Scarlet Devil Mansion Members

Koakuma

Like all things with Koakuma, the following is completely and utterly headcanon

I like the concept of Koakuma as a student/hanger-on to patchouli, (attempting to) learn magic from her. Memories of Phantasm seems to do this pretty well: Patchouli appears, Koa appears, hyping her up and Patche is completely non-responsive to it. I don’t Patchouli was the one who summoned her. Patchouli is generally pretty independent and slow to trust others, so choosing on her own to get an assistance seems pretty wildly out of character, at least, to me. Furthermore, Remilia (Patchouli’s BFF) seems a lot more willing to delegate, and is explicitly mentioned as being able to summon and command other demons, so it seems like a much more natural fit. In my mind the story goes a few different ways: Either Remilia summons Koakuma, beliving Patchouli either needs help with all her illnesses or needs a familiar to look more like a ‘proper’ magician. Either way this would cause some kind of argument between them with Koakuma herself kind of caught in the crossfire. Or, Remilia summons Koa for some other purpose, and she just kind of attaches to Patchouli of her own accord.

Remilia Scarlet

Remi and Patche seem to have a pretty good track record as friends, in a way that I think tends to get misunderstood and/or underutilised. The main image I get in my head is like, the evil bond villain and his (her) chief mad scientist. Remilia is the ‘Ideas Guy’ coming up with some crazy, stupid idea like going to the moon, she’ll inevitibly tell Patchouli, and Patche will come back and start going “Well to do that you’d need to…” and so on, and wander out of the room doing it all for her without either party really realising. Remilia further has a pretty strong need for showing off and looking cool (external motivation), whereas Patchouli is a lot more focused on producing a useful result or furthering her own understanding (internal motivation). This was something spelled out particularly well in Unconnected Marketeer’s endings, but I find most of Sakuya’s main-game appearances tend to have some hint of it somewhere.

Flandre Scarlet

Patchouli has been listed / hinted to be Flandre’s tutor in a couple of places, and EoSD shows that she knows Flandre’s supposed to stay inside, but beyond that there’s not too much canon material to go off of. For my part I think Patchouli and Flandre have to be at least reasonably close, given Patchouli’s relationship with Flandre’s sister, and I like the idea that she’s about as close to Flandre as well, even if pretty much no-one outside the mansion would get the chance to see it. I can also see Patchouli’s relationship with Flandre being a more effective barrier to Flandre leaving, and a kind of lesson in and of itself to Flandre. Flandre makes a pretty reasonable point in Foul Detective Satori: A stronger door or a more magical seal isn’t going to do anything to stop Flandre, the whole point is that she could destroy anything if she really wanted to. Patchouli’s rainstorms

Sakuya Izayoi

I think Patchouli and Sakyua have a lot of low-stakes friction between that makes for good humour. Patchouli and Sakuya are opposites in a lot of suprising and fun ways.

Firstly is their relative positions in the ‘heirarchy’ (if one exists) of the Mansion. As the head maid, Sakuya holds pretty high standing, while Patchouli doesn’t really have an official role beyond ‘Guest’, though in practice, this means Patchouli tends to boss Sakuya around with realtively little pushback.

There’s a lot of tension to be found in their personalities as well: Patchouli, as discussed elsewhere, doesn’t have a particularly keen understanding of others. Sakuya, on the other hand, has a particularly keen sense of people (See for example the EX stage in Unconnected Marketeers, where Sakuya’s the only one to actually spot Tsukasa playing everyone against each other). I could see a lot frustration between them on this

I think there’s a little bit of fun to be had here as well with Sakuya’s whole ‘Stage Magician’ / Misdirection theme vs Patchouli’s brand of science-magic. I could absolutely see Sakuya saying “Lady Patchouli, want to see a magic trick?” and Patchouli busting into “Well actually, …” and Sakuya getting a rant instead of the fun moment she was trying for.

Hong Meiling

I think Patchouli sort of cares for Meiling, in her own way, and is just genuinely atrocious at actually showing it. Patchouli is pretty consistently critical of Meiling, but that criticism shows a level of, at least, attention that I don’t think she shows people she actually doesn’t like. Compare Patchouli’s comments to Meiling (and even Sakuya in IaMP) to Alice’s encounters in IaMP. Patchouli is met with Alice, someone much smarter and more intent on listening to Patchouli than Meiling ever would be, and Patchouli’s responses amount to “you’re annoying I’m not saying much”. Meiling, for her part, is pretty dense but well-meaning so I could absolutely see a situation where everyone outside seems them interact and thinks “Wow, she really doesn’t care about that gate guard’s feelings”, Patchouli’s thinking “Come on Meiling I know you can do better”, and Meiling’s thinking “Man she must really care about me to be going on this much”.

Other Magicians

Marisa Kirisame

Marisa and Patchouli’s relationship is pretty straightforard: Marisa cares about stealing Patchouli’s books more than getting along with her, and Patchouli cares about her books too much to let it slide the way most youkai in Marisa’s life do. More than that, Patchouli seems to show very little regard for Marisa herself. There’s a common line in fanworks (that I think comes from canon somewhere but I’m not 100% sure where) where Marisa states “I’m not stealing the books, I’m just borrowing them till i’m dead”. In my head, Patchouli has followed this line of reasoning to it’s logical conclusion and decided “Ok, fine, no reason for me to care if you die then”, I think this is the primary reason that Patchouli doesn’t go over and, y’know, steal them back.

Alice Margatroid

Patchouli shows Alice the same lack of regard that she seems to show Marisa, though it’s a lot less obvious as to why. in IaMP, Patchouli regards Alice’s visits to the mansion as an unwelcome intrusion and gives her the barest explanation and tells her to go home. On the one hand, Patchouli isn’t that great at giving explanations to others in the first place, on the other hand she does explicitly call Alice “Rude” and “Rough-minded”. Strange Creators of Outer World, a sort of meta magazine about touhou, does highlight a different clash between them: Patchouli has absolutely zero respect for Alice’s magic, saying she’s just “playing house”.