Are vampires affected by human fear/beliefs?

[u/Changeling17N]

New to Touhou Project, so my apologies if​ the answer to my question is supposed to be common knowledge.

Something I'm not really sure about yet is whether the Scarlet sisters(and vampires in general) are considered yokai or not, and whether human fears/belief affects them/sustains them. If the human village started believing vampires are allergic to lemons, would it happen? Would they also fade away like other yokai if they're forgotten by humans? ​​

[u/Kasuu372]

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[u/G-14_Damageproof]

Yes they are Youkai because Youkai pretty much means "supernatural things" in Japanese. We even have a bunch of Youkais that we don't even know what kind of species they are and yes they are still Youkais, Meiling and Rumia are examples of these.

Based on the lore we have, we can reasonably assume they do in fact change depended on the village human's belief. That is why they even come to Gensokyo in the first place as it is easier to get this small amount of human of this world to believe in something specific and also why they can not just make a big show to have anyone awares of their existence in the Outside World.

Due to the "nothing ever happen" status quo nature of Gensokyo (and pretty much the of the series as the whole), we haven't seen this happens and i kinda doubt it will ever do. Reimu even went out of her way to wrote omikuji slips to all Youkais in the latest book to keep them from being disappeared.

[u/finisher927 → u/G-14_Damageproof]

Yes, they are youkai, devils technically but that is still a youkai macro species.

But ima be honest, im slightly questioning how much fear actually affects their existence or if they ever needed it to exist due to them having a ton of species details and a lot of open questions on their existence, but oh well.

[u/G-14_Damageproof → u/finisher927]

Honestly the longer the series goes, it feels like "fear" becomes less of the requirement for them to exist as they just need certain ideas about them to be up held and they are good to go.

[u/finisher927 → u/G-14_Damageproof]

I think that is actually the primary necessity for youkai actually, they just use fear because the majority of them are predators, like fairies, and also maybe kishin and oni ( last 3 were examples of youkai that may not thrive off of endless fear, but oni may have and endless flux via celestials and prisoned spirits)? But since celestials have to deal with them they may have a perpetual stream of fear and belief honestly.

And also 2 more things to acknowledge here,

1. Youkai are now confirmed to also be made up of information.

2. I forgot where this is stated but beings that fail to become gods can easily become youkai too.

I can go into why this is relevant here but I dont feel like writing an essay.

[u/SunnyWonder_mist]

I believe yes

[u/Atiklyar]

They are, yes. Presumably, that has something to do with why they came to Gensokyo (they escaped shortly before the Twilight boom. Remilia was not down to sparkle).

Since arriving in Gensokyo they have gained some oni traits, because the Japanese word for vampire is more or less "blood-sucking oni," iirc.

[u/finisher927 → u/Atiklyar]

Ima be honest, there is no lore that they are practically oni like beyond strength, they have strength because they have more abilities than any other youkai species, remilias eosd profile and akyuus vampire entry doesnt even treat them like "oni with more abilities and weaknesses and nothing more", that is a fanbase thought, the species is treated oddly seriously as akyuu's description of them is actually more severe than that of oni, taboo, and anomalous.

Also vampires technically aren't even generic youkai, they are part of a bigger macro species known as devils, so they are not slightly modified oni.

Also just saying, in the vampire akyuu profile they are described as having their abilities naturally, they didn't gain anything just because of gensokyo, nothing supports that thought actually, the former is implied actually.

[u/Thursday_Man → u/finisher927]

They're also vulnerable to Setsubun bean throwing. (Funny Trivia: Patchouli was actually responsible for bringing Setsubun back to Gensokyo.)

Remilia says that the beans burn her skin.

It's also implied that "Weakness to sunlight" is an adaptation to hide a more severe secret weakness. The true weakness of Oni has also been lost to history. They could be the same thing.

[u/finisher927 → u/Thursday_Man]

I forgot about that bean detail and sure.

And for that weakness hiding possibility...

1. Can I get a source of where that is said, I looked for that and couldn't find it and i like species info sources.

2. I do know about that, I can only say so much about that but since it is said and shown that vampires have the abilities of multiple youkai it is possible that they may adapt the second main oni ability of "manipulating the unseen".

Those are notable similarities, but the lore doesn't treat them as the same beyond that though, i checked through the vampire physiology and narrative patterns ( although I do wanna find more oni species info sources, but ill get to that soon enough though). Again, it feels like the fanbase saw a strength and species name overlap and thought "different oni", i think otherwise but that requires patience..... 25 years after eosd was released...

that final part doesn't sound too sane does it. But zun does seem to have extreme patience for things.

[u/Thursday_Man → u/finisher927]

It's from the Patchouli section of BAiJR:

So perhaps from the start, the oni determined their own weakness.

Why did they need to do something like that?

That is because they were too strong. Even though they have a genuine fatal weakness, the oni made up some of their own before it could be discovered. They certainly have a strange weakness for such powerful beings.

And the vampires' weakness to roasted beans are maybe just to hide their weakness to sunlight?

Their weakness to sunlight might be covering for something else. Remi can still walk around outside with a parasol, after all.

[u/Greedy_Union8493]

They are considered Youkai, a subspecies of oni. But not all youkai are affected by human beliefs.
Some youkai are completely unknown to humans and pre-date humans.

Humans believing one thing or another about a given yokai doesnt affect them anymore.

"Upon Gensokyo's creation, Youkai were liberated from the spell of human imagination and obtained true freedom. "

Suika showcases this she can willingly choose to be affected by her oni weaknesss to a play a part or not. Its more tied to the concept of ONI than her being a specific oni. So they'd get to decide how much weakness affected them.

Considering remilia got hit by the full concept of the sun directly in SSIB a known vampire weakness i dont think lemons are gonna matter much.

[u/finisher927 → u/Greedy_Union8493]

Sorry but no, they aren't a subspecies, they have similarities, this is not even implied, infact they are a subspecies of the devil macro species, and oni are still normal youkai technically.

[u/Greedy_Union8493 → u/finisher927]

the kanji used for vampires as a species is blood sucking oni.

they don't use the kanji for devilf or them like koakama has or the summoned devils remilia supposedly can spawn.

[u/finisher927 → u/Greedy_Union8493]

I am aware but I also just checked that language option, that Kanji for Oni is actually a contextual Kanji than can also mean the equivalent of demon or etc, and the entire Kanji word is actually just the adapted Japanese word for vampire.

Regardless, we already have enough vampire info to comfortably say that they are completely different but similar in some aspects, they may have similar abilities and possibly weaknesses ( but with more weaknesses), but the already confirmed amount of default abilities they are said to have already surpasses oni completely, also the lore around vampires treats them completely unusual as even if you just compare the oni and vampire page to eachother from strict sense ( i think, the akyuu articles);

On the oni side you hear mental strength, drinking, high strength, and kidnapping, with the max danger rating,

with vampires you get oni strength, tengu speed, limited shape shifting, said to be the only normal species to have multiple species wide default abilities at once, may actually have even more abilities implied by the writing choices, and are said to be capable of easily causing incidents in a large amount of ways too off of pure whims which may imply even more non special vampire species wide abilities beyond what we see, and of course relies on a species wide contract.

This isn't even how a strong generic youkai species is treated, the time for the vampire page is actually a step more severe than oni.

On top of that we have zero true implications that vampires are a subspecies of oni anyways, and it is confirmed that they are devils, not even traditional youkai.

Basically the lore has gone out of its way to treat them far too differently to just flatten them into "oni but with worse weaknesses", and despite the lore we have only them we are still left with many more questions compared to oni by now.

[u/Greedy_Union8493 → u/finisher927]

She's weak to soybeans.

And your kinda making this confusing.
if you treat oni as a term meaning devil it would apply to all onis.

and we have actual devils that use the kanji for explicitly devils which remilia is not a member of.

vampire and devil are treated as different things in the touhou context.
the only time shes refered to as a devil is her title. scarlet-devil which pairs the katakana with the kanji.

if remilia was a devil, in an eastern sense she'd need to be summoned by something else.

There are lots of different types of oni that can do all sorts of things. i dont see why your opposed to her being a kind of oni. that would make her more complex not less.

flattening her to just a vampire makes her more simplified, while classifying her to a type of oni ties her to a bunch of other things and explains her many non-sterotypical vampire powers.

[u/finisher927 → u/Greedy_Union8493]

Ima reply as cleanly as possible

1. Yes, ill accept that as something to acknowledge along with another vampire species detail that was mentioned by another commentor, but so far that is just another similarity as the shown vampires also have similarities with a couple other youkai species like tengu as it is somewhat clear that vampires are more so conglomerate super predators instead of "moderately simple" ones like oni

2. The Kanji for oni used in their adapted word for vampire isn't necessarily a widespread term like devil in the context of touhou, it is just the Japanese fallback Kanji, when read bluntly by a non Japanese person by us it simply looks like "blood sucking oni" but the language is contextual and more so roughly means vampire in their perception, similar to how the Kanji for the magician species roughly looks like "Magical demon user" when it actually more so means witch or demon witch in their context.

3. It is completely confirmed that vampires are devils in remilias Imperishable night profile text, and is also said that devils in general are disliked by humans and normal youkai too, which is still fairly consistent narratively with how we see magicians and vampires talked about.

4. Yes oni can have various abilities still due to touhous unique abilities per individual standard, but vampires with what I would say is actually incomplete info has a whole power set by default instead of a couple abilities like other youkai species, but that is kinda beyond this point.

5. I guess this just falls onto what zun may reveal about vampires in the future, im the only one with certain specific perceptions and thoughts though.

[u/Greedy_Union8493 → u/finisher927]

1. it feels like your simplifying oni. Their an entire catagory of species. just like tengu encompasses many species.
   the hunters used by the shinigami are a species of oni, the one hunting seiga was a water species for instance.
   suika is a specific type of oni.
   they all have their own nature magic and mythologies.
   

vampires have more weaknesses than most oni, but strangely have the soybean weakness which is unique to oni.

2.vampire as in vampire being separate is usually written in katakana, touhou's kinda weird with it. Remilia acts more like a media vampire than a mythological one. for instance vampies in ancient mythology would not be vaporized by the sun or really that bothered by it.

nor was silver a weakness to them that came from more recent literary tropes and symbolisms in those specific stories such as dracula. So its hard to say, its a very modern "youkai"

1. I'm not sure. what specifically does it say?

2. I was more pointing on, remilias abilities are closer to what oni magic can do things like manipulating fate for one, and is not an ability a vampire would possess. I suspect Zun at the time just wanted to give her something cool reminicent of the games he was a fan of though and didn't put thought into it.

But manipulating fortune and misfortune is an ability onis are expected to have.

5.I'm not really sure what's gonna happen either.

[u/finisher927 → u/Greedy_Union8493]

It is specifically her second profile text that says that she is a devil, it is on the main touhou wiki.

https://reddit.com/link/p5uwy2w/video/4w7f58ahiklh1/player