Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
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pmuB
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Remove Junko's Physical World/Avatar key (Touhou Project)
- Thread starter Shmooply
- Start date
Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,453
Bump
Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,453
Bump
Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,453
Bump
Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,453
Bump
Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,453
Bump
Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,453
Bump
Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,453
Bump
Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,453
Bump
Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,453
for every 1k views this thread gets without staff evaluation i will send a pipe bomb to my nearest-[USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST]
Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,453
Live photo of me "celebrating" another dead Touhou CRT.
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- Thread starter
- #69
Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,453
Makes no difference, staff ain't watching anyways.
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Disagree with everything else.
Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,453
bbbbu,pmmn,b bn AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,453
Inb4 they complain about Touhou spam :v
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Yeah this seems pretty reasonable. Full agreement
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For the love of God people really accept anything, huh?
First off, being a Divine Spirit means absolutely nothing. Like, absolutely nothing. A Divine Spirit is defined as being merely a ghost who is worshipped by humans. And they are, in fact, explicitly stated to have nothing to do with the Eight Million Gods, which are the actual deities who existed before all things and stuff. So Junko being a Divine Spirit, if anything, contradicts the very idea being proposed here. Though at the very least, her being a Divine Spirit doesn't help the point at all. (Although I will note that Touhou seems to get Divine Spirits and the Eight Million Gods confused sometimes, so this isn't 100% confirmation of Junko not being abstract, but it definitely doesn't indicate her being purely abstract with no physical shape)
But more importantly, this is profoundly incoherent from the get-go. Like. I do not have to explain that Junko is very blatantly a human-shaped being who can be seen, talked to and interacted with? And is clearly a single entity with a known location? All those contradict what a true Primordial God would be in Touhou terms. Like me paint a picture:
-Gods, per our own profiles, are Omnipresent (Junko is clearly a being who exists in one location, and needs to be aimed at to be damaged by the player. She has a defined human shape which the characters only notice when they look at where she is. Junko is not omnipresent)
-Gods in their true form are explicitly stated to be unable to be interacted or conversed with (Even people with no business being capable of interacting with gods, like Marisa, clearly saw and interacted with Junko with absolutely no issue)
-Beings with no names, stuff the closest to primordial gods, are noted to 'blend' among their surroundings, gaining the attributes of whatever they were around (Clearly not the case with Junko, who has a single, defined physical form which does not shift in appearance or anything)
-If you argue that the characters have enough NPI and extrasensory to see and interact with a primordial god, then they would constantly interact with the omnipresent gods (They clearly do not. They do not see anime girls everywhere that only they can see)
There is also no proof regarding Junko not having avatars. You have literally provided nothing. Unlike what you claim, Junko does have a name. It's... Junko. Junko is a name. It exists in-universe, as Junko introduces herself with it. You cannot claim "she has no name" when she blatantly gives us one. Junko's true self having held onto a pure aspect doesn't mean she is unable to get any names whatsoever. The fact that she factually has a name, that she has a solid physical shape, that she has other aspects to her being that raw hatred, and that giving this level of NPI to the protags would contradict established lore and be utterly nonsensical if given any thought, all point towards her having an avatar like any other god. You have failed to provide actual proofs of the opposite.
tl;dr being a Divine Spirit is being a ghost with faith powers, it isn't a deeper form of Non-Corporeality. The form of Junko we see doesn't act even remotely like a primordial god, with nothing to explain why that is. The characters having NPI on this level is entirely unexplained or even remotely hinted at, and would result in very heavy contradictions which are not present. And there is no proof that Junko lacks an avatar, with how she is treated even going against the idea of her not having an avatar at all.
Don't fall for the VSBrained traps of giving characters NPI because the supposedly non-corporeal character doesn't act like it at all. It's a bad habit that needs to be curbed.
First off, being a Divine Spirit means absolutely nothing. Like, absolutely nothing. A Divine Spirit is defined as being merely a ghost who is worshipped by humans. And they are, in fact, explicitly stated to have nothing to do with the Eight Million Gods, which are the actual deities who existed before all things and stuff. So Junko being a Divine Spirit, if anything, contradicts the very idea being proposed here. Though at the very least, her being a Divine Spirit doesn't help the point at all. (Although I will note that Touhou seems to get Divine Spirits and the Eight Million Gods confused sometimes, so this isn't 100% confirmation of Junko not being abstract, but it definitely doesn't indicate her being purely abstract with no physical shape)
But more importantly, this is profoundly incoherent from the get-go. Like. I do not have to explain that Junko is very blatantly a human-shaped being who can be seen, talked to and interacted with? And is clearly a single entity with a known location? All those contradict what a true Primordial God would be in Touhou terms. Like me paint a picture:
-Gods, per our own profiles, are Omnipresent (Junko is clearly a being who exists in one location, and needs to be aimed at to be damaged by the player. She has a defined human shape which the characters only notice when they look at where she is. Junko is not omnipresent)
-Gods in their true form are explicitly stated to be unable to be interacted or conversed with (Even people with no business being capable of interacting with gods, like Marisa, clearly saw and interacted with Junko with absolutely no issue)
-Beings with no names, stuff the closest to primordial gods, are noted to 'blend' among their surroundings, gaining the attributes of whatever they were around (Clearly not the case with Junko, who has a single, defined physical form which does not shift in appearance or anything)
-If you argue that the characters have enough NPI and extrasensory to see and interact with a primordial god, then they would constantly interact with the omnipresent gods (They clearly do not. They do not see anime girls everywhere that only they can see)
There is also no proof regarding Junko not having avatars. You have literally provided nothing. Unlike what you claim, Junko does have a name. It's... Junko. Junko is a name. It exists in-universe, as Junko introduces herself with it. You cannot claim "she has no name" when she blatantly gives us one. Junko's true self having held onto a pure aspect doesn't mean she is unable to get any names whatsoever. The fact that she factually has a name, that she has a solid physical shape, that she has other aspects to her being that raw hatred, and that giving this level of NPI to the protags would contradict established lore and be utterly nonsensical if given any thought, all point towards her having an avatar like any other god. You have failed to provide actual proofs of the opposite.
tl;dr being a Divine Spirit is being a ghost with faith powers, it isn't a deeper form of Non-Corporeality. The form of Junko we see doesn't act even remotely like a primordial god, with nothing to explain why that is. The characters having NPI on this level is entirely unexplained or even remotely hinted at, and would result in very heavy contradictions which are not present. And there is no proof that Junko lacks an avatar, with how she is treated even going against the idea of her not having an avatar at all.
Don't fall for the VSBrained traps of giving characters NPI because the supposedly non-corporeal character doesn't act like it at all. It's a bad habit that needs to be curbed.
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Kirbonic_Pikmin
He/Him- 3,480
- 6,934
As has been established in both the lore of Touhou and the profiles for the verse, gods can make a multitude of avatars for themselves, and pretty much all of the gods that have been fought in the games and other medias were just avatars of said gods, all except for one. Even though this god didn't use an avatar to fight the heroines in the game she stars in, her profile has for years assumed she did. I don't need to even mention who it is because you literally read the title.
Why she doesn't have an avatar key
Junko has the ability to purify anything in the verse. However, this is very different compared to the other forms of purification shown in the verse or other fictional media, as instead of purifying things the "normal" way (i.e literally removing the impurity of something), she restores something to their original, simpler or more primordialdid you see what i did thereform. Such as when she turned Clownpiece and the other fairies of hell into pure life energy (Source: Touhou 15 Manual). Though she didn't just use this ability on the fairies, as her bio in the Touhou 15 manual also states that she used this ability on both her anger and even herself, turning her into a "Sagacious Spirit," which ZUN (/word of god) states it's just another flavor of divine spirit in this interview:
It's hard to separate the character from the genre. She is a type of divine spirit, but it's hard to make a distinction so at the very least she's a spirit. In this case, it's a little hard to handle her. Who could there be to explain who she is or what she does?
It's also worth mentioning that Junko forgot her own identity after purifying herself, and that she carries the title of "Nameless Being" in Touhou 15. This is important as only the avatars of gods have names, while their primordial forms don't, which as ZUN mentions is explained in chapter 15 of CoLA.
At the same time that the power to name is a god’s power, the gods themselves didn’t have names in the beginning. Like with Takemikazuchi no Mikoto or Hachiman, the names of the gods we are familiar with nowadays only represent but one aspect of these gods. Takemikazuchi no Mikoto was originally Mikatsuchi (Pot Spirit), and just as the name implies, he was a god lodged in a jar. When his name changed to Takemikazuchi, he changed from a god of sorcery (as implied by the ‘pot’ character) to a god of swordsmanship (implied by the ‘thunder’ character). By changing its name, a god changes its nature, which is evidence that a god’s name is only one aspect of their selves. In the beginning, the gods had a much more ambiguous shape, so they were nameless entities with no particular distinctions.Conversely, the gods who still retain their original form can only possess things from before everything was named. Because if a god were lodged in something with a name, then it could only display one of its aspects.
With that out of the way, it just needs to be proven that the Junko that LoLK's cast fights is her actual, primordial form, instead of an avatar. Which there's also enough proof of.
Besides her title in the game being Nameless being, Reimu tells Tewi that Junko was a pure soul, or a divine spirit. Her words are credible as she's a shrine maiden, and she never talks about any other godly avatar like this.
(Sources: One of Reimu's endings in Touhou 15)
Probably somewhat weaker of the other evidences, is Junko's danmaku. For a series that's known for having characters whose entire fighting style is creating images or unique shapes out of the ridiculous amount of projectiles they throw at you, Junko's patterns are incredibly simplistic, with ZUN confirming that this was intentional in the interview. Considering that Junko can turn things into their most simplest forms, and that her danmaku is basic, also eludes that this is her purified state instead of an avatar.
Lastly, in the same interview I've linked, ZUN states that Junko managed to hold onto her pure form;
I touched on it a little in Curiosities of Lotus Asia, but if I have to say it then it would be the power of the gods. A pure power from before things had names. When you give a name to something, its godly nature disappears. But she held onto that pure aspect all this time, and she can bestow it upon other things. It's a power that's almost like giving birth to a god.
How does this affect the other profiles?
Since the playable cast of LoLK managed to fight the primordial form of a god, who have AE, NEP, and Transduality, their NPI will be upgraded. So these profiles will be affected:
Will this affect the scaling in any signifcant way?
I'm not really sure, as I'm not really good at Touhou's scaling chain. I'll update this part of the OP once a conclusion regarding Junko's placement in the scaling chain is reached.
I have absolutely no idea how this revision passed by me, I didn't see the og post at any point and only happened across it by accident searching Touhou discussions lmao. Basically every Touhou thread that's been opened has been dead for at least 3 months due to lack of admin interaction it seems, I should push something controversial sometime soon.
To get onto the thread itself, this is very well written and should be readable and understandable to even those who aren't familiar with the verse, good sourcing, etc etc. This is pretty solid and was a change that really should've hit a while ago, lol. I approve all the changes it proposes. Plus the extra source Fuji added helps its case further.
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