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Rumia's Party Games / Re: Seija Quest 5
« Last post by Kilgamayan on April 26, 2025, 05:06:36 PM »> Scoot on out the door!
ShrineMaiden
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52
Rumia's Party Games / Re: Seija Quest 5
« Last post by Tom on April 26, 2025, 03:28:36 PM »> Step back out of the room, then, before she can come over here and close us in.> You hop out of the storage room and return to the storefront. Sanae asks about prices for a few things before thanking Mamizou and leaving (once again 'forgetting' the door open).
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Rumia's Party Games / Re: Nitori Quest 3 - A Z-Machine Adventure
« Last post by Kilgamayan on April 26, 2025, 03:42:12 AM »> "This rocket was made to be operable for solo missions."
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Rumia's Party Games / Re: Nitori Quest 3 - A Z-Machine Adventure
« Last post by It's Purvis! on April 26, 2025, 03:38:03 AM »> "...Well...we could do something where I sleep first, and then you both sleep at the same time. Then we could all get some more time in."
>"That'd leave you without someone to watch the engine," says Aoi.
>"Or steer," Koa says.
>_
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Rumia's Party Games / Re: Neo Gensokyo Quest - Part 8
« Last post by Kilgamayan on April 26, 2025, 01:48:44 AM »> "This way."
> Head toward the lake in question.
> Head toward the lake in question.
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Rumia's Party Games / Re: Neo Gensokyo Quest - Part 8
« Last post by Neovereign on April 26, 2025, 01:47:55 AM »> "Sure thing."> Hardly a minute away. You think it might be the one you encountered Gwen at, though you could be wrong.
> Where's the nearest lake that isn't Lake Suwa?
>_
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Touhou Addict Recovery Center / Re: Analysis of Whispered Oracle of Hakurei Shrine (WOoHS): The Mechanism of Fortune
« Last post by CatointheMiddle on April 25, 2025, 10:52:17 PM »Thanks for the comment!
I agree with your assessment of Reimu and Hard Work, so nothing to add there.
On the topic of Fortune, one thing that becomes clear after reading through the Fortunes in the book is that characters who are bold and have 'strong' personalities tend to get a 'Great Fortune' (at minimum) on their Slip. What I mean are characters like Tenshi, Momoyo, Miko, and Mamizou. What these characters all have in common is that they don't let external factors get to them; in a word they are 'complete' within their inner selves (Toyohime also fits this description). Anything that you might characterize as 'bad luck' which might fall on any of them just flows off like water on a duck's back because that is their personality. Most of them are also so self-confident that they are convinced they are the top dog in town.
Basically, as the saying goes, Fortune favours the bold.
The way I think about it, these characters all think they are 'above' Fortune. They all think, to some degree at least, that the world will bend to their will; that they can just take Fortune for themselves. It is telling that these characters are presented as being representations of Good Fortune by Reimu's divination. Fortune is as much a mindset as it is something you are born with (like Shion, but even in her case her extreme misfortune is accompanied with a personality of extreme negativity) and something that changes day by day within the chain of cause and effect (the 'material world'), randomness (quantum physics) and memory (or 'karmic history'/karmic intentionality, which acts through the quantum realm).
This is more or less the angle from which I interpret Reimu telling herself things 'will go well'. She's basically creating for herself the mindset conducive to maximum fortune. It's probable one of the reason's she is a 'lucky card' which can influence the memories of the die to favour her is because of this mindset. As I pointed out in my analysis, it could also be because this is how she defines and so presents herself to the die (or, if we go by Lotus Eaters, to the gods/spirits within the die and around her). She defines herself as someone of extraordinary luck (things 'go well for her'), and the die/gods acknowledge that identity and then do their part to comply with it i.e. influence the spin of the die to favour her. The surrounding Fortune 'flows' to her - is attracted to her - because she has this mindset which is most attractive to it.
That's why ZUN also calls Reimu's words to herself a 'prophecy', because by telling herself those things she is simultaneously creating the future where those words come true. It is self-fulfilling.
Of course, Reimu is in a prime position to make this trick work especially well because she is the Hakurei Shrine Maiden. Obviously, she can commune and call upon surrounding gods and 'spiritual energies' much more easily than your average joe. Arguably this is the 'natural' aspect of her luck that she just has by default of her mysterious powers. But it is her mindset that things will go well for her which capitalizes on these powers and makes her the force of extreme luck that we all know.
I agree with your assessment of Reimu and Hard Work, so nothing to add there.
On the topic of Fortune, one thing that becomes clear after reading through the Fortunes in the book is that characters who are bold and have 'strong' personalities tend to get a 'Great Fortune' (at minimum) on their Slip. What I mean are characters like Tenshi, Momoyo, Miko, and Mamizou. What these characters all have in common is that they don't let external factors get to them; in a word they are 'complete' within their inner selves (Toyohime also fits this description). Anything that you might characterize as 'bad luck' which might fall on any of them just flows off like water on a duck's back because that is their personality. Most of them are also so self-confident that they are convinced they are the top dog in town.
Basically, as the saying goes, Fortune favours the bold.
The way I think about it, these characters all think they are 'above' Fortune. They all think, to some degree at least, that the world will bend to their will; that they can just take Fortune for themselves. It is telling that these characters are presented as being representations of Good Fortune by Reimu's divination. Fortune is as much a mindset as it is something you are born with (like Shion, but even in her case her extreme misfortune is accompanied with a personality of extreme negativity) and something that changes day by day within the chain of cause and effect (the 'material world'), randomness (quantum physics) and memory (or 'karmic history'/karmic intentionality, which acts through the quantum realm).
This is more or less the angle from which I interpret Reimu telling herself things 'will go well'. She's basically creating for herself the mindset conducive to maximum fortune. It's probable one of the reason's she is a 'lucky card' which can influence the memories of the die to favour her is because of this mindset. As I pointed out in my analysis, it could also be because this is how she defines and so presents herself to the die (or, if we go by Lotus Eaters, to the gods/spirits within the die and around her). She defines herself as someone of extraordinary luck (things 'go well for her'), and the die/gods acknowledge that identity and then do their part to comply with it i.e. influence the spin of the die to favour her. The surrounding Fortune 'flows' to her - is attracted to her - because she has this mindset which is most attractive to it.
That's why ZUN also calls Reimu's words to herself a 'prophecy', because by telling herself those things she is simultaneously creating the future where those words come true. It is self-fulfilling.
Of course, Reimu is in a prime position to make this trick work especially well because she is the Hakurei Shrine Maiden. Obviously, she can commune and call upon surrounding gods and 'spiritual energies' much more easily than your average joe. Arguably this is the 'natural' aspect of her luck that she just has by default of her mysterious powers. But it is her mindset that things will go well for her which capitalizes on these powers and makes her the force of extreme luck that we all know.
58
Touhou Addict Recovery Center / Re: Analysis of Whispered Oracle of Hakurei Shrine (WOoHS): The Mechanism of Fortune
« Last post by Suspicious person on April 25, 2025, 09:48:12 PM »Pretty interesting topics to talk about.
Reimu's older characterization made her like this "youkai-like Shrine Maiden" that was distant, mystical, hard to understand and the like, almost almighty in her constant stream of successes and seeming like she's beloved by the world itself in her absurd fortune (good old fish bridge) : print works however have largely contributed to tearing down that veil of mysticism : we have this impetuous, impatient, almost immature girl who can be quite brash and half assed : kinda human. Reimu has always managed to comfortably fall back on her talent and luck in order to get by when it matters most, and is generally quite confident on herself and her capabilities : hard work just seems like extraneous tiring and uneccessary effort for supposedly improving her chances at doing what she does best :
In WaHH's chapter 5 for example, where Reimu gets dragged for training with Kasen, Komachi basically remarks that the attempt at improving Reimu through training basically achieves nothing, cuz Reimu didn't have the kind of personality traits that would get straightened up by discipline. Another way I understood that is that, likewise, the training didn't particularly enrich Reimu in any meaningfull way : this is just Reimu's nature. In a similar vein, that's also kinda what I think about SSiB's god powers training and TH 15.5's slave-master fighting style training : an expeditive endeavor for the purpose of the time (Yukari's arrangements for the first, the resolution of the incident for the second) that was forced on her by the circumstances : she tries hard enough on a need-to basis imo.
Whatever Reimu seriously needs, she'll somehow gets. Hard work is just an extra hassle that is unneccessary for her imo. I think as far as the "heartwarming message goes", it's not about the hard work for Reimu, but her nature as a person that matters. It kinda feels to me like it's the way goodness and innocence tend to get portrayed in Japanese Shounen media, with the trope of the dumb but good natured guys like Goku, who could ride the nimbus cloud, or Luffy, who didn't get affected by Boa's powers, while villains or even villainouss characters are smart, cunning and calculated like Naraku from Inuyasha or Light Yagami from Death Note : dumb & naive but sincere and honest has virtue, and sometimes having the correct attitude is half the work. While I don't think that Reimu's is a hard-work & working for self improvement type (and definitely not fit most of the tropes associated with typical shonen protagonist characters), she's got a certain "purity" about her : she's simple minded (and can be kinda dumb), goes with the flow, has desires and worldlyness about her (but not to the point of obsessions), and is quite open and doesn't discriminate against anyone. She's got a good nature that attracts people and youkai alike, and rather than a super competent protagonist with savviness and trickeries, I think that giving the priority to one's good, sincere nature and heart is pretty alright too : after all, everybody's got a heart (sustaining hard work and discipline can arguably derive from that too)
Before getting back to that, the use of Reimu's puffing herself with her own words in the analysis (+ the dice roll thingy) is pretty interesting to me, as it reminds me of Sagume, whose words causes fate itself to reverse (if we go by her TH15 dialogue lines) when she speaks, obviously the complete opposite of Reimu and her dice results : if the memory layer of the world remembers her words and do its utmost to attain the exact opposite result of what she says every single time, then the karma explanation just doesn't become enough : how does a distant heavenly goddess that lives on the pure moon attain and maintain the kind of karma that gives a perfectly consistent result, especially since other residents of the place of similar nature and similar circumsstance don't have the same abilities ? And a similar question could be asked for Shion too.
Imo a possible hint may lie in the Lotuss Eaters's chapter 53, where we get the explanation for Futo and Miko's suspicious dice scam, as well as a more reliable explanation of Reimu's good fortune from Miko (she has the biggest, most beautifull brains) : Miko's series of dice gambling victories was thanks to Futo sending the flow of the other player's fortune towards Miko, who'll judge if that fortune would mean a win or a loss ; Furthermore Miko also explains that Reimu's great fortune is owed to her unconsciously calling upon the fortune of the divine spirits.
So basically, things MAY go like this :
1 - The world doesn't just memorize but acts favorably or not based on one's fortune. The more you have, the more it'll feel like you're favored by the world
2 - It's possible that there is NO true luck element, only constantly fluctuating fortune levels, and whoever has the most fortune at a given moment will have the odds at the time play in their favor & grant a desired or acceptable result
3 - It's possible that, similar to the fortune slips per character, some people have fixed fortune values of their own based on their nature (in order to explain the likes of Shion or Sagume)
4 - The flow of fortune can be controlled or heavily influenced
At any rate a pretty interesting part of the lore
Quote
Hard work & ReimuOn hard work versus Reimu, I think there's a dimension in Reimu's character that hard work and its transformative nature is just not compatible with : Reimu is free spirited, open, VERY laid back and honest, but more importantly EXTREMELY talented and lucky : she has always managed to get by and largely succeed in her Shrine Maidening activities by just falling back on these two traits, and for her success is just a matter of seriously putting her mind to it.
Reimu's older characterization made her like this "youkai-like Shrine Maiden" that was distant, mystical, hard to understand and the like, almost almighty in her constant stream of successes and seeming like she's beloved by the world itself in her absurd fortune (good old fish bridge) : print works however have largely contributed to tearing down that veil of mysticism : we have this impetuous, impatient, almost immature girl who can be quite brash and half assed : kinda human. Reimu has always managed to comfortably fall back on her talent and luck in order to get by when it matters most, and is generally quite confident on herself and her capabilities : hard work just seems like extraneous tiring and uneccessary effort for supposedly improving her chances at doing what she does best :
In WaHH's chapter 5 for example, where Reimu gets dragged for training with Kasen, Komachi basically remarks that the attempt at improving Reimu through training basically achieves nothing, cuz Reimu didn't have the kind of personality traits that would get straightened up by discipline. Another way I understood that is that, likewise, the training didn't particularly enrich Reimu in any meaningfull way : this is just Reimu's nature. In a similar vein, that's also kinda what I think about SSiB's god powers training and TH 15.5's slave-master fighting style training : an expeditive endeavor for the purpose of the time (Yukari's arrangements for the first, the resolution of the incident for the second) that was forced on her by the circumstances : she tries hard enough on a need-to basis imo.
Whatever Reimu seriously needs, she'll somehow gets. Hard work is just an extra hassle that is unneccessary for her imo. I think as far as the "heartwarming message goes", it's not about the hard work for Reimu, but her nature as a person that matters. It kinda feels to me like it's the way goodness and innocence tend to get portrayed in Japanese Shounen media, with the trope of the dumb but good natured guys like Goku, who could ride the nimbus cloud, or Luffy, who didn't get affected by Boa's powers, while villains or even villainouss characters are smart, cunning and calculated like Naraku from Inuyasha or Light Yagami from Death Note : dumb & naive but sincere and honest has virtue, and sometimes having the correct attitude is half the work. While I don't think that Reimu's is a hard-work & working for self improvement type (and definitely not fit most of the tropes associated with typical shonen protagonist characters), she's got a certain "purity" about her : she's simple minded (and can be kinda dumb), goes with the flow, has desires and worldlyness about her (but not to the point of obsessions), and is quite open and doesn't discriminate against anyone. She's got a good nature that attracts people and youkai alike, and rather than a super competent protagonist with savviness and trickeries, I think that giving the priority to one's good, sincere nature and heart is pretty alright too : after all, everybody's got a heart (sustaining hard work and discipline can arguably derive from that too)
Quote
FortuneFortune is still one of the aspects of Touhou lore that I find kinda complicated, and even CoLA's chapter 27 doesn't bring complete satisfication to me as we have new and more modern elements that plays off this topic too. The big question that wasn't asked nor answered by the chapter to me is this : why would fortune try to favor Reimu as the end-all-be-all ? Cuz a clear answer to that question may solve the topic entirely for me.
Before getting back to that, the use of Reimu's puffing herself with her own words in the analysis (+ the dice roll thingy) is pretty interesting to me, as it reminds me of Sagume, whose words causes fate itself to reverse (if we go by her TH15 dialogue lines) when she speaks, obviously the complete opposite of Reimu and her dice results : if the memory layer of the world remembers her words and do its utmost to attain the exact opposite result of what she says every single time, then the karma explanation just doesn't become enough : how does a distant heavenly goddess that lives on the pure moon attain and maintain the kind of karma that gives a perfectly consistent result, especially since other residents of the place of similar nature and similar circumsstance don't have the same abilities ? And a similar question could be asked for Shion too.
Imo a possible hint may lie in the Lotuss Eaters's chapter 53, where we get the explanation for Futo and Miko's suspicious dice scam, as well as a more reliable explanation of Reimu's good fortune from Miko (she has the biggest, most beautifull brains) : Miko's series of dice gambling victories was thanks to Futo sending the flow of the other player's fortune towards Miko, who'll judge if that fortune would mean a win or a loss ; Furthermore Miko also explains that Reimu's great fortune is owed to her unconsciously calling upon the fortune of the divine spirits.
So basically, things MAY go like this :
1 - The world doesn't just memorize but acts favorably or not based on one's fortune. The more you have, the more it'll feel like you're favored by the world
2 - It's possible that there is NO true luck element, only constantly fluctuating fortune levels, and whoever has the most fortune at a given moment will have the odds at the time play in their favor & grant a desired or acceptable result
3 - It's possible that, similar to the fortune slips per character, some people have fixed fortune values of their own based on their nature (in order to explain the likes of Shion or Sagume)
4 - The flow of fortune can be controlled or heavily influenced
At any rate a pretty interesting part of the lore
59
Akyuu's Arcade / Re: SMT/Persona Thread - Probably Wasn't Actually on V2 Edition
« Last post by SirtheBastard on April 25, 2025, 07:53:12 PM »...My Law alignment has overflown, now I can't summon my demons... ;_;
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Rumia's Party Games / Re: Seija Quest 5
« Last post by Kilgamayan on April 25, 2025, 06:31:48 PM »> Step back out of the room, then, before she can come over here and close us in.