Do Japanese yokai fit more closely onto demons or fae, as far as 'groups of enemies' goes?
>>97532320Depends on the yokai. Most of them fall into the "ghost" category. Others are "nature spirits" or "demons." Yokai are a wide category of mythological creatures, you can't just put them all in the same basket.
If you had to go at it with a blunt knife, just really make huge nasty cuts to the group to fit them into a box, Ghosts/Undead would probably be the category for Yokai.
>>97532320X-tail Foxes aren't either, they are the normal animal. It was believed foxes don't die of old age and gain power and intelligence boosts at certain ages.
>>97532320Yokai might as well be "monster" for how broad the category is.
>>97532320>Do Japanese yokai fit more closely onto demons or fae, as far as 'groups of enemies' goes?Yokai are so insanely diverse as to make broad categorization pointless. Some of them are Magical Creatures, some of them are Demons/Devils, some of them are Undead or Ghosts, some of them are Fey and Elementals, and some of them could even be considered Humanoid.
>>97532320They fit into the group "yokai". Obviously. Are you stupid?
>>97532320Neither
>Do Japanese youkai fit more closely onto demons or fae, as far as 'groups of enemies' goes?Youkai fall broadly into 5 groups.>Corporeal living things with inherent magical attributes such as oni>Normal life forms that have metamorphosed into magical beings>Ghosts of the dead>Non-corporeal spirits, usually shapeshifters>Lesser godsIf you really wanted to, you could bunch em into 2 or 3 groups with the physical and spiritual types grouped together and ghosts either on their own or with the spirits.None of them are particularly comparable to demons. Oni draw a comparison with demons due to their role in torturing sinners in hell, but it's important to keep in mind they're living things with a physical boy, not some sort of evil spirit. Hell, not all oni are even evil.Fae are a fairly broad group themselves and relatively similar to a lot of youkai, but it's not a 1:1 comparison either. "Boggart" would be even more analogous.
>>97532320Look at the rules of the game you're planning to play.
>>97532320Youkai is a pretty huge umbrella but most of them fit under Fey or Magical Beast.
>>97532320Fairy.
>>97532412Kitsune are yokai and many of their tales fall squarely within the realm of what would in the west be called a faery tale. That they are natural creatures who also happen to have what we call magical/supernatural powers doesn't change things.>gain power and intelligence boosts That's very story dependent. Even young foxes appear in stories able to talk to humans and shapechange such as in Konjaku Monogatari. A young fox in the form of a woman dies after being cajoled into having sex with a married samurai. She is reborn in a buddha realm after he copies the Lotus Sutra several times as an offering as he promised to do upon her request should she, as she told him would happen, die as a consequence of having sex with him. Her fox form is that of an ordinary fox, not white, no extra tails, young, can shape change.>don't die of old age and gain powerOld foxes don't necessarily gain any particular powers, such as in the folk tale of the fox couple so old and infirm that they could no longer hunt and provide food for their starving son. They can talk but even young foxes can do that.
>>97532320What game?
>>97535562ThE oNe YoU'rE pLaYiNgOP is a terminal faggot and he's going to say that.
>>97532320I want to pet that fluffy creature.
>>97535578Why would that offend you? Only someone not playing would take offense to that.
>>975323201000% fae anyone who says otherwise is a fucking retard. Exact same origins, powers, diverse shapes, and non-human thinking patterns as Scotts-Irish fae creatures.
>>97536619Like half of yokai literally are ghosts. They don't map into the same group as fae, not even close
>>97536624>Like half of yokai literally are ghostsAnd? Banshees and dullahans are traditionally fae beings as well.
>>97532320Yokai are Japanese Fae.Both Yokai and Fae would be Demons in Christianity.
>>97536924>Banshees and dullahans are traditionally fae beings as well.Yeah, but they're not actually undead in their original mythologies. "Bean sidhe" (bann shee) literally means "woman fairy".
>>97532320Kind of a cop out, but Yokai is basically just a catch all term for supernatural entities. Spirits, fae, demons, monsters, etc etc etc would all fall under Yokai.
>>97536924And banshees and dullahans are classified as "undead" most of the time, not fae. At most banshees get to be "undead fairy" but I've never seen a game where dullahans aren't "undead" or "undead knight."
>>97535562>>97535793/tg/ - Everything But Games
>>97532320Kitsune are fae
>>97532320Oh look, this thread again.
>>97532320Depends a lot on what kind of yokai we're working with.>OniDemonically corrupted humans. Kinda like vampires but demonic rather than undead. >MononokeUndead. Also has probably the best anti-murder hobo monster, the Gashadokuro. >BakemonoNature spirits, occasionally divine. Kitsune are normally nature aligned but they can be divine agents for powerful gods. >TsukumogamiObject spirits. Technically made by low-key worship of regular objects so they're Divine. >Kami Gods but Tiny! Shrines are literally houses for them. Definitely divine.
>>97536619>Exact same originsFae are degenerate gods from the land of the dead. Most youkai are neither. Literally what the fuck are you talking about?>powersI'm pretty sure the only unifying power among youkai is invisibility and not all fae can turn invisible>diverse shapesThat's not a point of similarity>non-human thinking patternsI'm sure there are some youkai that have non-human thinking patterns, but that's not particularly a defining feature of the group, and some have explicitly human thinking patterns.>>97536924>Banshees and dullahans are traditionally fae beings as wellDullahans aren't ghosts. Not all banshees are either. It's more of a job description.>>97536944Bean-nighe are ghost-type banshees.>>97537932>Demonically corrupted humansWat?
Putting "yokai" into a category is nonsense because "yokai" means a fuckton of mythological creatures that only share the fact that they're Japanese.Nobody groups up satyrs and tritons and sirens in the same category all because they're Greek.
>>97538179>Nobody groups up satyrs and tritons and sirens in the same category all because they're GreekActually all 3 of those are lesser nature deities. Both in origin and nature they're very similar. They aren't much more different than Nereids and Oreads and those are basically the same thing. Horrible example.
>>97532320They're all demons. Source: Shin Megami Tensei.
>>97538179Yeah, the closest D&D equivalent term to "youkai" is probably "monster"
>>97539732>In the context of the Megami Tensei franchise, Demon is used to refer to any entity that poses a potential threat to mankind.
>>97535578Trail of Cthulhu?I mean... I had this idea of having nipponese investigations in which it ends up that the (say) Tengus happen to actually have been a garbled up tale about the mi-gos, but...>>97537932IIRC from my weeb studies>OniDemons, even if they technically start up as batshit evil dead humans. Work in hell and all that jazz. They very rarely are of the "become an oni while human was alive" variety.>Mononoke and bakemonoBoth are more akin to a descriptor than a "species". Bakemono is something on the lines of "changed thing" (like in Oi no bakemono), mononoke of "apparition/specter", of the ghost type. But yes, it is not set in stone in every instance, no more than "goblin" is in english.>TsukumogamiMost are simply "old object being used for a century or so becomes alive", without an human direct intervention. I don't think there really is a western equivalent: we certainly have imbued objects of every kind but I can't think of a close similarity, there are sparse cases of objects aquiring mana (for a lack of better word) and/or powers but they don't work like those.>Kami Gods. Duh.Other famous cases>Kitsune POSSIBLY a case for using fae, but not really connected to the otherworld/unknowable like english fae. Would think more like some greek examples, but Kitsune actually start as mundane foxes and there is not a hard distinction. Growing older, they become (more and more) magical, and some have no masters (yako) and other are Inari servants with their hierarcy (zenko). And they end up pretty badass in both cases.Tanuki are similar, if mostly without the growing old thing,>TenguA proper "race" like centaurs, if batshit powerful (and connected to shugendo) and pretty evil at times. Probably the most western-like example.>KappaInterestingly, they don't have fixed powers execpt for being aquatic. Still, they know secrets and magic.
>>97540995>Interestingly, they don't have fixed powers execpt for being aquaticThey have a dish on their head containing water and weaken if it spills outTheir arms are connected inside their body, so they can extend one by pulling in the other.They can pull your soul(?) out through your anus, and possibly use these soul-beads as a resourceThey know how to make a potent healing salve
>>97540354Youkai = monster (neutral)Bakemono = monster (derogatory)
>>97538469Eh, not really.Satyrs were not worshipped, even if they were linked heavily with Dyonisus and were part of satyr plays. And they were not called gods,,, in greek. FAUNS were, but those are latin (at least before they mixed up). For added complexity, the romans did call satyrs gods, but even if they take them as thinking of OG satyrs, I don't think they ever worshipeed them either. Nymphaes on other hand were. Which is kinda a big deal, because the satyrs were sometimes described as their husbands.Close example: how angels are heavily depicted but practically not worshipped in catholicism (yes, I know of the big three execption, but you get the idea).Tritons would be similar (servants to the marine gods/in their company), and not worshipped or called gods. BUT OG Triton was a proper if minor god. The kind of god which you find in some stories and Hesiod, but still a god.>sirensProperly worshipped, if sparsely. Tought to be a fixed number, most times. Called goodesses... I think. Basically similar to nymphaes but cooler.So hardly "nature deities". Actually I'm not even sure if any of those could be called "natural" like nymphaes, even if we use this VERY modern concept.Origin-wise, the first two are just a race that happens to exist, the sirens have a proper divine genealogy.Yes, you did trigger my classical autism. Bear with me.>>97541115Meant "magical powers". I supposed the shirikodama is the closest they got, funnily enough, but when it's described it's more like they like human flesh and that supposedly has more concentrated magical energy or something.
>>97532320I just realized that like half of yokai at least are hardly apt to be used as an enemy, even in something like dnd.
>>97532320Yokai is basically just "Japanese supernatural beings." So some of them are more "fae" like Kitsunes and two tailed cats. Others are more Demon like with Oni and Tengu then you have all the different ghosts and spirits. So it's more of just a catch-all term.
>>97532320>Do Japanese yokai fit more closely onto demons or fae, as far as 'groups of enemies' goes?It depends on which specific Yokai you're talking about. Some are closer to demons (like most Japanese ghosts) while the Kitsune you're posting is more fae.
>>97532320Fae, in the sense of “ghostly beings who operate under obscure rules that must be respected and/or gamed in order to survive encounters eith them”
>>97541216>Which is kinda a big deal, because the satyrs were sometimes described as their husbands.I would say being the male counterpart to a host of gods makes you a god even if you aren't worshipped. Also they were worshipped to some degree in their association with Pan.>Origin-wise, the first two are just a race that happens to existThe earliest accounts have satyrs sibling to some of the hosts of nymphs.As for tritons. I misread it as Triton who was decisively a nature god, being a god of the sea. I actually don't know any specific mythology around Greek mermen, let alone any that addresses their origin or nature.
>>97546480They didn't call them as such.Care for a quote about the worshipping?
>>97532320Under the umbrella of supernatural creatures are four broad categories, kami, oni, ryu, and yokai.Kami means spirit. Anything with the suffix of -kami or -gami falls under this title. The greatest kami are the gods.Oni are demons. In traditional Japanese beliefs, these are specific supernatural creature. Sometimes this gets translated into English as ogre.Ryu are the East Asian dragons. Yokai is a catchall term for all other supernatural creatures and sometimes gets used as a umbrella term for all supernatural creatures. Some creatures like tengu can probably be most comparable to elves. Mononoke are literal constructs created bye the spells of an angry god. Kappa could be best described as a gobliniod. you would have to go through them one by one to sort them out.
>>97536991
>>97548048"I could one day maybe perhaps put yokai in a game if I feel like it" doesn't make the entirety of all yokai related to games, especially since nobody is actually talking about how they would use them in a game.In short, your image doesn't apply, which you'd know if you weren't terminally retarded.
>>97532320It depends in way to make any answer completely meaningless unless we are individually catagorizing each yokai. Next completely dumb question that is waste of a thread please!
I used yokai in Oriental Adventures. One of the player races was hengeyokai. They're not traditional yokai, in fact henge is a separate class of entity. But there were kappa and tengu and oni and kitsune.I used the ones listed as occasional monsters. Steered clear of the oni for the most part since I didn't want to become like the OA version of orcs. Never used any bake-danuki. Nowadays were I go to back I might make those potential allies since there are folk stories about them befriending humans.Kitsune might be far too powerful or far too mundane. They can be rather minor things but a lot of literature says that even while you could drive them out of where they are living, even if living as human, the powerful ones could rip the face off anyone. In a world where there are literal magic users running around the shape changing trickster nature of the kitsune pales in comparison and would be too easy to discover and the position they hold in the game world would be very different to the role they play in literature.>>97548159Now someone's actually talked how they did and how they would use yokai in a game. Don't see how that makes that pic any more pertinent.
>>97532320What system?
>>97548048Ahhh, mad because nogames
>>97548048>Coping so hard, he had to make a brownoid parody of people telling him to kill himselfThis is beyond pathetic.You should shoot yourself for real
>>97548904The most ironic part is he's more than likely brown himself.
>>97532320Depends on the yokai. "Yokai" is like asking what väsen falls under in Nordic/Germanic mythology. It's a very broad concept that is generally applicable to many different expressions of the supernatural.If you want to do term-based categories, I suggest approaching it from a multiple-options point of view. A thing can be a [yokai] *and* a [demon] or a [yokai] *and* [ethereal] *and* [undead], etc.
>>97532320All pagan spirits are demons.
>>97532320Yokels are just country bumpkins, dipshit. Doesn't matter what country they come from
>>97547860>Some creatures like tengu can probably be most comparable to elvesOne origin story for tengu is a group of powerful monks who screwed up at reaching enlightenment.So in a D&D setting I'd outright declare that tengu *are* elves, with the population of not-Japan becoming deformed after a failed atempt at ascending to godhood. Dai tengu were once grey elves, karasu tengu were high elves, shiba tengu were aquatic elves, guhin were wild elves, etc.In Pathfinder they'd all have at least Mythic Rank 1, and change from crow-based to long-nose as their rank increases.
>>97532320In my setting, yokai and fae are both words that refer to the same broad groups of entities. The current antagonist is based on the Wild Hunt and the Night Parade.
>>97547860>Kami means spirit. Anything with the suffix of -kami or -gami falls under this title. The greatest kami are the gods.Clerics and paladins are mostly associated with the Buddhist pantheon though; characters associated with Shinto gods are more like druids and binders.I'd say basically anything with the Fey or Outsider type qualifies as a kami. The former more kunitsukami and the latter more amatsukami.Though in some sources kodama are considered their own thing.
>>97547860>Oni are demons.Oni are yokai.Oni is an old word that was more or less synonymous with how yokai is used today. It was even more broad than today, such as how today kami are not typically considered yokai but kami could be called oni in the past, and ghosts were called oni.>Kami means spirit.That is a superficial and incomplete equivalence.>Ryu are the East Asian dragons. Ryu are yokai. They are also henge.>Yokai is a catchall term for all other supernatural creaturesOr maybe it isn't. A lot of people consider yurei to be yokai, a lot don't. Yokai wasn't much used in the past they used>Mononokewhich was largely synonymous with how yokai is now used. Far from being constructs created the spells of an angry god it was the mysterious, supernatural forces that caused diseases and then came to be vengeful ghosts or spirits.Yokai is ancient word that only attained its currency and modern meaning in 1891 when Yokaigaku (yokai-ologogy, or monster-ology) was published and belief in monsters was ridiculed by its author as a silly superstition at odds with Japan's emergence as a modern, scientific, rational nation. It was shortly after that that scholars started to distinguish yurei and yokai.You're applying some very Western concepts to words that have existed for more than a thousand years with evolving meanings and usages over that time. Even native Japanese can't agree on what they mean though most would agree to query your claims as being in line with ancient or modern meanings.
>>97547860>Kami means spiritKami means god>>97553111>Yokai is ancient word that only attained its currency and modern meaning in 1891Honestly Japanese mythology is such an absolute clusterfuck of regional variations and shifting etymologies, I wouldn't recommend trying to dissect what words meant instead of what words mean unless you are literally a professional folklorist or etymologist.Modern usages are significantly more concrete than they ever used to be and you won't come to any useful meanings if you try to be faithful to historical folklore.Also, the modern period for Japanese folklore begins in 1776 with the Gazu Hyakki Yagyou the mass production of which helped to start giving Japanese ghosts and ghouls national identities instead of deeply regional ones, effectively beginning the process of canonization.
>>97532320They're basically just Japanese fairies.>>97537752Show 5 examples.
>>97553834>>Kami means spirit>Kami means godKami means something closer to the classical Greek "Daemon." Kami, Fae and Daemon cover everything from the smallest household spirit to the highest, capital "G," Gods.
>>97557653Fae aren't gods. They're a corruption of gods adapted to monotheistic cultures.Likewise daemons were explicitly not considered gods in traditional Greek mythology where they barely appear. Conflation between the two came in the Classical period where the term came to mean many different things in many different contexts thanks largely to philosophers, not poets or priests.
I have to admit that I'm mesmerized by how anons are seemingly so sure of their categorizations.
>>97540354I think there was a japanese game that introduced foreign yokai which included monsters like Frankenstein's.
>>97558023Not all kami are worshiped as gods shinto is an animist religion which means everything has a kami. The Japanese equivalent of "there are people starving in Africa" to get children to eat their food is "there are 7 kami in each grain of rice."
>>97559097>Not all kami are worshiped as godsWorship isn't what defines a god. And yeah, there's an uncountable number of gods in Shintoism. They're all still gods. Literally every object and concept has at least one god and old enough things turn into gods. Basically the only shit that doesn't have an inherent deity associated with it is non-conceptual immaterial shit like digital information. There are no gods of the internet.
>>97559450>Basically the only shit that doesn't have an inherent deity associated with it is non-conceptual immaterial shit like digital information. There are no gods of the internet.This is the premise of a few Digimon videogames, e.g. Digimon Survive has a pocket dimension of "kemonogami" created and sustained by belief; in the ending they're saved when they go viral on the internet and become gradually more and more composed of digital informationOr weirder stuff like that story where Digimon had to fight a malevolent deity spawned from Twitter groupthink
>>97532336The only correct answer
