>>49320790
I’m very glad to see this thread. I was actually in the middle of writing fanfiction about Jo’on’s time at the Myouren Temple, and I’m considering whether it’s possible for her to really have lasting personal change, as a god of pestilence. I know that the nature of youkai is to some extent fixed, and so the work of the Myouren temple is somewhat an exercise in futility. But could it be possible for such a being to change fundamentally without depending on humans to *observe* that change and speak it into being, so to speak?
I know that Shou was able to change her identity, but that was only because tigers had been forgotten in Japan for so long and so it was easy for her to change as she was relaxed from the “zeitgeist”, if that makes sense. But could it also happen in more mundane circumstances? I think in the end I’ll have to stick to the canon of Jo’on losing interest in the luster of jewels, hiding out in human society but only stealing from those with excess so she wouldn’t be disadvantaging the poor. But I expect such a change would be painful, especially for a “being” (god, youkai, whatever) whose identity is already pretty crystallized in the minds of the humans in Gensokyo.