jasokun said: remi can't control reimu's fate of love? some power that is...zun really needs to explain what each touhou's power can do properly.
Apparently you didnt read enough on Remilia's power. ZUN already gave a bunch of info on it. One the biggest things she can't do is manipulate anything "Set in stone". She is a manipulator of Fate, shes not the almight controller. Whatever the higher powers that be decide, Remi cant alter that. She also cant change something thats "Impossible".
She cant just "Will" Meirin to kill Yukari for instance. Thats impossible and we should all know that. She cant fate for Chen to kill Mokou and such.
gs68 said: So what can she manipulate, then? I'm really confused as to what she's capable of, since you didn't provide any examples of what she can do.
Okay, allow me to take a crack at this. Her ability, when being technical, would read as something akin to "the ability to the extent of the manipulation of fate not set in stone." Expounding upon this, 'Fate' in the classical sense is usually considered to be the overarching force that drives and compels all life and nature. However, seeing as her ability is restricteed to 'fate not set in stone', my guess would be that it allows her control of what the Arcanum classifies as 'lesser fate', in simpler terms... 'Luck'. In fact, according to most of my research, mostly all manner of Magical Arcana that I have read/had access to, what we call 'luck' is in fact a misnomeaner for what the anchients called 'fate' and that 'luck' in and of itself is subservant to 'fate. To further envelop upon this, one would need to look at what in fact is 'luck' and what is 'lesser fate' of itself. Well, to start with, from what I can tell 'Luck' is 'good fortune' when it mainly has to deal with the individual, such as randomly finding a dropped coin (that was not the persons in the first place, although in situations this can apply). It is 'luck' that the individual found the coin, but it is not 'luck' that caused the coin to be dropped in the first place. It is also 'Luck' when one so happens to be dealt a winning hand in Poker (without needing to draw) that is normally considered impossible, such as a Royal Flush of Spades (or Five of a Kind), likewise it is also luck that caused one to trip over a pebble right before a bullet goes wizzing by just where one's head had just been... but these are both merely other examples of 'dealing with the individual'. 'Lesser Fate', on the other hand' is much more wide spread and universal, dealing not with just the individual but spanning the earth (and Moon, etc) and its (their) inhabitants. If it takes two or more people just so happening to do the right thing in order to make it happen, that is 'Fate', although in a much grander sense if it so much as takes one person that is not oneself just so happening to do exactly the right thing in order to make it happen when one doesn't actually have any direct means of manipulating that person... that to is 'Fate.' Of course, 'Fate' is not merely limited to persons as is also applies to objects and phenomena both natural and un-natural as well, like say if it always just so happens to be raining when Flandre just so happens to want to go outside, although this is a bit of an extreme example as that would take constant awareness of Flandre's whimsy on Remilia's part. ...That was a metaphorical ear full, so let me sum it up: the elements of 'Coincidence', the Unacountable/Unforseeable/Unpredictable, and 'Luck' make up the 'Lesser Fate'. "Unacountable/Unforseeable/Unpredicable" being the literal interpetation of what would otherwise be 'Random Events'... but that's still all it means regardless of the fancy words one uses, the movement is now for actually changing that segment to "the Random", a move I agree with. If you were curious, 'Greater Fate' would be, in a word, 'Destiny', which includes the feared 'Death' among other things, but I digress. So, Remilia's ability can be taken as 'the ability to manipulate all manner of coincidence, the random, and luck so long as the action does not disrupt the course of destiny'... still kinda out there though, don't you think? It's like Tewi's ability on steroids and more widespread... but of course, one can assume the law of equivilant exchange is still in effect (...yes, that's there in Magic too), so there'd have to be some kind of trade-off when the ability is used in grander scale, but this has not been addressed in Touhou even with more fearsome abilities (e.g. Yuyuko). Personally, I like to think of it as if it drains her life energy to manipulate fate, which she of course restores via human blood (commonly held as a human's life energy), and that she could hypothetically affect Destiny (Greater Fate) but doing so would kill her. Certanly not worth making the "unyu"s, "mukyu"s, "myon"s, "ayaya"s or "da ze"s disappear...
In closing, of course, I must be honest with you... all of the above is merely my personal opinion made solely from my own vantage point, others could see things a lot differently and ore clearly than I from where they sit, but that's the way it is with headcanon. Did I cover it?
... -reveiws text- ... ...I feel like I just wrote a doctorial thesis on a Touhou girl's special ability (sans reference section). (Well, at 852 (not counting the quote) the word count is nowhere near enough, but if I covered every one of the girls I could easily fill a book...)
grand_zero said: Okay, allow me to take a crack at this. ....
So, if I'm understanding you correctly, Remilia's ability works like this: One's destiny (higher-order Fate, whatever) includes death, and Remilia can't "manipulate fate" to prevent death. However, she can manipulate fate to allow one to live longer - say the individual suffers a heart attack on day x, but fate-manipulation ensured that a doctor was nearby and able to prevent the sufferer from dying - so long as the person's specific destiny did not enforce a specific manner of death on a specific date. And the more frequent/involved the manipulation is invoked, the more difficult it becomes - so that if someone was 'supposed' to die on day x (but not a 'set in stone' destiny), and Remilia manipulated that away, it would get increasingly more difficult to prevent death on days x+1, x+2, and so forth.
Is that right (or close enough for government work)?
Remi manipulates probability in her favor. It doesn't promise that something will happen and it can't affect something statistically impossible. Anything between is fair game.
SilverBlade said: ... Is that right (or close enough for government work)?
Yes, exactly.
The_Shadow said: ...
This is the short unspecific way of saying it, yes. Although a lot of things statistically 'impossible' according to the law of probability regulary occur.
Explosion said: They can manipulate whatever the plot needs them too.
Only in Fanon, but that's what all of this is, so... Limits exist so that logic may not be broken, because that is how we Humans understand things. That being said, Common Sense still applies in Gensokyo (just not for Sanae), Logic still rules paramount, as both accept all evidence of the moment and place. What matters it one learn the Logic of the place that they are, and for Gensokyo, all we have to go by is pretty shallow in most regards. One of the reasons why Touhou is such a drawing atmosphere, the Fans create whatever they want and run with it. But even then, if Doujin-ka go and @*$-pull their readers we all know how that turns out, not so well unless they themselves have some kind of plot-armor going. Therefore, they have to make the readers accept and believe their story, so the character's abilities are applied to the grasp of Logic. The better authors do their best to make their readers think "Oh, I'd never thought of it that way before. That could work!", merely as their way of staying fresh, that's how creators work. ...Sorry, I know too many [small time] authors struggling to get by and I myself am a closed-cirle doujin-ka, so...
Eh? Marisa is missing?Strange...she was around just a little while ago.Maybe she got drunk and wandered off somewhere?Forget about Marisa and drink with me, Reimu!Ah!Reimu, where are you going!?Ch.31 - If You're Not ThereVwassshWell, Marisa is kind of special to her, so...you know.DunnnnEhhh? What do you mean? No fair!!Milady, you manipulate fate. What nonsense are you speaking of to cry "unfair"?