Miscellaneous Questions 6: The Questionating

[Drake]

ZUN has said she's part Heavenly god and Earthly god to reflect that in some stories Ame-no-sagume is portrayed as one or the other. He says the one wing represents the Heavenly god side of her. The wing is also part of her white heron (サギ) imagery, but I don't particularly know if there's more behind choosing the heron besides for the similarity of "Sagume" and "sagi", and the homonym sagi (詐欺, meaning scam) giving her another tie to the amanojaku folklore.

[Helepolis]

This question also should have gone in the Miscellaneous Questions thread.

Agreed, merging the thread into Q&A.

[game2011]

In the fan game  Magus in Mystic Geometries, ZUN made themes for Shinki and Rinnosuke, An Ordeal From God and Curious Old Shanghai Tile.  Should they be considered official themes for them, since ZUN made them?

[Drake]

Depends what you really mean by "official theme". Could you call both of those "official" character motifs? Sure, just as how some characters have many different musical motifs with different expression. Could you call them "the theme that would play if they were in a battle in a danmaku game"? By the contexts of the games they come from I'm not sure that would be totally appropriate. If ZUN brought these characters to something new, they would probably be given completely different themes.

And to get even more delicate, even as character motifs, maybe you want to consider what it even means to be "official" or "unofficial". Kind of the point is that the music itself evokes some sort of representation of the character, but it's hard to say how much effort ZUN put into portraying the character with the music rather than simply making "some music" for the game that just happened to be connected to a specific character.

(Also Curious Old Shanghai Tile is from Touhou Unreal Mahjong; obviously why "Tile" is in the title. Both games were made by D.N.A and were similar situations though so whatever)

[Rei Scarlette]

Hi, I figured this was not important enough for its own topic and that it might best belong here in the Misc. Questions topic.

I was wondering if anyone might be able to help me identify the name of this song. I recognize it to be an arrangement of Flandre's theme, but the file has no helpful details attached. I got myself a stack of old PC games for $5, but it seems one of the CDs just had a bunch of videogame music on it. If the song in question is being sold anywhere I'd like to support the creators, but if it's freely available I guess all is well.

I assume uploading the entire track could be rather questionable, so on the side of caution I decided to go for just two 30 second clips that I thought might be most identifiable. https://my.mixtape.moe/smvlyp.mp3 (I assume this should be acceptable, but if not I or a mod could remove the link?)

Thanks for your time. It'd be great to know the name of the song and who made this.

[Drake]

緋色月下、狂咲ノ絶 by EastNewSound.

They actually have a Booth, with digital downloads, so you can support them directly and without import fees.
https://eastnewsound.booth.pm/

[Rei Scarlette]

Oh, nice! That's great, even better than I was hoping for. Thanks a bunch for the quick response.

[TresserT]

If an object were to be worshipped, would it become a tsukumogami? If not, what would happen?

[Sophilia]

It wouldn't become a tsukumogami, no.  Tsukumogami are the result of angering an object's animus, not worshipping it.  I'd think in this case, it'd be creating a god, much like Reimu did with the lightning tree that one time.

[Shadowlupus]

I have 3 questions.

1. Humans and Youkai don't need to be antagonistic 24/7, but the latter just need to cause incident/trouble once in a while to reinstate fear into humans to ensure their survival, correct?

2. I believe not all Youkai follows this rule, yes? Ex. Wakasagihime, Tewi, and Nemuno, from what I've read, aren't the type to go out and cause problems, so how can they survive? Gensokyo Chronicle?

3. I don't think it is stated anywhere how one can born a half-youkai hybrid, yes? I will assume that they are born normally like humans. Take Rinnosuke for example. That means one of his parents was a Youkai or a hybrid, so I assume that having a relationship with a Youkai isn't illegal?

Or a half-youkai hybrid is born because of something else?

[TrueShadow]

3. Well, if we go by Japanese folklores, then there are youkai who can give birth to humans. Like Kitsune, Tanuki, Yuki-onna, and Rokurokubi. I don't think relationship with youkai is considered acceptable, though, and the aforementioned youkai are the likes who can pass off as humans.

[PK]

Tewi and Wakasagi are outright non-antagonistic or even helpful to humans, same as the Zashiki-warashi, so there are obviously youkai that only feed on belief rather than fear. Nemuno might gather fear as "scary woman that slices you open with a cleaver if you enter her territory" even if she doesn't actually do it (she threatens to do it).

I've been wondering if mountain hags are actually 100% youkai-born rather than some type of magician like Alice, or maybe a kind of more sinister hermit?

[Prime32]

3. I don't think it is stated anywhere how one can born a half-youkai hybrid, yes? I will assume that they are born normally like humans. Take Rinnosuke for example. That means one of his parents was a Youkai or a hybrid, so I assume that having a relationship with a Youkai isn't illegal?

Or a half-youkai hybrid is born because of something else?

I assume Rinnosuke had human and youkai parents, but the Konpaku family were probably normal humans who got stuck between life and death somehow.

If you consider Keine a half-youkai (as opposed to fully human some of the time, fully youkai some of the time) then she wasn't born that way.

There's also cases of things partially transforming into youkai, but this state is usually unstable and they settle on one side or the other before long.

[game2011]

Can Yukari revive the dead using her gap powers, or did I just read a story written by a Yukari fanboy who believes her waifu is an omnipotent Mary Sue who can do literally and absolutely anything because of her ability?

Don't ask me what fan fic that is.  Please just tell me if she can revive the dead using her gap/boundary abilities.

[PK]

This sounds more like "follow what we are told" than "Yukari fanboy writing about their waifu" (which honestly makes you sound like you are bitter about it regardless of it being canon or not).
You can't blame people for writing stuff like that when the canonical description of her powers is almost literally "can do whatever she fucking want" in more than one occasion.

That said, she never did it so i'd say it's impossible to tell. Like most stuff regarding the characters' abilities.

[Mеа]

Was there a name for the type of flower pattern stamp-like patterns ZUN uses on a lot of his touhou title and menu screens? I feel like I read somewhere about him using an opensource one for DDC or something.

Or if there isn't, is there a name for that kind of flat stamp-like insignia-like pattern style?

e: oh, and I'm hoping to be given the japanese (or chinese) name for this style. I'm struck by the very orientalness of the thing.

[Electroll]

Why would the ultramarine orb kill gods like Suwako that highly depend on faith to survive? Doesn't ultramarine orb help to make the user purer? If that so, won't that make wako purer which is beneficial for her?

[Suspicious person]

Why would the ultramarine orb kill gods like Suwako that highly depend on faith to survive? Doesn't ultramarine orb help to make the user purer? If that so, won't that make wako purer which is beneficial for her?

In Touhou, gods can basically be literally anything + faith : purity is irrelevant, as far as godhood go ; and regarding the ultramarine orb, the way it works is essentially by making its user completely pure (not purer) : to reword it differently, it completely wipes away impurity.

Now then, regarding Suwako : she is a native god, made of 100 % faith : while I don't recall if some official material mention that whatever compose her being can be considered as impure, the fact of the matter is simple : taking the ultramarine orb can supposedly instagib her : it should be valid to deduct that whatever composes Suwako somehow fall in line with the impurity that the ultramarine orb wipe away... and considering that that's pretty much her whole being (100 % !), the ultramarine orb might do her way more harm than good.

Also, regarding the "purification" part, the ultramarine orb's purification should not be confused with the refinement part of Junko's purification ability.

[Sagus]

I imagine that a being that's made by the faith and desires of impure humans would be filled with kegare by nature, so it stands to reason for her to be particularly weak to things that destroy impurity.

Also I bet her relationship with the Mishaguji doesn't do her any favors in this regard.

[Goomba98]

If RedRive is free to download, how come I've found absolutely zero information on that game when the other two Project Blank games aren't free, and yet they still have wiki pages?

[Drake]

It isn't one of their larger projects, it's a small Arena STG focused around a neat little gimmick. Nobody's bothered to write anything on the english wiki because not many people even play the game, even though it's free. It's completely different in scale from RefRain and samidare.

[the old guy]

This is a dumb question, but is the volcano in Mokou's "Undying South Wind, Clear Sky Soaring Kick" actually real or is it just danmaku?

[Lt Colonel Summers]

This is a dumb question, but is the volcano in Mokou's "Undying South Wind, Clear Sky Soaring Kick" actually real or is it just danmaku?

Definitely just danmaku. Otherwise making it non-lethal will be fully impossible, not to mention the collateral damage.

[PK]

Definitely just danmaku. Otherwise making it non-lethal will be fully impossible, not to mention the collateral damage.

The games are plenty of attacks that should be lethal but aren't for some magical reason, tho. As for collateral damage, the "volcano" seems to be just a big fire column, and most collateral damage would come from her destroying the ground be kicking the opponent into it.

[the old guy]

I was asking this question because some guy on another web site used that to argue that Mokou could make a volcano. I highly doubt it because i'm 99% sure that who ever she was fighting would die there.

[PK]

Not saying she can obviously do it, but even if she could, how would it be different than Utsuho's nuclear fusion "danmaku" that are explicitly said to be super hot?

This also reminds me about Marisa's Horoscope in AFiEU where she says some attacks (like Yuugi punching you) would "normally kill you but it's danmaku so you don't die".
I doubt those were meant to be serious, but still.

[Lt Colonel Summers]

Something has been bugging me for a while now...

Why do some people refer to Kosuzu as "Motoori"?

In so far, we have referred to each and every 2hu by their first names. I.E,:
Hakurei Reimu - Reimu
Kirisame Marisa - Marisa
Yakumo Yukari - Yukari
Yagokoro Eirin - Eirin
Fujiwara No Mokou - Mokou
Alice Margatroid - Alice
Mystia Lorelei - Mystia
Hong Meiling - Meiling
etc...
Yet, Motoori Kosuzu is the only exception, as some people still refer to her as "Motoori", her last name...

Why is this the case?

[PK]

Shinmyoumaru gets called Sukuna much more often.

[GenericArrangements]

Shinmyoumaru gets called Sukuna much more often.

Doesn't make it right.

Although with Shinmyoumaru I guess some people physically can't/can't be bothered to pronounce her name correctly. Calling Kosuzu "Motoori" doesn't make as much sense.

[Shizzo]

Almost everybody calls UFO's 4th stage boss 'Murasa', too.  I think it comes from the fact that one name is shorter than the other (Much like Shinmyoumaru), thus people refer to the easier-to-spell name to avoid blunders. 

Frankly tho I never saw anyone calling Kosuzu by her last name.