Voidtreckers Application
Player Information
Name: Masquerade, but you can call me Masq if you’d like.
Age: 19
Contact details: Masquerade#0536 on Discord
Other characters: N/A
Character Information
Name: Hata no Kokoro
Canon: Touhou Project
Canon Point: Post-Touhou 15.5, Antimony of Common Flowers
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OU
Age: ~1300 years, however, she has only recently become sentient.
World Information: Kokoro hails from a world by the name of Gensokyo (literally “Land of Illusions” or “Land of Fantasy”), which can essentially be thought of as its own pocket dimension in which primarily creatures from Japanese legends and folklore inhabit, and it closely resembles what one would imagine feudal japan may look like. However, Gensokyo’s nature is that of a “land of that which is forgotten”, some more “modern” items that have fallen out of style for a long time have managed to turn up there as well. There’s a lot to cover here, so here’s a wiki link for more in depth information! (https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Gensokyo)
Personal History: Kokoro is a Menreiki, a type of Tsukumogami composed of Gigaku masks. Within the Touhou Project canon, Menreiki typically refer to the collective tsukumogami of a mask, or in Kokoro’s case, a set of them. As Kokoro herself is the sole known example of a Menreiki within her canon, everything we know about them comes from what she herself has shown or explained.
The 66 masks that Kokoro were born from were created by Toyosatomi no Miko (formally Prince Shōtoku). According to legend, Hata no Kawakatsu was given these masks when the country was in turmoil, and was ordered to perform 66 plays following Shinto and Buddist traditions. These plays became the first Kagura, from which Sarugaku was later derived!
Although the exact time Kokoro’s sentience has awakened is unknown, it is assumed to have been fairly recently, as the events of Hopeless Masquerade involve her developing a true sense of self, independent from her individual masks.
The events of Hopeless Masquerade center around Hata no Kokoro losing her mask of hope. This caused her to lose the ability to feel hope entirely, and the emotions in her remaining masks went berserk, draining hope from the human village. In turn, this caused a majority of the humans within Gensokyo (as few reside outside the village) to latch onto religious leaders as a source of hope. During the nights within the human village, Kokoro searched in vain for her lost mask of hope, where various people such as Reimu Hakurei, Byakuren Hijiri, and Toyosatomi no Miko herself came to stop her leeching the hope from the humans within the village. They all try various ways to stop Kokoro’s hopelessness, such as Byakuren teaching her Buddhism to control her own emotions and Miko making a replacement mask of hope, but none of them fully worked. Eventually, a bake-danuki named Mamizou Futatsuiwa noticed the contradictory actions Kokoro was taking, and stepped in herself to offer her own advice. Mamizou said Kokoro should stop relying on her own masks and discover her own true emotions through meeting (and eventually, fighting) several different people. In the process of doing so, she later finds her own anger at the religious leaders for taking advantage of the situation she caused, and manipulating the emotions of the humans for their own gain. Kokoro manages to defeat Reimu, Miko, and Byakuren, putting an end to the Hopeless Masquerade incident for good. Sometime afterwards, she’s invited to the Hakurei Shrine to perform Kagura as an offering for the gods.
In terms of canon continuity, she’s shown sometime after the ending of Hopeless Masquerade within the doujin Forbidden Scrollery, performing Noh at the Hakurei Shrine in an attempt to stabilize her emotions, hiding her identity as a youkai (as to not scare off any of the visiting humans). While she was popular at first, audiences were unable to understand her “play” (which turned out to be based on illustrations from an old tengu parody). Mamizou eventually took notice of this, and approached Kokoro to help her write Shinkirou. This was a play based on the events of the religious war (AKA, the events of Hopeless Masquerade), combining traditional Noh performance with modern comedic dialogue. To this day, it remains an extremely popular play for Kokoro’s exaggerated portrayals of the fighters in the “holy war”.
Kokoro appears again within Urban Legend in Limbo. Around this time, an incident had occurred where urban legends had materialized within Gensokyo, and were weaponized by a small number of its residents. One of these was Kokoro, who imitated the Kuchisake-onna. Those she meets try to repel her with the word “pomade”, but it has no effect as she gloats that she is the "new and improved Kuchisake-onna" and attacks them. Nitori Kawashiro, one of the people she encounters, reminds her she is a Menreiki, and it’s soon after this Kokoro realizes one of her masks is damaged. Opting to get Miko to repair her damaged mask, she arrives at the Hall of Dreams' Great Mausoleum, where Miko typically resides, only for her servant Mononobe no Futo to tell her she was away at the Hakurei shrine on some important business. Its soon after this Futo takes notice of the occult balls within Kokoro’s possession, thinking Miko has already collected them all, and attempts to defeat Kokoro to give the balls to Miko. Futo fails, with Kokoro asking her if she is pretty before running off to find Miko once again. Upon discovering her at the shrine, she attempts to dismiss Kokoro, saying she was busy at the time and could not repair her mask right now. Miko then notices the occult balls Kokoro possesses and tries to defeat her for them, but fails. After this, Kokoro returns to the human village to practice her Kuchisake-onna routine. Although confoundingly, she learns that the Kuchisake-onna attacks her victims regardless of whether they say they’re pretty or not, and decides to skip the question in her next acts entirely and attack her victim right away.
Kokoro’s most recent appearance is within Antinomy of Common Flowers. There is not much to note here as her most significant role was within a side story, however, she was investigating an incident with Nitori Kawashiro dubbed “Perfect Possession”. In Nitori’s own words, “It’s like normal possession, but you replace the body along with the spirit.” It was later revealed that when someone is perfectly possessed, their partner remains in the dream world, and pushes their other partner’s dream self into the outside world. Kokoro herself was shown to be worried about the consequences this could bring, but Nitori insisted they continue with their plan. With Kokoro’s help reading the emotions of others, Nitori manages to reverse engineer perfect possession and make it accessible to more people, worsening the side effects of forcing peoples dream selves into the real world.
Personality: Kokoro possesses a quiet, child-like personality, and to those unfamiliar with youkai, Kokoro may appear to be emotionless, as she often can be seen with an expression likened to a poker face. However, this could not be further from the truth, as Kokoro is one of the most emotional people you could ever expect to meet; she is one to act and speak purely from how she feels at the time, rather than take a step back and think about her next move. Kokoro has been shown to be quite impulsive, jumping without any hesitation into new situations she finds interesting. Although this can seem reckless (and to an extent, it very much is), she often does this in an attempt to understand and explore her own emotions in greater detail. Understanding her self identity is important to her, and staying true to her true self is something she seems to value highly.
As a newborn youkai, she has a very naïve understanding of the world, and is prone to take much of the information presented to her at face value. She lacks a lot of traditional “street smarts” one might be expected to have, so head-to-head social interactions may be somewhat of a struggle to her sometimes.
Key themes: Self-discovery, Independence.
Main Motivation: Discovering and staying true to her true self.
Skills: Hata no Kokoro possesses many qualities common to residents of Gensokyo. Including but not limited to the ability to fly, and is shown to be skilled in the art of Danmaku, which is treated as somewhat of a supernatural martial art by the inhabitants of Gensokyo. It can typically be generalized as magical blasts and lasers and the like, however many practitioners develop techniques unique to themselves, themed around their own unique abilities. Under the spell card rules, Danmaku duels are not to the death (although they can be lethal), but are instead ritualized and aestheticized sparring matches with agreed upon conditions for winning and losing. This is further emphasized by the many beautiful patterns of useless bullets. To paraphrase; “If enemies really wanted to kill the player, a 10:1 ratio of bullets wouldn't be necessary.”
However, Kokoro has a unique ability of her own, which is the ability to manipulate emotions. Each of her 66 masks embodies a powerful emotion, and these masks will impress their emotion on its holder and those around them. The effects of the masks are under her full control as long as they are not separated from the others. Although, she has only been seen using around 12 of them, and we only know the specific emotions of 8.
Ko-omote: Joy
Hannya: Anger
Uba: Pathos, melancholy
Fuku no Kami: Humor, laughter
Hyottoko: Cheerful
Monkey: Confusion, awkwardness
Raiden: Surprise
Fox: Determination, seriousness
Item: A set of 3 of her Gingku masks; "Fox", "Hannaya", "Hyottoko"
She also has 5 more within hammerspace; "Uba", "Fuku no Kami", "Ko-omote", "Monkey", and "Raiden".
Samples: (https://voidtreckerooc.dreamwidth.org/68217.html?thread=9969529#cmt9969529)
(https://voidtreckerooc.dreamwidth.org/68217.html?thread=9975417#cmt9975417)
(https://voidtreckerooc.dreamwidth.org/87096.html?thread=11473208#cmt11473208)
Notes: Wiki link for Kokoro, in case I missed anything.
(https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Hata_no_Kokoro)