Kevin Chen, Period 7, 11/16/23

Kevin Chen,  Pd.7
11/16/2023
Modern Mythology 2024
Blog #2 Revised

Parallels Between Greek Mythology and Genshin Impact

    Greek gods having a sense of humanity to them is a topic that has been brought up in class many times so far in the Greek mythology unit. Like recently discussed in class, the gods are flawed in a human way, and that makes their judgment prone to bias. Between the readings of Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes and Mythology by Edith Hamilton, the Greek gods are presented as having their decisions driven by emotion, much like humans, but often on a more amplified scale compared to average people.

    The gods display traits akin to the 7 deadly sins, like lust and envy. Lust is displayed in the story of Hephaetsus’ unwanted advances towards Athena. After being turned down, he gives into his desires and sexually assaults her. Jealousy is found in the continuous conflict between Zeus and Hera. Zeus knowingly assaulted many women, cheating on Hera. Hera, in her dismay, proceeds to punish each and every woman Zeus cheats on her with rather than Zeus himself. In the story of Demeter and Persephone, she is very protective of her daughter, and thus is furious when Hades kidnaps her. Demeter in her rage lets the entire Earth become infertile, punishing everyone for her own grief.

    Genshin Impact has been called “China’s largest cultural export”. I like to refer to its worldbuilding as “artificial mythology”-- lore crafted together in a way that resembles real life mythologies. In its world, gods were ordinary beings that were granted a small fragment of elemental power, and then ascended to godhood through various means. Even though they’re not human, they take the form of one, and bear flaws and emotions like people do.

    One god in particular comes to mind in terms of gods with flaws. She has many names, but I refer to her as Ei. In the 500 years leading up to the game’s current events, her closest friends were lost one by one in combat. Unable to bear the loss, she resorts to locking herself in a sub-dimension, and proceeds to pursue the concept of “eternity”, fearing that progress or change will lead to loss. As part of this, she shuts her nation from the outside world, under the belief that if the nation is stagnant forever in an isolated bubble, nobody else will experience loss the way she did. Additionally, she confiscates all the visions in the country. Visions are conduits for elemental abilities granted by higher powers, and a proof of one’s aspirations. The people of the country are forced into unfulfilling and mundane unchanging lives, unable to explore, create, or progress technologically.

    The remaining gods in the game are also guilty in a way of this flawed judgment. Morax, god of Liyue, elects to leave the governing of his nation in the hands of people, rather than himself. When disaster hits the nation, it is in a large part to the player character that the issue is resolved. His choice to give his people self governance can also be read as abandonment. Similarly, in the nation of Mondstadt, its god Venti is often found in the form of a broke, drunk, and unassuming bard. As the god embodying freedom, he chose to leave his nation alone for many centuries. To the citizens, it's the same as abandoning them. His friend- a dragon named Dvalin, became angry at his absence, and this is the root of the game’s main story prologue.

    Lastly, Ei once created a puppet, but cast it aside since it was unable to serve as a vessel for her powers. The puppet, taking on the name Scaramouche, journeyed around without purpose, and bonded with a few humans, but each time they died, leaving him behind. Scaramouche, as a puppet, doesn’t understand the fragility of human lives, and considers them to have abandoned him, like his “mother” did. Ei believes letting him find his own path was the better choice. Scaramouche believes that he was meant to become a god himself by inheriting Ei’s power. He commits many atrocities in pursuit of godhood, including starting wars. Eventually he finds himself with the corrupt officials in Sumeru, a nation that sealed away its own god. The corrupt officials accept Scaramouche as their new god. In order to give him the “wisdom of a god”, they proceed to send the city into a coma/dream state, and harvest their knowledge. In the lore, there are people who’ve come into contact with “forbidden knowledge”, an unknown power that drives people insane. The officials commit atrocities to harvest this knowledge, and feed it into Scaramouche. The process would have killed nearly everyone, if the player character hadn’t saved them.

    The way I see it, video game stories when written well are a form of literature. It’s eye-opening to see just how many parallels can be drawn between Genshin and Greek Mythology, and also gives insight into the inspiration and research the writers of the game did. Being able to use a new lens on the lore of the game is very interesting, and also gives me the opportunity to use parallels to predict the future of the game’s story- something the Genshin community has been obsessed with from day 1.