[4.7] World Structure Theory Revisited - A Genshin Impact Theory

I once theorized that Genshin was a chunk of land bubbled alongside the world tree which then sunk beneath a sea... well, it's been a couple years and we've got new information and a brand new lexicon of terminology to work with, so let's see if we can't flesh this idea out a bit more.

**TIMESTAMPS**

00:00 Introduction
02:00 Teyvat
04:35 Memoria
07:30 Primordial Sea
15:30 Galax-Trees
18:50 The Ark
28:00 Waking World
31:20 Closing Thoughts

**SPOILER WARNINGS**

- Bedtime Story Archon Quest
- Chapter 4
- Sigewinne's story quest
- Nahida's story quest (2)
- Moon Bathed Deep (Enkanomiya)
- Ei's story quest (2)
- Honkai Star Rail's Penacony Chapter

**CITATIONS & ATTRIBUTIONS**

[VeraldoAncodini]

So Genshin in a nutshell is:
Don't let your dreams be dreams.
Make your dreams come true.
Nothing is impossible.
Yes, you can.
Just do it!

[GuyWithAnAmazingHat]

In Honkai Star Rail Welt and Acheron's dialogue straight up talks about the final arc of Honkai 3rd about Kevin, the greatest hero of humanity who turned himself into a "villain" so that the world can be saved.
Kevin asked a question: "Why do birds fly?" Some people think birds fly because they like freedom, some think because they have a dream to fly, some think they fly because they can, all these answers assume that birds have the choice and desire to fly.

Kevin says, no, birds fly because they have to, if they don't fly, they will die. They evolved wings so that they can escape predators, not because they have the desire to fly, it's because they have the desire to survive. He forced the world to fly, with him as Icarus leading the way, as he got closer to the Sun, the light of hope, he and his comrades burned, leaving behind a burning trail to guide the rest of humanity to hope and freedom. The 13 Flamechasers, the original Trailblazers of Honkai, as Acheron said this man is befitting the spirit of the Nameless, Trailblaze.

So why am I talking about Kevin? I'm talking about how he saved the world with his 2 opposing plans, trapping the world in an endless Dream, a Samsara isolated from the outside world in a self sustaining bubble universe. And the other plan, have people in the world oppose this dream and stand up to him with such ferocity, they wake up from the dream, bursting the bubble, becoming mature enough to fly off into the universe and take care of themselves.

The Earth of Honkai 3rd faces an eternal cycle of Honkai eruptions which ends in civilisation getting destroyed and tiny groups of survivors spending tens of thousands of years to repopulate the world, this is just like the 4 known cycles of Teyvat. Kevin wants to break this cycle once and for all, by creating a bubble universe from the dreams of humanity, an Imaginary reality sustained by dreams, sort of like Tsukuyomi from Naruto, except all of humanity is sent into a dream space physically to have a sweet dreams forever, but no real dreams will ever be achieved. Sunday's plan was directly inspired by this as well, which is why the entire Penacony arc references Honkai 3rd heavily with Welt and Acheron directly talking about it.

Kevin himself does this out of desperation, instead of facing another mass extinction event, he would rather humans be suspended in a dream world and not go extinct. And he knows that this isn't the best solution, which is why he uses this solution to force the protagonists to transcend him, defeat him and his plan. And why would defeating him save humanity from going extinct? Because he merged himself with the Cocoon of Finality, sacrificing himself to gain enough power to create this dream world, instead of having Finality end humanity for another cycle. So he became the brakes to stall Finality long enough until the protagonists become strong enough to defeat him, he Trailblazed this path of hope for others to follow and then allowed himself to burn away.

Like Kevin as the Dreamer of this Dream, I believe the Primordial One or whoever it is, is the Dreamer of Teyvat and their goal is to force the inhabitants of Teyvat to have such great dreams, they will one day burst forth from this bubble.

This is why Celestia created the Vision system, so that humans can dream so big that they can one day defy Destiny/ Heavenly Principles and gain freedom for themselves. And in order to do this, they have to truly become an obstacle for civilisation, Celestia has to be such an overwhelming force worth defying and overcoming that humanity will reach for the dreams and mature for themselves.

Celestia will take on each civilisation with full force, anyone who wishes to over come Destiny will be met with the full power of Celestia, and if they fail, civilisations will be destroyed; They will become ruins and legends for the following cycles to learn from and to sprout even bigger dreams to overcome Destiny. And when Celestia is finally overcome, Teyvat will awaken from this dream ready to fly, face and fight against what ever is beyond.

[arghya_]

12:22 Editor's note - "if I don't include this clip at least once per video ashi docks my pay" lol

[aglitchinthematrix]

I had a weird thought this morning that was whether or not the Sumeru Archon Quest was foreshadowing Teyvat being a shared dream too and now this video drops lol

[ishansharma]

Woh, ei's line at the end "Waking world you seen, woven from the stuff of dreams, all shall fade away" gave me shivers. I find it highly unlikely that they put it there intentionally to hint at this kind of theory but if they did, this is some Aot level of details and foreshadowing

[niamhomahony]

Ashikai is our lore archon; when she uploads, I click immediately.

[antoinelelong]

When you mentioned erosion, I thought, in the context of this theory, the origin of erosion becomes much clearer : in a dream, you generally remember only most recent memories, so maintaining old memories for a long time is one of the challenges that the dream faces. It's a dream on steroïds; but it has limits nonetheless and there is a point when things gradually decay from ordered memories to chaotic unmaintained information, people and things erode to madness.

[nwoDekaTsyawlA]

I think this video is spot on, probably really accurate. Many of these ideas were fermenting in my head, but only Ashikai can express them so eloquently and nicely wrapped up.

Maybe the most interesting thing of this video is the attempt at discovering what the "main components" of the dream are. We apparently have a dreamer "sustaining" the dream (nice choice of a word there), a tree to drive the fate of the dream using memories, and a sun "harvesting" the dream.

I don't know who is dreaming. I suspect that the Teyvat we experience is a re-tell of the past, and the traveler is dreaming. There could be a second, failed dream, dreamed by the Heavenly Principles who is about to wake up. The "sun" could be, or could have been Zhongli. He is just too different and related to the sun. These are all loose hypothesis.

An interesting quote by Canotila: "Since memories can be made into books, if we reverse the logic, books can also be written directly into memories..."
And who writes books? The Hexenzirkel.

[yeet]

i love the idea that an enclosed amount of primordial seawater left alone for a while would naturally give birth to dragons… kind of like what happens if you put water and soil from a river in a jar, algae and plants and small animals start appearing

[genshin_lore_enjoyer]

My goodness, its only video intro and im already scream "YES, U COOK"

[trskuls]

Everything you said about the chaotic sea of Memories/Memoria/Elemental Energy perfectly fits with the description of The Sea of Quanta. The other side of the coin of the Honkai Universe. Where The Imaginary Tree is Order, The Sea is Chaos in every sense of the world, able to be easily influenced by anything it comes in contact with and can act as an Observer. And the Sea of Quanta is filled with Bubble Worlds that are small pockets of Order that though various means managed to prevent themselves from being swallowed by the Sea.

[Grafii]

What I find really interesting is that none of major events of each nation doesn't affect other nations at all, like completely, like Fontaine for example got completely submerged and given its vertical position, most other nations would have to be also submerged because that is how water works, yet it seems only Fontaine was affected by it and none of them even comment it, like it didn't happen. Same for all other events, no one besides in Mondstadt talks about what Dvalin was doing, it is as if he never crossed the border with other nations, which is weird. Every nation's story is weirdly localized that no matter how grim or devastating events happen, other nations are in no way affected at all which makes no sense, unless each nation is like a bubble world on its own, they are all in a larger bubble but they themselves cannot affect other bubbles. And Natlan is the best example of it, as until the end of Fontaine we at most had crumbs of information and nothing major has seeped beyond its borders. This would also explain why Melusines, Aranaras, Youkai and so on only exists in one nation, because they are only a part of that nation's bubble world and no other one

[SheyyCatt]

What you said about remembering the dream gave me a huge flashback to Zhongli's second story quest.
To quote:
"I need to find a better way of recording history in order to engrave its truth. [...] Therefore, I thought of you, Traveler. You are one who crosses the celestial atlas, and who passes through countless worlds. If our history is engraved in your memory, it will one day accompany you into another world. As long as a Traveler like you is able to record what happened, then a backup of sorts will exist for times and tides of Teyvat."
Make of that whatever you want, but it fits perfectly into the theory.

[optinium]

Hoyoverse, where your dreams turns to reality.

[oldstories]

29:31 If this is true then I think this is the reason for the traveler's entire journey to begin with, the purpose of their journey is to bear witness to everything in the world and learn as much about it as possible so as to reconstruct it when they "wake up"

[nekryone]

The fact it's called a dream "Solvent" implies that the crystallized dreams can be dissolved and then reconstructed into the same thing but in a different form.

Similar to how water is a solvent of salt, you can evaporate water to get the exact same salt, but it's just in a different form than what you put in the original.

[Gus-djub]

Last I was this early, The Senate hadn’t named himself Emperor.

[blank]

What if teyvat is actually the underground nation and khanriah is outside? That would explain why they have their own sun and moon and the "endless abyss" is just space or a nebula in space. Meanwhile the stars in teyvat are rocks and thats why no human knows about "the dome", because there isnt one because teyvat is actually underground. This also tells us that Irmynsul isnt actually upside down, its Teyvat itself which is inverted

[creativemind]

"Is it because of Penacony?"

Yes?

[keagonlua]

This honestly makes a lot of sense, especially given the upcoming event with origami birds (dragons) losing their color (their life). I thought it was originally about saurians losing their original forms, pyro dragons, as most, if not all, seem to be connected to another element plus Pyro. That's why there are only six, not seven, so perhaps it refers to both. Either way, this video is great timing because I was thinking yesterday that if they are gonna do that "it was all a dream", they could at least make the dream reality to make it hit less hard for us players.