here's an analysis on ariya and godhood that i originally posted on twitter. technically this is a crosspost but there's more thoughts interspersed in this one. helps that this site lets me yap as much as i want in one post.
anyways, cooking up some bullshiiiiiit under the cut.
the more powerful gods in touhou (ex. okina, kanako, keiki), no matter how benevolent they or their actions are, always seem to have an aspect of their personality that's self aggrandizing. they Know their place, their power, though their existence is fulled by humans via faith, it's like nature to them to be Above more lowly creatures, human or youkai. they'll grandstand displays of power and act very assuredly of themselves, and are quite arrogant. their dialogues in their respective games is very indicative of this.
ariya, too, as a god of permanence, a representation of something so powerful that the already all powerful lunarians themselves covet it, displays this selfsame awareness of her sheer power, boasting and all.
but with the context of the fw story, the grandstanding, the boasting, the self importance. it all feels so… forced? hollow? i can't explain it well, but i'll try. for comparison, i'll use keiki because i've been playing alot of wbawc and it's fresh in me head.
i will write with the assumption that you know these games' plots already. i'm too impatient to recap Everythang.
the dialogue and music for keiki really enforces the idea of her and her godhood. a saviour of the human spirits, but still a powerful god that rules above them and a powerful god that is Very Capable of wrecking your shit up fuckeddddd. everything leading up to it enforces that power, even. keiki has soldiers, has an army. even a leader for said army whose little clay fuckers are the bane of my 1cc attempt nightmares but i digress. keiki displays her powers to stop the protagonist and her little spiritual furry friend, and to show everyone watching what happens if you get in her way. very "fuck around and find out" sorta deal.
but with ariya and the plot of fw, it's different. all the leadup to her is basically just in stage 6 (because let's be fuckin real all of stage 5 is a leadup that ends in a sucker punch and your 1cc ruined from toyohime). stage 6 itself starts off in an empty cavern with a stone road and rib-like stalagmites poking from the ground here and there. what trumpets are present in the music, feels like the steps of someone who marches forward not for any sense of pride, but because it's their ever tired duty to do so, to do what must be done. your only enemies start off with spirits, then transition with pyramid jimbos and thats it. the only addition to the scenery at the end is a torii gate with what's probably just ariya's symbol on it, and a rib/spinelike thing taking place of a shimenawa. coupled with the music, it's so bleak. melancholic and empty and so, so tired. like all you're seeing is what once was. even as the battle with ariya starts, the hollow melancholy persists with her theme, the extended, trumpetlike notes after the first few piano chords sounding like the wailing of a tired heart. even the last verse that ends with the story of eastern wonderland leitmotif, where in other stage 6 boss themes that final verse is where the music is at its most intense or triumphant, the invoked emotion i feel is just a quiet, resolute anger, burning for thousands and thousands of years. but this anger isn't aimed at you.
i'd also like to point out the name of her theme, which in the eng patch i play with, is translated as "Because I'm Used to Being the Last One Left ~ Stone Goddess". it holds such a pessimistic, or perhaps cynical "it is what it is" tone, compared to what keiki's theme is named.
i'll get to my point.
ariya is a goddess that was sealed at the bottom of a pyramid where the environment is nothing but rocks and stone and a long forgotten shrine to her which sees no worshippers. the only thing that could conceivably be thought of as "alive" that far down there is her (but is that even right? zun comments on her track that she is neither able to die nor live. i suppose she just "is") . and the only thing in centuries that isn't a lunarian to appear before her that would be "below" her, is marisa/reimu.
so who and what is this grandstanding for? it can't just be for the protags. displays of power from previous incidents always had many witnesses (at least from what i remember).
the more witnesses, the more their power is ingrained in the hearts and minds of many, and thus they persist in many, as something to be awed, to be feared, to be believed in. you could argue that ariya timelooping gensokyo is an influence she used to ingrain herself in the minds of its inhabitants, but as various endings and lotus eaters show, the only people that were aware that it was a timeloop was just reimu and marisa.
keiki had an entire hell of animal and human spirts and probably some beast youkai too to bear witness to her power. ariya's only witness was reimu or marisa. and she was content with it. why?
my bet on why is because of ariya's sole true motivation: saving yuiman. compared to other gods, other incidents, this is something that is both selfish as befitting of a god, and selfless, as all that would be gained in the end, is yuiman's freedom. ariya's freedom too, would be gained, and she would get to stick it to the lunarians that the god whose powers they covet and used was beaten by an existence they deem impure, but this seems to her like just a bunch of extra little perks in accomplishing her goal.
the protagonists are a means to a very selflessly selfish desire. so that they will play the role of hero, she causes the incident to draw the incident solvers to her, creates the jimbo pyramids to guide them to her. when they ultimately face her, she recalls and re-embodies a god acting as a god should, but it is an act that is dug from old memories, threats and boasts that ring hollow. but in a fight, she does duel at full power, because holding back would signal that there is something Very wrong. thinking about it, in this way, she is very like her fellow gods. testing the protagonist's strength to see if they are "worthy" of beating her. she wants her defeat but won't just give it to them on a silver platter, she is a god after all.
still though, she gambles power that can easily overwhelm and probably gravely wound, if not outright kill a human, and places her bets on the protags. imprinting her existence into the masses, a public announcement of "i am here, and i am a god, cower before my might" means absolutely nothing to her.
because despite it, despite all that power, none of that will save yuiman. only by putting her faith on an extraordinary human that her jailers deem an existence to be rejected in their perfect, unchanging paradise, will she be saved.
