#after i posted ryumiya this time someone brought up ex rumia. i don't know what that. i don't know what that is. this is someone else.

[occasionaltouhou]

updated refs for a character you guys have seen before (rumia but a big deal) and one i’ve drawn before but haven’t posted here (miss iwanagahime)

one of my goals for this year is to update some of my old ocs -- though technically speaking both of these are canon characters in one way or another -- and so, y’know, i thought i’d make a strong start

summaries under cut. if you want

Shinguro Ryumiya (新黒 竜宮)

Capable of manipulating darkness

Ryumiya was born from, well, the joke of Rumia. The idea that a youkai of darkness was meant to be intimidating, but ended up being just a weakling. But, you know, darkness used to be a lot scarier than it is now -- if anything, with all the electric light pollution, perhaps we don’t have enough darkness.

So that got me thinking; what if Rumia wasn’t always a weakling? What if she used to be really strong? What if -- and bear with me -- she used to be one of those really strong youkai who helped build the Barrier, but she did it too late, and ended up reduced to little more than a feral beast?

More than that, what if, by storing a little bit of her power in that charm in her hair, just enough to keep a bit of what she used to be around, and with a little bit of scheming, she could get it all back?

Then I turned those ideas into a very rough draft for a fangame with her as the final boss, got through about a route and a half, and got distracted. That’s the same game as those two fish I reblogged ages back without context, actually.

But she’s here now! The concept of Ryumiya is that she tied her idea of darkness to more unknown, abyssal darknesses, like deep space and the ocean floor and even stuff like eldritch gods and the like in order to make herself into something that humans still don’t understand and thus fear.

She’s much more powerful than she was even for a long time before raising the Barrier; in addition to her traditional powers of darkness manipulation, she gained the ability to create youkai from the ocean depths (there could be anything down there, after all) and she gained the ability to create pseudo-black holes from deep space (not that she can control them once she creates them, though, so they usually pop pretty quickly). Of course, having spent a full century as a weakling, she’s still kind of a loser, but that’s her charm point.

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Iwanaga Yatsugi (岩長 弥継)

Capable of manipulating volcanic activity

Yatsugi comes from... I think specifically it was talking about a character belonging to someone in the occasional discord who was tied to Youkai Mountain that made me think about its other resident kami, but truthfully I’d been thinking about her since I first read that one chapter of CiLR. After that, it was really just a matter of, well, making my own claim of the identity of the Hakurei Kami.

Because like, despite only being mentioned twice, Iwanagahime is kind of important to Gensokyo, right? She’s the kami of eternity, so she’s who Akyuu prays to; and she’s the kami of Yatsugatake -- that is, Youkai Mountain -- so presumably she was involved in the negotiations surrounding Gensokyo’s location.

Probably? I mean, I don’t think ZUN really thinks about this bit of lore so much, but at the same time I wouldn’t be surprised if he dropped something in the next chapter of CoLA that totally contradicts this idea. But that’s why she looks like Reimu.

Until then, though: Iwanaga Yatsugi. Not a Sage (she’d honestly be amused to be regarded as such), but rather the foremost representative and the greatest beneficiary of the establishment of Gensokyo. Honestly, I feel like she’s probably not a hugely active character, unlikely to cause or resolve an incident, but probably shows up to parties a lot. Mostly acts like a retired old person who doesn’t have to work and spends all their time doing a relaxing hobby (in her case, using heat and pressure to create precious gems).

I drew her with Reimu as a point of comparison, but obviously canon says Reimu doesn’t know who the Hakurei Kami is -- but then again, Reimu’s never been the most observant...

Unlike Ryumiya, I never really had plans for Yatsugi beyond making her, but she exists now. They both exist. I might put them in a piece of writing at some point (sooner if anyone requests. wink wink) but until then. Please enjoy responsibly