name wrong :C)
I was one of those nonbelievers who thought Nue was simply a Flandre ripoff...that ZUN was running out of ideas to use as an ex-boss and simply threw Nue together. (Of course the joke that she has CAPTAIN MURASA'S HEAD copy-pasted on her amuses me to no end (I don't actually think she does, but still) )
I mean think about it, Nue had no hat, used "ZETTAI RYOUIKI" for cheap fanservice (fanservice!? IN TOUHOU!?? WHAT LIES.) has weird messed up wings like Flandre, has Murasa's head (okay I'll stop that lolololol) and her theme sounds like a mash of a bunch of themes, in particular U.N. Owen. No particular backstory whatsoever because she's just "REALLY MYSTERIOUS" and...well, I didn't really find much of the material canon given very appealing.
But then other people with far more creative juices than me figured out some things from what she was like.
For example she was guilty that she tried to troll with Murasa's ship because she didn't actually know what they were trying to do, and thought that if they failed it'd be amusing. (So like, a Tewi with no balls) but that's actually kind of adorable. A TOUHOU CHARACTER THAT FEELS GUILT!? WHAT IS THIS LIES. (Good god even the EX-boss of UFO is amazingly good and pure and noble compared to everything else in Touhou!)
When I first read this, it didn't cross over my mind as some sort of possible character trait because all I thought at that moment was "It's Tewi without balls." So yeah.
Then, I realized that Sanae didn't exactly treat this adventure with the...best of intentions (well, plundering treasure isn't at first either but you get the point) and the fact that people are portraying what Sanae did to Nue similar to what she does with Kogasa...
It's like they're trying to turn her into a moeblob. An EX-Boss...into this adorable girl...who's actually this terrifying creature that can shapeshift into anything, but...that's so adorable.
I mean, she is often put with Koishi and Flandre, as other little girls who may get misunderstood because they're creepy, terrifying...misunderstood, but damn Nue actually doesn't seem messed in the head, kind of geuniuely...well, cute. She scares people because that's what she does, as a youkai. (No wonder Kogasa shows up as mid-boss in the EX Stage!)
...and once I realized this I very much love MurasaxNue now, which actually makes sense. (Lol when I mentioned ShouxMurasa in an earlier post. IT DOESN'T MATTER WITH TOUHOU I'M VERY FLEXIBLE WITH ANYTHING, BE IT CHARACTERS OR PAIRINGS OR MUSIC OR GAMES...)
Oh yeah, PC-98 characters too, they're also cool. I started to appreciate them after a fanfic, but I'm not sure if they'll ever hit my "FAVOURITE CHARACTER OF THE DAY!" phase...P:
And now to end this wall-of-text...to further emphasize that favourite character of the day thing, I will now list every character I thought was super awesome for at least a day:
"Marisa, Cirno, Meiling, Flandre, Letty, Chen, Prismrivers, Youmu, Yuyuko, Ran, Yukari, Wriggle, Tewi, Reisen, Keine, Mokou, Yuuka, Aya, Komachi, Shikieiki, Tenshi, Iku, Momiji, Suwako, Parsee, Satori, Utsuho, Koishi, Nazrin, CAPTAIN MURASA, Shou, Nue"
ALSO MATCHUPS THAT SHOULD HAPPEN, LIKE NOW:
Mokou vs. Utsuho (Bows, long hair, FIRE, NUCLEAR FUSION vs. IMMORTAL, also opposites "black hair, white hair, green skirt, red pants")
Komachi vs. Captain Murasa (This seems completely obvious but Cap'n Murasa's amazing ability to capsize boats vs. Komachi's boat! Also maybe they'll be able to extinguish the flames of the last match.)
ALL THE ANIMAL-YOUKAI BEING PORTRAYED AS SUPER DEFORMED CARTOON-ANIMAL THINGS. (This one doujin has The. Cutest. Tiger. Shou. In. Existence! AHHHHHHHH!) The rest of them as yukkuri. (hilarious Yukkuri, like Takoishi!)
Okay that last one wasn't a matchup, BUT I WISH TO SEE IT.
With that, Spotto shall sleep.
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Headcanon is the fanon formed inside an individual's mind after being exposed to various types of media regarding their fandom of choice.
For example, if one reads a fancomic of a particular franchise from some medium, the fancomic may have certain interpretations of characters that the reader would adopt if they too agree with the content at hand and it would fit alongside the canon.
A big reason I fell out of the Hetalia fandom (besides the roleplaying stopping, probably) is that I really only liked a few characters from the series. The others never really pulled me in, and my favourite characters were relatively minor, so despite how big the fandom probably gets, I just couldn't stick with the fandom.
However, Touhou is much different. It is also different from Negima because that too I only like a handful of characters. There really hasn't been any fandom I've been in where I liked as many characters as I have Touhou.
I had the longest problem finding a favourite since it changed so often the first few weeks into this gargantuan fandom, and despite the fact that I have one now, it's not because the others before her became worse, it's just I like her EVEN more.
(This very much contrasts South Park when I found EVERY CHARACTER "okay" but couldn't figure out a true favourite, thus my short time discussing much of it on this blog.)
Since Touhou had tons and tons of characters, all with interesting intepretations of the characters, there was bound to be a very big favourite among them all. I did find one, her name is Koishi.
I think it's kind of ironic that I once said to Aoi-dono that the game with the characters I liked the least was SA, but at present I find the most interesting of the entire series. (In terms of gameplay I can't say because I refuse to play the next game until I finish EoSD which I am VERY BAD at, so...I did hear it's one of the most difficult though.)
To further emphasis on how much I didn't care about the SA cast, when I first found the manzai series I loved the first three...then I wondered why these random "no-name" characters flooded the fourth one. Hahahaha. Oh Spotto, so close-minded and ignorant you were a month ago... *is an idiot* (Well, I was introduced to Touhou through the fighting games, particularly IaMP so it's no wonder I didn't give a damn to anyone beyond PCB...)
But in the beginning, my first favourite, my VERY first...was probably Meiling. This was before I got interested in the fandom and just played IaMP over and over again. (As a side-comment, I really love IaMP's implementation of spell cards. The fact that it's limited to a specific time, and you have to press specific keys. At first this did annoy me as I had a very hard time actually getting the spell cards to WORK, but eventually they came to me quite easily. Sadly SWR and UNL takes away this part of IaMP that I really liked.)
Anyway I liked Meiling because she was bad at IaMP and she was mostly melee. I liked melee fighting, after all IaMP was very different from other traditional fighters so rather than the massive amount of bullets in the game I more focused on punches and comboes and such, which I suppose was Meiling...except she's really bad.
It got to the point that, at some point I was annoyed when people called her China. Of course I didn't actually know the origin and simply assumed people did it because there's no point to using her name and saying her country of origin (which probably isn't right somehow, as it is Gensokyo but eh) would demean her in a way....then I realized, after accepting that that it was pretty much the actual reason, that remaining stuck-up and preachy about it would help no one (especially since I found this "Gensokyo" place pretty bloody awesome) and time went on.
Once I DID get into the fandom it became Yuyuko. I remember when I was young and called every female in existence with pink hair retarded. Hahaha. I think it especially helps that I no longer care too much about colour. I used to only wear blue, black, brown, beige, etc. things...but now I have this big puffy pink coat that keeps me warm and I don't have to wear 5000 layers in the winter for. (My old jacket is not very warm nor very waterproof, or even windproof...what kind of coat is that!?)
But it's not so much about her character design (which I like, anyway...BESIDES THOSE DAMN FRILLS I CAN NEVER DRAW!!) but I really enjoyed her backstory, and how she's pretty much a cloudcuckoolander, except it's all a ploy and she's really a scheming brilliant strategist under it all...
Then I saw her turn into an extreme omnivore for everything in sight, which I didn't mind at first--it was rather amusing. Then it got somewhat tiresome unless there was some sort of subversion or SOMETHING different about it (or even making it MORE EXTREME by taking it up to eleven! THat's ALWAYS funny!) though from time-to-time it's still amusing.
Afterwards, I jumped around a bit (I liked Mokou a lot too, which means I'm kind of chronologically going through every game or something lol...in fact I loved Aya a lot for like two days after this!) then I found Suwako a pretty awesome character at MoF. (Only recently did I realize PoFV ISN'T a decimal game, which I had assumed all this time and thus never really included it in the "official not-spin-off line of games". [And I assumed Aya came from MoF not PoFV at this point >_> *stupid Spotto*])
After Suwako though, was tons of CAPTAIN MURASA LOVE *a certain deviantart user is to blame for this!* and well, Koishi either came here or during the Murasa phase and it's been like that since. So, why Koishi? Why her over all these other characters I like? It took me quite a long time to even establish a top-3 or anything like that (and NEVER ask me to rank them because I really can't do that with this fandom, it changes far too often, even the top four or five can interchange AT ANY TIME.) but Koishi claims this mountain!
Well, my initial impression with her was pretty amazing. There's this one PV with the best Kogasa-remix EVER (honestly the original arrange by ZUN sounds WRONG to me because of it) with a bunch of chibis of the entire cast (well, most that appeared in the windows games) and there's this one part in the middle where Koishi sticks her face at the screen...and it was the CUTEST.THING.EVER.
Of course it's a pretty popular video, so I first watched it when I didn't know many characters. I just saw them go by and then noted the ones I liked (like Yuyuko eating Mystia) and then THIS CHIBI STICKS HER FACE IN MY FACE AND SHE'S SO CUTE BUT WHO THE HELL IS SHE!?!?
The other initial impression was from that same *certain deviantart person* who did all those amazing Murasa things. He drew this comic and with an extreme interpretation of how fanon treats Koishi (like I said, up to eleven makes ANYTHING FUNNY.) turned her into a....penis-obsessed freak.
So, let's review here. I saw this ADORABLE THING SHOVE HER FACE INTO MY FACE.
And then she is obsessed with anything that looks remotely-phallic.
Wait, what!?
I'm sure that turns on many people's radars, probably wondering how a character like this is like. The obvious first-thought is that she's a complete pervert or something like that, but then I find out the reason.
...okay, well when I first read her backstory, I was actually kind of confused. (because Spotto is a moron like that) I was trying to get my head around...hmmm, subconscious. Yes, I subconsciously know what subconscious means, but it's hard for me to really...throw it out in words because the last time I took a psychology course was two years ago and I barely remember it.
But eventually I get the idea. Well kind of, the next big thing I saw of Koishi was this absolutely adorable doujinshi series that covers the SA backstory (oh my god it was so cute...gah) and the artist's interpretation of how she closes her third eye by ripping the artery-thing attached to her third eye to her head made a BOATLOAD of sense. In fact it was probably implied considering Satori has more of those vein things than Koishi and there's a very visible one attached to her head.
It could even explain why she wears a hat! Maybe she uses it to hide the wound or something, but anyway.
Anyway the doujinshi itself (also not finished) covers more of Satori and her pets than Koishi so far, but what I saw of Koishi was absolutely brilliant. Just how she handled the surface, shoving tomatoes in her mouth without even KNOWING what they were "GROWING SOMETHINGS!" and then not understanding the concept of "you should not take things that are not yours" and really, the entire thing...how clueless she was...it was just so...goddamned cute. Gah.
I mean I've SEEN characters not understand everyday things. They tend to be portrayed as serial killers and other psychotic folk, but Koishi had this...innocence about it, and I just found that not only heartbreaking (because she caused it herself since she didn't want to be hated by people. D: she even has a sad backstory *cry*) but just utterly, utterly...well, different.
And because Touhou is such an open-end type of game (which pretty much spawned all of this mass fanon stuff) there are other interpretations too, of Koishi. It's like I can look at some picture of Koishi depending on my MOOD...and everyone of them COULD WORK. That's brilliant. I am so amazed by the different contributions of people that define Koishi as a character...so much so. I mean I usually get annoyed at OOC things for the sake of being OOC being something of a "STAY CLOSE TO CANON!" person myself, but I mean...let me be honest.
The Touhou canon kind of sucks. Like, it's not BAD, but there really isn't that much to tell besides some descriptions or pieces of dialogue (and some manga too, but they're not much), it's not an RPG game with cutscenes to pull you into some story, it's a bullet-hell game and thus the gameplay is the emphasis, over everything else. Even so, the designs of the characters, the little tidbits that are given can be expanded, so it's not like you can just make something that seems very simple and straightforward and expect it to explode with people overnight. I think ZUN is some sort of genius managing that.
People always whine that they want a Touhou anime. I kind of want one too, but I think I'm starting to see why not having one is for the best, in terms of the fandom. I mean, if there was some official anime and it had Koishi in it and portrayed her in one specific way...isn't everything else OOC then? There's no longer that open-end ability with interpretation now. A series may become popular because of its characters and story, but if someone is satisfied with the characters and story so much, it will not give them much initiative to get their own creative juices going with said characters. (This explains why having amazing design but bad drawing skills helped as well for Touhou)
Anyway, fandom can get out of hand with some things, but it's not so much the fanon as a joke getting far too old. Yuyuko eating Mystia? Old. Yuyuko turning into a giantic whale-thing with razor-sharp teeth, sucking in everything in its sight like a ghost-black hole and dooming Gensokyo!? Funny. Even then there's only so many ways you can interpret that until it's kicking a dead horse....and there are many dead horses. I often see people seeing these types of things as "idiots who keep repeating old overdone jokes" but it's not IDIOTS who do it, it's people who are fairly new to the fandom, or those who barely touch on it and thus an occasional "Sakuya wears PADS-*knifed*" is funny to them, since they're not in an enviornment where it's repeated constantly around them.
For example, my friends who introduced me to Touhou like it for the gaming and music, but I don't think they care about the characters as much (or from what I've seen) so they do throw out the occasional "CIRNO IS THE STRONGEST!" joke. And it's not because they're idiots repeating the same joke, this is one of the few downsides with having such a massive fandom. I mean, if I repeated an in-joke that's getting really old in the Ventrilo servers over and over again, that'd feel like a pretty retarded joke at some point. For example (and only Souless would get this) simply saying "Cunchy is a babby" over and over again is not funny, however in certain contexts it might bring out a chuckle, like: "Did you learn fractions in school yet?"
Okay, so back to Koishi...I kind of trailed off there.
Also it's not simply just her backstory, or how cute she is. I love how her name sounds, I love that it's unique (I CAN TYPE KOISHI INTO GOOGLE AND ONLY GET THAT CHARACTER, KOISHI...okay I get stone furniture sometimes, but in terms of "ONLY THIS FICTIONAL PERSON HAS THIS AS A FIRST NAME" it's kind of nice, especially since there are TWO Kazumi Asakuras and both Kazumi and Asakura are quite common >___>) I love her character design (green is not my favourite colour, but it just looks so nice on people...) and, well...what's not to love?
In Hetalia I always felt like I needed to be interested in a country's history to like the country, I mean I did for some of them, but a lot of the characters didn't really make me start liking the country more than usual.
I also don't think I need to have a massive interest in psychology to like Koishi. She's associated with it a lot yes, but that's only one part of her. I don't particularly plan on writing for this fandom anyway (I write if I'm not satisfied with what the fandom has, this fandom has practically everything, so...) and I mean, if I do think up of some scenario I'll probably just write it out or something. (as in not a full-fledged multi-chapter story that spans more than 50,000 words because I WILL NEVER FINISH IT GRAH)
(If anything I'd do a MokouKeine PV with "My First Friend" because WHY DOESN'T IT EXIST WTF.)
But as for her character itself...it's somewhat complex, there are again, different interpretations of how she is like. In my opinion after she closed her third eye, she kind of...lost part of her mind--some people extend it to being an emotionless shell. (Except rather than just being expressionless, Koishi kind of reverts to an...instinctual-type person, who seems to be very aimless yet very carefree, smiling whenever. (Are they real smiles, true signs of happiness? Probably not.)) I've always been fond of the stepford smiler concept, but they've never been extended something...permanent. Like, those who are stepford smilers are people who smile and try to be happy, hiding what they are truly feeling inside (usually something terribly depressing). I feel Koishi WANTS to show what she's feeling, but simply cannot.
She is broken.
Yes, broken is the perfect way to describe her. Her mind is broken. That one doujin I read and mentioned above showed her as a rather clueless, adorable--seemingly harmless type of person with that kind of mind, not the "SHE WILL KILL EVERYTHING BECAUSE SHE FEELS NOTHING/IS COLD AND CRUEL ETC." that first comes to mind; however, her ability to manipulate the subconscious is a truly terrifying ability. That is where I think all those creepy, horror-type images and interpretations of Koishi I believe come from. (and I like those too, they amuse me.) Mostly though (and also backed up by canon) she uses this ability to be stealthy, to manipulate ones mind to not notice her. She isn't invisible, you just don't notice her. It's like when you're searching for your glasses or something and it's been on your head all this time. You can feel it on your head, yes, but you don't notice that feeling even though IT'S RIGHT THERE. (I don't think this was the best analogy, but whatever.)
But, instinctual--like an animal. Here's an example, in her subconscious...she is hungry. So naturally she needs to eat. Now a regular person would go out and buy food, or cook food, or go out and kill an animal and cook that animal, or harvest some crops and cook those crops. In a doujin that follows the canon rather closely, when Koishi gets hungry--she walks into other people's houses and eats their food. She does not see a problem with this whatsoever. Normal people would.
I mean it's just like "person A doesn't like person B, so A murders B. A does not understand what is wrong with this, since all A wanted was to not be in the presence of person B" however I think Koishi, the real Koishi actually likes quite a lot of people, or is capable of such. I'm sure being a satori (a youkai that can read others' minds...this is why she and her sister are hated) actually wanted people to like THEM, since they're hated so often, so I'm sure she herself would not be a hypocrite and would probably like a lot of people quite easily, perhaps even be gullible. So broken!Koishi might still has this one part of her left, perhaps she's lived that way for so long as a satori, that something like that is second nature to her, in other words...something she believes unconsciously--in her subconscious...instinctual. Therefore I don't think she'd really need to kill someone she doesn't like because she often likes people more often than not, and considering Gensokyo follows a white and grey morality..
Of course, that means if she didn't live in such a lighthearted world, it might be different, thus the different interpretations. I read an excellent fanfic that turns Gensokyo into a very dark place (as fanon enjoys doing, anyway) and Koishi does use her power for something very terrifying, something very chilling. She also becomes cold, almost emotionless. I love the story. It's VERY different to what I'm used to, but it also could work and so doesn't feel OOC.
At the same time I can also understand how odd or awkward or even difficult it might be to write her, so there are doujins that interpret her as a pretty cute little girl who wants friends, and closing her eye while still being rather tragic hasn't quite affected her as much of some of these other stories (after all in the canon itself she...SEEMS like a nice girl.) and that's fine with me too.
Anyway a person like that can be pulled to do many things for the lulz (trolling is an art, it is also amusing and part of the reason why I love some of the touhou characters) particularly Koishi's association with Freud. Now we all know that man once proposed a theory (I'm not entirely sure EXACTLY but it has to do with daughters or at least females being jealous of men because they own shwongs or something) and when that is pushed up to eleven, you get that comic I mentioned where Koishi is obsessed with anything phallic-shaped at ALL and she can do it so nonchalantly because of how she is, closing her third eye and everything. Comedy gold...and it works. If anything, I would call Touhou BRILLIANT, of all fandoms I've partaked in.
It can also mean things like: <"I heard that you do this to someone you love!" *kisses Satori on the lips*> Hilarity ensues, also massive amounts of fluff.
Also it's not just Koishi, Touhou has this ability to make me have a "favourite character of the day". For example, I did not give a damn about Nue whatsoever. When I got into the awesome UFO cast, everyone was pretty cool...except Nue. (too bad that doesn't rhyme unless you pronounce her name wrong :C)
I was one of those nonbelievers who thought Nue was simply a Flandre ripoff...that ZUN was running out of ideas to use as an ex-boss and simply threw Nue together. (Of course the joke that she has CAPTAIN MURASA'S HEAD copy-pasted on her amuses me to no end (I don't actually think she does, but still) )
I mean think about it, Nue had no hat, used "ZETTAI RYOUIKI" for cheap fanservice (fanservice!? IN TOUHOU!?? WHAT LIES.) has weird messed up wings like Flandre, has Murasa's head (okay I'll stop that lolololol) and her theme sounds like a mash of a bunch of themes, in particular U.N. Owen. No particular backstory whatsoever because she's just "REALLY MYSTERIOUS" and...well, I didn't really find much of the material canon given very appealing.
But then other people with far more creative juices than me figured out some things from what she was like.
For example she was guilty that she tried to troll with Murasa's ship because she didn't actually know what they were trying to do, and thought that if they failed it'd be amusing. (So like, a Tewi with no balls) but that's actually kind of adorable. A TOUHOU CHARACTER THAT FEELS GUILT!? WHAT IS THIS LIES. (Good god even the EX-boss of UFO is amazingly good and pure and noble compared to everything else in Touhou!)
When I first read this, it didn't cross over my mind as some sort of possible character trait because all I thought at that moment was "It's Tewi without balls." So yeah.
Then, I realized that Sanae didn't exactly treat this adventure with the...best of intentions (well, plundering treasure isn't at first either but you get the point) and the fact that people are portraying what Sanae did to Nue similar to what she does with Kogasa...
It's like they're trying to turn her into a moeblob. An EX-Boss...into this adorable girl...who's actually this terrifying creature that can shapeshift into anything, but...that's so adorable.
I mean, she is often put with Koishi and Flandre, as other little girls who may get misunderstood because they're creepy, terrifying...misunderstood, but damn Nue actually doesn't seem messed in the head, kind of geuniuely...well, cute. She scares people because that's what she does, as a youkai. (No wonder Kogasa shows up as mid-boss in the EX Stage!)
...and once I realized this I very much love MurasaxNue now, which actually makes sense. (Lol when I mentioned ShouxMurasa in an earlier post. IT DOESN'T MATTER WITH TOUHOU I'M VERY FLEXIBLE WITH ANYTHING, BE IT CHARACTERS OR PAIRINGS OR MUSIC OR GAMES...)
Oh yeah, PC-98 characters too, they're also cool. I started to appreciate them after a fanfic, but I'm not sure if they'll ever hit my "FAVOURITE CHARACTER OF THE DAY!" phase...P:
And now to end this wall-of-text...to further emphasize that favourite character of the day thing, I will now list every character I thought was super awesome for at least a day:
"Marisa, Cirno, Meiling, Flandre, Letty, Chen, Prismrivers, Youmu, Yuyuko, Ran, Yukari, Wriggle, Tewi, Reisen, Keine, Mokou, Yuuka, Aya, Komachi, Shikieiki, Tenshi, Iku, Momiji, Suwako, Parsee, Satori, Utsuho, Koishi, Nazrin, CAPTAIN MURASA, Shou, Nue"
ALSO MATCHUPS THAT SHOULD HAPPEN, LIKE NOW:
Mokou vs. Utsuho (Bows, long hair, FIRE, NUCLEAR FUSION vs. IMMORTAL, also opposites "black hair, white hair, green skirt, red pants")
Komachi vs. Captain Murasa (This seems completely obvious but Cap'n Murasa's amazing ability to capsize boats vs. Komachi's boat! Also maybe they'll be able to extinguish the flames of the last match.)
ALL THE ANIMAL-YOUKAI BEING PORTRAYED AS SUPER DEFORMED CARTOON-ANIMAL THINGS. (This one doujin has The. Cutest. Tiger. Shou. In. Existence! AHHHHHHHH!) The rest of them as yukkuri. (hilarious Yukkuri, like Takoishi!)
Okay that last one wasn't a matchup, BUT I WISH TO SEE IT.
With that, Spotto shall sleep.
(Actually have some random Spotto statistics because I'd like to keep them SOMEWHERE.
Favourite five themes in no particular order:
Cosmic Mind ~ Emotional Skyscraper (UFO)
Septette for the Dead Princess (EoSD)
The Eternal Steam Engine (UNL)
The Doll Maker of Bucuresti (PCB)
Wind God Girl (PoFV)
Game with Best Music Overall: SA/PCB (tie)
Favourite four characters in no particular order:
Nazrin
Koishi
Ran
Murasa
