Touhou General Revisions (Tier 2 Removal, Hax Revisions)

[Guardian_Doge]

There was just so much to reply to so I really want to boil it down to the unfortunate misunderstanding of quantum mechanics and physics being used here first before I move on to other things in this comment.

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Cosmology boogaloo​

1. The Actuality behind brane-worlds in Touhou​

Unlike our OP's proposition of regular p-branes, which are objects of a p-dimensional extent (i.e a boat is apart of a 3-brane), Touhou quite consistently follows an ideal cosmology, which we are shown is heavily adapted to be the Kaluza-Klien's 5th-dimensional space, the reasoning I mention this is because, in the material we are confirmed gravity as a force is unified with every other one, likewise we are also told, that closed strings do exists based on the premise that Gravitons leak onto other branes which are by the way confirmed to be outside the limit of Planck energy/scale, which is conversely very in line[1] with[2] physics[3] of a KK model. Therefore it can be said, the brane's in touhou are D-brane's which in the case of an ADD theorem, are four-dimensional membranes. Thereby making each brane (of the right size) a fully-fledged universe. (Low 2-C.)

In fact, even in the context of brane cosmology, they are not automatically spacetimes, or even 4-D structures at all. For example, our universe is often posited to be a 3-brane (A 3-D brane, obviously), set in parallel to other branes in a higher-dimensional bulk, and with the temporal dimension existing adjacent to that entire space (See, for reference, this paper, which is an introductory article to brane cosmology that focuses on its simplest consistent model. For illustrative purposes, see also this, this)

While it is true brane's as an idea, are made to be objects that classify where exactly dimensions are extended or compactified, this is just simply not the particular model that touhou and saying it is, requires evidence, since it's even noted that the temporal dimension in touhou is connected with the spatial ones as a 1:1 and indivisible manner of framework.

2. The Falsity behind Worldvolumes​

The basis behind world-volumes assumes like I previously said, is a p-brane, in the theoretical model, such brane's are restricted to particular fields of space-time within a given target space, these can also be called manifolds, the problem with this, is it assumes the brane's are finite in extent, and the world-volume itself is not some sort of indication that destroying the separate dimensions are not low 2-C/2-C, it simply means that it's a 'container' of sorts for the given object which we've proven are infinite in size. Oh and, in accordance within the given implications, our cosmology cannot use p-branes because they would not allow for particles to seep into the Large dimensions (bulk).

Likewise even in discussion of D-branes, they are infinite in extent but can also be whatever size (which I guess you can apply to otherworlds like senkai xd, since you can make them infinite spatially or not.) But the overall point is, they[1] lead[2] to a 4 dimensional manifold, and in the first link it's stated that such manifolds have a curvature of one with Gaussian Normal Coordinates (which is basically a Psuedo-Riemannian manifold) and thus require the space to have a hyperbolic geometry which we know touhou has based on the non-Euclidean[1] geometry[2] scan we all know and hate love [the reasoning it's hyperbolic is because as marisa physically travels she always diverges away from a straight line meaning that the axiom, something that must be true to present the theorem, is described as "lines can be extended infinitely" meaning, gensokyo is physically infinite despite being a closed space because topologically the study of curves must use the postulate that any segment can be increased to an infinite decree (another relevant timestamp) , something the scan directly shows.

3. The Additional Tiering behind structures​

This section was my shakier one, but I needed to bring this up: The dream world. I know I know, it was pretty controversial in the last string theory upgrade thread but I must stress how it's nature as an "otherworld" does not let it equate to just 2-C. As we know a dream is primarily something regarded as an entirely separate reality [translation], the additive element for this is that a dream is something where you see dream souls, such things are coherently noted as "images" of a person's dream, now I won't explicitly be saying that images itself implies superiority so let's continue. Whether they're mental series of images similar to a flatland, or simply a "resemblance'' to an object, we know for a fact in touhou they have a physical and objective existence, which allows you to do 'anything' you want. Likewise because of this, the places we know and see in dreams, are not only real, but are subsets of the entire dream world, which by virtue of our cosmological model means it is large to also let multiple 4-D worlds situate inside of it, making it arguably a D-5 brane, which would upgrade our bulk to 6-D as it must act as a hyperspace to the lower dimensions.


Those are my thoughts on the cosmology, but throughout the thread I recognized something I felt a bit nit-picky about:

2-C is bunk because Touhou has a brane cosmology. It literally cannot be 2-C under these circumstances because there is only one big time with a bunch of 3-D universes participating in time.

This is NOT how we should treat the interpretation of a verse's cosmology. Simply because it adheres to a proposed multiverse theory and many elements correspond does not suddenly restrict changes or other possible upgrades from it.

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Other things (insert funny title name)​

To start off would have to be the Youkai Mid-Godly, I know it isn't favorable so I'd like to instead give the youkai back their immortality type 8 based on the premise they exist for their conceptual nature, and even in the midst of them 'dying' or being forgotten so long as their initial idea has an existence, they can revive. Likewise in WaHH, reimu states the same thing, so similar to the nature of fairies who can resurrect upon death because they're manifestations of nature, youkai can also revive upon death so long as their "purpose" or "origin" isn't changed, yuuka is a primary example of an equivalent to fairies. To explain it with another adequate piece of evidence:

In ULiL it’s established that everyone explicitly has a myth or legend associated with them. An explicit example being doremy.
“Strange rumors were spreading in the human village.

"A dog with a human face was searching for compost." "There's someone who saw an old woman selling her feet." Those silly rumors spread explosively and terrorized the children. It was a creepy and incomprehensible rumor that was different from the youkai who used to attack humans. Because there is no actual harm, adults will think it's a child's nonsense.

Of course, they are not afraid. Because I knew that these are "urban legends" in the outside world. Urban legends had interesting characteristics. In order to respond to the rumors that change through oral communication, the mysterious phenomena will also change. Reimu and the others learned rumors that matched them and treated strange phenomena like toys.

If you manipulate rumors without fear, you can harm the mysterious phenomena that appear. No, on the contrary, I can even use it on my own. I thought it was necessary for me to manipulate urban legends and not to cause any damage. That was certainly the case. Until that night.”
^http://tasofro.net/touhou145/story.html

[Dream-Bestowing Youkai] Doremy Sweet

"My name is Doremy Sweet. I am the ruler of the world of dreams."
A youkai who rules over the world of dreams. She normally stays cooped up in the dream world, but she's recently been seen in Gensokyo. Just what does this mean, in the end? Her special trait is her ability to pluck "Dream Souls" out of opponents with her attacks. The more she steals, the more powerful her Urban Legend becomes.

Because of that I believe low-godly is alright, but we should add immortality type 8.




These are truly the only things I can talk about confidently at the moment, apologies but to conclude it with a tl;dr:

-Say no to p-branes, but vote for D-branes (makes the individual brane's low 2-C again)
-5-D dream world (treats brane's as subsets of finite quality, thus with Brane cosmology is attributed to a higher spatial dimension)
-6-D bulk (hyperspace for 5-D world)
-Immortality type 8 (youkai have a conceptual inheritance they can revive from)

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Having taken the time to read Doge's post, juxtaposed with the OP and my own (limited) knowledge of branes, I think Doge makes a lot of sense here. Low 2-C/2-C staying, while the cosmology as a whole is low 1-C, is very reasonable.

As for youkai regen, if we're going this route, I may as well show the many other scans supporting how youkai exist for the sake of a concept, and that concept allows them to keep coming back. A good example is how yamabiko exist as the embodiment of the phenomena of mountain echos, becoming nearly extinct when the scientific reasoning for them became common knowledge. Kyouko, by constantly shouting and creating echos, reinforces the former belief that yamabiko were responsible, and has essentially become the embodiment of that belief and is reliant on it. This also means that, if she is unable to fulfill that role, and people no longer believe in yamabiko causing mountain echos, she will cease to exist. Though, the issue with low-godly is that that implies recovering from bodily destruction, but since youkai are made of spirit (souls and the subconscious), recovering from that would necessitate mid-godly anyways. Granted I'm fine with whatever level of regen we go with since it won't stick around long anyways.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Slightly off topic, but having gone back and checked the original text for Yukari's statement of undermining reality, it uses 物事 (which is what the translator used to denote 'reality'). The issue is that in Japanese, 物事 means 'everything'. With that in mind, we can conclude that Yukari affecting all of reality (ie; everything) was in fact the intent present in the original text.

EDIT: DeepL kinda proves me right here, we can and should scale Yukari to everything in the verse via boundary hax.

EDIT (again): In case people scaling to low 1-C god tiers still needs more evidence, we literally see Remilia physically overpower Yorihime and leave her with several scratches and bruises. That is not something a high 3-A could do to a low 1-C. Or a low 2-C to a low 1-C. But yeah sure Yorihime being 2 degrees of infinity above Gensokyo denizens makes total sense.

EDIT (AGAIN again): Momoyo, who resides in Gensokyo, would upscale from the Lunar Capital via this statement. She then considers the protags of UM worthy opponents. Furthermore, both Marisa and Alice are stated to be comparable to members of the Lunar Capital by Kaguya, a former member of the Lunar Capital.

Frankly, when we have so many statements of characters matching low 1-C levels of power, I'm not sure if we can keep calling this an outlier. At this point it contextually makes more sense to assume that the statements of the Lunar Capital's superiority over Gensokyo merely means that they as a whole are superior to Gensokyo; Their population is greater, and they possess a higher concentration of high tiers, most of whom possess hax many Gensokyo characters can't adequately counter. But, when it comes to individuals from both civilizations fighting each other, they are consistently shown to be even to one another, or at least comparable enough to justify scaling.

TL;DR: Lunar Capital scaling is bad and wanked and people are giving ZUN way too much credit for like two offhand statements that pretty blatantly contradict canon.

 

[OnsokunoSonic]

Based Mokou, and based Doge. Takes the words out of my mouth (also, bump).

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

More examples of Gensokyo denizens scaling to Lunar Capital denizens would be appreciated, but frankly, when we have like 3-4 instances of it anyways, and respective scaling chains to go off of from there, I think that alone solidifies low 1-C for the main cast. At worst I could see a 'possibly'.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

By the way, in regards to spirit manipulation not being applicable outside of Touhou... The SBA page outright confirms it's applicable. It literally fits the exact descriptor of the kinds of things that can be equalized under this rule. That whole downgrade is based on not understanding this site's own rules.

So yes, spirit manip is fine to use in VS matches and always will be, cry about it. This still includes power null.

For a more specific example, look at chakra from Naruto. It is both mental energy and stamina, and acts as the power source behind ninjutsu. Now, compare this to spirit in Touhou, which is the subconscious, emotions, and stamina, and acts as the power source behind magic. The two are very similar in these regards, and can therefore be equalized under SBA. However, keep in mind that this only applies to the power nullification aspect of spirit manipulation.

Spirit manipulation does not need SBA for most of its abilities to work; At its core, it is soul manipulation, mind/empathic manipulation, stamina manipulation, and statistics manipulation. All of these things exist in other verses, regardless of whether or not they have some kind of energy source that needs to be equalized; Soulhax work just as well in Touhou as they do in Yakuza as they do in Final Fantasy as they do in Pokemon as they do in One Piece as they do in Naruto.

Look at it this way. If a Touhou character had all those powers individually, you'd be fine with them being used on a non-Touhou character, right? Just because they're lumped together under a broad power doesn't make it inapplicable.

 

[Jinsye]

I haven't responded because I have other things i want to do in my life but I'll still get back to this eventually

 

[Jinsye]

Ultima said he wants to respond about the cosmology stuff later, so I'll leave that to him I suppose.

Staff disagree with fear manip, so I'll leave that too.

I'd want to get rid of Acausality next, because the whole "Gensokyo has a different flow of time" scan is not only wrong (context shows that they're talking about how it could be a hundred years until they build a ropeway so no need to rush since things are pretty relaxed. Nothing to do with universal time being slower), but also doesn't even grant acausality (because time being slower does not mean a different causal system) so I'd like to get rid of that entirely.

And I don't necessarily agree with Sonic people having type 4 acausality from moving in the ****** up time zone, but I'm still not convinced that Kaguya's ability to force everything to be eternal means moving within it grants acausal 4. It being stated to be an illusion does not help at all.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Staff disagree with fear manip, so I'll leave that too.

Literally one person disagreed, what are you on about? Nobody even responded to the last points, this seems like a lazy excuse to avoid having to acknowledge new evidence.

I'd want to get rid of Acausality next, because the whole "Gensokyo has a different flow of time" scan is not only wrong (context shows that they're talking about how it could be a hundred years until they build a ropeway so no need to rush since things are pretty relaxed. Nothing to do with universal time being slower), but also doesn't even grant acausality (because time being slower does not mean a different causal system) so I'd like to get rid of that entirely.

And I don't necessarily agree with Sonic people having type 4 acausality from moving in the ****** up time zone, but I'm still not convinced that Kaguya's ability to force everything to be eternal means moving within it grants acausal 4. It being stated to be an illusion does not help at all.

First off, what you do or don't agree with isn't relevant here. You do not dictate wiki standards; Our standards currently allow acausality for beings who move in locations with warped flows of time and causality, so if that's a problem for you, change the standards. Furthermore, Kaguya's ability is directly stated to have removed Eientei from history itself, with it only appearing in history and reality after the effects were undone. It literally did not exist within causality, meaning in order to properly experience any sort of cause and effect within that realm (as many characters have done), you must have some degree of acausality.

As for the time scan, as already shown, existing under altered flows of time can indeed grant acausality. I know you personally disagree with that, but unfortunately, you need to abide by what our standards are, and our standards currently allow acausality from that reasoning. Also, nothing you've said disproves the scan. Yes, they're talking about building a ropeway. Yes, they say they can take as long as they need to. But none of these things inherently contradict the statement of time flowing more slowly. Time running more slowly in Gensokyo is why they don't feel the need to be rushed; Both interpretations can coexist.

Plus all of this is ignoring how Touhou characters already have evidence of operating under a different kind of causality via being unaffected by Keine erasing things from history. Not that that by itself is enough for type 4, but it is supporting evidence.

Also I would at least like a response to the spirit stuff, since I'm hoping that can be quickly resolved since it seems like just a misunderstanding of what verse equalization is. Might as well take out the small things.

 

[OnsokunoSonic]

I'm still not convinced that Kaguya's ability to force everything to be eternal means moving within it grants acausal 4. It being stated to be an illusion does not help at all.

Ignoring contexts of the verse, Kaguya is capable of stopping history and manipulating time. Heck even outsiders feels like time and causality is messed up in Eientei even after the spell got dispelled.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Ignoring contexts of the verse, Kaguya is capable of stopping history and manipulating time. Heck even outsiders feels like time and causality is messed up in Eientei even after the spell got dispelled.

Is it the quote about people experiencing unusual sensations? That seems to be good supporting evidence of acausality for anyone who can move in Eientei, given the context of an altered flow of history feeling unnatural to outsiders, though I think we would need to scrap type 4 from anyone who doesn't have feats of acting normally in Eientei.

If this is an agreeable compromise we could at least bypass the 'time flows more slowly' stuff. Not like it matters when universal type 2 will be a thing soonish :v

 

[OnsokunoSonic]

Is it the quote about people experiencing unusual sensations?

It is.

That seems to be good supporting evidence of acausality for anyone who can move in Eientei, given the context of an altered flow of history feeling unnatural to outsiders.

Specially when those characters move in that place when the spell was at it's strongest. Even Gensokyo inhabitants that live in a different time and space with different laws feels like something is off in Eientei.

though I think we would need to scrap type 4 from anyone who doesn't have feats of acting normally in Eientei.

I am not up to date on the current Touhou revisions, so I'll leave that to someone else.

 

[Shmooply]

bump

 

[Jinsye]

First off, what you do or don't agree with isn't relevant here. You do not dictate wiki standards; Our standards currently allow acausality for beings who move in locations with warped flows of time and causality, so if that's a problem for you, change the standards. Furthermore, Kaguya's ability is directly stated to have removed Eientei from history itself, with it only appearing in history and reality after the effects were undone. It literally did not exist within causality, meaning in order to properly experience any sort of cause and effect within that realm (as many characters have done), you must have some degree of acausality.

Honestly, I don't have a problem with this scan. Though, you could say that it's resistance to Kaguya's stuff for the Imperishable Night cast

Saikou does though and since he helped me make the thread he'll get his fair dues, I'd suppose.
This is a bit paraphrased.
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We shouldn't classify Kaguya's eternity manipulation as time or causality manip, as I don't think it fits either of those classifications. I'd think concept manipulation is the best definition considering she applies it in obviously not time stop ways (i.e. the Hourai Elixir and the Eientei not really working as time stop. People don't freeze the instant they get in there, and more they can't enter it at all unless you're Tewi and break the spell. Because 'eternity' prevents them from entering and thus disrupting the status quo. This wouldn't make it acausality as 'having no history' is just having the concept frozen which Kaguya is not applying to them

Like, it's not some all-encompassing bubble of frozen time and something a bit more esoteric than that. Also, there isn't a reason to assume that Kaguya would apply the spell of eternity onto them, because even with the food argument you can reasonably assume she'd apply it to the food. No reason to do so for the intruders.
-------------------------

Also,

"Should be comparable to those who can act normally inside Eientei, which exists outside of time and causality[10][11]"

What is this 'should be comparable' nonsense. Acausality doesn't transfer over like that if you have literally no evidence of that being the case.

As for the time scan, as already shown, existing under altered flows of time can indeed grant acausality. I know you personally disagree with that, but unfortunately, you need to abide by what our standards are, and our standards currently allow acausality from that reasoning. Also, nothing you've said disproves the scan. Yes, they're talking about building a ropeway. Yes, they say they can take as long as they need to. But none of these things inherently contradict the statement of time flowing more slowly. Time running more slowly in Gensokyo is why they don't feel the need to be rushed; Both interpretations can coexist.

This is not how our standards on acausality work. Acausality type 4 is having an irregular system of cause and effect, and a slower system of time is not proof of causality being different.

Ignoring the frankly very basic metaphor (It's basically equal to saying 'This is the longest 5 minutes of my life', we don't assume that 5 minutes is literally stretched out). Having a slowed system of time is not an "irregular causality system". Time just moves slower, and we already don't give acausality for verses where time passes differently between dimensions, so we shouldn't here.

If you want a baseline explanation. In a universe where time is slower, causality is still assumed to act the same, because there is no indication of cause and effect being different.

 

[FantaRin_The_First]

Been out for awhile, so I am sorry if this was explained earlier, but where does Acausality Type 4 come from again? Is it from IN Crew moving around Eintei without any issues even when it was under the influence of Kaguya's wacky powers or was it from Gensokyo's time being slower and different than the outside world time? Or is it both?

 

[Jinsye]

Been out for awhile, so I am sorry if this was explained earlier, but where does Acausality Type 4 come from again? Is it from IN Crew moving around Eintei without any issues even when it was under the influence of Kaguya's wacky powers or was it from Gensokyo's time being slower and different than the outside world time? Or is it both?

Both

 

[Jinsye]

Honestly

I think Kaguya's stuff is concept manip but I don't entirely agree with Saik in that regard of causality
The time being slow in Gensokyo thing and the "should be comparable" thing are both very dumb and should be removed though.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Honestly, I don't have a problem with this scan. Though, you could say that it's resistance to Kaguya's stuff for the Imperishable Night cast

Alright, so does that mean the time stop stuff is fine to stay as well in your eyes? If so, you should probably remove that from the OP.

We shouldn't classify Kaguya's eternity manipulation as time or causality manip, as I don't think it fits either of those classifications. I'd think concept manipulation is the best definition considering she applies it in obviously not time stop ways (i.e. the Hourai Elixir and the Eientei not really working as time stop. People don't freeze the instant they get in there, and more they can't enter it at all unless you're Tewi and break the spell. Because 'eternity' prevents them from entering and thus disrupting the status quo. This wouldn't make it acausality as 'having no history' is just having the concept frozen which Kaguya is not applying to them

The Hourai Elixir is a poor example; The elixir was merely made with her power in addition to Eirin's own knowledge of medicine (it even uses conventional ingredients, as they're stated to be stored in the immortal's liver). It isn't literally applying Kaguya's power to whoever drinks it. There is also nothing about the spell of eternity that prevents people from entering, I've found no scan that implies that. People not freezing is the basis of, y'know, the entire time stop resistance upgrade to begin with. So frankly, the basis of it not being a time stop is already wrong, but we have direct statements of it being a time stop, with the scan I provided above (which Jinsye seemed fine with I think).

Also even if Kaguya were manipulating the 'concept' of time and history, that would ultimately still be time and causality manipulation, just... accomplished through conceptual manipulation. This is like saying "Yukari doesn't have (x) manipulation, she's just manipulating the concept of (x), so it's concept manipulation".

Like, it's not some all-encompassing bubble of frozen time and something a bit more esoteric than that. Also, there isn't a reason to assume that Kaguya would apply the spell of eternity onto them, because even with the food argument you can reasonably assume she'd apply it to the food. No reason to do so for the intruders.

"Kaguya wouldn't use her time stop on people trying to break into her home and beat the shit out of her". Yeah, okay man, whatever you say. This is doubly stupid when you remember she was willing to trap people in an infinite corridor in the same game. She didn't even need to do that anyways, the spell of eternity was already applied over the entirety of Eientei.

Also,

"Should be comparable to those who can act normally inside Eientei, which exists outside of time and causality[10][11]"

What is this 'should be comparable' nonsense. Acausality doesn't transfer over like that if you have literally no evidence of that being the case.

This was off of the basis that we were also using the 'different laws/flow of time' justification, with the consistency of people moving into Eientei backing that up. For example, I didn't give acausality to Tenshi since she doesn't exist under the Hakurei Barrier, and the scaling by itself is not nearly enough evidence. Granted, I'm fine with removing this anyways since the scan Onsokuno provided above showed that people very much are affected by Eientei under normal circumstances, so consistency and supporting evidence aside, we can't use it.

This is not how our standards on acausality work. Acausality type 4 is having an irregular system of cause and effect, and a slower system of time is not proof of causality being different.

Ignoring the frankly very basic metaphor (It's basically equal to saying 'This is the longest 5 minutes of my life', we don't assume that 5 minutes is literally stretched out). Having a slowed system of time is not an "irregular causality system". Time just moves slower, and we already don't give acausality for verses where time passes differently between dimensions, so we shouldn't here.

If you want a baseline explanation. In a universe where time is slower, causality is still assumed to act the same, because there is no indication of cause and effect being different.

Then by all means, please change the standards we use, and feel free to downgrade multiple profiles while you're at it. I can go through several profiles that use this line of reasoning and had those justifications accepted by staff. Like, I'm not even going to bother debating this point, we give acausality for characters moving in realms with warped time/causality, we've done this many times before, it's not some new thing. A standard that you disagree with is, unfortunately, a standard you still have to abide by.

For example, we don't allow low 2-C ratings for characters who can infinitely expand space and time. I think that's bullshit, and it should count for low 2-C, but I cannot just go "I think that's wrong so I'm gonna make threads that pretend that ruling doesn't exist". I need to either make a thread to change that standard, or accept that standard and move on.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Honestly

I think Kaguya's stuff is concept manip but I don't entirely agree with Saik in that regard
The time being slow in Gensokyo thing and the "should be comparable" thing are both very dumb and should be removed though.

At best it's concept manip that manipulates the concepts of time and history, which really doesn't change anything about the feats themselves. It'd ultimately just be a different delivery method.

If and when we come to a conclusion on whether or not the Eientei stuff is fine for acausality, I'm fine with removing the other acausality justifications.

 

[Shiroiyo]

I am going to give my opinion on acausality stuff. Imo, acausality 4 for people who can act in Eintei is fine. Afaik, the argument for it is that Kaguya used her powers on Eintei and not directly on the protags, none of them were affected by being in a place with an irregular causality system. What, according to Mokou, fits as acausality. (I looked for examples of acausality and found this to be somewhat similar to our current situation)

People entering and leaving Eintei is already indexed as time stop resistance.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

I am going to give my opinion on acausality stuff. Imo, acausality 4 for people who can act in Eintei is fine. Afaik, the argument for it is that Kaguya used her powers on Eintei and not directly on the protags, none of them were affected by being in a place with an irregular causality system. What, according to Mokou, fits as acausality. (I looked for examples of acausality and found this to be somewhat similar to our current situation)

People entering and leaving Eintei is already indexed as time stop resistance.

Zagreus and Sonic are also good examples.

 

[Shmooply]

bump

 

[Shmooply]

buumpmppmbpmpmbpbmp

 

[Guardian_Doge]

Procrastination hit me again, so I'll be continuing the hax reply

 

[Jinsye]

Then by all means, please change the standards we use, and feel free to downgrade multiple profiles while you're at it. I can go through several profiles that use this line of reasoning and had those justifications accepted by staff. Like, I'm not even going to bother debating this point, we give acausality for characters moving in realms with warped time/causality, we've done this many times before, it's not some new thing. A standard that you disagree with is, unfortunately, a standard you still have to abide by.

I'll make a more general thread on this then.

 

[FantaRin_The_First]

I'll make a more general thread on this then.

Bit off topic, but how much of the hax, that has been stated in your starting post, been talked about already, Jinsye? All of them? Half of them? If it is the former, has your points been rebunked regarding them? Just trying to get the geist of the progression of this thread.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Bit off topic, but how much of the hax, that has been stated in your starting post, been talked about already, Jinsye? All of them? Half of them? If it is the former, has your points been rebunked regarding them? Just trying to get the geist of the progression of this thread.

Basically none, Moritzva said their piece and moved on (and was neutral on a lot of shit anyways), aside from that we're still just arguing. I'm hoping with the new evidence and the outcome of Jinsye's acausality thread, we can at least get the time stop resistance and acausality taken care of.

Also, I keep pushing her to discuss the spirit effectiveness stuff, since that really just boils down to not understanding what verse equalization is.

 

[Jinsye]

Hello guys, Touhou hater with a secret agenda to destroy the verse twirling my evil mustache here.

The type 4 acausality thread is moving about as ******* slow as it humanly can so that makes things very awkward. I'm going to push Ultima to respond there later, I suppose.

So I'll retread my misconceptions on spirit manipulation a bit.

1. Verse equal doesn't universalize things, just equalize similar things. But that's not really relevant here, I guess.
2. I'm not necessarily convinced of the "Soul/Mind drain on every attack" part however.

That is still so weird to me, because literal random rocks from Touhou 11 are capable of knocking the spirit out of you. Said rocks have no indication of being weapons used by a supernatural being, they're just falling rocks.

If you get hit by these rocks, you lose Spirit. This makes literally 0 sense with the context of "every being can drain the mind and soul with a basic attack". It does lean more onto the indication of "A being will lose spirit if they get hit, but not because of a power the enemy has".

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

1. Verse equal doesn't universalize things, just equalize similar things. But that's not really relevant here, I guess.

Yeah? I know how it works. Spirit hax will nullify chakra, but it won't do shit against... idk, some more abstract conceptual energy.

This is only for power null though, soulhax are soulhax and mindhax are mindhax regardless of whether or not they're tied to an energy system. Those parts don't need to be equalized.

That is still so weird to me, because literal random rocks from Touhou 11 are capable of knocking the spirit out of you. Said rocks have no indication of being weapons used by a supernatural being, they're just falling rocks.

If you get hit by these rocks, you lose Spirit. This makes literally 0 sense with the context of "every being can drain the mind and soul with a basic attack". It does lean more onto the indication of "A being will lose spirit if they get hit, but not because of a power the enemy has".

If all you have to disprove spirit's universal presence is literally a single inconsistency across over nearly 30 games, some of which make the manipulation of spirit a major plot point, I think we can just say this is nothing more than a stupid inconsistency and leave it at that. I was aware of this when I made the thread, and I discarded it for exactly that reason; If something works fine 99.9% of the time, we don't give the .1% precedence.

As an example of this, spirit manipulation absorbing spirit from beings who lack spirit has occurred at least 3 times in canon, and that was rejected as an outlier in the original thread, so a single unexplained anti-feat should be treated with even greater scrutiny.

 

[Jinsye]

If all you have to disprove spirit's universal presence is literally a single inconsistency across over nearly 30 games, some of which make the manipulation of spirit a major plot point, I think we can just say this is nothing more than a stupid inconsistency and leave it at that. I was aware of this when I made the thread, and I discarded it for exactly that reason; If something works fine 99.9% of the time, we don't give the .1% precedence.

I'm not going to disprove Spirit's universal presence. I just don't think everybody drains the mind and soul on every attack.

Your interpretation is: "The characters drop spirit power after getting hit, thus all enemy characters must drain it with hax."
My interpretation is: "The characters drop spirit power after getting hit harshly, thus enemy characters don't have hax and it's just a verse mechanic"

Literally no clue what your supporting evidence is, so I'll leave you to present it.

My evidence for "people who get hit hard drop spirit power naturally" is the boulder stuff, as well as the fact that Sanae explicitly states that the P tokens are charms and treasures which generally does not imply "literal incorporeal essence" is being drained. (I wouldn't say any types of common charm are metaphysical)

As for the fighting game stuff? Once again, Spirit isn't drained unless they're actively blocking and fail to. If they truly hax every single time they hit then the opposite should be true. So, it could very much be a case of someone failing to use the ability to defend themselves from blocking rather than proof of the 'spirit is drained on every hit' because that's just demonstrably not true (as spirit is not drained on every hit in the game).

But, if you could reiterate why you think the spirit being dropped is so, that would be nice.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Your interpretation is: "The characters drop spirit power after getting hit, thus all enemy characters must drain it with hax."
My interpretation is: "The characters drop spirit power after getting hit harshly, thus enemy characters don't have hax and it's just a verse mechanic"

Literally no clue what your supporting evidence is, so I'll leave you to present it.

My evidence for "people who get hit hard drop spirit power naturally" is the boulder stuff

Jinsye

If you can only provide a single example of your interpretation being true across the literal hundreds of examples of it working the way I describe, then perhaps that interpretation is not consistent and should not be used. You are taking a single outlier and extrapolating it to mean that the entire foundation of a universally present mechanic, which is portrayed consistently across the rest of the series, is invalid. Do you have any idea how absurd this really is?

Also, the point is not just that they lose spirit upon getting hit; You can very obviously collect the spirit that enemies drop and use it to empower yourself, regardless of your interpretation (you can still collect the spirit the rocks in SA cause you to drop, for example). So even if it is just "getting hit makes people drop spirit, and isn't tied to specific ability", everyone would still be able to absorb it, and possess the absorption-related abilities tied to spirit manipulation.

Sanae explicitly states that the P tokens are charms and treasures which generally does not imply "literal incorporeal essence" is being drained. (I wouldn't say any types of common charm are metaphysical)

The "treasure line" is just Sanae being confused by Ichirin's statement prior to the fight, which doesn't apply to the point/power items.

Also, Sanae saying they're charms is... not an anti-feat? Spirit is phantoms, which have no defined form and can take on any shape as they please; So it doesn't matter if they visually resemble paper charms or whatever. Not to mention a character with NPI wouldn't really differentiate between physical and metaphysical, they're both equally interactable to them.

Even then we would probably give precedent to the 20 or so statements about spirit being metaphysical, which is obviously more consistent.

As for the fighting game stuff? Once again, Spirit isn't drained unless they're actively blocking and fail to. If they truly hax every single time they hit then the opposite should be true. So, it could very much be a case of someone failing to use the ability to defend themselves from blocking rather than proof of the 'spirit is drained on every hit' because that's just demonstrably not true (as spirit is not drained on every hit in the game).

Did you just straight up ignore the clip I sent from one of the games? It very explicitly triggers on regular attacks, without characters blocking.

Also in regards to blocking, your assumptions regarding wrongblocking are, well, wrong. It is not a universal concept, and projectile attacks, regardless of where they hit, always drain spirit (it says it depends on the projectile, but I tested most of the basic ones in Soku's demo and they all reduced spirit). I tested this in Hisoutensoku and it checks out, all projectiles drain spirit regardless of blocking. So "danmaku into spirit hax gg" is still perfectly valid. At worst you could argue that this is a limitation for melee attacks, but did you know that 13.5 dropped the concept of wrongblocking and made it so blocking universally causes spirit loss? TL;DR: Wrongblocking doesn't apply to projectiles, and it literally doesn't even exist in more recent games. No matter which way you go, this argument is bullshit.

All this essentially means is Touhou characters can reduce spirit even through forcefields and such. The basis of these supposed limitations is completely unfounded and anyone with even a cursory knowledge of these games can see that.

 

[Saikou_The_Lewd_King]

Girl there is no "hundreds of examples" of your interpretation being true. There are hundreds of examples of characters losing spirit power when hit badly with no explanation behind it. It's a toss-up whether it's from the characters doing the attacking or a weakness of the victim (although I'd say the latter makes more sense overall). This rock example simply proves that no, this effect is not caused by characters' attack but simply from characters getting knocked out.

Absorbing loose energy presented under a charm doesn't give people the ability to absorb spirit inside other people or in other ways. That's just not how this works. If simple contact could absorb spirit not only would that be acknowledged at least once in the entire series, but simply running up to the boss would allow you to get their energy. Which is obviously false.

And in general, it would only be an ability if Spirit doesn't work like that usually. If we know that Spirit that ambiently exists in that form without being inside anyone or a phantom cannot be absorbed by random people. We have nothing indicating this, so we have no reasons to assume any protagonist is special in that regard.



Sanae thinks that the "secret treasure" Ichirin says Sanae is collecting are the P charms. She's confused, yes, but the point remains that the Power Points are considered treasures and thus physical goods. One could easily confuse them for treausres to be collected, not just weird spiritual energy.

Also "Spirit" isn't just Phantoms. Phantoms are embodiments of spirits, but all Spirit isn't phantoms. The same way all aspects of nature aren't made out of fairies. Both Fairies and Phantoms are compared with each other after all. So no, those charms can't just be phantoms people put into their pockets. And regardless you can't just decide that those charms are Phantoms in disguise when nothing indicates that. All we know is that those things are considered physical goods, they're called charms, and they give the user higher power. Them just being physical charms imbued with energy is a much better and straightforward assumption than them being shapeshifting phantoms that all characters can force out of their system.

Also "she has NPI so she can't make the difference" is such a bad take. People in general very much can tell the difference between a phantom and a random physical object. So they absolutely wouldn't consider intangible energy points to be treasures instead of just, you know, energy. And assuming all people have NPI in all scenarios when the NPI feat is "their attacks in a fighting game can attack phantoms" is just a bad assumption.

No one is saying Spirit isn't metaphysical. We are saying the Spirit Charms dropped by the characters aren't bits of spirit randomly dropped by people. They're physical object that give Spirit power. And when characters are hit they drop them. That's it.



What are you saying with that last paragraph. Spirit only drains when blocking attacks. I have tested with both Soku and AoCF and getting hit by attacks, projectiles or not, do not drain MP. Only blocking attacks do. Which is 100% more indicative of "Keeping the magic shield up against attacks costs energy" than "Everyone can drain mana from their opponents but only through shields".

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

What are you saying with that last paragraph. Spirit only drains when blocking attacks. I have tested with both Soku and AoCF and getting hit by attacks, projectiles or not, do not drain MP. Only blocking attacks do. Which is 100% more indicative of "Keeping the magic shield up against attacks costs energy" than "Everyone can drain mana from their opponents but only through shields".

My point was that using Hisoutensoku's wrongblocking as a counterpoint is wrong, because it doesn't work on projectiles and isn't present in future titles. I never claimed the fighting games showed spirit being reduced on unblocked attacks, that's in the STGs. I also never claimed that spirit reduction was only accomplished via hitting barriers.

If you're gonna come out here just to strawman me, then please go back to proxying via Jinsye.

Girl there is no "hundreds of examples" of your interpretation being true. There are hundreds of examples of characters losing spirit power when hit badly with no explanation behind it. It's a toss-up whether it's from the characters doing the attacking or a weakness of the victim (although I'd say the latter makes more sense overall). This rock example simply proves that no, this effect is not caused by characters' attack but simply from characters getting knocked out.

I can go to literally any STG game in the series and show you clips of me hitting an enemy, them dropping spirit power, and me absorbing that spirit power. This is something that is directly triggered by player input, and no external factors (besides the rock) ever cause enemies to drop spirit power. When the only input is "player hit enemy" and the resulting outcome of that input is "enemy drop spirit power", then the conclusion is obvious; Hitting the enemy causes them to drop spirit power.

The rock thing is an outlier. It is really that simple. It should already be an outlier on the basis of cosmic level characters being hurt by ******* rocks. If you are giving one feat precedence over countless other examples... I could abuse that same logic to get the verse to low 1-C. It is so wildly outside of everything we know about spirit, and the fact that you'll so desperately cling to a single piece of flimsy evidence for a downgrade of this size really says a lot about where the opposition is coming from.

Finally, I cannot stress enough that we do not assume weaknesses by default in situations like this. If an effect is caused by (x) hitting ( y), we do not assume that ( y) just has a very specific weakness that causes them to be affected by certain hax or whatever; We always assume (x) has a power related to the effect caused, so you need actual evidence if you want to argue otherwise, as we do not treat "(x) has hax" and "( y) has a weakness" as equal.

Absorbing loose energy presented under a charm doesn't give people the ability to absorb spirit inside other people or in other ways. That's just not how this works. If simple contact could absorb spirit not only would that be acknowledged at least once in the entire series, but simply running up to the boss would allow you to get their energy. Which is obviously false.

And in general, it would only be an ability if Spirit doesn't work like that usually. If we know that Spirit that ambiently exists in that form without being inside anyone or a phantom cannot be absorbed by random people. We have nothing indicating this, so we have no reasons to assume any protagonist is special in that regard.

What? I... never claimed that that's how it works. You hit the opponent --> you cause their spirit to fall out --> you collect the spirit. That is how I have always presented it as working. I never said they just... ambiently absorb it while it's inside someone's body. It doesn't work on contact (except in combat, but I shouldn't have to tell you that punching someone or hitting them with a sword is a bit different than just tapping them on the shoulder). So uh.... I guess we agree?

I also cannot decipher what that last point is supposed to mean so :v

Sanae thinks that the "secret treasure" Ichirin says Sanae is collecting are the P charms. She's confused, yes, but the point remains that the Power Points are considered treasures and thus physical goods. One could easily confuse them for treausres to be collected, not just weird spiritual energy.

"Treasure" can be literally anything though. Why are you saying it needs to be a physical object? A metaphysical source of power is just as much of a "treasure" as like, a magic charm or something.

Also "Spirit" isn't just Phantoms. Phantoms are embodiments of spirits, but all Spirit isn't phantoms. The same way all aspects of nature aren't made out of fairies. Both Fairies and Phantoms are compared with each other after all. So no, those charms can't just be phantoms people put into their pockets. And regardless you can't just decide that those charms are Phantoms in disguise when nothing indicates that. All we know is that those things are considered physical goods, they're called charms, and they give the user higher power. Them just being physical charms imbued with energy is a much better and straightforward assumption than them being shapeshifting phantoms that all characters can force out of their system.

They're not spirits people are physically storing away or whatever. It's... literally just people's souls. Where are you getting the pockets claim from?

Also you are taking a singular instance of a character using the word "charm" and have instantly decided that this completely overrides literally dozens of scans that indicate spirit is a genuine energy source. The entirety of SWR alone spends ages talking about spirit and how its temperament and the subconscious and phantoms and chi and god ******* knows what else, so you need a metric **** ton of evidence if you want to just... throw that out.

And speaking of which, Komachi should be treated as one of the foremost authorities on phantoms, given her job is dealing with them. So her blatantly claiming that temperament (which is spirit) is phantoms is something you need to find a way to reconcile, as well as how Tenshi's absorption of spirit was affecting phantoms in the Netherworld. Spirit and phantoms being completely interchangeable is very consistent, and is proven on multiple occasions by reliable sources.

Akyuu's statement about phantoms being the embodiment of spirits also doesn't mean much when she also says they literally are spirits, so uh... Maybe we shouldn't use a self-contradicting scan as evidence and instead go with better sources :v

Also "she has NPI so she can't make the difference" is such a bad take. People in general very much can tell the difference between a phantom and a random physical object. So they absolutely wouldn't consider intangible energy points to be treasures instead of just, you know, energy. And assuming all people have NPI in all scenarios when the NPI feat is "their attacks in a fighting game can attack phantoms" is just a bad assumption.

Except.... the thing they're interacting with in both scenarios IS phantoms. Like, in the context of the Sanae scan, she supposedly treats spirit power as physical... and then immediately goes on to fight Murasa, a phantom, as though she were physical.

No one is saying Spirit isn't metaphysical. We are saying the Spirit Charms dropped by the characters aren't bits of spirit randomly dropped by people. They're physical object that give Spirit power. And when characters are hit they drop them. That's it.

See above. Sanae saying 'charms' once doesn't prove they're physical objects, and it certainly doesn't override literally an entire game's worth of evidence to the contrary.

EDIT: Actually, even if they were physical items, it wouldn't be all that contradictory, as spirit can be shaped into physical items like the Palanquin Ship and Myouren Temple. Assuming spirit can take the form of charms would just be an extension of that property.

EDIT^2: According to ZUN, the player defeating enemies is what causes spirit power to spawn, meaning the protagonists are responsible for an enemy losing their spirit. There is no indication of 'literally any hit regardless of context causes people to lose spirit', which is what you want to interpret this as, while WoG backs up my interpretation.

TL;DR: You are taking individual examples that are pretty clearly outliers and making them out to be more important than they really are.

 

[Jinsye]

can go to literally any STG game in the series and show you clips of me hitting an enemy, them dropping spirit power, and me absorbing that spirit power. This is something that is directly triggered by player input, and no external factors (besides the rock) ever cause enemies to drop spirit power. When the only input is "player hit enemy" and the resulting outcome of that input is "enemy drop spirit power", then the conclusion is obvious; Hitting the enemy causes them to drop spirit power.

The rock thing is an outlier. It is really that simple. It should already be an outlier on the basis of cosmic level characters being hurt by ******* rocks. If you are giving one feat precedence over countless other examples... I could abuse that same logic to get the verse to low 1-C. It is so wildly outside of everything we know about spirit, and the fact that you'll so desperately cling to a single piece of flimsy evidence for a downgrade of this size really says a lot about where the opposition is coming from.

Why yes. You just proved that "enemy drops spirit power upon damage". You have not disproved my interpretation (the interpretation that they don't drain spirit on every single danmaku bullet) at all.

The rock evidence is not an outlier because you have not provided any claims of substance makes it an outlier in the first place. If you say, provided me a statement that even implies that this is a character power, then that would be a big point in your favor. However, you've provided nothing so far besides default assumptions.

You also can't just dismiss evidence you don't like as inconsistencies. You haven't even established a consistency to contradict. All you've done is say "oh look when things get hit, they drop spirit power". A rock hitting a person and them dropping spirit power does not contradict that at all.

It's only a contradiction if you've firmly established that "Every Touhou character has a special ability which allows them to drain the souls/mind of every enemy on every hit", which you haven't. I can't make a further counterpoint than that when you have not established that. The only thing you might have proven is that Touhou danmaku drains and weakens shields easier.

Finally, I cannot stress enough that we do not assume weaknesses by default in situations like this. If an effect is caused by (x) hitting ( y), we do not assume that ( y) just has a very specific weakness that causes them to be affected by certain hax or whatever; We always assume (x) has a power related to the effect caused, so you need actual evidence if you want to argue otherwise, as we do not treat "(x) has hax" and "( y) has a weakness" as equal.

This is true when it's the default assumption.

However, evidence in favor of the weakness (i.e. the rocks) outweighs the default assumption most of the times.

To bring an example, imagine Sonic. Sonic drops his rings upon being hit.

Eggman hits him, he drops all his rings. With no other evidence, we assume Eggman has an ability to force drop rings.
Random enemies hit him, he drops all his rings. Now things are looking shakier, but sure, we can assume all enemies have the ability to force Sonic to drop his rings.
Random spikes hit Sonic, and he drops all his rings. You'd have to be stretching now to say this esoteric ring dropping ability is a thing and not just a weakness of Sonic (or god forbid, a game mechanic. But you seem adamant that it's not so). This example happens and it can change the way the previous examples were evaluated.

Same thing with Touhou
Reimu and co. hit things, they drop spirit power. Sure. It's a draining ability.
Bosses hit Reimu, she drops spirit power. Okay. A bit weird for this to happen with no elaboration, but we can assume they just have the ability too.
Random fodder hits Reimu, she drops spirit power? A bit weird to assume every human, fairy, and youkai have this unexplained offensive ability but sure.
A random unspecial rock hits Reimu, she drops spirit power? Now we have to re-evaluate every previous example with this in mind. Instead of "They drop spirit power because they have hax", it can now easily be interpreted as "They drop spirit power because they took notable damage". Which has stronger evidence due to said rock.

It is one example, but you've provided no examples to the contrary other than "well it's the default assumption". So until you can provide an actual piece of evidence, I'm still going to disagree.

They're not spirits people are physically storing away or whatever. It's... literally just people's souls. Where are you getting the pockets claim from?

The pockets claim comes from Eternity Larva's biography that states that she'll come over to a fight with a few power items in hand. It feels weird to treat these spirit power charms as actual souls with this context in mind. Eternity Larva is a fairy, so her casually having a bunch of literal souls on her feels like a very weird thing.

I dunno about Saikou, but I'm not arguing that 'spirit' as a concept doesn't exist. I'm just not entirely convinced that these spirit power charms are actually souls and whatnot. It could just be an item that boosts your own abilities. Which would make far more sense within the context of Wriggle's biography and also Reimu just dropping them in general after getting hit by innocuous rocks.

If you need a simple explanation on why it makes sense? Them being physical items that they use would match up with you getting stronger the more you get. Reimu/Marisa/whoever getting hit causes her shots to get weaker as she loses all of the items, similar to how other video game characters drop/lose items when hit.

It's comparatively simple and has more evidence behind it than "Touhou characters literally shear the souls off of their enemies to get the power tokens".

EDIT: Actually, even if they were physical items, it wouldn't be all that contradictory, as spirit can be shaped into physical items like the Palanquin Ship and Myouren Temple. Assuming spirit can take the form of charms would just be an extension of that property.

If they are physical items, then them dropping out of people when they take heavy damage is not soulhax of any kind. Unless you're arguing that a danmaku bullet soulhaxxes an enemy, causes them to drop their soul, transmutes them into a physical item, which Reimu will proceed to absorb.

Which I hope is not what you're arguing, because there are like four different assumptions going on there, and that's basically like spitting on Occam's Razor.

Also you are taking a singular instance of a character using the word "charm" and have instantly decided that this completely overrides literally dozens of scans that indicate spirit is a genuine energy source. The entirety of SWR alone spends ages talking about spirit and how its temperament and the subconscious and phantoms and chi and god ******* knows what else, so you need a metric **** ton of evidence if you want to just... throw that out.

And speaking of which, Komachi should be treated as one of the foremost authorities on phantoms, given her job is dealing with them. So her blatantly claiming that temperament (which is spirit) is phantoms is something you need to find a way to reconcile, as well as how Tenshi's absorption of spirit was affecting phantoms in the Netherworld. Spirit and phantoms being completely interchangeable is very consistent, and is proven on multiple occasions by reliable sources.

Rementioning that I'm not arguing that spirit isn't a thing. I'm arguing about how the spirit power items aren't literal spirits.

Not much else to say there. None of this contradicts the spirit power items not being spirit.

Also, the point is not just that they lose spirit upon getting hit; You can very obviously collect the spirit that enemies drop and use it to empower yourself, regardless of your interpretation (you can still collect the spirit the rocks in SA cause you to drop, for example). So even if it is just "getting hit makes people drop spirit, and isn't tied to specific ability", everyone would still be able to absorb it, and possess the absorption-related abilities tied to spirit manipulation.

This is also not relevant to my point. Since if someone does this, then they hardly removed someone's soul and drained it as durability negating hax. So it would be counted as absorption technically, but not in the "every attack will cause you to lose your soul". They'd just be able to absorb loose spirit.

Did you just straight up ignore the clip I sent from one of the games? It very explicitly triggers on regular attacks, without characters blocking.

Also in regards to blocking, your assumptions regarding wrongblocking are, well, wrong. It is not a universal concept, and projectile attacks, regardless of where they hit, always drain spirit (it says it depends on the projectile, but I tested most of the basic ones in Soku's demo and they all reduced spirit). I tested this in Hisoutensoku and it checks out, all projectiles drain spirit regardless of blocking. So "danmaku into spirit hax gg" is still perfectly valid. At worst you could argue that this is a limitation for melee attacks, but did you know that 13.5 dropped the concept of wrongblocking and made it so blocking universally causes spirit loss? TL;DR: Wrongblocking doesn't apply to projectiles, and it literally doesn't even exist in more recent games. No matter which way you go, this argument is bullshit.

All this essentially means is Touhou characters can reduce spirit even through forcefields and such. The basis of these supposed limitations is completely unfounded and anyone with even a cursory knowledge of these games can see that.

Your clip showed me a character dropping spirit power tokens while changing phases. I rewound five seconds and I hardly saw any of this "every danmaku bullet causes spirit to be drained" stuff. She was taking hits just fine and the only spirit tokens being dropped were the ones from destroying the fodder enemies.

You got way too caught up in proving me wrong about wrongblocking that you forgot to actually address the point. The spirit power resource only gets drained when blocking/using shields in the fighting games. Why do we assume this scales to every danmaku bullet on every attack? Your video provides no evidence, as I mentioned above. It just shows the tokens being dropped as she changes phases.

Though, that does give me an idea. Maybe...

The way Spirit Energy is utilized as a whole in Hisoutensoku and other fighting games is game mechanics. This could be supported by the fact that flight drains a notable amount of spirit energy when it clearly doesn't in mainline Touhou games, the mechanics with blocking and wrongblocking. There's also the fact that grazing certain projectiles causes you to lose spirit power, while getting hit normally doesn't. Perhaps this depiction is contradictory, weird, and game mechanics that should not have any lore precedence.

And if you argue that "well if Hisoutensoku's depiction is game mechanics, wouldn't the rock be too?". Now, a fighting game gauge is far more game mechanics than someone dropping spirit essence/tokens after they get hit or whatever. The former isn't even acknowledged in game other than the name being called 'Spirit Energy' in the manuals, while the latter has been acknowledged.

-------------------------------------------------------

TLDR: You have no evidence to support your claim. It mostly relies on it being the default assumption of it being a power for the characters instead of a weakness, but there's evidence to the contrary with the whole rock argument, as well as the fact for bosses don't constantly spew Power tokens whenever they're attacked by a barrage of bullets. Power tokens might not even be actual souls coming out of their body, with their treatment as items and all as well as Eternity Larva sort of just having them on her to use during combat.

 

[Kirbonic_Pikmin]

To bring an example, imagine Sonic. Sonic drops his rings upon being hit.

Eggman hits him, he drops all his rings. With no other evidence, we assume Eggman has an ability to force drop rings.
Random enemies hit him, he drops all his rings. Now things are looking shakier, but sure, we can assume all enemies have the ability to force Sonic to drop his rings.
Random spikes hit Sonic, and he drops all his rings. You'd have to be stretching now to say this esoteric ring dropping ability is a thing and not just a weakness of Sonic (or god forbid, a game mechanic. But you seem adamant that it's not so). This example happens and it can change the way the previous examples were evaluated.

I fail to see how this example applies to your argument or debunks anything regarding Spirit Power. This is a completely different case of game design, mechanics, and in world/lore explanations. Sonic, or any other character in the series drops rings when they're hit, yes. Rings protect the holder from dying so long as they hold onto at least one.

This is also a pretty massive difference when Touhou has one single instance of being damaged by environment hazards and dropping spirit in one game across literally 25 years worth of 31 different games. Meanwhile Sonic dropping rings upon being hit by anything is a universal mechanic that is present in literally every single game of franchise history and is even mentioned in the games themselves and manuals and everything you could imagine. Sonic has a string of precedents for this event while in Touhou it consistently works differently. As Fuji has mentioned earlier, Spirit also has several mentions of existing within the world and being a functional mechanic of the series beyond just a game mechanic.

Not to mention, functionally, nobody uses Sonic running into a hazard and losing rings, being "hurt" as an attempt to debunk anything regarding him since its blatantly either game mechanics or an outlier, and frankly, him being hurt by any of that shit doesn't make sense based off of his other feats and his stats. Sonic being hurt by running into a wall or being hit and dying by a swinging block doesn't downgrade his tier the same way that Reimu getting smacked by a rock and dying doesn't downgrade her either. Sonic being able to be ****** by stage hazards despite being planetary in base minimum happens far, far more than a single rock in a single game in a single stage ever does, and yet Sonic is still 5A in base.

This Sonic example is bunk and doesn't even make sense.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Why yes. You just proved that "enemy drops spirit power upon damage". You have not disproved my interpretation (the interpretation that they don't drain spirit on every single danmaku bullet) at all.

The rock evidence is not an outlier because you have not provided any claims of substance makes it an outlier in the first place. If you say, provided me a statement that even implies that this is a character power, then that would be a big point in your favor. However, you've provided nothing so far besides default assumptions.

The assumption relies on the rock harming the characters, such to the extent that is damages their soul and mind in addition to their body. A falling rock of that size is probably about 9-B in terms of AP. Even with extremely low end interpretations of Touhou stats, Reimu and Marisa are easily trillions of times tougher than a ******* falling rock. So unless you want to try and convince me that Touhou high tiers are wall level, this interpretation holds no weight.

You also can't just dismiss evidence you don't like as inconsistencies. You haven't even established a consistency to contradict. All you've done is say "oh look when things get hit, they drop spirit power". A rock hitting a person and them dropping spirit power does not contradict that at all.

It's only a contradiction if you've firmly established that "Every Touhou character has a special ability which allows them to drain the souls/mind of every enemy on every hit", which you haven't. I can't make a further counterpoint than that when you have not established that. The only thing you might have proven is that Touhou danmaku drains and weakens shields easier.

This is true when it's the default assumption.

However, evidence in favor of the weakness (i.e. the rocks) outweighs the default assumption most of the times.

To bring an example, imagine Sonic. Sonic drops his rings upon being hit.

Eggman hits him, he drops all his rings. With no other evidence, we assume Eggman has an ability to force drop rings.
Random enemies hit him, he drops all his rings. Now things are looking shakier, but sure, we can assume all enemies have the ability to force Sonic to drop his rings.
Random spikes hit Sonic, and he drops all his rings. You'd have to be stretching now to say this esoteric ring dropping ability is a thing and not just a weakness of Sonic (or god forbid, a game mechanic. But you seem adamant that it's not so). This example happens and it can change the way the previous examples were evaluated.

(kirb covered the sonic stuff better than i ever could lol)

Until you can prove that there is a valid reason as to why I should believe a falling rock harming universe level characters is anything but an outlier, there is nothing to discuss here. So no, the rock thing doesn't matter, and by your own admission, we would grant an ability over a weakness when both of these interpretations hold an equal amount of evidence. Seems like a concession to me :v

The pockets claim comes from Eternity Larva's biography that states that she'll come over to a fight with a few power items in hand. It feels weird to treat these spirit power charms as actual souls with this context in mind. Eternity Larva is a fairy, so her casually having a bunch of literal souls on her feels like a very weird thing.

This is just argument from incredulity. We know she has NPI via harming youkai (she fights Aya in HSiFS), we know spirit is souls, so like.... her carrying souls doesn't contradict anything. Yeah, it's a little weird, but that doesn't make it wrong.

I dunno about Saikou, but I'm not arguing that 'spirit' as a concept doesn't exist. I'm just not entirely convinced that these spirit power charms are actually souls and whatnot. It could just be an item that boosts your own abilities. Which would make far more sense within the context of Wriggle's biography and also Reimu just dropping them in general after getting hit by innocuous rocks.

If you need a simple explanation on why it makes sense? Them being physical items that they use would match up with you getting stronger the more you get. Reimu/Marisa/whoever getting hit causes her shots to get weaker as she loses all of the items, similar to how other video game characters drop/lose items when hit.

It's comparatively simple and has more evidence behind it than "Touhou characters literally shear the souls off of their enemies to get the power tokens".

Evidently you didn't bother reading the blog. I will recount the many, many instances of spirit acting as metaphysical energy.
-In 17.5 it's stamina.
-Tenshi's spell card that fires spirit is described as firing temperament. It is also described as a 'lump of negative human emotions' (and temperament, again).
-The mist in SWR is a mist of spirit. That mist is also referred to as temperament.
-Spirit and temperament are literally stated to be the same thing by Yuyuko.
-Kokoro's spell card that uses emotions is also said to be using spiritual energy,

Already we know that spirit is stamina, emotions, and temperament. This alone disproves the idea that it is a physical object. However, since spirit = temperament, there is more we can do with this.
-Temperament is the subconscious.
-Komachi says temperament is phantoms.
-Sakuya says that the mist of temperament is phantoms, and says it's chi.
-And Youmu says the same thing.
-Phantoms are souls, which I hope to god I don't have to provide scans for.

This is exceptionally consistent. Dozens of separate scans corroborate spirit being a non-physical energy source, whether that be stamina, emotions, souls, chi, or everything all at once. But the point remains: Spirit is not a physical item. And sure, you can nitpick individual statements, but enough of them are blatant enough that it's quite clear that spirit isn't physical.

In conclusion, your 'more evidence' claim is maybe one of the most bold-faced lies I've seen on this wiki.

If they are physical items, then them dropping out of people when they take heavy damage is not soulhax of any kind. Unless you're arguing that a danmaku bullet soulhaxxes an enemy, causes them to drop their soul, transmutes them into a physical item, which Reimu will proceed to absorb.

Which I hope is not what you're arguing, because there are like four different assumptions going on there, and that's basically like spitting on Occam's Razor.

They are not physical, see above.

Rementioning that I'm not arguing that spirit isn't a thing. I'm arguing about how the spirit power items aren't literal spirits.

Not much else to say there. None of this contradicts the spirit power items not being spirit.

To be clear, you are saying this is the case because a character offhandedly called them treasures on a single occasion? A treasure can be non-physical, a treasure can literally just be anything of value, which spiritual power would technically qualify for.

This is also not relevant to my point. Since if someone does this, then they hardly removed someone's soul and drained it as durability negating hax. So it would be counted as absorption technically, but not in the "every attack will cause you to lose your soul". They'd just be able to absorb loose spirit.

I just posed this as a 'what if', assuming all your headcanons are true.

Your clip showed me a character dropping spirit power tokens while changing phases. I rewound five seconds and I hardly saw any of this "every danmaku bullet causes spirit to be drained" stuff. She was taking hits just fine and the only spirit tokens being dropped were the ones from destroying the fodder enemies.

You got way too caught up in proving me wrong about wrongblocking that you forgot to actually address the point. The spirit power resource only gets drained when blocking/using shields in the fighting games. Why do we assume this scales to every danmaku bullet on every attack? Your video provides no evidence, as I mentioned above. It just shows the tokens being dropped as she changes phases.

Did I not provide the video of Reimu getting hit by Rumia once and immediately dropping spirit? That was what I was referring to. To recap the list of instances where spirit drops:
-Upon getting hit (as the protag in the STG games)
-Upon being 'defeated' (as a generic enemy)
-Every couple seconds while fighting (STG bosses)
-Upon blocking a projectile attack (Fighting games)
-Upon grazing (fighting games)

Basically, there is a lot of variance in this, though they all share the common theme of 'getting hit/getting almost hit', which is where my interpretation comes from. But it always relies on input from another spell card user, and never some random environmental hazard (barring massive ******* outliers). To be clear, I'm not opposed to indexing spirit manipulation differently, since its mechanics aren't 100% consistent, but characters absorbing/reducing it is the part that remains true regardless of the game itself.

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If it is really necessary, here is a non-comprehensive list of the various ways spirit is absorbed or manipulated in completely unambiguous ways across the series. This should show that it's a very common power, leagues more common than 'universe level character gets hit by rock once', which you seem very fixated on.

-Marisa has spell cards and basic attacks dedicated to absorbing spirit at an enhanced rate.
-ZUN in EoSD confirms that spirit power comes from the player attacking enemies, not from just 'everyone loses their soul when they get hit regardless of context'. It is blatantly done through player input.
-Youkai absorb spirit.
-Rin and Okuu absorb youkai, which are made of spirit.
-Suika can drain spirit with chains.
-Reimu manipulates spirit.
-Tenshi absorbed everybody's spirit over an interdimensional range as like, the main plot of SWR.

This isn't even including the many instances of characters being able to control phantoms (Yuyuko and Komachi), temperament (Kokoro), chi (Meiling and Takane), and so on. There are so many examples of characters manipulating spirit even without the context of the games themselves, and yet you wanna sit here and keep mentioning a single instance of universe level characters being harmed by a falling rock while pretending that's somehow not as absurd of an outlier as Goku screaming in pain when Krillin threw a pebble at him or Raidou slipping on a banana peel.

TL;DR: Please explain why characters who regularly fight cosmic level threats, whose lowest ever tiering on this site was low 6-B, being harmed by a tier 9 attack, is not an outlier. If you cannot do that, then by your own admission, you will have conceded.

 

[Kirbonic_Pikmin]

The way Spirit Energy is utilized as a whole in Hisoutensoku and other fighting games is game mechanics. This could be supported by the fact that flight drains a notable amount of spirit energy when it clearly doesn't in mainline Touhou games, the mechanics with blocking and wrongblocking. There's also the fact that grazing certain projectiles causes you to lose spirit power, while getting hit normally doesn't. Perhaps this depiction is contradictory, weird, and game mechanics that should not have any lore precedence.

Considering the dashing/flight in Soku has a passive grazing/bullet phasing effect to it, even when directly making contact with or passing THROUGH bullets, while normal flight doesn't, and the usage of it drains spirit, this could be argued to be a different technique/type of flight altogether. This on its own honestly cant really disprove anything.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Considering the dashing/flight in Soku has a passive grazing/bullet phasing effect to it, even when directly making contact with or passing THROUGH bullets, while normal flight doesn't, and the usage of it drains spirit, this could be argued to be a different technique/type of flight altogether. This on its own honestly cant really disprove anything.

Plus it's something that Marisa can do, when her having unassisted flight in canon is a little contentious.

 

[Moritzva]

This isn't even including the many instances of characters being able to control phantoms (Yuyuko and Komachi), temperament (Kokoro), chi (Meiling and Takane), and so on. There are so many ******* examples of characters manipulating spirit even without the context of the games themselves, and yet you wanna sit here and bitch about "ohhhhhh b-b-b-but the rock, the rock hit them" while pretending that's somehow not as ******* absurd of an outlier as Goku screaming in pain when Krillin threw a pebble at him or Raidou slipping on a banana peel.

TL;DR: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY CHARACTERS WHO REGULARLY FIGHT COSMIC LEVEL THREATS BEING HURT BY A ROCK IS NOT AN OUTLIER

Fujiwara, I get that you're upset and you disagree with Jinsye on this matter, but can you make an effort to keep things civil and reasonable? I'd appreciate it greatly.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Fujiwara, I get that you're upset and you disagree with Jinsye on this matter, but can you make an effort to keep things civil and reasonable? I'd appreciate it greatly.

Yeah, sure, sorry about that. Very frustrating to argue against someone who believes a low 2-C character taking damage from a rock isn't an outlier.