What if the Great Hakurei Barrier was never put up?

[Doll.S CUBE]

I'm currently writing a fan-fiction of Touhou on what will happen if the great Hakurei barrier was not put up (see PSL for preview of the character list) and was wondering what you all would think would happen?

And no, I'm not trying to fish for idea's for my work. I already thought of plot and character placement of everyone in it already. I just need to write it down, which I'm having hard time with .

[Helepolis]

This thread belongs in Patchouli's library imo.

[Nobu]

Hele, those breasts are hypnotic. Egads.

Re: where this thread belongs - This appears to be a a topic intending to discuss the idea of the great Hakurei barrier having never been put up, so it would belong here. My only suggestion to CDS in that in future posts to post threads geared towards discussion here, and threads geared more towards your fiction specifically in PSL.


And re: thread topic - If the Great Hakurei Barrier were never put up, i'd imagine the world would be like our world is right now. The only difference being that sometime in the past, instead of the youkai being whisked away to a insular world, they would have died out instead. Maybe you'd still have Yukari around, and a handful of gods like Kanako and Suwako still around with nowhere to go, but that's about it. 

[Doll.S CUBE]

Yeah, Sorry for that :blush:

Anyway, that is a good general description of what will happen but what I'm looking for is your opinion on what will happen to all the character, how different will they be? Will they be the same? How about the flower incident or what would the Moriya shrine do? The specific of the massive effect of there being no Gensokyo. Things like that. Remember, certain things will still happen whether there was a Great barrier or not.

[AJS]

According to PMiSS, "it can be said that the barrier is logically creating the place that we call Gensokyo."  If the Barrier was never put up, then Gensokyo as we know it would not exist the way it is today.  "Gensokyo" (if we could even call it that in this alternate reality) would just probably be your average little countryside, with some legends surrounding it concerning the strange things that go on in it.  Since some of the older, more powerful youkai, like Yukari, were likely around before Gensokyo, they'd probably still be around, maybe even running rampant across the Earth.  Other youkai, who "moved" to Gensokyo, would also be roaming the planet, rather than coming to and settling down in Gensokyo.  Gensokyo wasn't the reason why they existed--it was a place where they all came to to live together.

[orinrin]

I could say that if a butterfly was killed, it would somehow cause a drastic chain of events that led to the demise of world.  I'm just saying, that there are a lot of things to factor in when you decide to change past events.  Maybe if the Hakurei Barrier was never put up, it's possible that some other sort of boundary would have protected Gensokyo (maybe another shrine?).  You never know.

[Nobu]

Anyway, that is a good general description of what will happen but what I'm looking for is your opinion on what will happen to all the character, how different will they be? Will they be the same? How about the flower incident or what would the Moriya shrine do? The specific of the massive effect of there being no Gensokyo. Things like that. Remember, certain things will still happen whether there was a Great barrier or not.

Well, I'd say a lot of them would be different on account of being dead. As far as I can remember, the Barrier and Gensokyo were created as a preserve for the youkai and magical beasts who were in danger of being driven to extinction due to urban sprawl. No Gensokyo also means no Reimu or Marisa, or at least the Reimu and Marisa that we know and love. They would exist as normal human beings at some point along the timestream.

One could guess that Kanako/Suwako/Sanae would be mostly the same and still around since they came to Gensokyo in modern times. Gensokyo would only exist as a dream of a drunken computer programmer and the setting for a series of successful shmups and doujin spinoffs.


Or if you want to take it in a different direction, perhaps the youkai decided to go to war and fight instead of running away to Gensokyo? That would be a much different scenario, especially if they won.  Also might be interesting (as well as less depressing) than the alternative. :3

[draganuv15]

Something drastic would definatley happen if the Hakurei Border was never put up,

Yukari would definatley exist since she created it, she would probably mess with us a lot.
Youkai would probably not die out but would be rare to find especially in our developed lifestyle now, possibly hanging around places with small spiritual connections to them.
Sanae would probably still be here but we could not see Suwako or Kanako.

[Doll.S CUBE]

How about places like Hakugyokurou or Higan?

[draganuv15]

they're both different places, Higan would still exist since it is the japanese representation of a form of Purgatory since spirits wait there wating to se if they go to Heaven or Hell. 

Now Hakugyokurou,

but Hakugyokurou is a bit yes and no,
It exist away from Gensokyo but can be accessed to BY Gensokyo so that isn't a very simple question.

[Silent Harmony]

Or if you want to take it in a different direction, perhaps the youkai decided to go to war and fight instead of running away to Gensokyo? That would be a much different scenario, especially if they won.  Also might be interesting (as well as less depressing) than the alternative. :3

Depends on your view. Personally the idea of humans being wiped out or used as a steady food supply isn't exactly my idea of "less depressing." I really wouldn't trust most youkai outside of the spellcard rules.

Basically a world without Gensokyo would result in an inevitable struggle between humans and youkai with one side winning. If humans won, we basically have today's world. If youkai won, then we're boned.  :V

[Hello Purvis]

This depends on a few things

Assuming there was nowhere else for them to go: If there were no barrier, then the youkai would have quietly died out due to modernization just as they had been doing. Some of the deities might have hung around for a bit, but given Kanako and Suwako were at the end of their rope, I doubt many would last long. Now, whether magic would still exist is an interesting question.

Is Makai an entirely separate world, or part of Gensokyo? I could see Yukari, at least, using it as a refuge. How well mortal world youkai would do in Makai, that's the question.

Do other separate world refuges, such as Shangri-La, Mu, Avalon, and so forth exist? I could see some Gensokyoan youkai fleeing to those instead, if they could.

But if there's nowhere to go, the youkai are pretty much screwed. Faith has power over them; and if everyone's faith is in the rational, observable, scientific world...well...there you have it.

[KrackoCloud]

The region would end up being like one of those manga where it's a normal town or city, but there are monsters lurking everywhere - The youkai would have resorted to going into hiding because exposing themselves could alert the military. But somehow no one seems to care about all the "recent disappearances."
Reimu and Marisa would be protagonists who try to live normal lives and do their best to conceal their occupation of extermination and incident-solving when they're at school and with their friends.

The SDM is a mansion in a suburb, with a reputation for being haunted. Eientei is a corporation full of secrets.

I'm quite thankful things aren't that way, although it's an amusing thing to think about.

[Tengukami]

I shudder to think where Kaguya would have to go and the lengths she would have to take to hide from the Lunarians. Actually, that's not a bad story idea ...

[Kingault]

I'd be extremely happy and i wou-
Oh, it's just the name of some fanfic.
Good luck.

[Hello Purvis]

I shudder to think where Kaguya would have to go and the lengths she would have to take to hide from the Lunarians. Actually, that's not a bad story idea ...

Never did consider the hourai peoples. Hmm.

[Kirin]

Well, there're still many incredibly powerful youkai around. Assuming the GHB was never put up, it's not inconceivable that these greater youkai would put up barriers of their own. Not as powerful or as big as the GHB, but maybe a small localized area. For example Remi could simply make the SDM vanish from mortal eyes, making it look as though the Misty Lake is a lake and having no island/peninsula in the center. While the immortals wouldn't be able to live the way they do now, Eirin DID manage to hide the entire mansion from the residents of Gensoukyou until the events of IN. Small localized barriers that act as a sort of refuge for youkai.

Add to that the fact that in Gensoukyou, most youkai look like little girls. It's very likely that at least some youkai with more than an ounce of common sense would be able to hide within the human populace and learn their ways, moving every five years or so to disguise the fact they don't age.

And finally, if one were to have happy sweets and cakes, then we'd have a world much like this, and by extension, this.

[Yukarin]

Does this mean I can go to Gensokyo whenever I want to?

[Drake]

Yukari has created a pocket of reality I will call Closed Space. This closed space is what you see manifested as the purple place with eyes. The closed space is essentially a reality controlled entirely by Yukari's whim. Yukari has the ability to open a portal to her closed space and store anything within it, that can be easily accessed when needed.  When Yukari gaps from one place to another, you don't see the other side through the gap, you see the closed space. This is because a portal is opened to the closed space, and then another is opened to the destination; this is for the sake of Yukari controlling exactly where the portal opens through her mind's eye instead of attempting to visualize it manually. The closed space itself does not technically exist, or rather does not occupy a 3d space nor does time move forward inside of it. Similarly, gaps are two-dimensional spaces manifested on a 3D plane; if you viewed a gap from a certain angle it would become invisible. However due to there being only one "line" where the gap is invisible, it's essentially impossible to not see. Opening a gap in an object and budging it even slightly will transport the piece of object, and closing it would split the object at the space the gap swallowed. A moving object may keep its state of movement once it exits the closed space and time flows again.

Gensokyo in and of itself is a closed space folded over another closed space. The portal to the closed space transports to the immediate other side of the portal. It does not exist in the real world, however there are methods to traverse the boundary between Gensokyo and the real world, which are unknown. The space in the real world that replaced Gensokyo is also folded closed space that exists adjacent to Gensokyo's space. This is the same kind of relationship the Lunar Capital has with the dark side of the moon.

I dunno I wanted to write this down somewhere.

[ArteShy]

If Hakurei barrier wouldn't exist, Yukari would be the original founder of  the Aperture Science

[Seian Verian]

But if there's nowhere to go, the youkai are pretty much screwed. Faith has power over them; and if everyone's faith is in the rational, observable, scientific world...well...there you have it.

I would like to point out here that if the Youkai still existed, they WOULD be observable. Science could not BEGIN to disprove their existence with them right their in front of them, so humans would have no reason to stop believing.

And as for any theories that humans would have wiped them out... ...No? Some of these youkai are powerful enough to destroy the world offensively, and they're hard enough to kill that even sneak attacking them isn't likely to do much. And then there's stuff like faeries and the Hourai immortals, who are IMPOSSIBLE to kill.

[OkashiiKisei]

And as for any theories that humans would have wiped them out... ...No? Some of these youkai are powerful enough to destroy the world offensively, and they're hard enough to kill that even sneak attacking them isn't likely to do much. And then there's stuff like faeries and the Hourai immortals, who are IMPOSSIBLE to kill.

Well...fairies could, in theory, be killed. At least, if you're willing to wipe out the majority of, if not all, nature on the planet, the source of their existence. Or Cirno's case, melt all the ice in the world.

...Yeah, they'd be impossible to kill without royally screwing yourself over.