#to clarify this is a newer-ish design

[brainrotisseriechicken]

one of many older meri concepts ...... cant seem to settle on anything

[onyx-archer]

Reimu “Godhood” Theory

I’ve had this theory kicking around in my head for a little over 2 years, and I forget if I’ve mentioned it in the past, so I’m covering it now. As the title may confuse some people, I want to clarify that the “Reimu” in the title is in fact Reimu Hakurei from the Touhou Project, so this is obviously a Touhou Theory. I don’t talk enough about the series, and since I’m drafting an idea for a project that uses this theory, I’m going to be discussing this little fan theory I have relating to the lovely Destitute Armpit Shrine Maiden. If you’re interested, I’ll put it under the cut, as to not flood you with a wall of text right away.

To preface this, while I have played the majority of the official games, and have a good understanding of the series. It’s not perfect, since I haven’t played any of the spin-off games from Fairy Wars onward, and have only dabbled in the most recent game. This means I may be missing an important piece of information from, say, Hopeless Masquerade, and will be referring to a wiki for anything I need from a few games. I will also be referring to a wiki for info about the canon manga stuff, so I’m probably going to be missing a lot of stuff from that. I only ask that you don’t be a dick with a correction of a mistake. I’m not an all knowing source of Touhou information, so don’t expect me to know little things.

Now, to start the theory proper, I need to establish a key point. Namely, the fact that I’m working under the assumption of “the PC-98 games happened in the Windows continuity, but with subtle differences to better fit within the current canon.” This is because the Windows Era is seen as something of a soft-reboot by ZUN, in that if conflicts arise in the events between eras, the newer game is the “correct” way of looking at it. So I’m choosing to see them as two different timelines, with the Windows Era having events that are similar to the PC-98 Games prior to Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, especially since Alice and Yuuka have interactions with Reimu that suggest that they have met before. I plan to expand upon this aspect sometime in the future, but for now, it’s just something to be mindful of when reading this theory.

(Of course, you can also view this as being one timeline too, since it doesn’t really matter, I just think the changes to the lore in the Windows Era that sometimes contradict events in the PC-98 Era make it a little easier to separate the two a little, though that is just preference. Just make changes in your head to adjust for the difference, since there are few at the end of the day.)

The first thing is basically addressing the elephant in the room: what about the purple hair? Reimu’s sudden change from purple hair and flying on the back of a talking turtle, and the black/brown hair of the armpit miko that can “float away from reality” without said flying turtle is a bit of a drastic change. So what happened? Did Reimu, in this hypothetical parallel timeline, have purple hair at all, or am I saying that she didn’t?

I like to believe she did have purple hair. But why it changed plays a little into a bit of speculation based on the words of one character, and the appearance and “race” of another character. Those characters being one of the Goddesses of the Moriya Shrine, Kanako Yasaka, and the Living Goddess Shrine Maiden (and my favorite character in the series), Sanae Kochiya.

What do I mean exactly? Well, it is stated by Kanako in “Symposium of Post-Mysticism” (“The Goddess Yasaka”), and by Sanae in Reimu’s Mountain of Faith Scenario, Shrine Maidens have the capacity to become Gods themselves by gathering enough faith from worshipers of the shrine. Sanae herself is living proof of this, as she is, in fact, a “Living Goddess.” This means she is technically a Goddess that, if she were to lose all faith, would still be able to live as a human. I believe that Reimu was, at one point, a Living Goddess, but fell out of favor with humans due to her not tending to the Hakurei God’s desires, and her tendency to befriend youkai post-incidents.

Why do I think this? Surely there isn’t really any proof, right? Just because Sanae is a Living Goddess, doesn’t mean Reimu has ever been one. I mean, she’s thought to have no followers, so how could she have the faith to even touch the title of “Living Goddess?” Well, I think the key is, funnily enough, her hair color. Yeah, I know, weird right? Hear me out on this, it’s where things get really knee deep in speculation territory.

To make it easier, I’m going to provide visual references. Sort of. It’s more so you can look at the appearances of the two Reimu and Sanae so you can get a decent grasp of what I’m talking about. Sanae and Windows Reimu are from HIsoutensoku and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, respectively, whereas the PC-98 Reimu is fanart in a similar-ish style, that I found on Google, though I couldn’t locate a reference, so forgive me for the lack of credit.

Looking at the image above, I want to direct you at the hair color of PC-98 Reimu and Sanae. Notice something? They are both a unnatural hair color for humans. Most of the humans we see in canon Touhou (which is very few, in terms of memorable characters) have natural haircolors, typically within the realm of browns and blacks, which would match the dominate natural hair colors in Japan. Now, I know you can shrug this off as “it’s an anime-esc style of character design, what’s the big deal?”

Well, Sanae, unlike most of the humans depicted in Touhou, has green hair, which is something that resembles more of more supernatural characters. I propose the simple idea that hair colors for beings that are beyond humans (Youkai, Gods, Hermits, Monks, etc) have a distinct “unnatural” coloration to them to signify their more mystical natures. In this case though, I’m saying that the color is/could be a visible sign of attaining some kind of divinity. It’s a stretch, sure, but it’s not something that can be discredited by lore in Touhou as far as I’m aware. It’s not like it isn’t possible... right?

Basically, what I’m saying is that I think that the reason Reimu had purple hair is because she had more faith from humans, and thus, was visibly divine. I think her inability to communicate effectively with the Hakurei God, which in turn makes the God angry, and her tendency to befriend youkai (intentionally or not) after incidents led to people losing faith in her, and by extension, the shrine. Thankfully, it’s not a complete lack of faith, but it’s diminished compared to what could have hypothetically been a golden age with the previous Shrine Maiden, who was likely Reimu’s mother.

I should also throw in this little bit: I think that Reimu’s initial faith from the human village is likely due to the legacy of her mother, whom I will assume was the previous miko of the Hakurei Shrine. She likely did a lot to earn the faith of the public, and maintained a good balance within Gensokyo’s population. She may have even ascended to become a goddess, or she could have been killed, but we have no way of really knowing any of this.

Reimu’s actions, due to her inability to communicate with her Shrine’s displeased God, have lead her down a path more akin to a youkai than a God, which brings forth a comparison between Gods and Youkai within Symposium of Post-Mysticism by Kanako, and how Reimu actively starts rumors of youkai problems in the Human Village to get work, which is akin to a youkai needing to stir up a commotion of some kind as to not be forgotten; both are survival tactics that are a little underhanded, if necessary for both parties.

Obviously, the more she does this, the more she’s making her life harder in terms of being the Shrine Maiden of the Hakurei Shrine, but as it stands, the only thing that can fix this is forming a better relationship with her shrine’s residing deity, as to quell the God’s anger, but she has yet to do so. As far as the series is concerned, we’ll probably never. We, like Reimu, don’t know who the God/Goddess (let’s be real, it’s probably a Goddess because Touhou) of the Hakurei Shrine is, and we likely never will. All we know is that it channels it’s power through the Yin-Yang Orb, which grants Reimu abilities to deal with youkai. This connection between the God and it’s go-shintai could have also channeled the divine energy of the God through Reimu, much like how Sanae can invoke the powers of Kanako and Suwako easily, presumably through the snake and frog accessories in her hair. This could grant Reimu divine energy, which would put her closer to the status of a Living Goddess; she’d likely (still) be a Living Goddess if she didn’t piss off her God through her negligence of her duties to her patron/matron deity.

I also want to briefly mention the fact that Reimu is likely also a descendant of a divine being, much like Sanae is the descendant of Suwako. I believe this to be the case, as she shares the name of the Shrine of which she resides/looks after, and because only people of the Hakurei can use the power of the Yin-Yang Orb, which is the God’s means of assisting her in her incident resolving duties. This may be why she has yet to turn into a youkai, despite having a youkai-like nature when it comes to some of her habits.

Oh, and finally, real quick, since I mentioned him in the beginning, but didn’t really need to mention him beyond that: I do believe Reimu still may have used Genji when she was younger, and still learning how to utilize the powers of the Yin-Yang Orb and her divine abilities outside of said orb. I, much like, ZUN himself, believe that Genji is still around, sleeping in the pond at the shrine, just out of view to us in the official games’ depiction of the Hakurei Shrine.

In conclusion, I believe Reimu is either a former Living Goddess, or was close to becoming one, then her inability to please her God, her habit of being youkai-like to make money, and her tendency to become friendly with the youkai she deals with during incidents has lead to her losing the faith, and as such, the loss of a divine aura, which is visible through the purple color of her hair at the peak of her ability to gather faith. The color of her hair, as a result, changed to a more natural hue of dark brown/black due to her lack of faith. I also believe that she is related by blood to the God of the Hakurei Shrine, which is tied to her ability to use the Yin-Yang Orb. Finally, I also believe this to be the case regardless as to whether or not the PC-98 Era and Windows Era are in the same timeline, or if they ran parallel, with minor differences up to the events of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.

If you have any questions about the theory, hit me up and I’ll try to give an answer as soon as possible! Thanks for baring with me through this long as hell post. I could trim it down a bit, but I like it

[disconcision]

where could i find enough info on what u mean by "racket structures" to understand what ur doing with fructure? (for ref: let's say i know what an s-expression is, but i've never actually used them)

haha well to understand what i’m doing with fructure would necessitate that i understood what i’m doing with fructure but i can try to get you a little closer to my current state of confusion.  and, apologies in advance, but i’m going to take advantage of this ask to clarify some things for myself out loud.

(i should clarify that i am relatively new to programming languages, having pivoted in their direction last year just prior to completing a math undergraduate degree. you might know more about actual programming than i do so let me know where i’m being patronizing.)

so i take it then that you’ve never used a lisp e.g. clojure, scheme, emacs lisp, etc? ‘racket’ is the language formerly known as ‘PLT scheme’ where ‘PLT’ stands for programming languages theory. it’s a language specifically designed as a laboratory for language features, a ‘programming language’ programming languages where programming languages are first-class objects, at least in principle.

fructure, which is my first substantial self-directed programming project, is a racket-based structure editor, initially operating on code written in racket, but with an eye toward leveraging racket’s language-level features to make it end-user extensible to a broader range of languages. in brief, a structure editor is an editor/IDE which operates directly on the AST instead of the text source code. the advantage of doing this in s-expr-based languages is that you practically have an AST already; parsing is very simple.

more generally, i am using the idea of s-exprs, and more generally, annotated s-expressions as an ‘interface’ for interacting with syntax. like if i want to interact with a particular language, i want to be able to declaratively specify the grammar for that language, and feed it into a parser generator to get a parser for that language into an s-expr form. there are already good tools for this. what i want to do then is to design a standardized s-expr-based template by which i can declaratively annotate particular elements of that grammar. these annotations would include parameter names, types, default values, and visual styles for all the constituent forms of that language.

for example, in my grammar i might specify the form (if expr expr expr) as a subcase of the sort ‘expr’. then i would specify the following annotation layers:

type: (if bool any any)

names: (if condition consequence alternative)

defaults: (if true void void)

style: (if-wrapper (if-head) (hole) (hole) (hole))

where in the style layer, the names are references to a css-ish stylesheet which specifies how different parts of the ‘if’ form are colored and laid out on the screen. eventually (distant future) i’d like to be able to specify a near-arbitrary layout algorithm for each different form in the language’s grammar; essentially, each embedded component of the source code would be a special-purpose editor for precisely the kind of function/data which that part of the source represents. the ‘editor’ would no longer be a monolithic application but a hierarchically nested tower of special-purpose editors.

my emphasis now though is on applying such annotated representations to allow the user to interact with source code in a richer, more structured way. basically, i want to turn refactoring into a first-class concept, in that IDE-based refactoring should not be a matter of what notions of refactoring are build into the IDE at compile-time, but rather can be created by end-users on-the-fly according to their specific workflows. in fact, i hope to get to the point where refactoring is not merely something you’re doing to a particular object-level piece of code, but a more general approach of understanding and thereby restructuring one’s own processes of interacting with all kinds of structured information. 

to this end, i’m applying racket’s extensive pattern-matching functionality, which i am attempting to both extend and syntactically streamline to the point where it can be applied, in-line, to rapidly destructure and restructure source code in controlled, semantically-aware ways.

like it’s hard to get into specific examples here without building up some vocabulary; i’m hoping later to illustrate it with some gifs. but for a pretty trivial example let’s say i’ve selected an ‘if’ statement. in fructure, selections aren’t a binary matter of you’re pointing at something or you’re not; selections have structure. for example, one of the primary modes of selection is pattern painting. by default, whatever you’ve selected is painted with the ANY pattern. that means that there’s a meta-environment variable, ANY, whose value is the subtree which is currently selected. so if i press the replace key, and tab-complete to replace the selected ‘if’ with a new form, say another ‘if’ statement, i can then use ANY as a variable for any of the sub-expressions of that new statement. when i press ENTER to effectuate the replacement, that ANY would be replaced by it’s value, effectively nesting the old ‘if’ in the newer one.

this is nothing fancy, of course; most editors have some built-in way of wrapping an existing statement in a new one. my approach though is at least slightly more general. instead of using the default ANY pattern, i can elect to paint a new pattern onto the current ‘if’, or press a button to toggle between suggested patterns. for example, one such pattern might be (if A B C), which captures the various sub-expressions of the ‘if’ as variables A, B, and C.  so if i wanted to turn that simple ‘if’ into some fancier multi-conditional construct like a ‘cond’, i would just start typing ‘cond’, tab-complete, type in [A B] for the first condition/consequence pair, and then [else C] for the second.

again, switching between different conditional constructs is a extant feature in many editors, but the point here is that there’s a generic interface for these kinds of destructurings to be done on the fly. the pattern-based DSL i want to implement goes further than this, and allows the specification of contextually-aware patterns. the utility here is the ability to create pattern which are aware of the scope of their variables, so that source code can be transformed in ways that guarantee the preservation of certain syntactic and semantic invariants. 

my big goal right now is creating an intuitive interface for declaratively specify context-aware rewriting rules and chaining them together compositionally to create an extensible, somewhat language-independent schema for restructuring and refactoring.

i’m going to cut this ramble off because i feel at this point this thread is likely useless without pics, and it’s going to be a bit before i can provide in-situ illustrations. not sure that actually addresses your question. if you’re just wondering about racket the language i’m happy to talk about it in-and-of-itself.