The PNP-Theory: Drug Abuse in Gensokyo

[mew77]

I double checked the wiki..turns out faeries are their own species..I was wrong.

So then why do large swarms of faeries attack the player all the time..
I don't want to chalk it to just stupidity.

Here this might help us: http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Perfect_Memento:_Encyclopedia:_Fairy

[Dead Princess Sakana]

Hey, thanks for the link Mew.
I should have checked those articles sooner, they might provide some clues.

And you weren't completely off, it says that they are 'a kind of youkai' there. S we might say that they are at least related to youkai, just like cats are related to tigers for example.

"Without thinking of the consequences, they disturb the actions of those in front of their eyes. " might be a direction as for why they attack. Though just that wouldn't justify the barrage of danmaku the players usually encounter.
Plus it's said, that  "The truth is that while fairies are reckless, they don't like fighting much at all."
Then again, there is "However, there are also the occasional exceptions where without doing any pranks, they just suddenly attack."
Ah damn, that doesn't solve the problem at all. I have no idea as of yet, other than 'defense' or 'orders', as I stated before.

As for the clothing:
First of all, I will grant the fairies enough intelligence to dress up by themselves. That would be of relevane for cases where the fairies have some clothing that diverts form the usual simple dress (i.e. PoFV stage 9).
I would take fairies as creatures that live in groups. In that case clothes might be a way to distinguish between groups and foster companionship amongst fairies of the same group.
Of course they might also wear certain clothes on the order of a master that domesticated a goup of fairies, like the SDM fairy maids.
That would, btw, bring on the thought if the fairies in PoFV stage 9 copied their style from Shiki, or if not in fact Shiki domesticated them and dressed them herself.

As for the dressing in PNP-colours though, I can't say anything yet. I had some thoughts, but they're yet too confusing to be a theoretical explanation.

[OkashiiKisei]

Whatever made you think the faeries were scavengers??

my feeling is that faeries actively attack in swarms when they can..or are domesticated for use by more powerful youkai.

it happens.

Eh, fairies feeding on humans? Where did that come from? I consider them magivores (as in, that gathering of magic and processign it into PNP is already their 'feeding')

It's called a joke guys. Is the Discovery Animal Planet parody text not a big enough of a hint? Seriously, you didn't have to take it this far.
Fairies don't need to eat (like you said, nourishing on magic), but they sometimes consume food because they're curious and want to mimic humans (how cute)

I think the fairy dresses and costumes are part of their being, and magically appear when they come into existence. They might become more elaborate when they become more powerful (Lily White's dress is far more fancy than those of normal fairies). And ofcourse, they can wear anything that's given to them (even Shikieiki has uniforms for them that's similar to hers). Their PNP production might also influence the color of the dress, since, like I said, they are part of their very being.

I also already explained why fairies attack players at random, which also comes back in the article (yes, I've read it before): They're scared for the youkai (boss) that's currently attacking them for PNP, so they gather and get aggressive to try and fend the youkai off. During the hectics of the battle, they mistake the player character for a predator too, and start attacking them too. The player obviously responds with defending themselves and eliminate the attacking fairies, only to make all the other fairies in the vincinity more pissed off, continueing the attack.

And you weren't completely off, it says that they are 'a kind of youkai' there. S we might say that they are at least related to youkai, just like cats are related to tigers for example.

Nice comparison BTW.

[Dead Princess Sakana]

It's called a joke guys. Is the Discovery Animal Planet parody text not a big enough of a hint? Seriously, you didn't have to take it this far.

My comment wasn't directed at you, actually. I got the joke, but Mew started on the man-eating fairies one post before that and I didn't know whether that was supposed to be a joke as well. Oh well, nothing serious happened, so whatever.

Fairies don't need to eat (like you said, nourishing on magic), but they sometimes consume food because they're curious and want to mimic humans (how cute)

Actually, I just had the thought that fairies mimicking human eating habits might make them a good target for pranks themselves. Make two portions of food. Put something incredibly sour/ spicy etc. into one portion. Wait for fairies to approach and eat the safe portion of food before their eyes. Let them take the other portion, hide, watch  :V

Anyway, back to topic: I agree to your notions on clothing. A being with a living dress sounds weird, but we're talking about Gensokyo here. Only thing that we might have to look into is the reason why some fairies produce slightly different PNP than others.
One of my thoughts was that fairies might have simple social structures (we talked about leadership by bigger fairies before, right?) and that inside of those structures, there might be different roles a fairy might attend to. Maybe which role a fairy has might influence the nature of the PNP it produces.
For example guardian/fighter fairies will process magical energy in a way that makes it easier usable for fighting, which leads to them producing the kind of PNP that has the highest power-boosting abilities, the red PNP. Blue ones on the other hand might be the fairies that take care of the more social matters, like caring for baby fairies (if that exists), nursing hurt fighter fairies etc. They would have to use magical energy differently, resulting in blue PNP. The rest would be the changing of the dress' color according to the type of PNP produced, as Naito said.

And yeah, now that you mention it, you did explain why fairies attack before. It's getting pretty hard to remember everything we had up to now.
One correction though:

they mistake the player character for a predator too

They don't mistake them, they see them for what they are  :V

[OkashiiKisei]

Actually, I just had the thought that fairies mimicking human eating habits might make them a good target for pranks themselves. Make two portions of food. Put something incredibly sour/ spicy etc. into one portion. Wait for fairies to approach and eat the safe portion of food before their eyes. Let them take the other portion, hide, watch  :V

Oh, your so mean yet so much win :V

Anyway, back to topic: I agree to your notions on clothing. A being with a living dress sounds weird, but we're talking about Gensokyo here. Only thing that we might have to look into is the reason why some fairies produce slightly different PNP than others.
One of my thoughts was that fairies might have simple social structures (we talked about leadership by bigger fairies before, right?) and that inside of those structures, there might be different roles a fairy might attend to. Maybe which role a fairy has might influence the nature of the PNP it produces.
For example guardian/fighter fairies will process magical energy in a way that makes it easier usable for fighting, which leads to them producing the kind of PNP that has the highest power-boosting abilities, the red PNP. Blue ones on the other hand might be the fairies that take care of the more social matters, like caring for baby fairies (if that exists), nursing hurt fighter fairies etc. They would have to use magical energy differently, resulting in blue PNP. The rest would be the changing of the dress' color according to the type of PNP produced, as Naito said.

Hmmm...a delightful notion. Fairies having an insect colony like lifestyle could be very interesting, and explain alot. I'm not sure either if fairies get kids, but I doubt that. I think they probably just poof into existence. But the possibility's still there. Perhaps why there are so many female fairies: like bees, all the workers are female, and a male is only needed to impregnate the 'queen'. After that he'd probably turn into a female fairy or vanish from existence. Though that raises the question if fairies lay eggs..... and if there is indeed a need for a queen, Daiyousei is going to get veeeeery busy.

[Dead Princess Sakana]

Hm, nice follow up on the fairy social structure there.
I didn't think of insect colonies, but they fit very well. They work for simple creatures and yet provide enough different roles to link those to PNP in some way.

As for fairy-birth, all of your ideas are possible.
Just to mention it, another mindfuck-idea I had for the fairy colours was to suggest that red fairies are female, blue male and green underaged. The colours are needed so that the fairies can reproduce, since there is nothing else to distinguish their sexes and maturity by  :V
Though that might have spawned some fun discussion, I rather not wanted any of the fairies to be a male. We're talking about Gensokyo after all.
Which doesn't mean I am against a queen-bee theory. As fairies are magical beings, I don't think the necessity of a male for reproduction needs to be applied.

Though, thinking about it a bit more, if we want to explain things conclusive and in detail, accepting male fairies with the sole purpose of reproducing might be a rather good choice. And actually I can even imagine that PNP might have its uses there as well, by boosting the potency of a male fairy in order to succesfully generate lots of new offspring. Which might then end in the male fairy 'vanishing' from exhaustion.


//offtopic

Oh, your so mean yet so much win :V

Actually that is one of my favourite traits in real life as well. Given there is some good input from someone else I can have pretty nice, and usually mean, ideas (and you've provided a lot of input Naito, see this thread   ).
If I want to be creative on my own, however, well....
And btw, your words of fairies 'poofing into existance' gave me an image of the cutest 'Big Bang' ever  :V

[mew77]

All this talk of living dresses can has strange side effects...the faeries in MoF stage 3 wear cowboy hats...are we to assume the hats are also living?

In the SDM they have uniforms and in shikeiki's land as well, but

did nitori convince a large swarm of faeries to wer cowboy hats? I wouldn't put it past her, but the faeries in MoF stage 4 do as well.

oh I get it, momiji uses cowboy hats as the youkai mountain defense crops uniform.

I guess...

I think i'm jsut rambling now, so back to you guys

[Dead Princess Sakana]

Actually, why not? I like the 'Mountain Defense Corps' idea, and it fits into everything else really well.

They are obviously a special group of fairies, seeing as they only appear on two stages. Also, on stage 4, their attacks are a lot more coordinated than those of normal fairies (i.e. when they shoot danmaku to narrow you down to a specific path at two points in the stage). And the timing with which they appear also makes sense. They only appear after the player has succeeded in beating the person who usually is responsible for keeping humans from the mountain, Hina, so at that point there's a real threat to all the creatures on youkai mountain.
So them being a fairy special force (well, rather a militia maybe) that acts to intercept intruders to the mountain would explain their behavior and the uniform hat pretty well.
And since usually the tengu guard the moutain, Momiji and Aya would be their superiors. As Aya is often away that would probably make Momiji the actual commander, so the hats might indeed have been Momiji's idea. Though I wouldn't put it beyond Aya as well, but that's not the point here.

I'd say you made a pretty nice discovery there, Mew.

[OkashiiKisei]

oh I get it, momiji uses cowboy hats as the youkai mountain defense crops uniform.

Aya: 'So, Momiji, what's the deal with the hats?'

Momiji: 'To show that they *puts on sunglasses* mean business.'

YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Now I can't stop imagining Momiji using the fairies as dress up dolls.

Anyway, I wanted to support my 'magic clothes' theory a bit. It really isn't that farfetched really. Because think about it:
Who in their right minds would actually try and make hundreds of thousands of Europian, highly detailed dresses for ALL the wild fairies in Gensokyo who have absolutely no money on them? And since fairies are mostly homeless and the only possesion they carry are the their dresses, I doubt they'll have the resources or skills to make the dresses themselves. Stealing from humans is out too, because the residents of the Human Village mostly wear fuedal style clothing, no Europian clothing. Also, most fairies are either kid or doll sized, and I doubt there are enough kids or dolls in the Human Village to provide so many clothing anyway. Stealing is out of the case too.
Actually, most youkai seem to have pretty fancy clothing too despite living in the wild (with Rumia as prime example). The mansion dwelling youkai have hundreds of dresses ofcourse, but wild youkai don't have anything except for, yes, their clothes. Youkai could possibly also be able to magically create clothing.
Mokou and Kaguya get blown to smithereens every five seconds, yet they regenerate immediatly with no clothing damage. Perhaps even humans/Lunarians can learn to magically generate clothing.

[Dead Princess Sakana]

Now I can't stop imagining Momiji using the fairies as dress up dolls.

She needs some hobbies as well, doesn't she? I mean, it's not like someone is attacking the mountain every day just so she can do her job  :V

Who in their right minds would actually try and make hundreds of thousands of Europian, highly detailed dresses for ALL the wild fairies in Gensokyo who have absolutely no money on them?

Now that you mention it.... (o_0)
I could imagine one single person in Gensokyo making fairy-sized clothes, and that would be Alice. But even she could and would never make some for every fairy, so yeah...
To support you some more, I'd like to mention that we usually see the girl's clothes dirty or torn after a fight. Since we can assume they fight regularily I doubt they always have the ressources to repair their clothes manually (especially, as you said, youkai living in the wild). So the fact that they have clean and undamaged clothes when the players meet them already hints to some magical clothes-recovering ability.

I think your Magic Clothing theory explains the weird ways of dressing in Gensokyo pretty well.

[mew77]

since automatic clothing regeneration doesn't exist in our world it must exist in theirs.
Since dresses don't magically appear out of nowhere in our world it might in thiers

it's called Gensokyo logic..whatever can't happen will.

[Dead Princess Sakana]

Wow, I think Mew's 'Mountain Defense Corps' theory can be supported by the strongest proof, the game itself.
I played it again just now and my eyes caught the names of the stages for the first time.
And well, stages three and four are named 'Flawless Fortress' and 'Mountain Fortress' respectively.
Now a fortress wold be useless without a defense force, right?
Well, and the only thing we can see in the game that resembles a defense force are Momiji and her army of cowboy-hat wearing fairies.
So what Mew said he was just rambling about was in fact the truth, great job!  :V

[mew77]

Well isn't that interesting...

The stage logos don't pop up long enough for me to read them usually.

[OkashiiKisei]

Well guys, we've also been wrong on the ghosts. Apparently the humanoid ghosts and the gaseous ghosts are entirely different species and not interconnected.
See for yourself:
Phantoms (half of what Youmu is) http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Phantom
Ghosts (Yuyuko) http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Ghost
Even poltergesist are entirely different things http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Poltergeist

So ghosts don't materialize further into humanoid beings when they develope. They are humanoid from the start. They can however, change into Evil Spirits when their bodies are stolen by Kasha (I think Mima is one but I'm not sure. The ghosts faries defiantly are), or change into Yama when they get applied for the job or if they had died near Jizou. And we ofcourse established that Ghosts could turn into Gods when man is in need for a god.
Phantoms are completely different beings who are apparently 'born' instead of being spirits of the dead (most of the time though, there are exceptions, where apparently many can spawn from the same dead person).
 Poltergeists are the same, but can materialize in humanoid form by possesing something (the Prismrivers with their instruments), and are often 'created' like the magic sentries (the Prismrivers were created by the fourth sister, Layla).
From this we can assume that (complete) Phantoms are PNP producing while Ghosts are PNP absorbing. Poltergeist may have been created in the same vein as sentries, through PNP, and may be PNP producing themselves.

So now the fairies, phantoms, poltergeists, UFO's and FOE's fall outside the evolutionary lines, being PNP producers. The Ghosts meanwhile have now become part of the evolutionary line, adding Yama's and Evil Spirits to the list. I am already implementing them into my rather simple start of the evolutionary line, which I've started making during and in between classes. I've also connected Vampires and Immortals to humans, with their own unique ways to evolve (vampire bite for Vampires and Hourai Elixir for Immortals), but after that they're pretty much evolutionary dead ends.

I've also discovered from Perfect Memento that youkai don't have ghosts, so the poltergeists and strage ghosts can't be youkai ghosts. They are all their own independant beings.

Regarding the evolutionary line I've been making, does Ran count as bishoujo? She already has nine tails, and she only has to lose five of them now to become a Tenko (divine fox). We assume from this that Ran is bishoujo and that her tenko form is Perfect stage. I used Ran in my evolutionary line because I didn't dare use Yukari for it. I'm not sure if she's bishoujo or perfect, but she's giving the impression of perfect....

[Dead Princess Sakana]

Who would've thought that the dead would be more complex than the living...
But you already managed to figure out how we have to deal with those pretty well, so there's not much I have to add right now.
Only thing I have some thoughts on are Poltergeists. It is said that those can be grouped together with phantoms, so seeing the as PNP-producing is a possibility.
On the other hand I think they could be seen as a special case like the Hourai-beings, where the evolution lines are distorted by external influence. They possess objects, so we might have a case similar to sentient objects here, which are at the start of youkai evolution lines. But then they are able to gain physical form and abilities like a youkai of mature level. And yet they are constructed like sentries and actually don't count as living beings.
So my guess is that they might very well produce PNP by themselves, but probably rely on additional external PNP to go into humanoid form and fight, just as it is for youkai/ human.
That last sentence would also go for Youmu, by the way, as we would assume that her phantom half produces PNP as well.

Good luck on the evolution lines, I can imagine they must be a lot of work.
As for Ran, I would definitely place her on bishoujo level, with Tenko being perfection form, just as you said.

[mew77]

Looks like you all have the discrepancies all settled.

In your opinion do we need to do more work in terms of classification of enemies?

They're majority faeries anyway.

I'll look into bullet shape and color next but probably has no link.

wait...I jsut thought of something. It's obvious but still relevant. Cound the variety of bullet colors correspond to the users PNP level?

[Dead Princess Sakana]

I think we can stick with the classification we have now, unless someone discovers a completely new enemy type or something.

As for your last question, I'd say definitely yes. Just look at the different buillets shot by a single fairy, a doom fairy and then a boss. There's a clear difference there and we know that they have different levels of PNP.

[mew77]

I suppose it would take too long to get a measurable system for determining color variety. So Kogasa despite being only a stage 2 boss has a midboss card that just screams taste the rainbow. While on the other hand Parsee's attacks have less variety in color.

Wow..I just found a way to classify characters according to power level that doesn't involve the stages.

Gotta test it a few times.

[Dead Princess Sakana]

Sounds good, I'm interested what your results will be.
Just one thought though, as Danmaku are controlled by will, you might also want to consider the character's personality a bit. Characters that are usually calm and composed might tend to use less colourful but more thought-out patterns, while cheerful and upbeat ones might lean towards more colourful and random patterns.

[OkashiiKisei]

Rumia, despite being a darkness youkai, uses a rainbow barage at one point too. Same goes for Cirno and Meiling (Though Cirno evenyually freezes them). Flandre has pretty colourful ones too (most prominently Starbow Break). Meanwhile Remi only uses red orbs and Patchy tends to use only one or two colours at a time. Sakuya doesn't count since she just uses knives.

Rumia, Cirno, Meiling and Flandre are all childish, happy-go-lucky girls, while Remilia and Patchouli are dead serious. Parsee is always jealous, and appears pretty dark and serious, so she uses only a few colors too. Marisa is probably the most optimistic character in the series and uses nothing but rainbows. The colorfulness of the danmaku seems to indeed depend on the personality of the caster.

It might have something to do with power too. The most colourful ones are mostly stage 1-3 bosses. Marisa is a stage 4 boss and she uses nothing but rainbows. Meanwhile Yuyuko only uses pink and purple, and her power is insane. Yuuka and Suika, part of the Gensokyo Top, don't have much color varity in their danmaku either. Yukari on the other hand (Miss 'I-Can-Turn-The-World-Inside-Out') uses pretty varied colors. Sure, it starts of as only a few colors at a time or just variations of purple, blue and red, but her penultimate spellcard (and probably her most brutal) is one big seizure storm of colors. Yukari has a pretty colourful personality though...

[mew77]

So the colors reflect the characters personality rather than their power level.

Interesting.