A hypothetical break of the Hakurei barrier

[Idkism]

 I'm bored as hell, let's talk hypotheticals.

Let's say that, for some damn reason, the Hakurei barrier breaks, you can say it's the Lunarians going Lunatic mode and say fuck all to the balance of the world, some crazy, angry Youkai God or Yukari just fucking with the residents (both are basically the same thing but you get me, you're a smart...individual), how would this pan out?

Of course, you can say "Oh, the Outside World's gonna go extinct because of the wild Youkai!" or "Oh, all Youkai would starve from the lack of faith/fear!", but I want an *actual* answer that's not just a cheap copout, so...let's think about it.

We all know how Gensokyo works, it's a magical place (not a secluded dimension iirc, so y'know, it's not the cliché Isekai shit) where the forgotten creatures of old reside! And y'know, also humans but fuck them, whatever, how it works is that, 1800-ish years ago, the 3 Sages came, did some barrier, and invited Youkai, now the thing here is that...well, if you think about it, any "mythological concept" can realistically work.

I mean, what are "Youkai" in the context of Gensokyo? Most of them are either races taken from Japanese Mythology (Tanukis, Kitsunes, Kappas, etc...) or ACTUAL concepts taken from Japanese/Japanese resident mythology (take the MoF goddesses F.E, both of them take some stuff from lake Suwa and the things that are around it), sure it's not a 1 on 1 copy, but it wouldn't really be tasteful for the Japanese audience, now would it?

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is, Gensokyo is basically a huge gathering of "faithless" concepts, basically how it goes is "Concept is in the Outside World > faith dwindles due to X reason > they 'die' > Gensokyo"

So, take the idea into literally any other concept, and boom.

Now you might say "Oh, but why isn't there any other concepts in Gensokyo appart from East-Asian mythos?" It's simple...

ZUN doesn't give a shit (I know, lazy answer, but c'mon...)

okay seriously though, it's just that ZUN makes shit ambiguous, and one of them is well...this entire discussion.

Whatever, where am I going with all this? it's simple, way I see it, we're getting a Shin Megami Tensei scenario, if you don't know shit about the series, lemme give you the rundown...

Demons from all mythos are somehow in the real world, depending on the games you have a "Demon summoning program" (DDS for short), basically lets you recruit demons, talk and negotiate with them, yada yada...

How the world WORKS is different in most games, but the common thing is that humanity is getting the short end of the stick, and you have factions for the demons, Chaos, Neutral and Law as an oversimplification.

so, how I see it is, once this barrier goes down, it's gonna be complete chaos for the next few days, y'know everyone fighting each other...

the catch is, the Youkai we see in Gensokyo are much more civilized than...well, demons.

so, after all the chaos dwindles, humanity doesn't get killed or simply "enslaved", they basically become bargaining chips and life sources for the Youkai.

let's just group each "faction" and try to...quantify this shit :

>Law : Well, it's not that simple, but how I see it, it's not just gonna be A God, but more like a council of Gods, or in this case Goddesses, you can put most Goddesses with an actual following in this category; Keiki, the Moriya girls, etc...

>Neutral : These are gonna be the normal, but not generic Youkai, they're gonna work more with fear than simple faith, but we'll see how it'll work

>Chaos : These...are basically New Hell, basically take the Yakuza BS they made, and boom!

That's how I see it work, I'm really curious to hear from y'all, and y'know, if you agree with this schizo rambling at 3AM, you guys can put some characters in this "faction" system.

[Stan]

the youkai would survive due to the fact that people would fear them and their existence as they become visible to the world. You can say this is a cheap cope-out answer but I think the youkai would be annihalated by modern military capabilities. Even excluding the nuclear option what chance do most of these youkai have against the power of tanks, attack helicopters, tear gas and cluster bombs. Not to mention any illness that could fall upon them (of course this is assuming that youkai can be affected by human illnesses) due to the fact that the youkai have been isolated from the outside world for so long, new diseases could wipe them out easily. Now of course this only includes the low tier or mid tier youkai, F to B on tierlist terminology.

Some like Yukari would be much harder to simply take down with force. Some sort of a contract would have to be established with the world governments. Maybe this contract will be secret and this will be covered up as some massive government conspiracy where people are secretly fed to these creatures somewhere in some underground chamber. Possibly death row prisoners, people deemed persons of interest by the government. Although now this is starting to sound like the SCP foundation. Thats all the ideas ive got. plenty of people here will have actually good ideas about the subject matter im just some dumbass

Edited February 1 by Stan

[Luki_zet]

I wrote short essay about what I think would happen.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19l-9EAqwlXcl4MqloEejgSQUHcFuIxoFgoLRPmyXB2w/edit?usp=sharing

[Crab]

Lots of hypothesis incoming, so I'll try to be brief and fail miserably.
I also should use spoilers to conceal the walls (or maybe bricks) of text and separate different scenarios.

Also, a disclaimer must be added because I'm not a huge lore fan and there are holes both in my knowledge of Gensokyo and in the plot itself. This will be also somewhat biased towards some of my world views (and also expanded for a bit). Overall, I hope this can be somewhat entertaining. So lets begin this mess, shall we?
 

Premises of my scenarios:
 

Spoiler

Well, we'll start by disagreeing but I have to do this otherwise nothing would make much sense.
You see, youkai and gods always existed even before the barrier was made. Yukari and many other characters are older than Gensokyo. Shrine maidens were the real deal back then, and there are even foreigner characters who have access to magic (such as Patchouli, Remilia, Sakuya, Meiling, etc.). We can't also forget that non-foreigners (but still outsiders since they weren't born in Gensokyo) also had access to magic, like Sanae, Sumireko, and Maribel¹.

Where do I want to get at with the previous paragraph? By implying Gensokyo exists in real life, you are also implying that magic is real. How the magic works? No idea! But it IS there! Grimoires could work, specific rituals could work, power by faith could work, artifacts could work, et cetera. If Gensokyo is real, then YOU could be a magician, being there or not!

Another premise is that I don't really understand how the Lunarians work and operate, so I won't be really including them at my scenarios. All I know is that they aren't invading Earth, so that might be an sign that it won't be escalated into conflict.

And also keep in mind, when I say "Youkai" I'm usually referring to all non-human beings from Gensokyo. Could be gods, youkai, menreiki, you name it. It's just a shorter form so I don't have to repeat all names when citing them.

¹There are theories that say that Maribel is Yukari, but I don't know how it goes so I used her as an example either way. My point still stands because of Sanae and/or Sumireko.

 

Different Scenarios:

I think on few different possibilities on what would happen that can have "modifiers" added to it. Gensokyo's nature isn't clear, so all we can do is speculate on what could be truth or not. We can also change the premises of the discussion so we could entertain more of these thoughts, but the scenarios I want to explore are the following:

1) Barrier served to protect Youkai from the outside world, so tearing it down would make them be forgotten and soon extinct;

Spoiler

If that happened, most of Youkai would be extinguished and very few powerful ones would manage to be active. There could be political issues, but humanity would have the upper hand on this case. I don't know on how the Lunarians would react or even if they would still exist after the barrier is gone.

It doesn't make much sense to assume the Lunarians would vanish together with Gensokyo, but technically speaking they are on the same universe. It could be the end of this fantasy, or a shy new beginning for the few people that noticed that magic is real. The new generation of magic casters wouldn't have sufficient power to wreak havoc upon the world, so it would likely never develop into some sort of war.

2) Barrier served to strengthen Youkai. So despite being there or not, the mystical beings could still exist and be at full power even when Gensokyo is but a geographical line;

This scenario needs more details to turn out interesting, so it's better divided between "2.1" and "2.2".

2.1) Same as the section 2, but the Youkai act the same way they do at Gensokyo and keeping the issues at minimum;

Spoiler

This means that youkai would behave and that Touhou would basically turn into modern setting. There would still be incidents, but there would likely be more shrine maidens scattered through Japan (and/or the entire world) to solve them. People would also be allowed to visit former hell and other mystical locations if they are protected by a more powerful being.

What could go very wrong, however, is if many people notice about magic being real and starting using it for wars. Give too much power to a single human and he will show who he really is. So that might escalate into a human-only problem if few youkai/gods don't intervene.

2.2) Again, same as section 2, but the Youkai will rebel and try to expand their domain over fear. Some gods and youkai would be against such violence, so there would be conflict;

Spoiler

There are some benevolent beings that wouldn't want to cause a bloodshed, so there would be a "Human and Youkai vs Youkai" war. Some gods might go against humans on certain topics, so it would be likely a grim scenario. It should be unlikely that human extinction happens because faith is still converted into power for youkai, so if mankind perishes, so will they.

So I think this could end on one of both ways: either Chaos reigns supreme as youkai domain over the powerless remaining humans; or Order is established as the evil youkai are gone and mankind learn how these newfound powers can cause their doom if misused. Could be also a never-ending conflict where neither sides managed to win.

This could turn into a great story if someone is up for the job. Technically all other scenarios could, but I feel like this one has a bit more potential than the previous two. But it has less potential than for what's coming up next...

3) Same thing as scenario 2, but on turbo while on fire!

Spoiler

Try to stay with me for this will sound crazy (because it is). Gensokyo is basically a barrier that protects a place that's hidden on plain sight within Japan. The landmass is there, but people just don't see it nor can access it by normal beings. It contains Japanese folklore creatures and even some that came from other places, like Meiling/Seiga from China and Remilia/Patchouli/Flandre from Europe (they never said which country though).

With that in mind, what if there are other places like Gensokyo scattered through the globe?

Get Celtic Folklore, Slavic, African, Greek mythology, Egyptian, Norse, get stories from all Anglo-Saxon and Latin Americas, check from all the other places I forgot to name (I wanna see Vietnam's stories), and then make a "Gensokyo" for every one of those. Lots of work, right? Right??
So now, shatter these barriers all at once!

What will happen? I know exactly what would happen. A bestseller would happen.
It would be a global-scale conflict between so many different factions that our population would regress to having 9 digits instead of 10 (if we're lucky). We'd have Zeus at Olympus arguing with Yukari and Thor on why he shouldn't make a thunderstorm at Asia. We'd get Hades, Hecatia, and Death herself trying to sort out which souls go where.
It would be such a beautiful mess it would turn into a series that would require an entire lifetime to be completed.

 

These are my thoughts. Lotsa spoilers, I know, but I tried to make it brief and better for the eye of the reader. Thank you for reading!

[Luki_zet]

Quote

Well, we'll start by disagreeing but I have to do this otherwise nothing would make much sense.
You see, youkai and gods always existed even before the barrier was made. Yukari and many other characters are older than Gensokyo. Shrine maidens were the real deal back then, and there are even foreigner characters who have access to magic (such as Patchouli, Remilia, Sakuya, Meiling, etc.). We can't also forget that non-foreigners (but still outsiders since they weren't born in Gensokyo) also had access to magic, like Sanae, Sumireko, and Maribel¹.

Where do I want to get at with the previous paragraph? By implying Gensokyo exists in real life, you are also implying that magic is real. How the magic works? No idea! But it IS there! Grimoires could work, specific rituals could work, power by faith could work, artifacts could work, et cetera. If Gensokyo is real, then YOU could be a magician, being there or not!

Briefly, Gensokyo was created because people started losing faith and were able to racionalize the strange phenomena with science so the fear/belief of yokai was practically non-existent, meaning the yokai started to disapear.
As you said, magic does exists in real life, but you have to BELIEVE in it. 
If you read Hifuu club stories you will see this theme, Maribel Hearn who BELIEVES in the magic is able to enter Gensokyo while Renko Usami who is really smart tries to RATIONALIZE the event with science and is not able to see anything.
I would say that the moral of the story is that life without phantasy loses it´s MAGIC.

It´s all about believing.
 

Edited February 1 by Luki_zet
fixed typo

[Idkism]

29 minutes ago, Crab said:

Where do I want to get at with the previous paragraph? By implying Gensokyo exists in real life, you are also implying that magic is real. How the magic works? No idea! But it IS there! Grimoires could work, specific rituals could work, power by faith could work, artifacts could work, et cetera. If Gensokyo is real, then YOU could be a magician, being there or not!

Well the thing is, there's really nothing to disprove the existence of magic in the Outside World, i'm totally fine with magic being there, it clarifies Sumireko's entire thing with the occult powers, and strengthens Sanae's point

The problem isn't with magic existing, it's with magic not being in modern times, you can point to a lot of things, the belief in science, atheism, or just that some things are forgotten, magic DOES exist in the Outside World, it's just that noone remembers and/or believe in them

let's just take Sumi for example, by believing in the occult and making the Hifuu Sealing club, the faith and belief is there for the magic of the occult to work, leading to the games and the sleep bullshit.

I'm not going to the hifuu CDs, since i have very limited knowledge of them, but what luki said, it's all about Believing.

[Crab]

Just now, Luki_zet said:

I would say that the moral of the story is that life without phantasy loses it´s MAGIC.

It´s all about believing.

Poetic. I loved it.
I'll go outside of the topic for a moment because I agree with that. It's a thing where your perspective of the world affects how you exist within it. So being optimistic or pessimistic don't change how things function, and only how they affect you. Also... we gotta have some spice of life to make things enjoyable, no matter what it is. Even if you look "autistic" while doing so. Being happy is often way more important than what some people think of you.

Now back to the topic, I see your point. It's interesting to note that in this case, your singular perspective matters more than what other people think. So if you genuinely think that magic is real and your neighbor doesn't, you might be able to cast Fireball and he cannot.

Just now, Idkism said:

The problem isn't with magic existing, it's with magic not being in modern times, you can point to a lot of things, the belief in science, atheism, or just that some things are forgotten, magic DOES exist in the Outside World, it's just that noone remembers and/or believe in them

On the scenario proposed of the Great Barrier going down, that would convince some people that magic is real, so that wouldn't really be a problem here. It only sucks for non-believers, heh. It also impacts the total amount of people who are capable of doing so (abandoning your old beliefs isn't always an easy task), and how many would be convinced (or allow themselves to be convinced) that magic is real, thus letting them cast spells or not. I assume it takes more dedication than just simply believing, but if a high-school girl managed to do so, then our Council of Wizards shall rise.

 

And thank you two for the extra input. I really wasn't aware of the Hifuu part of the lore.