First Issue: "Non-Existence" Taken so Much Literal
Mokou's premise comes from the idea that the characters are treated like nonexistent beings, as when they are forgotten in the Outside World they outright enter into Gensokyo, thus, they cease to exist.
The issue however is that this is a clear case of taking things so much literal, as the whole context of losing their existence is under the point of view of the Outside World. Obviously, since this is a place where logic and science has reached its peak, and all the mysticism lost its previous power. That's why they become "nonexistent" beings, because they are more related to the fantasy and general speculation.
And that's why Youkai in general are treated like nonexistent beings, not because they are literally that, or just pure nothingness, as Mokou is trying to imply.
So first things first, we know that the non-existence here is literal despite what Hecatia says. To argue that this is a matter of perspective from the outside world would be to argue that this is not erasing people from existence, but rather just moving them to another world, which from an outside perspective would seem to be as if the person or thing in question had just disappeared from reality. Problem is, the specific nuance of what kanji are being used here disproves that notion. There are a few sets of kanji used to indicate the term ‘existence’ in Japanese, but for our purposes we’ll be looking at
存在, as this is what’s present in most scans related to existence and non-existence.
The very first definition is one of existence, the example provided showing that this kanji is indeed referring to existence (and by extension, non-existence) as this thread is attempting to use it, and not one’s mere presence in one location or another. Of course, the definition of ‘presence’ is still present
(heh) within the link provided, so what gives?
When being defined as ‘presence’, 存在 is being used as a noun (eg; My
presence in this thread is still needed, it seems). However, 存在 may also be used as a verb, describing an action being undertaken. The problem with the presence argument is that, in some of scans shown above, 存在 is used as a verb and NOT a noun. When looking at the definition of 存在 as a verb, you can see that it lists existence as a possible definition… and that’s it. That is the ONLY valid reading of 存在 when used as a verb. Therefore, when scans mentioning existence use that term as a verb, it is undeniably referring to ‘true’ existence or non-existence, and not any unfounded notions of ‘presence’ or subjective non-existence.
But more importantly, if this were a matter of the outside world’s perspective… then why the hell do Gensokyo’s own citizens refer to themselves as non-existent? After all, if this is just from the outside world’s POV, then surely from Gensokyo’s own POV, they’d continue to exist, right? Except that isn’t the case, and characters do indeed acknowledge that they do not exist in conventional terms anymore. The ‘outside world POV’ argument just falls apart under even a small amount of scrutiny.
Take for example this scan (which was also cut by Mokou in her last summary
). Miko is talking about how Youkai are born from human imagination, and then Byakuren says that, due to this, their "nonexistence" is obvious. I think everyone here has enough reading comprehension to understand that, in this context, this isn't providing NEP of any type, but instead, it just talk about how Youkai are mostly abstract entities born from imagination and human thoughts, hence why they are "nonexistent" in this context.
Mokou can counterattack by saying that Gensokyo as a whole works like an illusion or that the beings there are illusionary beings, but again, this isn't to be taken literal, as they are illusionary in the sense of Gensokyo being the "reverse" place of the Outside World, where everything that cannot stay in can enter there.
This next scan is being heavily misinterpreted. What Miko and Byakuren are saying is not “youkai are born from human imagination, so they’re non-existent”. Miko’s exact quote is “it is natural that
some youkai were meant to be fictitious exist”. Byakuren goes on to state “I see. As a youkai
whose non-existence is obvious, right?”.
This creates a dichotomy between existent and non-existent youkai, with those characteristics being defined upon their creation. After all, Miko specifies that this only applies to some youkai. So if this were a matter of ‘created from imagination, ergo non-existent’, Miko using ‘some’ would make 0 sense, because being created from imagination is a trait that all youkai share, not some. Therefore, we can conclude that youkai non-existence referring to the means of their creation is incorrect, as it is heavily contradictory with itself.
So what does this scan prove, anyways? Well for one, it solidifies that the dichotomy of truth and fiction are indeed correlated with existence and non-existence (as fictitious youkai are ‘obviously non-existent’). Secondly, it furthers the notion that Gensokyo is by design a place for non-existent entities, as these non-existent youkai will immediately appear inside Gensokyo upon their creation.
As stated, there are three layers in Gensokyo, but the ones that matters for us is the first and second one.
^ As you see above, there are clear distinctions between what is physical and what is non-physical. If Gensokyo was literally a non-physical realm, then the existence of these layers shouldn't make sense.
Mokou's argument against this is that physical doesn't mean literally physical, and that incorporeal beings exist in the first layer.
To answer this, I will going to quote myself from the counterargument that I didn't published yet:
What the-
No. They aren't actually in the physical layer. They are actually in the mental layer, which is, by definition, the one allowing for them to exist. Literally, this whole point it's just posting proves for incorporeality and saying "well this are incorporeal characters yet they exist in the first layer because yes" without even properly proving why. And yes, things can exist between layers, because they can have a physical vessel while their true core is within the other one. If not, then we must make massive downgrades to every Youkai, because:
But obviously I'm against that method, because it doesn't make sense, and most importantly, because the one who needs to prove something isn't me, it's
you. Magic for example can be visualized in the physical layer, but we know it's actually within the second one.
In regards of your point about "ghosts do coexist within the mental layer needs proofs" it's the equivalent of saying "well this spirit isn't stated to be within the non-physical plane so you need to prove that." If you can't see the issue with this, then idk why I'm still arguing.
But let's see. The mental layer it's literally stated to be the plane in which every metaphysical event is able to occur, reason to why the spirit, the mind, and magic, are able to be created in the world:
Using mere logic, and Occam's Razor, we can easily understand that
every incorporeal event and character, by definition, it's directly within this layer. If X character becomes non-corporeal, then congratulations, he gained a free pass for the mental layer. The reason why someone can be "saw" within another layer, it's because these aren't really planes of existence per se, but instead, just ways to separate world, yet, they are in the same place. I don't know why are you making so much trouble with this, if it's something pretty simple.
No, no, no,
god no. First of all, literally nothing about the layer’s descriptions correlate with physicality or incorporeality. It’s just “the laws of physics” and “magic and some other stuff”. Neither of those give any indication about where physical or non-physical entities supposedly reside. In fact, using the two as a physical/non-physical dichotomy is ******* stupid anyways, because quantum particles (which according to you, would be physical due to falling under the physical layer)
are described as formless (ie; non-physical), while the mental layer also encompasses magic, which itself can manifest as physical phenomenon (creating pillars of ice or rock, for example). Non-physical things can exist on the physical layer, and physical things can exist on the mental layer. This whole argument is just… why…
Also, youkai no longer have universal range and the entire basis of their minds having that range was bullshit, so that point isn’t even relevant.
Also, the layers of reality are indeed separate locations.
Doremy basically confirms that the Dream World IS the mental layer, which means that according to you, all incorporeal characters would be existing in the Dream World. This is so heavily contradicted that I hardly know where to begin. First is that this contradicts the notion of beings like gods or youkai having dream selves, since they’d already be native denizens of the Dream World which means… they’d be their own dream selves???? Also, this means anyone and everyone would get multiversal range for so much as touching a god or youkai, which is extremely contradicted by how nobody can touch Reimu’s multiversal range Fantasy Nature (even from non-physical characters who supposedly have identical range, no less!), or how
characters in TD can enter the ‘Spiritual Realm’, acting as a sort of spatial intangibility, yet characters who can interact with supposedly multiversal-ranged ghosts and spirits somehow can’t harm characters who would require
less range than that. Just contradictions all around. None of this shit lines up with how characters are portrayed.
This whole argument relies on making a huge assumption (‘non-physical beings exist on a separate layer of reality’) and providing very little evidence to support that. If you wanna talk about Occam's Razor, then I hate to break it to you, but assuming that ghosts don’t automatically exist on a separate plane of existence requires far less assumptions than assuming they do. The fact that you’re also going “now prove me wrong!” when you’ve provided virtually nothing in support of your own arguments is ******* rich. That’s not how we do things around here.
Oh yeah, she also uses Yuuma to try to debunk me by saying that animal spirits can still interact with the characters, while they are stated to be unable to interact with physical/soulless beings (basically another point to try prove some sort of incorporeality for everyone), to which I respond with this:
Your example with Yuuma fails at the moment we are talking about the matriarch of the Toutetsu family. Same goes with Saki and Yachie. They can do this because they are the most powerful spirits, and also they can create their own physical bodies as we see. Plus, your own scan proves me right, again (
this one), because not only it reaffirms how physical bodies are still existing, but also, because it literally says how they can only do spiritual damage. It also explains why Yuuma can still harm the characters, because they still have
souls, unlike with the Haniwa Legion.
None of what you just said disproves my point. They can interact with souls because those souls still exist, unlike various other aspects of the characters in question, which don’t exist. I’m not giving them type 1 NEP, after all. Also where are you getting the idea that the Animal Realm leaders can create physical forms? I genuinely don’t remember that from any part of WBaWC.
Lastly I want to talk about this:
That could be a good argument if only it wasn't saying "lifeblood" instead of flesh-and-blood. It's pretty clear in that scan alone how this is a totally different type of energy in comparison to general blood, because if it wasn't. then there's no need to separate it from the general blood.
Yeah uh… Where the **** are you getting the idea that lifeblood is some metaphysical energy and not, y’know, ******* blood? I’ve checked various definitions for
lifeblood and the kanji used for it (生き血) and every time it’s. Just blood. Since you’ve admitted that this is a good point, I’m hoping that this will help convince you on the physicality stuff. So yes, physical characteristics can paradoxically be present within non-physical entities in Touhou canon.
First of all, I want to re-establish that truth and history are correlated.
-"Lack" of truth explains why history doesn't exist in Gensokyo in first place:
And that should be enough, because the other things will be provided for the whole argument.
So why it's important to say that history = truth/information?
And that's because:
There is the
third layer that is directly correlated to history and causality as a whole. This is yet another solid proof about how things that supposedly doesn't exist in Gensokyo are still there, just in different "states." Anyway, now let's explain the main scan for all of this.
There's actually a real reason about why Rinnosuke states that truth doesn't exist in Gensokyo, and is the following:
Truth itself is something that can be easily changed and manipulated through various ways, and in fact, this is something the Youkai can do (
not directly, obviously, but via their actions and potential censorship of many events). Thus, that's why "true" truth cannot exist, because as Rinnosuke states, the involved party is still there, being able to do any change to the information in Gensokyo as they please.
(I want to remark again that
I'm not saying Youkai can literally manipulate truth and the third layer [with a few exceptions, obviously, like Remilia, Keine, Aya, or even Nue]. There are many ways history and truth can be changed, like, as I said above, censorship or misinformation, so don't take my argument like I'm implying some sort of causality manip for everyone)
Another instance in which we can see how truth/information is still existing in Gensokyo is with Chimata herself, whose
profile states the following:
Information can still exist among objects, that works even with those that are from Gensokyo itself (reason why a market can be created there). And by manipulating the information of the objects allows her the creation of Cards' Abilities, so this information has clearly the same supernatural properties of the original one:
This is even crucial because Chimata via this ability was regaining her godly strength, so this reaffirms how the information in the objects are actually the same as the truth itself.
You do not understand what information is on this wiki. There are two types; Knowledge, and Fundamental. When I say Gensokyo lacks information, I mean Fundamental information; That which alters the very nature of reality itself. Much of what you listed is Knowledge; Chimata, for example. The ‘information’ present within the objects listed is not fundamental in any sense, but since it correlates with the memory of who owned and bought it, we can pretty clearly see how this correlates with information as knowledge. In fact, the information page explains that information present within objects falls within the confines of type 1, not type 2, so everything related to Chimata is undeniably type 1 and has 0 relation to any of my arguments.
TL;DR:
This.
So your first scan does not indicate that history and truth are related. Look at Rinnosuke’s quote again:
“When you write down a truth, it is not truth anymore. That’s why it’s impossible to write down the truth. Don’t you know why there isn’t any historical history in Gensokyo?”
So he’s explaining why you can’t write down the truth, and then goes on to ask Marisa if she knows why historical history doesn’t exist in Gensokyo. He is NOT saying that the impossibility of writing down truth is why history doesn’t exist; Rather, he is making a statement, then following it up with a question unrelated to that statement. You’re extrapolating a connection that isn’t even there.
And let me ask you this: If truth and history are so deeply connected, why was history completely unaltered when Yukari manipulated truth for the sake of the Youkai Expansion Project, or when Sagume manipulated truth during ULiL? Your interpretation fails to account for how any of this would impact the narratives where these concepts play a key role; Regardless of how logical your interpretation may seem (and as I’ve demonstrated above, it really isn’t all that logical), it still needs to fit within the framework of the setting at large (which it also doesn’t do). And don’t try to bring up “oh, it’s directly stated so it doesn’t matter”, because even
if that were the case, we still wouldn’t use it because it is directly contradicted by the narrative. Feats >>> statements, and the supposed truth/history connection not only has no feats, but it in fact has numerous anti-feats to its name, so we cannot use it at all. We accept stuff like the time/space connections, because that’s actually shown in canon (with Sakuya’s time manip passively warping the space of the SDM, and Kaguya’s eternity manip letting her create infinite space-time), but what you’re proposing? It has absolutely goddamn nothing going for it.
And from there, given that the history/truth connection is BS, I don’t really have much of a reason to argue against the other scans since they all rely on that faulty assumption.
1)
Eiki shutting up Aya when she claims she can change the world with her newspaper isn't an evidence that she can't do so. In fact, she can do this, and Eiki herself says so ("Close, but no cigar. 30 points"). The thing however is that Aya can do this
via Bunbunmaru News, not by her power alone. So it's clear that she "can't" control information with literally everything she talks about, but only with her newspaper.
2)
She uses this to claim that Sagume needs to create truth in order to affect Gensokyo, thus truth originally doesn't exist there. This is clearly a false equivalence fallacy ("Sagume creates Occult Balls to indirectly create truth in Gensokyo, therefore truth originally doesn't exist there") and not what the statement means. While yes, she uses this to cause an indirect effect into Gensokyo, this doesn't implicitly correlates with the idea of Gensokyo lacking of truth at all, specially knowing that Lunarians usually doesn't "attack" in a common sense, but just make any sort of tricks and conspiracies to achieve what they want. So the creation of Occult Balls isn't a true proof to assume anything of this.
3)
Following with this, she says this is yet another proof about truth doesn't existing in Gensokyo, hence why Sagume needs to create a new one from nothingness. But this is a misinterpretation, because what Sagume is doing via Aya isn't creating new truth at all, at least not in the way Mokou treats it. What Aya assumes it's happening, is that the Lunarians are creating convenient truth to benefit them, and that's all. There's no recreation of truth from nothingness, or anything like that. It's just Sagume changing actual truth into something else. Also, the correlation with Occult Balls doesn't has anything to do with the main notion of Gensokyo lacking truth, because urban legends are indeed non-existent, but that's because of their
own nature, not because of a lacking of truth.
4) Finally, I want to remind everyone here that Zun
doesn't know anything about the categories of Information Manipulation, yet, Mokou by stating "well this is type 1 truth while this one is type 2" is essentially implying that Zun is knowledgeable enough to make these separations from a time where those didn't existed at all, an assumption that clearly doesn't makes any sense, neither he has a real reason to separate this concept into two types, so this also highlights yet another issue with Mokou's argument.
1). No, that’s not what ‘close but no cigar’ means. It means ‘you've got the right idea, but you’re still wrong’. So Eiki is still saying that Aya is incorrect. And as I mentioned before, Aya manipulating truth is hard contradicted by the events of AFiEU. It was specifically Sagume’s plan to use her power to make what Aya wrote into truth, so if Aya could just control truth on her own… Why the **** was Sagume’s power even necessary? Not to mention that at literally no ******* point in time does Bunbunmaru
ever alter reality.
2). My point is that, if Sagume can manipulate truth, what exactly would prevent her from, y’know, just doing that instead of setting up these convoluted schemes? Why make the Occult Balls? Why have Aya write fake news stories? None of these make any sense if truth already existed in Gensokyo. While I won’t claim that this by itself is sufficient reasoning for a lack of truth, it’s damn strong supporting evidence.
3). Read this quote again real quick: “Because the Urban Legend incident was an occurrence in which
non-existent urban myths
came to life. This matches up with the power I was told about in the interview earlier”. Hard confirmation that Sagume’s power IS creating something from nothing despite what you claim.
4). Ffffucking lmao. “The author didn’t intend for there to be multiple types of information, therefore it’s all the same!” ZUN sure as hell doesn’t know what NEP and transduality are, but I certainly don’t see you aiming to downgrade primordial gods based on that. Assuming author intent based on nothing is one of the worst things you can do in a VS debate, and even IF we somehow knew ZUN’s intentions when writing about information, it’d be overwritten by what’s actually in the text. We absolutely never give author intent precedence over what’s in the text, because not only do we not even ******* know their intent 99% of the time, but it also encourages a culture of just skipping over canon content entirely and harassing authors about how strong they intended their characters to be, which defeats the entire goddamn point of VS debating. I’m not gonna waste any more time on this, I’m just disappointed that you genuinely thought this was a good argument.
But let me finish this with another hard shut down. Truth being easy to manipulate or create in Gensokyo contradicts literally the entire narrative and setting. Youkai no longer being ‘true’ is
why Gensokyo needs to exist, it’s
why the Great Barrier was set up, it’s
why practically the entire series takes place in Gensokyo. If truth were so easy to manipulate, there would be 0 ******* reason for any of this to be the case; Any asshole could write down “hey youkai are real” and it’d be true and we’d skip all the hassle of creating an entirely new space-time, making deals with Dragon Gods, and the very existence of the sages of Gensokyo. Except that obviously didn’t ******* happen, and when we see that ‘truth’ can ONLY be manipulated by some of the most busted reality warpers in the entire goddamn verse (and only under specific conditions, at that!), that’s a pretty clear indication that truth takes a lot of effort to manipulate. The idea that Aya can just
write shit and make it reality contradicts every tiny semblance of worldbuilding present in the verse.
Third Issue: Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
Lastly I want to talk about the idea of comparing the ways someone can enter into Gensokyo and via that stating everyone becomes non-corporeal after going inside.
Everything starts from this statement:
As Maribel says, she thinks Youkai saw her like a phantom.
Yet this doesn't really supports anything at all. What she's doing is theorizing about how people in Gensokyo see her, but that's isn't a direct statement or anything. And she doesn't even directly says she becomes a phantom or something, she just says is like a "phantom-like being," but that's all.
Now she talks about how Sumireko becomes incorporeal when entering Gensokyo, thus in everyone's case this should be the same, riiiiiiiiiight?
Not really.
First, Sumireko is a special case, because she isn't entering Gensokyo in the same way as everyone, but via their dreams. That's why she can become intangible there (which for the 1812748917481748914784 time proves how there's a difference between physical and non-physical in it), because her true self isn't there, just her dreamlike being.
Which is also ironic because in AFiEU we see
this:
When she is spirited away, which is basically being BFR'd into Gensokyo, she is teleported with all her body, proving how when entering like this way into it you don't lose your physical self. But, since now Sumireko enters in Gensokyo at dreaming, this rule doesn't apply.
There are more instances of this, like for example all the people BFR'd by Yukari and their skeletons and skulls which are still in Gensokyo, but I think this should be enough.
Finally, I want to point out how everything of this is basically another fallacy (the title of this section) on the same level of "my partners come to job through the subway, so every worker comes to job through the subway," but with more fancy words and wankaphysics to make it sound better.
And well, this is my last take on the topic. Sorry for taking so much time to finish it, buuuut...
well I can't lie, I took advantage of how 2hu threads are easily forgotten to procrastinate jijijija
Alright, well first off, the phantom thing is NOT the entire basis of the incorporeality argument. There are other statements in Dr. Latency that I brought up, like physical form being meaningless in Gensokyo (which isn’t unique to youkai, given that it’s a generalization about the world itself AND Maribel has met humans like Mokou and Sakuya within Gensokyo before) and how a youkai cat that ended up in the outside world could phase through objects. And like I mentioned before, so long as the lack of information is accepted, we can still give already-incorporeal characters NEP, while physical characters would just get immunity to information manipulation.
Yeah, I’ll admit that Sumireko’s dream projection falling outside the confines of ‘normal’ entry into Gensokyo was something I didn’t consider. However, I don’t think we should take her intangibility to Reimu at face value. Dream projections are essentially the soul of the person dreaming, and given the extent of Reimu’s NPI, her not being able to interact with Sumireko is a huge outlier and likely falls under PIS.
Also uh… why exactly does Sumireko getting spirited away disprove incorporeality, again? Reimu helps lost travelers return to the outside world, outside world humans getting stuck in Gensokyo before finding a way out isn’t exactly new information.
This will also likely be my last post on the topic. Also, reminder that anybody who takes a side here when it comes to NEP should also preferably state their opinion on high-godly, given that that’s something Hecatia and I both agree on and most other people haven't acknowledged.
Last thing I will say is that Hatate and Aya should have Information Manipulation.
And somehow I'm the Touhou supporter here who keeps getting accused of wank >:V
.
