#enkanomiya lore

[lilyandthegenshinbrainrot]

ONCE AGAIN REMINDING YALL ABOUT ENKANOMIYA AND THE VISHAPS !!!!

Neuvillette is the reborn Hydro Dragon,,, but he is also the product of the old legends from Enkanomiya, of vishaps who take the form of humans to take positions of power in their governments.

I'll never forgive Hyv for removing Kokomi's plot relevance as much as they did, but at least they stayed consistent about the details they introduced

[kshkshks]

i shall continue.

part two of this post on wolfy's line in imaginarium theatre

“Collection of Dragons and Snakes” (a quest in Enkanomiya) just existing.

“The Serpent and Drakes of Tokoyokoku”: “The origin of heaven and earth is like the chicken and egg, and are not dragons and snakes kin?”

“Bathysmal Vishap Experimental records”: people of Enkanomiya (also of UC) attempted drafting Orobashi’s blood to the bathysmal vishaps (Dragonheirs); first attempts failed, due to Orobashi being part of the Human Realm and vishaps — of Light Realm; no explanation is given for why the last attempt at drafting was successful.

“The Serpent and Drakes of Tokoyokoku”: upon discovering Orobashi, the kid “felt a form of kinship”, plus Orobashi’s line “You are not one of my people, but you are human nonetheless.” confirms again that Orobashi is connected to humans.

“The Serpent and Drakes of Tokoyokoku”: “The universe has no beginning and no end, and so it was with the land that once was. But this matters not to us, for the land that bears us no longer has anything to do with that eternity without start or ceasing.” and “Legend has it that Aberaku was opened up to wisdom by the Tokoyo Ookami, and was thus able to bring light to Enkanomiya”.

“Before Sun and Moon”: humans of the Unified Civilisation who the scribe calls “our ancestors” were created way after PO defeated the dragon sovereign. then those people fell down because of the Second Who Came. then Tokoyo Ookami (Istaroth) was the only Shade in contact with the people of Enkanomiya. additionally, Dragonheirs of the Depths here are called “people of the seven sovereigns”.

so what if

✦ snakes — the people of Orobashi and Orobashi themselves. and possibly Enkanomiya? weird thing with Dainsleif’s constellation is still lingering in my mind, so could they be Khaenriahns?

✦ boars — the unaffected UC, comprised of Sal Vindagnyr and Enkanomiya. maybe.

✦ lizards — ??? here i am a bit confused. should be vishaps. but can’t, because vishaps are pure dragons.

✦ turtles — could they be current teyvatians? turtles are related to lizards and snakes, they're all reptilians.

what if the people PO plopped in teyvat were A MIX of the elemental dragons that inhabited the world prior, and, since humans are created in the image of PO/Phanes, part of PO/Phanes. and the divine envoy Seelie weren’t, in composition, different from them — they just ranked higher or something. then, after Scale Punishing the ‘Boar Tribe’, separated those people into unscathed survivors ('boars'), lightly bruised survivors ('snakes', 'turtles', 'lizards'?), current humans, husks of seelie, surtalogi, nicole, nabu malikata, wind spirits.

[l0reenthusiast]

hello i saw from your name that you might like lore-?

if you like genshin lore what are your thoughts on celestial nails?

ooooooo YES I DO like lore!

as far as we know right now, there's only 2. and both of the ones we DO know about are in pretty significant locations. The first on Dragonspine, and the second being in the Chasm. When we're looking at where each nail is, we also need to take into account how the land looks. We know that the first Celestial Nail was dropped onto Dragonspine, and the other ended up in the Chasm, but it was underground unlike the first nail. Using our evidence, we can possibly tell which nail was dropped first, and even tell how each nail was used individually. So let's take a look at Dragonspine first.

Dragonspine: The nail is broken into multiple pieces, and the land around is like a pit. This would make sense for the surrounding area to look like this. I like to think of the nail here as like a meteorite. When a meteorite hits the ground, it would make a dent on the ground it lands on IF it was large enough. Meteorites also never land on the Earth while being very large. Most meteorites that land only have 5% of the original remaining, so it would be rare to document something large. This fits regarding the state of the Dragonspine nail. The nail landed onto Dragonspine, but ended up breaking into smaller pieces on impact.

The Chasm: The nail in The Chasm is a bit different. This nail is completely intact and underground, but we don't know why this is. We're told that on the surface of the Chasm, Morax fought a battle where he used the stone pillars that are there to this day, so one would assume that the surface of the Chasm looks the way it does because of that. However, the pillars seem to be sticking in a general diagonal direction, and they don't really face a certain way. Meaning that these pillars are the result of the battle Morax fought, but not how the Chasm looks. Compared to the pillars, there are a multitude of cliffs that all face the same way, almost like they're rotating as well. Not to mention the entrance to the Underground Mines of The Chasm are in the very center of this rotation. The best way I can put this is that the surface if The Chasm looks like a hurricane. A hurricane's spin and direction are caused by the Coriolis Effect, which causes the path of fluids — everything from particles in the air to currents in the ocean — to curve as they travel across and over Earth's surfaces. But what would cause land to look the way it does. The nail in The Chasm was likely used like a drill compared to the nail on Dragonspine. This would perfectly explain why the Chasm looks this way as well as the nail being underground. The surface of The Chasm is the hurricane, and the entryway to the Underground mines is the eye of the hurricane. The eye being where the nail was placed, and when the nail was used as a drill, causing the surface to look like a hurricane. This would also explain why the Ancient City in the Chasm is upside down, since it would only be upside down if it WAS on the surface and drilled underground. However, that's a different subject.

What's also important is that both of these nails are located where ancient and forgotten cities are.

So now we can tell how each nail was used, but how do we tell which nail was used when? Well, we can't tell EXACTLY when each nail was used, but we might be able to know which nail was used before the other. Given how the first nail was dropped onto Dragonspine and broke on impact, I doubt Celestia would want to make the mistake of one of their pillars breaking again. So, they used the nail in The Chasm as a drill instead. This is only just a theory though, and there's really no evidence to back it up.

We also want to know WHY the nails were dropped where they were. For this, we want to take a look at the books left in the ruins of Enkanomiya, the ruins on Dragonspine, and the architecture of both Enkanomiya and the city in The Chasm, The books in Enkanomiya, made by the scribe of Istaroth, talking about the Primordial one and The Second Who Came, and when the Traveller and their Twin arrived to Teyvat.

The Primordial One and The Scribe of Istaroth: The Scribe wrote about the Primordial one, a god from another world theorized to be Teyvat's creator and fought a 40-year war against the Seven Sovereigns. The Primordial One also seemed to be pretty benevolent towards humans. Then the Second Who Came appeared and restarted the long-ended war. After the war, The Enkanomiyans tried to get back onto the surface. Unfortunately, their way was blocked, and The Scribe believed that the Primordial One sealed them in the underground, with only Istaroth responding to their cries. This seems like pretty unusual behavior for a god such as the Primordial one who views humanity so highly.

The Ruins in Dragonspine: I forget the name of it, but there is a specific claymore you can obtain by doing a quest in Dragonspine. In the room where you obtain the claymore, there 2 different paintings, 2 painings of each being on 2 of the walls. The first painting most likely depicts the Primordial One and Humanity, and the other seems to depict Celestia. In the painting, Celestia is depicted as a floating island in the sky. But we don't know if this is Celestia for sure, because what could be depicted is JUST the island or Celestia in it's entirety.

The Architecture of Enkanomiya and the city in The Chasm: I the second Traveller Archon Quest, Dainsleif points out that the Architecture of Enkanomiya is pretty much the same as the Architecture of Khaenri'ah, except the city in The Chasm is upside down. We also know from Ancient books in Enkanomiya that Teyvat was just one big civiliation with one culture, which ended uo changing after the war between The Primordial One and The Second Who Came. During this war, Enkanomiya fell into where it is today.

We also need to take into account the first cutscene of the game. This cutscene takes place during the destruction of Khaenri'ah, and the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles states; "The arrogation of mankind ends now." This could hint as to why Celestia dropped the nails.

Conclusion/Theory: gathering the evidence we have; we can finally come to a hopeful conclusion as to why the nails were dropped where they were. The conclusion I came to was that the nails were dropped on these ancient cities, as well as Enkanomiya being left underground, is for the same reason that Khaenri'ah was destroyed. We can start by going with what the Sustainer said about the arrogation of humanity. Celestia wanted the arrogation of mankind to end, so it would make sense that they would destroy any country that became too advanced. Hence, nails being dropped onto The Chasm and Dragonspine. But what about Enkanomiya? When we look at what The Scribe of Istaroth wrote, the entrance to the outside world was sealed off by the Primordial one. Think of it like putting away dishes in a cabinet. When you put the dishes away, this particular time they were put away in such a manner that they would probably fall. But to prevent that, you shut the doors to the cabinet and left the dishes be, thinking that it would be fine. But when you later go to open the cabinet, the dishes end up falling out. This is what Celestia did to Enkanomiya. They sealed Enkanomiya underground after they fell, thinking they would not make it back to the surface. But thanks to Orobashi thousands of years later, they did. There's also a second reason they could have done this, to get rid of evidence. When a murderer kills somebody, they want to hide the evidence that they did the murder as much as possible. In this case, the murderer is Celestia, and the victim is The Primordial One. Since these cities knew about the Primordial One and the war against The Second Who Came, Celestia likely killed the Primordial One and then got rid of the citieas that were too advanced or had a connection to the Primordial one, hoping to get rid of all evidence that there were gods before Celestia.

[1caru]

what if venti combined his wisp and human forms

[turtlespancake]

i love seeing out of context posts about long-running stories with deep lore because it's always shit like "MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!! i can't believe that the metallic athenaeum's envoy actually used never-ending dance of the 57th universe on rionne as if she's not LITERALLY the incarnate of august?!?!" it's like buddy boy thank you for the spoiler tag but all of those words are incomprehensible without at least 5 years of foreshadowed knowledge, 7 different fan theories, and 21 wiki entries

[nightmare-grass]

One of my biggest hyperfixations nowadays is the lore of ancient kingdoms in Genshin Impact. I wanna know what they were all about, how life was like for them, what led to their downfalls, and how or if they interacted with one another. It’s said that there used to be a unified civilization of humans in Teyvat, and that’s why so many ruins have similar architectural details despite being spread across all the nations of modern Teyvat. We still have very little lore about the Nameless Ruins in the Chasm, we still don’t even have a name for them despite Dainsleif’s quest taking place there. But there’s also strange similarities between the stories of the ancient kings and how the kingdoms fell. I already buy into the theory that King Deshret of Sumeru/Gurabad may be related to or the same as King Irmin of Khaenri’ah, since the Traveler’s twin is the Abyss Prince/Princess, and the Traveler seems to remind Liloupar of Deshret in terms of looks and powers. And wouldn’t it be fitting for Deshret, who turned down the Gnosis and challenged the heavens by obtaining Forbidden Knowledge (abyssal power) to be in some way related to the king of Khaenri’ah, a nation without a god that hid from Celestia and was later punished for it? And there’s sources about Remus, the king of Remuria, citing Remus as a god king just like Deshret. And Remuria as well as Remus were swallowed by the Abyss, reminding me of the sinking of Enkanomiya, where the names of the people are lifted directly from Greek/Roman mythology. And Remus is directly inspired by the Rome founding myth, while Remuria as a whole is inspired by ancient Rome. And the most tantalizing thing for me has to be the lost kingdom of Sal Vindagnyr, where it seems so cut off from these other lost kingdoms but their princess dreamt of events that wouldn’t come to pass for thousands of years, long after her civilization was destroyed. She was born under an offshoot of Irminsul, and had the power of prophecy through her connection to the tree. She foresaw the Cataclysm in Khaenri’ah, the coming of the abyssal dragon Durin, but she had no frame of reference for when these visions would come to pass. Think about what that would do to you as your kingdom was being swallowed in ice and snow, the gods having forsaken you, and your father asks to see a vision of the snow cleared and blue skies, but you’ve already forgotten what that looks like since it’s been so long in the blizzard. Dragonspine and the ruins of Sal Vindagnyr haunt me.

EDIT: I think I figured something out about Dragonspine. In every source I could find on the topic, people usually sort the Princess’s vision of Durin before the Celestial Nail that destroyed their Irminsul tree. I think, since the people of Sal Vindagnyr proclaimed to be in such close contact with Celestia, that Celestia dropped the nail on Dragonspine as a response to the princess’s vision. They laid down a preemptive strike against the abyss and then realized, “oh shoot, we messed up,” because Durin wouldn’t appear in Mondstadt until thousands of years later! So Celestia gets the heck out of dodge before the humans can seek retribution for the destruction of their home, that’s why they abandoned the people of Sal Vindagnyr. The humans were left wondering what they did wrong, but Celestia is the one at fault! Celestia panicked and messed up!

[blood-orange-juice]

I just learned there are glowing spider lilies on the graves of Enkanomiyan sun children

they are visible only during Evernight and it makes me wonder what exactly the Evernight/Whitenight mechanic is.

I know that some mechanisms appear only during one state or the other and I can handwave it away as "magic", but spider lilies are, you know, special.

they are "flowers of the other shore", plants of the death realm. so, uhm... what exactly does Dainichi Mikoshi do? since Enkanomiya is at the intersection of three realms maybe it sort of... nudges the place towards a specific realm? rather then simply being a very big flashlight.

also why does Dainichi Mikoshi light scare vishaps away? they are creatures of the light realm and non-artificial sun doesn't seem to scare them, so what exactly is happening there? what in the abyss did the priests build?

(also I love how in the language of flowers spider lily means "may we never meet again". the sun children really just said "do not bother us", huh?)

also I missed the Gateway Offering event but apparently at some point Danichi Mikoshi was... a tree? hello?

who forgot to weed out the Irminsul sapling and why is it an invasive species

upd:

hmmm

[welshoot]

Genshin Impact Timeline: Analysis and Theory (Part 1: Ancient History)

[Ancient History]  [Mythic Period] [Archon War-Mondstadt] [Archon War-Liyue & Inazuma] [Archon War-Sumeru & Fontaine]

So the timeline of Genshin Impact lore is questionable at best and straight-up confusing at worst. However, I’ve been working on a fic series thingie that may never see the light of day that required me to do some digging, so here I am. I put the rest under-the-cut because it gets rather lengthy. Also this is all largely theoretical and gained from the process of analysis. I used the game itself and the Genshin Impact wiki to help me along. I will possibly add to this as updates with new information or information that corrects past misunderstandings crop up. There are definite spoilers below for pretty much all of the Genshin Impact storyline  and this is a VERY long post so please beware!

The Seven Sovereigns

So, apparently at the start of everything in Teyvat, there were the Seven Sovereigns which apparently were the seven strongest elemental dragons for their respective element [Book: Byakuyakoku Collection Volume 2]. As a heads up, we do not have names for the majority of these dragons. These Seven Sovereigns had a king (who was first introduced as a plot point in Nahida’s second story quest) known as King Nibelung. (It is worth noting here that the name “Nibelung” likely comes from Wagner’s opera Der Ring Des Nibelungen but is also a name that appears in Norse legends and Germanic myths). These dragons ruled Teyvat and had elemental ‘Authorities’ until they were defeated by an individual referred to as the ‘Usurper’. It is highly implied that this ‘first usurper’ is the Primordial One. Notably, the Primordial One is often implied to be the Heavenly Principles, though, so far as I know, this has not been confirmed, though it is not a bad theory. Supporting this theory is Neuvillette’s comment that the first usurper (i.e. the primordial one) was the one who bested the seven sovereigns, while Focalors said it was the Heavenly Principles that stole the Seven Soverign’s authority. However, for the sake of simplicity, I will continue referring to this character as ‘The Primordial One’ rather than ‘The Heavenly Principles.’

The Primordial One apparently appeared out of nowhere and is highly implied to be an outlander, and as Nahida suggests at the end of the Sumeru Archon quest, the First Descender and thereby from another world, similar to the Traveler. A scribe in Enkanomiya used the name ‘Phanes’ for them and described how “the eternal throne of the heaven’s” appeared at the same time as the Primordial One [Book: Byakuyakoku Collection]. No matter where they came from though, they did battle with the seven sovereigns for what is implied to have been a lengthy period before they at long last won and, upon doing so, took part of the seven authorities from themself and their ‘4 shining shades.’ (NOTE: The best I can figure is that these ‘shades’ were created by the Primordial One from the Primordial One and are thus aspects of the Primordial One, though it is mentioned in some sources, such as the Byakuyakoku Collection, that the Primordial One would work the shades, implying that perhaps these shades were more like children, or helpers to the Primordial One.) These shades are/were able to operate separately from one another, as evidenced by Istaroth, a shade who held dominion over time and wind, coming to assist Enkanomiya when none of the other’s could hear the cries of the people of Enkanmoiya [Book: Byakuyakoku Collection Volume 2]. Additionally, these shades are implied to be of a ‘higher power’ than the Archons with Istaroth being labeled as a ‘higher power' than Raiden Makoto in Ei’s second story quest. Additionally, these shades may have even helped create at least some of the archons, as the thus far unnamed Shade of Life assisted in creating Egeria after the Sovereign Dragon of Water was defeated [Item: Fontaine Wind-Glider]. 

Seemingly, in the course of the forty year war between the Primordial One and the Sovereign Dragons, the Primordial one emerged victorious[Book: Byakuyakoku Collection Volume 2]. Most information states that, after the Seven Sovereigns were defeated, the Primordial One created heaven and earth in preparation for humanity [Book: Byakuyakoku Collection Volume 2 ]. Humans apparently came onto the scene approximately 400 years after the first appearance of the Primordial one and made a covenant with them [Book: Byakuyakoku Collection Volume 2 ]. The contents of this covenant are unfortunately unclear, though it is mentioned that the Primordial One had a plan for humans and that there was apparently one taboo: Succumbing to temptation. Interestingly, volume 2 of the Byakuyakoku Collection also mentions that the path to temptation is sealed. It is possible that ‘temptation’ refers to forbidden knowledge or something of that sort.

The Second One Who Came.

At some point in time, while Enkanomiya was still part of a single unified human nation that spanned the entire world and after the creation of humanity, but before the Archon war, ‘The Second One Who Came’ (also referred to as the ‘Second Throne in Heaven’) came from ‘beneath the firmament” [Book: Byakuyakoku Collection Volume 2, Artifact: Flower of Paradise Lost- the Amethyst Crown]. It is worth noting here that the second one who came is referred to as ‘Invaders’ indicating a plural group rather than a singular person in the Amethyst Crown artifact from the Flower of Paradise Lost set. It is possible that, since Apep implies Nibelung was revived or returned after defeat, that the Second One Who Came and King Nibelung joined forces against the Primordial one and that this is when the divine nails were used for the first time, but that is merely conjecture. However, we do know that King Nibelung apparently gained access to Forbidden Knowledge and seemingly introduced Forbidden Knowledge to Teyvat in an attempt to beat the Primordial One and “gain the right to shape this new world” [Nahida’s second story quest, Book: Byakuyakoku Collection Volume 2]. While The Second One Who Came ended up fighting the Primordial One for unclear reasons, this war ended up ravaging the heavens and earth, with the Primordial One apparently ending up victorious. It was during this war that Enkanomiya sank beneath the waves [Book: Byakuyakoku Collection Volume 2]. After emerging victorious from this battle, the Primordial One used Divine Nails (like the ones in Dragonspine and the Chasm) to heal the land from the damage done by the Forbidden Knowledge. This could be when the divine nails were sent into Dragonspine into the ancient civilization of Sal Vindagnyr, the Chasm, Tsurumi Island, and the Eternal Oasis. However, if that is the case, then Khaenr’iah would have been appearing around this time since the ‘Scribe’s box’ item from the Dragonspine quest mentions ‘a new nation without gods’ and Khaenr’iah is the only nation without gods that is known to have existed [The Scribe’s Box: Dragonspine quests].  Interestingly, during this war, the Primordial One’s Authority that had been initially taken from the Seven Sovereigns ended up getting damaged, making it so that they could no longer suppress the original order of the world. In order to ���continue to subdue and control the resentments and loathing of this world,” the Primordial One was forced to create the gnoses with the assistance of someone referred to as ‘the one who came after’ [Neuvillette’s Character Story: Vision]. It is worth noting here that it is unclear if ‘the one who came after’ is the second one who came or yet another descender, possibly the third one whose body has been suggested to have formed the gnoses [Fontaine Archon Quest]. Interestingly, the people of Enkanomiya did attempt to return to the surface, which is when they learned the Primordial One had been victorious. However, they also learned that the Primordial One had supposedly placed a ban that sealed Enkanomiya from the surface. An NPC in Enkanomiya called Eboshi asserts that the Primordial One/Heavenly Principles did not want anyone who knew the true history of the world to be on the surface, hence the ban. However, the ban is only referred to as a ‘heavenly order’ and the Second One Who Came was apparently connected to the heavens as well, meaning the order may have come from them rather than the Primordial One.

[arttama17]

The souls of Enkanomiya

[genshinnrambles]

[3.3]: On Dreams, the Abyss, Forbidden Knowledge, and Wish Fulfillment

So basically I was reading for another theory about automatons and the uncanny in Genshin, but ended up with some separate-but-related ideas that grew legs and a tail and is now this post. Today I’d like to discuss how Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of dream interpretation provides a framework to help us understand what the Abyss is, what Irminsul edits do to reality, and what forbidden knowledge might be. If you are not caught up on the 3.3 Interlude Archon Quest (Inversion of Genesis), Nahida’s Story Quest, Aranyaka, or Perilous Trail, do not read any further! 

(As a side note: I will be simplifying Freud, but I hope that in the process I am not butchering him. Corrections on how the information is presented and applied are welcome!)

Psychoanalysis 101 - On Freud’s Theory of Dream Interpretation

Though it may seem unrelated, in order to begin to understand Freud’s conception of dreams it is actually useful to start with his theory on the psychology of errors. This theory is more commonly known as the “Freudian slip,” the accidental voicing of an unconscious thought often (though not exclusively) through substituting one word for another. 

Freud believed that errors occur when two different tendencies ��collide” with one another in the process of communicating. The error is not a result of the interrupting tendency triumphing over the other, but is rather the compromise produced between the two tendencies in their collision. For example, I’m talking to someone I don’t particularly like and have to express some politeness to them, but my sentence comes out wrong and includes a more hostile word than I originally intended - the error betrays that my true feelings are not amiable toward this person, but the error in and of itself is not the true expression of my feelings, just a hint toward them.

Importantly, you do not have to be consciously aware of the thought or feeling that produces an error such as in the above example in order for the error to exist. We don’t even have to acknowledge that thought as our true feelings in order for it to serve as the error’s origin. As a psychoanalyst, this angle is crucial to Freud. The unconscious is the realm of the repressed, and to psychoanalysts it is where our most honest thoughts and feelings reside. I don’t have to acknowledge to myself that my feelings towards someone are less than positive for those negative feelings to still exist. I can even actively deny those feelings, suppressing them in favor of less critical thoughts. But I can’t just delete my feelings - they persist, festering in my unconscious mind.

Having understood this, we can approach Freud’s theory of dream interpretation with some important context and clarity. He theorized that dreams work very similarly to errors, in that the dream is the result of an interrupting stimulus or stimuli acting upon the body’s “tendency” to sleep, and the dream is a compromise between the two tendencies in order to protect sleep. Freud acknowledges the way that external stimuli such as noises manifest in a dream, but focuses his theory on the internal stimuli that act on the sleeping body in a hope to disturb sleep – namely, thoughts and feelings, most of which are repressed by our unconscious. Freud also acknowledges somatic stimuli as interrupting sleep, but does not elaborate on them in his theory of dreams.

Freud believed the manifest dream content, the images that you’re shown in a dream, are a result of the latent dream thought, the unconscious thought disturbing your sleep, being transformed by the dream-censor through a process known as the dream-work.

The dream-censor disguises the latent dream thought in the manifest dream content, distorting it’s true meaning to the point that is unrecognizable. At least, in dreams that do not fall under what Freud called infantile type dreams (and we’ll discuss this type in just a minute). So, the dream-censor protects the ego from the unconscious thought through distortion. In order to arrive at the true meaning of a dream, the dreamer must freely associate the manifest dream content with other things in order to decipher the distortion and identify the latent dream thought. With me so far?

Freud also thought there were different types of dreams, one of which is the infantile dream. These dreams have very little distortion between the latent dream thought and the manifest dream content, though distortion is still present. An example he gives is of a little girl who dreamt of sailing a boat on the lake - she had sailed with her family the previous day, but their time sailing ended before she would have liked. The latent dream thought behind her dream, then, was “I would like to sail on the lake,” transformed into “I am sailing on the lake” in the manifest dream content. Freud thought infantile dreams held key information about the nature of dreams in general, which he hypothesized was wish-fulfillment. He believed that wish-fulfillment was central to all kinds of dreams, even what he called anxiety dreams, but that this idea is most evident when examining simpler dreams with little distortion. In the case of anxiety dreams, he asserts that they cause an anxious feeling precisely because the wish underlying them is one that we reject and repress, but it is so strong that the dream-censor fails to censor it fully. 

We’re nearly done here, but this last idea is very important. The dream-censor effectively rejects the wishes and thoughts dredged up from the unconscious again by transforming them in the dream-work into something unrecognizable. Freud then asks, well, why is it that these rejected wishes only express themselves at night? Freud hypothesizes that the mind’s censorship is strongest during the day, but at night the censorship is “suspended, or at least very much weakened” (229) in favor of sleep, allowing these wishes to express themselves at all.

Aru: They are what the Jibashiri call the Shades of Tokoyo. But bear in mind the principle that “to know sin is to be free of it.” Do not tell them that they are afterimages.

So, let’s summarize this:

Freud thought dreams are a compromise between continued sleep and stimuli that would otherwise disturb sleep. 

He maintains that when the stimulus is mental, it is dredged from the unconscious and censored into illusions that obscure the original meaning of the thought to protect the ego and make the thought incomprehensible. 

He also thought that behind this mental stimulus is a wish seeking fulfillment, which is partially accomplished through the dream. 

However, the dream cannot truly resolve the wish. The thought, therefore, persists in the unconscious until it is worked through in the conscious life (like through talk therapy).

Rejected wishes express themselves at night because this is the time the censorship is weakest.

While Freud’s theory is far from watertight, and the following applications to Genshin will also not be 1:1, I hope this can be a useful tool in some cases for trying to understand some of the concepts discussed in the intro. Without further ado, 

Theory #1: The “chaotic space” beneath the Chasm behaves like a dream.

Now, I very well could just refer to Paimon’s dialogue in Nahida’s story quest stating that “dreams are chaotic,” then refer to the repetition in Perilous Trail of the term “chaotic space” and call it a day, and frankly I think there’s sufficient supporting evidence in the rest of Nahida’s story quest and Aranyaka to render this an acceptable choice, but I also think it’s useful to review all of the ways the space beneath the Chasm does reflect a dream space according to Freud’s theory of dreams, if for no other reason than to extrapolate these findings to other quests.

From the minute that the Traveler, Paimon, Yelan, Yanfei, Itto, and Shinobu fall into the chaotic space, things are not quite right. They notice that their sense of time past differs significantly amongst each other and their bodies seem to be in a “suspended” state, not accumulating fatigue or hunger. What’s more, some of them report strange sightings - fissures that appear and disappear, items that vanish, people that vanish. Illusions. They even stumble upon a strange room after falling through a fissure that shows them an unpleasant or anxiety-inducing thought specific to them, one that they all would “wish to avoid.” What’s going on here?

“All the things that we wish to avoid.”

Let’s start with the strange room, and interpret the illusions as if they were dreams. We may not be convinced at this moment that these are in fact dreams, but let’s see what happens when we try fitting them to Freud’s theory. In particular, we’re looking for “manifest dream content,” which we will help translate into a “latent dream thought” with the help of the dreamer, and through this we should be able to identify some kind of “wish.”

Itto’s illusion is Inazumans throwing beans at him and berating him for his influence on their children. This illusion could represent a real memory of Itto’s - one of the NPC’s is named, after all -  but he never identifies who these people are to him beyond their Inazuman heritage, so there is no way of knowing if it is an identical memory or not. Still, let’s apply some Freud here and interpret the scene, treating it as an anxiety dream due to Itto’s reaction to it: The manifest dream content, the Inazumans throwing beans at him, represents Itto’s desire to avoid the ire of humans. Indeed, he greatly fears it. The latent dream thought behind the manifest dream content, then, is Itto’s wish to befriend humans and live a carefree life. Despite this sincerity, he is often met with animosity from people other than the Arataki Gang and the children of Hanamizaka. Itto’s wish to befriend humans causes him fear to admit, even if that fear is unconscious, because the scene from the manifest dream content is what he is so often met with in real life.

Similarly, we have Shinobu’s illusion. Importantly, Shinobu only claims familiarity with the conversation her mother’s illusion is having with her, and not exactly with the scene itself. This is a hair-splitting point for me to make, but I hope if you’re not convinced now that after the next two examples it will seem more plausible. 

Yanfei: Your mother wanted you to become a shrine maiden?

Kuki Shinobu: The whole reason I came to study in Liyue was because I didn't want to become a shrine maiden. My family never approved of my studies, so they wanted me to work in the Grand Narukami Shrine after I returned to Inazuma.

Paimon: From what we know about Lady Guuji, it seems being a shrine maiden is a pretty cushy job.

Kuki Shinobu: Think of it this way: Some cats can be domesticated and kept in the house, while other cats are meant to survive in the wild... As for me, I need complete freedom and space. Although I do admit that being a shrine maiden is a decent job, it's just not for me.

From this excerpt, I would guess that Shinobu’s wish and latent dream thought is as she says: she wants to live her life freely and pursue anything that interests her. The manifest dream content demonstrates the anxiety that her conviction in this wish causes her through the resistance she faces from her family members as a consequence.

Yanfei’s illusion is where things start to get interesting. She sees people having a civil dispute, something she often has to deal with in her profession as a lawyer:

Paimon: Who were they?

Yanfei: No one in particular, but it is a prime example of the many difficult civil cases that I've had trouble handling before.

Yelan: Hmm, so you mean you don't like handling disputes over petty matters?

Yanfei: Not exactly, what I mean is that I don't like working with people who cannot let go of trivial grievances, especially of the kind you saw just now. They start with good intentions, but end up making a big fuss...

She then states that her motivation in pursuing this profession is to help people solve problems, but that people like those in her illusion are difficult for her to comprehend. Her wish is to successfully navigate difficult legal terrain to help her clients, her anxiety is that she is not equipped to do so because she can’t understand everyone’s “complicated minds.” Put in more Freudian terms, the fact that Yanfei strongly wishes to solve people’s problems as a lawyer despite knowing she finds some minds particularly incomprehensible causes her some anxiety.

Finally, we have the Traveler’s illusion. It is nothing but the vast Abyss. The Abyss that took their twin away, who they are always searching for. We know intimately that their wish is to find them, and their anxiety is that they never will, that this journey of theirs is pointless - hence the twin’s lack of presence in the illusion.

Yanfei’s comment that her illusions were no one in particular also makes me suspect that the previous NPC’s identities are less important than the ideas and thoughts they are representing. The scenes are not the reenactment of a memory, but a distorted illustration of a unconscious thought. Where these illusions at times do not line up with Freud is that the dreamer’s wish is not repressed but is in fact something that the dreamer is actively pursuing in real life. If the wish is not repressed, perhaps the doubts and anxiety associated with them are. Regardless, both seek expression through the illusions, with varying amounts of distortion.

Are we at least receptive to the possibility that these illusions are more than just tricks the space is playing on the crew, that there are wishes underlying them that are specific to each person and draws from both the conscious and the unconscious? If so, I would like to propose that this room did not just show illusions of scenes specific to the people opening them, but dreams.

“Reading our minds.” 

Now, let’s deal with the other illusions outside of the strange room. The chaotic space is demonstrably manipulative in how it interacts with each of them. While looking for Xiao and a way out, it projects an odd illusion of him and his voice through a fissure to lure the crew to the dream room. Yelan reports seeing illusions of catalysts specific to her clan and of people when she was there to find the truth about Boyang’s fate. Yanfei also notes that “the chaotic space” is really a misnomer, as it is really several spaces that constantly intersect with one another and can be directly influenced by their own mind’s wishes. They are not completely at the space’s mercy, in other words.

Remember how Freud thought that dreams were a vehicle for wish-fulfillment? It turns out that everyone who makes it to the deepest levels of the Chasm’s illusions also had a deeper purpose for being there: Xiao wished to find Bosacius, Yelan wished to learn the truth about what happened to Boyang during the Cataclysm, Yanfei wished to find the Fantastic Compass, and the Traveler is always wishing to find their twin.

Yelan: This is a long shot, but it may be our last chance…so, whose wish was it that summoned this device?

Traveler: Perhaps it was all of us.

In this deepest part of the space, all of these wishes are answered. While the space undoubtedly had an ulterior motive of trapping them further by using their wishes as lures, the facts remain the same - by stumbling into the last domain after Itto breaks another illusion along the cave’s walls, they’re able to make contact with several phantoms of the Fantastic Compass, allowing them to navigate to the correct time-spaces to get closer to what they all wished to find. I haven’t read too much on this topic, but my first thought is that this is similar to what it might feel like to have a lucid dream.

Yelan gets her answer about Boyang, Yanfei finds the Fantastic Compass, Xiao learns Bosacius’s fate, and the Traveler is cruelly tricked once again with a phantom of their twin in a time-space that resembles the Abyss. Though the space does effectively “fulfill” their wishes with the added direction of the compass, are the answers what they truly wanted? Did it give them peace, or did it serve to lower their spirits again?

Yelan: I went back to the domain again just now. Although I couldn't find a new route, it wasn't a completely fruitless trip.

Yelan: My clan has practiced magic for generations and has created some catalysts that only we know how to use.

Yelan: I recognized something like one of these catalysts in the domain. Unfortunately, it disappeared as soon as I approached it.

Traveler: Was it an illusion?

Yelan: I think so. But it's hard to distinguish between reality and illusion here. I can't be sure.

Yelan: Also... I am the only one out of all of us who could know what it would look like. To me, that confirms that this place really is reading our minds.

Yanfei: Just like with that door. It's like it's alive, and testing us.

Yelan: By reading our minds and showing us what we want, it creates the reality that we want to be true... Everything it does is either to get us to lower our guard or to wear us down.

Yelan: If that's the case, it can only have one goal: To trap us here until we die. What else could it be?

I would make only one amendment to Yelan’s comments here - the space is not just reading their minds, it is their minds. It is their shared dream. It projects illusions using everyone’s memories, unconscious wishes, and conscious thoughts. The illusions are a result of these thoughts interrupting the space’s influence. Their purpose is to draw the dreamers in further, luring them deeper into the space so it can continue its tendency to consume their souls. Without speculating too much off the deep end, it is clear that the chaotic space traps souls and is capable of holding physical objects taken there, though those objects are no longer able to be taken out. We see this from the notes Boyang and the other Millelith soldiers left behind, as well as from the Fantastic Compass. Clearly, none of these items belonged to any of the people in the Traveler’s crew, so the space must continue to exist regardless of someone’s physical presence within it. I would speculate that the reason this is the case is because the chaotic space is sustained by the souls it consumes. Yes, I mean to say that the chaotic space is also the shared dream of all of the fallen soldiers, of Bosacius, and of Boyang. They are all still “there” in the space, wandering as lost souls, as Xiao implies of Bosacius during his fight with his illusion.

Escape from the Depths

Let’s wrap up this theory here, because we still have a lot of ground to cover. I’ll conclude with some remarks on the red specter-forms that try to prevent the team’s escape from the space at the end. 

There is an achievement after the conclusion of this cutscene titled Layers of Fear, which I believe provides a hint at what these specters are supposed to be. If we at least partially accept that the chaotic space behaves like a dream, and that in order to conjure the images characteristic of manifest dream content the space would also need to have access to the dreamer’s unconscious in some way, then these specters are the raw embodied form of the fearful thoughts of everyone trying to escape (to say nothing of how they could also belong to the souls consumed in the space). They are trying to drag them back down into the depths, a symbol of the unconscious where repressed anxiety and fear fester. In the next couple of theories, I’ll make some guesses as to what this means on a broader scope.

Theory #2: The chaotic space shares characteristics with the Abyss, but is not quite the Abyss.

In the last theory, we briefly touch on the possibility that the chaotic space is a shared dream space, and that it is sustained by the souls it consumes. The next question would be, if this were true, then what comes first? The dream space or the soul? How did the space come to be? While I don’t have a definitive answer for that, I do have another rabbit hole we might jump down based on Katheryne’s dialogue in Requiem of the Echoing Depths, the last time that we saw Dainsleif. As she bids us farewell before heading to the Chasm, she recites the Adventurer’s Guild slogan before pausing at “abyssosque,” remarking that “this time, you truly are bound for the abyss.”

So, let’s pause. The Chasm was Liyue’s frontline against the abyssal monsters’ invasion from the Cataclysm. According to the legends, the monsters came “from the depths,” and the deepest part is outright referred to as the abyss in several instances in the Solar Relic of the Vermillion Hereafter set. So, why is there any need to make a distinction between the space and the abyss, or to be skeptical of equating them? 

First, the space doesn’t really behave similarly to Dark Enkanomiya in the Three Realms Gateway Offering event, which was being polluted with void energy from the Void Realm (the Abyss in a fancier font). It certainly does try to take advantage of your fears, a tactic we saw an Abyss Herald try to use in Andrius’ corruption ceremony (though Abyss Heralds are of the Abyss Order, distinct from the Abyss, corruption affects anyone who comes into contact with the abyss). 

Abyss Herald: You claim to be a guardian, yet your once-sharp claws have clearly dulled since your days of godly glory.

Abyss Herald: If you serve us, we can restore your divine powers you once held in the past.

Boreas: Lies... lies…

Paimon: Oh no... Is this the same thing they did to corrupt Dvalin's mind?

Time also functions differently in the chaotic space compared to on the surface, something we can also trace to the Abyss from Childe’s lore - he spent three months in the Abyss with Skirk, but only three days had passed on the surface. But, if the chaotic space was the Abyss, I am not sure why Yelan wouldn’t have commented on the space’s similarities to it sooner. The only time she mentions the abyss is in the deepest parts of the chaotic space, when the Fantastic Compass’s needles are pointed forward the farthest they can go and the Traveler sees an illusion of their twin that turns into a smaller Fantastic Compass. Yelan knows the Abyss well from her own past, so it’s weird that she didn’t mention anything until close to the very end in a specific place.

So, what about a middle ground? The space shares characteristics with the Abyss because it is a boundary, a liminal space, between the Human Realm and the Void Realm. A place where the two realms “interrupt” each other, much like the way dreams are a liminal space between the conscious and the unconscious, much like an “error” produced when two different tendencies collide.

Theory #3: The spaces below the earth, including the Abyss, are this world’s “realm of the repressed.”

The Thing Calling Itself “Enjou”: You mean, why wouldn’t I, right? I’m a creature writhing in the Abyss, and you’re a mortal walking in the sun.

This mini-theory definitely has its issues from the get-go, but let’s take a look at where this does ring true and then decide for ourselves how much weight this claim really holds. We’re also going to stretch the meaning of “repressed” here to deal with more than just unconscious feelings, but also beings and structures. Ultimately, we’ll see there’s not as big of a difference as imagined between these things and repressed feelings.

“Yet buried in the depths of this world lies smoldering remains…”

Eboshi: However, the heavenly order seemed to not wish for those who remembered all this to remain on earth. We searched and searched for a road of return, but there was none to be found.

In the beginning, the Primordial One vanquished the Seven Sovereigns and banished the Vishap race to the depths so that it could create a world suitable for its creation, humans. 

Later, a second divine throne would descend to Teyvat and war with the Primordial One, who dropped the celestial nails to stabilize the “delusions and breakthroughs” arising in the mortal realm due to the “illusions” brought forth by the invaders.

In laying waste to the mortal realm, the ancestors of Byakuyakoku fell into a space below the earth and were banished from returning. There they met hostile creatures, the “Dragonheirs of the Depths,” who had lived in darkness since their defeat during the mortal realm’s creation. The two struggled against each other until the construction of the Dainichi Mikoshi and its artificial sun.

Eboshi: Due to the phenomenon known as Sinshades, the “past,” “history,” and “truth” of Enkanomiya would endure even if left to their own devices. As such, great effort was expended, not that we might remember, but that we might “forget.” Lady Sangonomiya was of this view.

Another such civilization’s ruins can be found deep within the Chasm, the nameless upside down city, but still more vanquished civilizations can be found in these spaces below the earth: the mural civilization of Tsurumi Island, the Ruins of Dahri (a Khaneri’ahn ruin), and the list goes on. Of those listed here, all were privy to truths of the skies that the Heavenly Throne sought to conceal and suppress. All of them had something to do with forbidden knowledge contamination events.

To return to the topic of Vishaps, the “return of the repressed” is also illustrated by a particular progression in 1.x patches with the Geovishaps and the Primo Geovishap. Prior to version 1.3, the Geovishap overworld enemy did not exist. There were only Geovishap hatchlings, which also had a slightly different appearance before 1.3.

Pre-1.3 (left) and current (right). Notice the major change that occurred was in the eyes. The one on the left may be a newly resurfaced vishap hatchling with eyes still designed for below surface light levels, while the right one has adjusted to the change in light.

From the Geovishap archive:

It is said that after many years have passed, Geovishap Hatchlings will shed the armor that originally protected them and become Geovishaps. However these two and the older, greater Primo Geovishaps have spent many years hibernating under the mountains and have only emerged and become active in recent times. As such, none can personally attest to have witnessed or recorded such a thing in person.

And the Primo Geovishap archive entry:

Folktales hold that after the great "draconic calamity" that led to the ruination of Tianqiu Valley, the overlord of the Geovishaps and Primo Geovishaps was imprisoned deep beneath the earth, and so too did they burrow into deep and unseen places, awaiting their chance to rise once more…

This description is referring to Azhdaha’s imprisonment beneath the Dragon-Queller tree. Azhdaha debuted as a weekly boss in version 1.5, two patches after these Geovishap enemies were released and changes were made to the hatchlings’ appearance. Azhdaha’s own circumstances are no exception to this theme of recursion either - Morax found him beneath the mountains, befriending him for some time before having to seal him away underground once more. In version 1.5, he returns once more to break the seal on his tree and rise to the surface again. Azhdaha is at once two things: he is his own suppressed rage at the ley lines’ exploitation, and he is symbolically the repressed pain Morax endured in sealing his own friend. This will hardly be the last time they will suffer this pain, Zhongli knows. The repressed will return again. Hoyoverse demonstrated this phenomenon through their patch release schedule in a way I would wager was quite intentional, to gesture towards the “feelings” that were slowly bubbling back to the surface.

This is just a smattering of examples in a long list of cyclical recurrences, but I’ve gone on long enough. The point is that, with the notable exception of Sal Vindagnyr, the things this world suppresses are often found beneath its surface. They are things that this world would prefer to forget, something unpleasant that it would rather avoid. 

Theory #4: Dreams, as liminal spaces between the conscious and unconscious, are a frontline for delusion and corruption. 

Here I want to further explore the implications of a chaotic space like that beneath the Chasm behaving like a dream space, and that space’s behavior sharing characteristics with the abyss. To do this, we need to take another look at wish-fulfillment in dreams, delusions, and corruption. Here we have to fully embrace the analogy of the surface as the conscious mind and the Abyss as the unconscious mind to make necessary progress.

Seeds of Delusion

"We share the same goal, you, your Tsaritsa, and I."

"Cleanse the sources of distortion in this world: short-sighted, ignorant gods and the darkness and corruption of the Abyss."  –Stainless Bloom, Pale Flame

Nahida’s first story quest is crucial to understanding the significance of dreams as sites for repressed wishes to be expressed. 

Take the humorous first dream question Paimon is asked at the dream event. Ata finds his daily life difficult, so he wants his dreams to be a space of leisure where he can reliably “become” a Slime as relief. Paimon details every time she has dreamed of the same thing, but every dream ends the same way: tragically. This lays the groundwork for the rest of the quest quite nicely. 

Each dreamer has an unfulfilled wish that causes them great sorrow, and that can never be fulfilled in real life again. Their dreams are the only place these wishes can be fulfilled, so they retreat into the dream world where the illusions of the manifest dream content can comfort them through pain. This is a prime example of how wishes can become obsessions, and how obsessions feed delusions. This is what it means to “become” a monster.

Nahida: When forced to confront such “brutal” truths, people may break down into tears, talk nonsense, or lose their tempers…

But this can only end in tragedy. Because dreams, ultimately, are illusions, and fulfilling a wish in a dream is not the same as fulfilling it in real life. Underneath the manifest dream content of all those who wish to escape reality is a latent dream thought that causes the dreamer terror. For Ilman, it is his wish to be with his wife and the repressed terror of never being able to do so again. Once the mantle of the dream-work from Beynuni (who functions as the dream-censor here) was pulled back and the dream collapsed, these anxious wishes all took the form of monsters - riftwolves, lawachurls, geovishaps.

Ata: I guess I just want to experience something different. My everyday life is nothing but the same…The sky is right above me, and the ocean just over the horizon, yet I remain caged in a life of monotony.

More than this, the underlying wish reveals something far more sinister in these dreamers, and that is a dissatisfaction with reality. It is this dissatisfaction, the horror of reality that welcomes delusion and Abyssal influence in the mind. Once it has taken root, “forgetting” becomes much more difficult. By blurring the lines between dreams and reality, the dreamers also introduced monsters near the site of their delusion in the real world. Maybe this is one of the consequences of trying to reject the truth?

The Forest Will Remember

Traveler: Do we need to enter the dream of the Vasara Tree this time too?

Arama: Yes. We must erase all traces of Marana's influence.

While dreams are not the only place where anxious thoughts can bloom into delusions and obsessions, they remain a key site for the beginnings of delusion and also for the forgetting of delusion. This is crucial to Aranyaka, which deals in memories, dreams, and the repressed trauma of lost innocence. 

In order to save Rana from the influence of Marana’s Avatar, we have to help the Aranara save the forest from its influence as well. Marana is the memory of death in all things, reborn each time it resurfaces in the conscious mind.

Araja: The forest didn’t know death, until a day came when the trees realized that withered flowers and dead animals covered the earth.

Araja: On the same day, the earth remembered the dark, poisonous blood it had once devoured, or was about to devour. The rivers thought of the descent of the sun, evaporating all water and leaving a red world behind.

Araja: They realized that all things would meet their end, and so, Marana was born. It is the name of death, and those who know it shall die.

Araja: Marana urges everything towards death. As for the tall, dark, and warped beings, they are the avatars chosen by Marana, the heralds of death.

Marana’s influence spreads in Sumeru through Withering Zones as a consequence of forbidden knowledge polluting Irminsul. Tighnari notes early on in the Archon Quest that each eradication has a shorter latent period between resurgences. This is further reflected in Aranyaka by the many dreams we enter to “erase all traces” of Marana’s influence, because taking care of the Withering Zones outside of these affected plants is not enough to get rid of it.

Arama: Alright, Marana's influence should be right inside. If left unattended, it will soon turn the dream into a horrifying nightmare.

Arama: If we take care of the baddies inside, the Vasara Tree will become healthy again and thank us with a Vasoma Fruit.

Marana’s influence in the Vasara Tree takes the shape of fungi, perhaps in the Traveler’s dreams it takes the shape of an Abyss Herald. By eradicating its shadow in the Vasara Trees’ dreams, we help the Vasara Tree “forget” Marana so that it can produce a Vasoma Fruit with memories and dreams that are free of it.

Inherent to Araja’s definition of Marana is the return of the repressed. When the forest learns of death, it remembers “the dark, poisonous blood it had once devoured, or was about to devour.” The memory of Marana resurfaces, thus Marana is born again. Once it is repressed through the process of “forgetting,” the cycle starts over. This is not the first time that the forest learned of death, and it may not even be the second time. The source of the forbidden knowledge pollution event was King Deshret, after all. Didn’t that disaster occur before the Cataclysm? Oops, I forgot the initial pollution seemed to only affect the desert. Ignore this point.

But wait, Tillandsia! If you complete Aranyaka after completing the Archon Quest, the dialogue suggests even repressed memories can’t return anymore once they’re removed from Irminsul!

Arama: Yes. May we never meet again, Marana. Many tiny Marana remain in the forest, but we've defeated the greatest one.

Arama: I can sense that all memories about Marana in Sarva have been completely erased. In this case, even the memory and fear of "death" that dwells in all things cannot bring it back ever again.

Despite the temptation to bow to Arama’s words, we know this isn’t completely true. We’ll explore those loopholes briefly in the next theory…

Theory #5: Irminsul Edits as Dream Censorship.

“The tale of the moon goes like this: this story came from a very ancient dream, one that was hidden in a Nilotpala Lotus.” –Moonpiercer

Now, this post doesn’t cover even one tenth of the material in this game that deals with the concept of dreams. If I tried to address every single thing, we’d be here until sunrise and still going on tangents. However, I want to go down one more rabbit hole before calling it a day and moving on to the follow-up of this post. 

You’ve probably noticed that many of the early dreams we considered did not suffer from heavy amounts of censorship from the dream-censor. The distortion between the latent dream thought and manifest dream content was minimal, allowing the meaning of the dream to be interpreted rather easily by myself, and in some cases by the dreamers themselves.

But we’re not free of the idea of the dream-censor yet. Its job is to mitigate the expression of the repressed thought in the dream, distorting it to the point that its original meaning is incomprehensible without dream interpretation techniques.

Well, the two don’t work quite the same way, but I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between what editing Irminsul does to reality and how the dream-censor distorts unconscious meaning. Irminsul contains a record of everything that has ever happened in Teyvat, with the exception of anything that originated outside of Teyvat such as a Descender. Nahida is an “avatar of Irminsul'' and has a deeper connection to it, having originated from its unsullied branches. What’s more, we know that Nahida has the power of dreams, a formidable ability in Teyvat that even the Fatui have their eyes on. Given her origins, could this ability also be an extension of Irminsul’s power?

At the end of the Sumeru Archon Quest and in the Interlude Quest, two major edits are made to Irminsul’s records: Greater Lord Rukkhadevata’s name is erased, and Wanderer’s identities “Kabukimono” and “Balladeer” are erased. While these edits had severe consequences for the written and recalled records of the world, spanning from books to quest dialogue to artifact sets to domain descriptions to even character voice lines, we know from Inversion of Genesis that Irminsul deletions do not split any timelines or actually change the events of the past, but merely how they are remembered. Those who died in the past before the deletion still died untimely deaths, those whose lives depend on the consequences of edited events are still alive. Rather than removing information completely, I wonder if a better analogy is that Irminsul introduces distortion into everyone’s unconscious.

No, seriously. Seriously think about what Nahida did to save Wanderer’s past from the deletion. She hid his past in an allegory, and by interpreting that allegory she was able to remember his past, including all of the gaps left in between. It wasn’t a matter of reteaching Nahida and Paimon what the Traveler already knew, they couldn’t comprehend it that way. It was about properly recalling the information by associating each element of the story with something else. Just like a dream. She created her own form of distortion, one that could be more readily understood. Perhaps nonsensical on the surface, there is a hidden truth beneath it. If the analogy holds true, we can locate Irminsul and the Ley Lines in the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious.

The truth is not deleted, and the past is not changed. It is just being repressed.

Conclusion: Nothing Under the Sun is Truly New

Nahida: But in this dream, you showed them only the most comfortable and soothing things. This entire world has been built on a foundation of buried and unseen pain.

We’ve explored this idea of how unconscious, repressed thoughts recur through dreams by using Freud’s theory of dream interpretation as a framework, and we examined how this framework shows up in Genshin’s worldbuilding (and where it diverges). We’ve shown how becoming obsessed with these repressed thoughts can occur through delusion, and that delusion can take root in dream spaces. We’ve also revisited the ideas presented in Aranyaka about Marana, also known as The Withering, which exists and recurs because of forbidden knowledge from the Abyss that contaminated Irminsul.

With this, I’ll propose an imperfect analogy: the Abyss, symbolic of the unconscious and realm of the repressed, contains forbidden knowledge about the world at its deepest point. Though Greater Lord Rukkhadevata tells us that forbidden knowledge “doesn’t belong to this world,” that it comes from the very bottom of the Abyss, I am skeptical that this is really the full story: 

Nahida: So what exactly is... forbidden knowledge?

Greater Lord Rukkhadevata: It's a kind of knowledge that doesn't belong to this world, and a form of "truth" that can't be understood.

Greater Lord Rukkhadevata: The world is constantly rejecting it, leading to all kinds of bad phenomena.

Greater Lord Rukkhadevata: If we allow forbidden knowledge to pollute Irminsul, I'm afraid the entirety of Teyvat could fall apart.

I cannot deny the way Greater Lord Rukkhadevata’s description of forbidden knowledge resembles the psychoanalytic concept of a repressed thought. Note that from Rukkhadevata’s dialogue, the problems that arise from forbidden knowledge seem to be a result of the rejection rather than the knowledge itself. Why is this “truth” being rejected? What makes it unable to be understood? Is this imagined destruction of Teyvat comparable to something like ego death, the destruction of self-identity?

Rather than coming from beyond this world, forbidden knowledge is, I think, more likely to be something that the world has forgotten belongs to it, “something long known and at once familiar,” that has become strange and incomprehensible through repression and distortion. It is something the world is in a cycle of remembering and forgetting in disaster after major disaster as the repressed returns once more. Dreams are crucial sites for its return.

What may be interesting to consider with this analogy is that if forbidden knowledge is indeed a kind of repressed thought that the world has “forgotten,” its recursion should tell us that it wishes to be expressed, and that it is seeking fulfillment in the world’s “conscious” mind. If forbidden knowledge was the world’s repressed wish, what would that mean? Hell, what would the wish even be?

Writing this kinda made me feel like how I felt while reading Freud, so if not everything makes sense or agrees with each other I sincerely apologize and hope there are at least a few ideas here that feel useful, even if just for this moment. Thank you for reading <3.

Sources: All information regarding Freud’s theory of dream interpretation comes from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, primarily lectures 6-8 and 13-14. You may read it online for free at Project Gutenberg.

[lilyandthegenshinbrainrot]

Hi bffs, today we're going to be talking about Enkanomiya's "Vishap people" and the curse of King Deshret's people, the birth of Eleazar bc I can't stop thinking about this possible/not likely correlation

Eleazar produces scales as a manifestation of divine punishment, for knowing "forbidden knowledge." It slowly paralyzes the patient and causes severe nerve damage.

Eleazar is positively related to a person's elemental "content", which I would gather means that people with eleazar has more elemental capacity/resistance or elemental synergy.

What does this have to do with the Vishap people? Well, I'd ask you to recall the Vassals of Watatsumi, and Tsumi the snake-masked shrine maiden from the Enkanomiya Event way back when in 2.4. Tsumi tells us that she was a reptile, a descendant of the Vishaps that had grown and evolved to further their advancement against humanity and Watatsumi. Vishaps are some of the oldest creatures in Teyvat, species wise. They are noteable for their ability and relation to elements, as they are biologically connected to specific elements. (Azhdaha, and the Dragon of Water legend of Watatsumi).

It's curious that there is a similar line between Eleazar producing scales and Vishap people, as Eleazar is divine *punishment* and Vishaps are the divinely *punished,* being that the Primordial One sent them away from the rest of the world.

a side note to relate this to irl include: the wiki calls Eleazar is a Jewish name, meaning "god has helped" /el'azár.

This is a curious decision by HYV given that Eleazar is, technically, proven to be mediated by "archon residue/ a god's remains" by the notorious Il Dottore

[kshkshks]

trying to understand that goddamn speech from wolfy. help.

this is part one of this post

˚⁎⁺˳ ✦ ༚ spoiling imaginarium theatre. for free!!

so wolfy’s boar story + nicole line.

“ Why not wolves? Many a tale has wolves in it, and even the compendium personally burned by Madame Mage had a wolf character!

It is said that the Boar Tribe were once all wild boars, but the boars did bad things, so the master wanted to punish them. The master took out a rusted set of scales, and told the boars to stack their own things on both sides. If the scales tipped to one side, they could leave.

But the scales were so rusty that putting just a small amount of weight was not enough to move them.

Those boars who placed their heads on the scales became wolves, lizards, and snakes, leaving only their strength. Those who offered their muscles became rabbits, leaping three paces to a bound, instinctively guiding people to treasure.

But there was one boar who placed things evenly on both sides, until the rusted scale broke right down the middle...

And so she became a mute person — for she had placed her voice upon the scales as well.

She is also a friend of Madame Mage, and I hear she likes to speak in people's heads! “

tldr: the seelie got their husk forms via Scale Punishment for a ‘bad thing’ they did. they were punished by a 'master'. (in this context, it may be implied to be PO.) and, depending on which metaphorical parts of themselves they gave away, they turned into multiple different creatures. btw, it's hard to tell how metaphorical the scales are. they may very well be actual scales because mihoyo is just cheeky like that.

“Legends of Jueyun” and "Amethyst Crown". they differ, which leads me to believe that "legends" is not to be taken literally, at least anymore. nabu malikata's account is much clearer: the Scale Punishment might have happened right after the Second Who Came (Nibelung potentially), when PO was anxious of their empire crumbling. and that Scale Punishment was the great exiling of seelies, "divine envoys of heaven".

Arama in “Aranyaka: Part III - Nursery of Lost Dreams, Part 2: For the Children of the Past”: the ‘bad thing’ should be falling in love with humans. i interpret this as protecting humans at large, as a race. or maybe creating nephelim. or maybe that's one and the same. "Song of Seelie": the 'Boar Tribe' likely lived in the Dark Sea and/or Abyss, as that's where the seelie are said to have had palaces before being exiled.

"The Little Witch and the Undying Fire": teyvat's people (imo it's unclear if that's the UC or current ones) are nephilim — fusions of angels (probably seelie) and regular humans.

funny thing: little husk seelie + nabu malikata and vishaps have horns and their designs seem to be based on the same animal — varieties of sea slugs. they are also connected to the moon sisters, not only through “Legends of Jueyun” but also because of something you may not want to read, so skip ahead. here i go:

now, goddess selene/luna (depends on the religion) in her description looks like nabu malikata and the seelie ladies who appear in various stories; she's always a beautiful pale woman (see for example "drunkard's tale"), and in nabu malikata's case, they're both horned. regardless, selene/luna are stemming from the moon gods like men and mah, and all of those guys always have the visual of horns of a crescent rising behind. and the very old babylonian moon god suen/sin/nanna is additionally the god of cattle. the husks of seelies we interact with in game have tiny horns themselves, too (so nabu malikata isn't an outlier).

there's an achievement in enkanomya called "phosphorus's guidance" that you get by following seelies to their courts, which implies phosphorus being, like, either all seelies collectively, or, more likely, their ancestor from "legends of jueyun". phosphoros literally means 'morning star', they are the god of planet venus (sometimes called morning star). another word is heosphoros which means 'torch-bearing' and that's how hecate and diana appear in their iconology. additionally, selene is a sister of the goddess of dawn eos. with dawn comes the morning star, venus is mainly the goddess of love, her name meaning 'desire', and eos's description is overwhelmingly just how lusty she was. in roman mythology lucifer's mother is aurora, which etymologically leads us to, again, eos. lucifer literally means 'light bringing', and is not only the name of the christian devil, but also diana's title -- lucifera. her name, btw, means 'divine, heavenly', and 'morning sky'.

tldr: phosphoros (the seelie god or something according to a genshin achievement) is basically diana, the moon goddess.

˚⁎⁺˳ ✦ ༚

personal speculations

✦ rabbits — seelie husks. offered (at least) their physical bodies, soul. maybe that's control of their fate, power to change anything themselves "A Song of Seelie": "stripped of all that the body once held close and [stripped of] the soul once held dear"; "Ay-Khanoum's Myriad": "stripped of their minds"; Wolfy: "guiding people to treasure".

✦ wolves — khaenriahns and/or surtalogi and/or a figure surtalogi is mirroring. offered (at least) 'head'. “A Drunkard’s Tale”: “what you humans call wine, we wolves call the abyss”; this post and this comment thread on surtalogi’s connection to woobakwa and the wolf pup in “The Boar Princess”.

✦ boars — survivors of the Unified Civilisation, such as Enkanomiya and possibly Sal Vindagnyr (see "Dragonspine's Glacial Secret"). offered nothing? if they even exist still after the Scale Incident, which they may. since boar princess travels with not-boar animals who are still considered to be from her kingdom. this is a can of worms however since the boar princess was theorised to be the princess of sal vindagnyr.

✦ foxes — some weird spirit guys. i don’t know. definitely have an istaroth connection. “The Dandelion Sea” whole; the wind spirit turning into a fox in "A Drunkard's Tale"; "Imperatrix Umbrosa Chapter: Act II - Transient Dreams, Part 3: Radiant Sakura": makoto's plan (ei planting the sakura in the plan of euthymia) involved istaroth, and i the cutscene of it coming to fruition foxes come along.

✦ turtles — ambiguous.

✦ lizards — something something vishaps this is not in my competence. offered (at least) 'head'.

✦ snakes — ambiguous. offered (at least) 'head'. maybe khaenriah, another group or all instead of wolves, simply because dainsleif’s contemplation is ourobouros.

✦ nicole — gambler. went all in. 99% turn away just before they hit it big. you should bet your house your wife your kids and your organs. offered (at least) her body, voice, possibly 'head' and/or soul.

✦ nabu malikata — i don't know anymore. read fun fact below. i don't know what she offered. should i be afraid? fun fact: there's a mathematician called Nicolo Tartaglia Fontana. first is his actual name, second is a nickname, third is a (possible) surname. HM. this was the only link connecting childe to nicole before, so i thought it could have been a fluke. BUT NOW, since 'wolves' with nicole are of one species originally, and assuming the wolf in "the boar princess' references surtalogi... "The Dirge of Bilqis, Part 6: The Eternal Dream, Ever Lush": when traveler sees nabu malikata in liloupar's memories, they describe her gaze as being faced with "nothingness". oh what's that. childe just happens to have this weird detail where his eyes don't have a sparkle. HM HM OH THERE'S MORE. "Ay-Khanoum's Myriad": jinn addressing nabu malikata "Please, dream-mother, mistress of forgetting and wine, we beg of you — remain queen of this garden." DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT WINE IS. WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'DREAM-MOTHER'. LIKE NIGHT-MOTHER?? *grits teeth* i don't know what exactly is going on there but this may be related to the 'head'. purple (colour of padisarahs) is the colour of abyss and hexenzirkel and the imaginarium type in hi3 too and don't dare tell me this is not important.

what the fuck is head

[stainedglassthreads]

Goooooooood I hope that the Archon Interlude involves connections to Enkanomiya because like!! There's so many connections between Fontaine and Enkanomiya and there is! SOMETHING.

Enkanomiya is the first place where an Abyssal Lector displays the ability to take human form during a World Quest. Enkanomiya contains books that talk about how the Dragon Sovereign of Water will be reborn as a human. Vishaps and marine-based animals feature in both Enkanomiya and Fontaine. The Abyss as an oceanic zone, descending deeper, deeper. Condemnation by the Heavens for the sins of your God.

Enkanomiya has weapons that look a lot like the weapons Childe makes--has people with Greek names, just like how Ajax and Teucer are Greek names. Enkanomiya has a strong theme of sin and condemnation with Aru ritualistically condemning his people before we can fight the Bloodbranch Vishaps. Children who are figurehead rulers are condemned by the masses and executed for the sin of ignorance. Oceanids that don't realize they're really Oceanids and Sinshades who don't realize they're really dead.

Enkanomiya casts the Traveler into the role of Hero and Fontaine is all about performances!

All I want is for Childe to come back with info from Skirk and then he and the Traveler both just kind. Trip and stumble into Enkanomiya and/or the Abyss. And we make some progress with *gestures generally at Childe's whole Thing*

[mtkanna]

in their own ways, each member of the narzissenkreuz institute became 'immortal,' i think. jakob exists as an abyssal creature lived far beyond his original lifespan, while the eidolon in the real annapausis holds all of mary-ann guillotin's memory and thus acts as a living monument to her. alain guillotin produced so many advancements for fontaine's technology that his name was almost canonised—everyone knows his name, now, and what he did for fontaine, even if they don't know much about him as a person. and rene became part of the primordial sea only to return as narzissenkreuz, thus becoming a being that prophesied its own death and infinite rebirth...

[coingbee]

VISHAPS!!! THEY HUMAN SOMETIME????

so a while back i sent a reaaaalllly long post about bathysmal vishaps being humans, the who the when and the how, for this cool fic from @yaekiss :)) and i was like oh i should post it but forgot forever soooooo here it is exactly 100 days later

vague offhand spoiler for 4.1 or 4.2? i genuinely don’t remember

THW WHO

1. Pahsiv our beloved! Look at her she’s the bestest ever!! she’s very vishap coloured! down to the eyes! her name is also vishap backwards which. um. I didn’t notice until someone pointed it out to me. During the quest a vishap appears to help us fight rift hounds while she disappears right before, so there’s a chance they might have been one and the same! She’s so cool she’s the best.

2. Vassals of Watatsumi! They’re kinda mostly dead these days but they were Orobashi’s familiars and had half-human and half-reptile forms, then eventually became more and more humans until the only thing setting them apart was slit pupils. They defended people from vishaps and could talk to them so that’s neat.

3. Reptilians! There aren’t any pictures of them so look at that instead 👍 They’re bathysmal vishaps who got their ass kicked and started infiltrating humans by imitating them . only difference from humans is slit pupils again. Where are they now? who knows

4. Tsumi! Is she a Vassal? Is she a reptilian? Are those even two different things? legends say kokomi and enjou are still arguing to this day. she was raised by vishaps though, so that’s cool

SO Pahsiv is probably a reptilian, but instead of being human shaped she’s melusine shaped. and uhh vassals are weird almost but not quite vishap but that’s my opinion like I said I wasn’t there in the event so this section is basically the only one I got second hand information for

THE WHEN????

A fucking while ago, mostly. Tsumi is thought to be the last Vassal, since they stopped being, um, produced? after Orobashi died.

But! Bathysmal vishaps have started popping up in Fontaine! (Thought the citizens don’t know this yet) (which i think is interesting because there are none anywhere else, even in inazuma making them the only overworld bathysmal vishaps anyway) Something about

Who’s to say. neuvilette probably could

How.

Vishaps are really good at adapting and learning. Like, really good. example given: the whole reptilians thing. Among other things like them becoming cryo and electro for social and combat reasons, and going blind as they grow up (yes that’s on purpose)

See: this neat riddle

and the second one

and while they did develop cryo and electro from hydro, pyro was a dead end

Uhhhh idk. What else. Deep sea eels were imported into enkanomiya?

To conclude: I like vishaps they’re blue and purple and lizards 👍

[ae-ul]

enkanomiya