Shenanigans in a Magical Forest

Create.swf Adventures #1: Shenanigans in a Magical Forest is an adventure created by KimikoMuffin, set in the Touhou Project universe (with "alternate-reality fic" modifiers from a webcomic Muffin created). It started out as a relatively simple collect-the-macguffins story, but it soon spiralled into a deconstruction of the MSPAFA format itself: the reader-submitted commands are revealed to be in the form of "spirits" influencing their actions, and some of the characters have reacted to this with hostility. 
==Plot==
The setting is Gensōkyō, a sealed-away realm existing alongside the modern world, filled with magic, youkai (non-human magical beings, such as humanoid monsters or ghosts or fairies), and other supernatural entities, all hidden away from contemporary Japan by the Hakurei Border, and tended by the miko (shrine maiden) of the Shrine. The story opens with the arrival of Marisa Kirisame, the famous but self-proclaimed-"perfectly ordinary" witch, at her old home in the Forest of Magic. Her goal is to acquire enough magically-infused mushrooms to fuel a particular non-destructive spell (Marisa is usually only good at blowing things up).
She soon discovers a small grove containing a whole bunch of mushrooms, all but one frozen solid. The culprit turns out to be an ice-fairy named Cirno, who had then been knocked out by an unknown assailant. This assailant turns out to be Mima, Marisa's old mentor and now an enemy, who did this to keep Cirno quiet while she revealed to Marisa that there was going to be a new Incident, and that if Marisa kept doing whatever came naturally, she would find out she is "the star." Mima then leaves as Cirno wakes up.
Marisa activates her CODEC (also known as KAWADEC) and tries to call Reimu Hakurei, her partner-in-crimebusting, but gets no response, so she calls her lover, a youkai-magician named Alice Margatroid, to warn her about the Incident, and then enlists Nitori Kawashiro, a kappa who helped Marisa invent the CODEC device, to get the message to Reimu. Marisa notices that Nitori had been acting strange.
Meanwhile, Alice has been working on developing magic for extracting, dividing, recombining, and reinserting animistic souls. The implication is that this is what Marisa is going to used the energy for. However, she is interrupted by the sudden arrival of the meddling youkai Yukari Yakumo, who was responsible for Gensōkyō's sealing-away. In the ensuing conversation, Yukari detects some sort of half-felt magical effect interspersed with some of Alice's actions.
Cirno and Marisa get into a fight, and Marisa heads back to her house. At the same time, Nitori heads for the Hakurei Shrine, where she discovers that Reimu had accidentally broken her KAWADEC device. Nitori relays the message and repairs the device, and Reimu prepares for Marisa to come over so that they can resolve the Incident together.
At this point, Yukari becomes playable, but immediately discovers the "spirits" sending them "commands." She coyly decides to obey them to a point, and sets her two familiars, Ran Yakumo and Chen, on the task of searching for something; she hides the specific from the spirits (and thus the readers), as well as preventing them from receiving commands. She then joins Mima to watch the "show," though she insists on not giving away everything she's seen. Ran soon finds whatever it is, and Yukari puts the same shield on herself that she put on Ran and Chen (thus becoming unplayable).
Marisa receives a CODEC call from Reimu, who deduces that whatever-it-is may be subverting Marisa's free will. Marisa prepares to head to the Hakurei Shrine, but is interrupted by the discovery that Nitori has been fooling around a pumpkin and a new version of her Optical Camouflage device, which was meant to hide itself from Marisa's magician-sight, but only worked up to a point. Marisa irately chases her out of the house, but then calls up Nitori to apologize. They are interrupted by Yukari calling Nitori to drop a cryptic hint about breathing. Afterward, Nitori tries to scan the air she's breathing, but doesn't find anything useful. Alice, meanwhile, has tried to put up a mind-shield, but doesn't work except to make everything staticky and black-and-white from the readers' perspective.
Cirno meanwhile arrives at the Shrine. Reimu becomes playable soon after, but she immediately goes on a rampage with the first command she receives, attacking Cirno and somehow rendering her unplayable. Nitori, Marisa, and Alice immediately sense something amiss, and Marisa and Nitori head to the Shrine to investigate. As they travel along, Nitori seems to stumble upon a solution to the mystery, but she soon runs into Reimu, and ends up being rendered unplayable in a surprisingly big explosion, but not before emailing her information to Marisa. Marisa heads to Alice's house to mount a better defense than they could separately. Alice also summons her mother Shinki, the dark goddess of Makai, the demon-realm, and she puts a shield around Alice's house shortly before Marisa and Reimu arrive. Reimu then arrives through a gap, and after a short conversation with Marisa and Shinki, joins forces with Shinki to seal all of Gensokyo from the spirits' influence, thus rendering everyone unplayable. The game is then saved.
===End of Act One===
Shortly afterward, the players take control of an ordinary mushroom (in fact, the one mushroom Cirno didn't freeze in her rampage). After a few useless commands, the mushroom is then told to become a mushroom youkai. This works, and results in the creation of Masha Kinoko. She is revealed as having been the "spirits" before she became sentient, so she knows something about what is going on. She explores a bit, then creates Spell Cards, a necessity when combat is expected. She is then contacted through a KAWADEC she somehow has by a mysterious figure named Boon, who tells her to leave the grove and head to some "point of interest", but avoid attention. As Masha leaves, Boon then contacts Masha again, and tells her Mima is on the way to investigate the grove. An out-of-character vignette reveals that Boon is working with Yukari. Masha tries balancing speed and stealth, but runs into some fairies and hides. She calls Boon, who reveals that Mima is investigating the grove Masha was created in.
Masha sneaks around them and arrives at a Danmaku Measuring Device, and calls Boon, who offers to come there in person to run interference for Mima while Masha uses the device. Masha fires lasers at the measuring device, and also leaves a proximity-explosive mushroom for Mima. The mushroom successfully blows up Mima when she comes to investigate, but Mima quickly catches up. Masha is rescued by Boon, who turns out to be crow-tengu Aya Shameimaru wearing a cyborg ninja mask from Metal Gear Solid. As Aya and Mima duke it out, Masha runs to the nearby Misty Lake. Aya ends up losing, but Yukari hits Mima with a train.
Yukari calls Masha and tells her she's a "stage 3 boss" (a technical term) and to wait for Aya. While waiting, Masha encounters a fairy named Daiyousei, who is worried about what happened to Cirno. Daiyousei is initially suspicious, but after determining that Masha doesn't actually know anything, they end up deciding to go look for Cirno, particularly after Yukari calls Masha to let her off the hook -- she claims she'd been worried that Masha might cause some kind of threat, but that her worries were apparently unnecessary.
At Alice's house, Reimu, Marisa, Alice, Nitori, and Cirno are recuperating: immediately after Shinki and Reimu put up the seal, they contacted Medicine Melancholy, a doll-tsukumogami who specializes in her namesake, and who is part of "Melancholy, Scarlet, and Yagokoro," a triumvirate of the three best doctors in Gensokyo's aboveground consisting of herself, Flandre Scarlet, and Eirin Yagokoro. They determined that their irrational behavior was caused by fungal spores from "unstable fly agaric" mushrooms (the species of the mushroom which became Masha), and that the controlling-spirits spread via the spread of the spores. They don't know why they produced enough to cause these effects, however. Medicine prescribed a drug which stimulated their immune systems and which has left them feeling ill for the past hour.
Daiyousei and Masha head to the Hakurei Shrine, where they find that Reimu has left a note saying that she and Cirno are at Alice and Marisa's home, and change their course that way. Aya later finds the note and does the same. Daiyousei and Masha, however, encounter a group of fairies, and the ensuing danmaku battle scares Masha enough that Daiyousei decides to take her straight home for a much-needed rest. Aya arrives at Alice's house and finds it in a quarantine shield which Marisa had put up as a joke; it goes down, and Cirno immediately bolts out, flying up into the sky, where she meets her girlfriend, Utsuho Reiuji. Aya goes down to enter the house, which immediately infuriates Marisa. The rest of them begin discussing the connection between the spores/spirits and Masha, and after heading to the grove and realizing it was the one where Marisa met Cirno, they figure out that it was because there was already a cloud of "life force" there, which caused the mushroom to produce excessive spores, so Cirno's freezing of the mushrooms and Reimu and Shinki's shield freed it up to form a youkai from the remaining mushroom.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, Mima hooks up with Team ❽ (a parody of the Midnight Crew), consisting of herself, Rumia Yagami, Yuuka Kazami, and Nue Houjuu. Mima tells them a little bit about Masha, and Nue comes up with an as-yet-unrevealed plan.
Reimu and Marisa decide to look for Masha and say hello; they have a conversation which only now reveals to the readers that the adventure takes place fifteen years after the ninth Touhou game, Phantasmagoria of Flower View, and that Marisa has been a youkai-magician and married to Alice for the past ten years. Masha wakes up and meets Daiyousei, who tells her that Reimu and Marisa want to say hello, though Masha is still somewhat shy. (At this point, Reimu also discovers that Yukari has still been observing Masha with Ran's help.) Daiyousei, who always has difficulty switching to her as-stupid-as-other-fairies facade on the fly, takes her leave, while Marisa and Reimu invite Masha to their post-Incident party.
===Shenanigans in a Fiery Netherworld===
What follows is the introduction of Yasora Kojiwa, a yatagarasu (three-legged crow-god). A thousand years ago, Yukari had gathered hundreds of youkai, gods, and demons, and launched an invasion against the Capital of the Moon; her intentions, however, were for her side to lose, and Yasora was one of the casualties. The story shifts to a point immediately after the events of Subterranean Animism, the eleventh Touhou game. In the Palace of Earth Spirits, Satori Komeiji has sent Utsuho to her room for attempting to blow up the surface world; however, this was Yasora's influence, and when Utsuho goes to sleep, Yasora takes direct control. Fortunately, the mere act of doing so wakes up Satori, who wakes Utsuho and then sends her back to bed, getting her pet hell-cat Orin to watch guard over Utsuho.
The story skips around a bit, showing some of Utsuho's story and how Yasora deals with it (or at least reacts to it), as well as showing part of Rumia Yagami's backstory and mostly how it relates to Yasora; some years ago (implied to be at the same time as the fifth Touhou game, Mystic Square), Rumia tried to attack Yukari, who retaliated by sealing her in a much younger form who couldn't control her darkness-powers. Almost two years after Utsuho consumes Yasora's body, Gensōkyō is apparently attacked by an indestructible demon named Konngara, with Utsuho and Rumia Yagami participating; Utsuho is struck by one of Konngara's attacks, and Yasora takes control, attacking Konngara from behind. This reveals Yasora's presence to everyone involved, and after the fight, Utsuho takes stock of the situation; Yasora tries to work up the nerve to apologize, but Utsuho assumes that she's just trying to be evil and simply bickers with her for a bit.
It then makes one last jump to the present time, in which Nue reveals her plan to the rest of Team ❽, who decide to go ahead with it.
===Act ⑥===
Masha, having gotten tired of the party at Marisa's house, wanders off alone and tries to find Daiyousei. Heading back to Daiyousei's home, she chances upon a group of fairies, which promptly start attacking. She flees up into the sky, only to attract the attention of other fairies, which she fends off using a Spell Card. This is all being watched by Mima, who seems pleased with Masha's skill.
The fairies down below were impressed with Masha's display, and she makes friends with them, holding a dance-off in a fairy-ring (of mushrooms), discovering in the process that her specific ability is "manipulation of fungus." Masha then goes off and meets Daiyousei, who discovers that Masha's physical size has been fluctuating. While Masha is panicking over this, Daiyousei notices that they're being watched by Nue Houjuu. They are suddenly plunged into darkness by Rumia Yagami's shadow-powers, and Rumia kills Daiyousei (a minor, temporary setback for a fairy) with her Sword of Light and Darkness, which she explains to Masha is immune to the effects of light and dark, and therefore appears the same in any level of lighting. This means that it is also plainly visible despite the dark.
Utsuho and Cirno, flying home, are drawn over by the commotion. They decide to attack Rumia's clearly-visible sword from outside, but Rumia surrounds the two of them in darkness, and kills Cirno with the sword, which was not visible at the time, revealing that she was lying. Utsuho flips out at this, and starts randomly firing miniature suns everywhere, trying to hit Rumia. Marisa and Alice, at Marisa's old home, notice the miniature suns over the treeline, which unsettles Marisa given that Utsuho should know better than to just throw her suns around like that.
==Characters==
* Marisa Kirisame - The "player 2" character of the Touhou games. She's an easygoing tomboy cute-witch kleptomaniac who fires lasers the size of freight trains. She is famous in Gensōkyō for being the second-best at resolving Incidents that threaten Gensōkyō's stability; she typically does this by blowing them up. In addition to bigger and better explosions, her most noteworthy invention is the CODEC system, essentially copied directly from Metal Gear Solid. (This version of Gensōkyō has a limited Internet-access, and Marisa has even fewer qualms about pirating old video games than she has about stealing material goods.) She also now belongs to the magician "species": she was formerly a human, but became a youkai through training ten years ago, although this was not revealed to the readers at first. Lost player control when Reimu and Shinki sealed Gensokyo, but regained it after Masha's introduction.
* Cirno - An ice-fairy, greatly notorious for her childish self-centeredness, which everyone interprets as stupidity. For various reasons, thanks to her, a nine in a circle ("⑨" or "nineball") has become a synonym for stupidity in Gensōkyō and the Touhou fandom. The primary source of her reputation for idiocy is the "easy mode" version of her Icicle Fall Spell Card, an attack from which her opponents are perfectly safe as long as they stand right up close directly in front of her; however, the latest version of this attack involves "CIRNO SMASH PUNY WEAKLING WITH GLACIER-MALLET" should they enter this "safe-spot". Lost player control as the first act of Reimu's rampage, but regained it after Masha's introduction.
* Mima - a ghost (oh, pardon me, "evil spirit") who taught Marisa how to use magic and helped her to become a witch. However, they became enemies not long after Marisa and Reimu started teaming up. She has the ability to listen in on the commands. She is never playable, apparently unable to be influenced by the "spirits." She is a member of Team ❽, as the equivalent of Diamonds Droog, with the title of "Deathly Dusk."
* Alice Margatroid - Marisa's wife, and like her, she was formerly a human, but became a youkai through training, though this happened much earlier. Her preferred vocation is that of dollmaker; her lifelong goal is to use magic to create a sentient, independently-moving doll. Paired with Marisa, she's the calm, relaxed, thoughtful one. She's more of an armchair detective, preferring to leave hands-on Incident-resolving up to Marisa and Reimu and their friends. Lost player control when Shinki sealed her house, but regained it after Masha's introduction.
* Nitori Kawashiro - a kappa, heavily involved with Gensōkyō's industrial revolution (at least as far as youkai are concerned), and co-inventor of the CODEC device (which, thanks to the fact that she's gone off on her own direction with it, is now also called the KAWADEC). Attempted to prank Marisa with a pumpkin and an optical camouflage device. Lost player control in Reimu's attack, immediately after discovering the fungal spores (though this is not revealed until later), but regained it after Masha's introduction.
* Yukari Yakumo - a youkai with the ability to manipulate boundaries. This includes things like "the boundary of night and day" and and "the border of ignorance and knowledge," making her ridiculously powerful. However, she is extremely lazy. She was the first one to identify the "spirits" as such with the second command. She has a shikigami (sort of like a familiar) named Ran Yakumo, a nine-tailed fox, who has a shikigami of her own, a two-tailed cat named Chen. (Their given names respectively mean "violet," "indigo," and "orange.") She put a shield on them so that they weren't playable, and soon afterward Yukari herself lost player control when she put a shield on herself.
* Reimu Hakurei - the miko of the Hakurei Shrine, and the one responsible for maintaining Gensōkyō's continued existence. She is also Gensōkyō's premier resolver of Incidents. She has also become much more mature over the years. Lost player control the minute she got the "quickly retrieve arms" command, which caused her to go on a rampage, but regained it after Masha's introduction.
* Shinki - Alice's somewhat goofy mother. She created Makai, the realm of demons. She's not strictly a goddess, she's an Infinite Being -- gods require faith and worshipers, and Infinite Beings do not. Not only lost control right after receiving her first command, but barely four pages after her first appearance.
* Masha Kinoko - A newborn mushroom youkai. Before she gained sentience, she was the spirits controlling a number of Gensokyo's residents; however, once Gensokyo was sealed from their influence, she came to life. Currently the only character with player control. Yukari seemed to know this would happen, and took an interest in her even before her "birth." There is a "flash forward" at one point, showing a much older and more mature-looking version of her cheerfully chatting with a pregnant Alice.
* Aya Shameimaru - A crow-tengu who runs the Bunbunmaru Newspaper, a curious periodical given to more or less equal parts sensationalism, libel, and outright falsehoods. She was working for Yukari as a "mysterious shadowy figure" who was helping Masha over the KAWADEC until Yukari decided that Masha wasn't a threat.
* Daiyousei - An abnormally-intelligent fairy (she refers to her intelligence as a "birth defect"), rather concerned for Cirno. She tricks Masha into revealing that she knows something, but she isn't very hostile, and is rather protective of the "newborn" youkai.
* Rumia Yagami - A youkai of darkness, and the leader of Team ❽, and thus the equivalent of Spades Slick, with the title of "Shining Shadow." She used to have an amulet disguised as a hair-ribbon which sealed her away in a much more childish form, placed on her by Yukari; it has since been removed, although it has not been said why.
* Nue Houjuu - A nue/chimera with the ability to disguise her true appearance, and the a member of Team ❽ as the equivalent of Clubs Deuce, with the title of "Chimeric Dark." She seems to come up with various ideas for Team ❽'s activities which vary between "stupid," "crazy," and "awesome," as Rumia puts it, and sometimes all three.
* Yuuka Kazami - A flower-youkai, and the a member of Team ❽ as the equivalent of Hearts Boxcars, with the title of "Horticultural Blackness." She has a reputation for being extremely powerful, dangerous, and sadistic, in decreasing order of accuracy.
* Utsuho Reiuji - Cirno's girlfriend. A hell-raven who gained the power of the Sun (read: the ability to control nuclear reactions) after consuming the corpse of Yasora Kojiwa. She's a bit of an idiot, though; where Cirno is a ⑨, she is a ⑥. She lives in the Palace of Earth Spirits, right next to the former/recently-rekindled Hell of Blazing Fires. She is the protagonist of the "Shenanigans in a Fiery Netherworld" chapter.
* Yasora Kojiwa - a yatagarasu who took part in Yukari's intentionally-failed invasion of the Moon. A thousand years later, Utsuho consumed her corpse and gained her power; she often used to attempt to possess Utsuho, but mostly failed due to Utsuho's stupidity and Satori Komeiji's vigilance.
* Satori Komeiji - A youkai who, with the "third eye" attached to her chest via tentacles, is able to read peoples' hearts and minds. She can also copy other peoples' abilities using a technique called Terrifying Hypnotism. Utsuho is a pet belonging to her; she is rather concerned for Utsuho's well-being, and fairly antagonistic towards Yasora.
* Rin "Orin" Kaenbyou - A hellcat, and one of Satori's other pets, she collects corpses to help fuel the Hell of Blazing Fires. She occasionally gets a little bit too enthusiastic about the corpse-collecting, but she still cares about her friends and "family."
==Tropes Used==
* Arson And Ingestion
** Readers keep suggesting that Masha try to eat fairies, although none of the commands have been used yet.
* Crumpled Piece Of Paper
** Masha discovers an actual crumpled paper in her inventory shortly after creating her Spell Cards. It links to this wiki!
* Color By Technicolor
* Just Add Anthropomorphism
** Masha was an ordinary mushroom who became a humanoid mushroom youkai.
* Name That Game
* Red Darts
** Cirno's abrupt KO by Mima.
* Ride Adventure Like A Mechanical Bull
** "What pumpkin?" and "Quickly retrieve arms from X" are both heavily used (the latter escalating towards silliness), as well as "weird _____ shit" ("magic" and "postmodern" are both used). From Homestuck, there are a few references to "Years in the past (but not many)," Masha does the "BLUH!"-while-spitting reaction, and Aya calls Masha to say "Mima just kicked my ... butt. That's really all there is to say on the matter," and at one point Marisa reads page 4130 of Create.swf Adventures, which has the text "Your dawning suspicions were correct: everything you just did was, indeed, a colossal waste of time."
* That NOUN Looks IMPORTANT
** Not only that, but they're also colored, depending on whether it's in English, Japanese romaji, or "Japanese translated into English."
* Trusty Paddle
** Marisa's mini-hakkero. Or possibly her trusty "Master Spark" Spell Card.
* World Wide Wecursion
** Early on, Marisa goes to MSPaintAdventures.com, where Marisa fondly recalls how Homestuck ended(!). Much later (without a command directing this), Marisa visits the site where Create.swf Adventures is hosted, and views page #4130, which is the last page of a Seihou Project adventure called "Vivid" (in the Touhou universe, it is Seihou which is ZUN's magnum opus), made in the year 2016.
* Voices In My Head
** A major plot point; the "reader-commands" in the first act were actually from spirits spread by fungal spores, and in the "Shenanigans in a Fiery Netherworld" chapter, the players are not directly controlling Utsuho Reiuji, but the voice in her head.
* You Are Now This Gal
* You Can't Do That, Stupid!
** A consequence of the characters becoming aware of the "spirits." Also used when the players assumed "control" over a mushroom.
Category:Comedy
Category:Fantasy
Category:Postmodern
Category:Adventures
Category:KimikoMuffin Adventures