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Showing content with the highest reputation on 12/03/15 in Blog Entries

  1. Image by Kieta Reimu. The main character of the touhou series and the current miko of the Hakurei shrine, carrying the burdens of managing the Hakurei Border and exterminating dangerous youkai. The personality of touhou characters is generally decided by the fandom, while the characters themselves only have the minimum amount of phrases needed for people to have a line on what they're thinking. This leads to, of course, several differents interpretations of how they are. In the most dark and serious works, Reimu is portrayed as a reluctant hero who is regularly forced into nigh-impossible battles against eldrich-like abominations wearing the face of humans, capable of bending concepts to their will, armored with nothing but her yin-yang floating orbs, flying power and aptitude with magical barriers. She will be portrayed as the only sane, trustable force fighting for the sake of humanity- her only allies being the only person she could call a friend, an unreliable, insane cleptomaniac witch fighting for the sole sake of finding treasures who is essentially a youkai in mind... And a totally green miko from a different shrine more occupied with swindling humans into worshiping her gods than actually protecting anyone. Wild and horned hermit suggests she's bitter about losing her parents (through the quote: "Believe not they will be around for you always: parents and daylight" [which is a modification of some haiku I forgot, by the way]) In comedic works, she's a poor miko going around looking for donations with a bunch of youkai friends who keep spooking humans away from her shrine, preventing her from getting any money. All in all, Reimu is a very well-known figure in the touhouverse that can be used in several different ways, and it would be impossible to cover them all. As the Hakurei miko, she is also arguably the most important character in the whole project- And definitely one of the most interesting ones, too. I leave you with a song about Reimu by Alstroemeria Records - Highly Responsive to Prayers.
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  2. So, touhou. It's a bullet hell game series that happens in a feudal-japan-like land named 幻想郷 (Gensokyo- Roughly "Land of illusion"). Gensokyo's is a sealed-off, haunted area of Japan that went missing several millenia ago. It is estimated that the region is sealed off because the youkai that lived there had a reign of terror over japan, and brave human expeditions constantly tried to exorcise and anihilate them. The vicious battles could have lasted from months to decades, but what is known is that they ended with the creation of the Hakurei Shrine there, who made a barrier that completely took the land off the map, and no one can enter, leave or see the place. Ever since the creation of the hakurei barrier, the only gateway to the common world has been the hakurei shrine, isolated amongst several mountains. While leaving to the human world is virtually impossible for any Gensokyo resident (a few extremely rare exceptions aside), it's relatively easy for powerful beings to access other lands which aren't part of Gensokyo, like Higan, Makai, the Netherworld and a few others... Gensokyo's population consists mainly of youkai, but there's a human settlement in the land as well. Most youkai are known to eat humans regularly- they are also all significantly stronger and live much longer, with their lifespans often reaching millenia. To know more about youkai I would suggest reading the Youkai article in Perfect Momento in Strict Sense, which will explain them with some detail. This is somewhat outdated/wrong, but here's a map of Gensokyo, which I will expand on further in another episode of touhou lore, where I examine geographic locations in-depth. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments, if you have any.
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