This was a research paper I wrote for my Multimedia Theories class like... two years ago.

It was initially about more than just Genshin (I talked about Falcon and the Winter Soldier and The Hunger Games in the initial paper), but someone on Tumblr asked for the full thing specifically on my Genshin sideblog (you can see it here. Consider the post itself a warm-up for the paper as well, but I'll be reiterating some points here as well so you don't have to).

And from revisiting this paper, I realized that the last time I wrote this, it was Version 4.1. So I rewrote some parts to reflect current lore at Version 5.7, kept some of my original references and introductions, and added some in-game references to back up a lot of my claims.

Note that this isn't a condemnation of the game and more an analysis of its messaging. I still actively play this game in private, I'm not telling you what to feel about the game. I just analyzed what it was saying in general.

Contents

Introduction

  Ideas about poverty

  Povertyism and the media's role

  Mythification and evils in mass media

Discussion

  The villainification of indigents

  Genshin Impact

    Othering

     Criminalization

     Accessory

Conclusion

Footnotes

Introduction

There is no shortage of fictional works that mention or center on poverty. It has its own tropes and standards within any given genre, be it as an accessory to the plot or an aesthetic choice. It comes with its own implications and prejudiced perspectives.

Often, when poverty is treated as a central topic in any piece of media, it is plot, setting, and conflict– all in one. Characters are poor, live in a poor environment, and/or must be resilient in their poverty or be swept under. And, just as often, there are moral implications to this sink-or-swim perspective. When the poor are pushed to the brink so absolutely, will they work within the system that institutionally aggravates this condition or will they work outside of it and attempt to outsmart it?

By virtue of narrative, those who wish to outsmart it rarely come out unscathed.

For pieces that do not give poverty the depth of discussion it requires, the way it is discussed and treated opens a world of implications.

Poverty is an abstract concept, one usually defined as a lack of access to basic resources (e.g., food, shelter, etc.) or the currency required to gain access to those resources over a lengthy period of time, experienced by a collective group/population, by individual family units, or just by individuals in general.* (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Poverty.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 July 2025)

One must consider the implications of poverty in a moral sense as well. The term “impoverished” for example, a term meaning, “to be made poor,” (Harper, Douglas. “Etymology of Impoverish.” Online Etymology Dictionary) sounds rather innocuous at first. But upon digging further, “poor” by itself has multiple implications. There is contempt in using “poor” to mean inferior, wretched, to be pitied, to be so incapable as to have little to produce or bring forth. (Harper, Douglas. “Etymology of Poor.” Online Etymology Dictionary) And while using the word’s negative connotations might be a case-specific basis, especially when understanding the most generic understanding of the word “poor” just means “not wealthy,” in the context of this analysis, this etymological meaning of the words must still be taken into consideration.

Poverty by itself skews negatively when discussed, although often poverty is felt and experienced by those who have no say in the matter. For most, poverty is as ruinous and calamitous as any natural calamity, and often comes just as suddenly. For this reason, I will be using the term “indigent” instead to refer to people who experience poverty (Harper, Douglas. “Etymology of Indigent.” Online Etymology Dictionary), for convenience, consistency, and in an attempt to steer away from turning the subjects into an object of pity or just an object in general.

Ideas about poverty 

Historically, there have been two prevailing views about poverty within the field of academics: 

1.  the utility idea—which sees poverty as a goal for a nation’s economic development (“poverty is seen as necessary for the country’s economic success, which requires a large number of people eager for work, and avoiding hunger is seen as a necessary incentive for doing that work”); and, 
2. the institutional-failures idea—which sees poverty as preventable and as the result of failures of the state to serve its people (“poverty as a social ill that can be avoided through public action in a capitalist market economy.”)

It is notable here that the utility idea was largely influential before the 20th century (Ravallion, Martin. “Lessons from a History of Thought on Poverty.” CEPR, 13 Aug. 2013) and that one of its biggest supporters was the founder of modern policing, Patrick Colquhoun. I will discuss this in later parts of the analysis, but the police and military forces being entities in charge of enforcing the state’s laws, authority, and presence is essential to the maintenance of the state of poverty as we see it worldwide.

The modern understanding of poverty in the field of academics, though not acknowledged outside of it, is the institutional-failures idea. The spread of it outside that context is hindered by neoliberalist ideology, which was prevalent in the West in the early 1990s and heavily promoted the utility idea. As a consequence, neoliberalism was and still is the common ideology in the West, the Global North, and the Global South (Saad-Fiho, Alfredo. The Crises of Global Neoliberalism: The Economy, Politics, Health.. SOAS University of London; Thorne, Abigail. Neoliberalism. What Was Liberalism?), not including countries that do not have capitalist ideas, which has led to the villainization of the institutional-failures idea (which has mostly been dubbed as communist ideology).

Povertyism and the media’s role

Special Rapporteur Olivier De Schutter defined the word “povertyism” as negative stereotyping against the poor (De Schutter, Olivier. Banning Discrimination on Grounds of Socioeconomic Disadvantage: An Essential Tool in the Fight against Poverty. A, 77/157, United Nations, 13 July 2022.), referencing a proposal made by Sheilagh Turkington in 1993. This was in a report De Schutter made for the United Nations asking for an update in anti-discrimination laws to accommodate indigents due to the overwhelming neoliberalist ideology that villainizes them.

Indeed, it is hard not to notice widespread povertyism within the media once it has been pointed out, especially in news media, where word choices by themselves are able to change the narrative of an event from one of a peaceful protest into a senseless and destructive riot (Martin, Bronwen. “Semiotics and the Media.” The Handbook of Media and Mass Communication Theory, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2014, pp. 56–73. Wiley Online Library). This works in tandem with the overwhelming media bias towards the police and military forces as well, where often news outlets are wont to offer their platform to the police but never to those being policed to offer a neutral stance.

One thing I cannot expound on for the sake of brevity and focus is the intersectionalities between povertyism and other social injustices, where the institutional bigotry instilled in most societies (influenced by the West or otherwise) has ensured that these groups maintain indigency. I will briefly touch on these topics in certain sections of the discussion, but only to a certain point.

It is not controversial to assert that the media is the voice of the mainstream and, concerningly, is massively controlled by the state. Because of the prevalence of neoliberalism, which privatizes public welfare and resources (including access to information and certain modes of communication), mass media is overwhelmingly subject to the laws of the state, not to the benefit of the people.

As such my objectives for this analysis are as follows:

• To ascertain how pervasive fictional portrayals of marginalized groups have affected mass opinion and whether this could be applied to portrayals of indigents; 
• To better understand how fictional media can be utilized to help advocate for and about societal issues; and,
• To understand if these pervasive fictional portrayals mean that we should be having more in-depth conversations about indigents—within fiction and without.

To meet these objectives, I will be analyzing the messages and signals in the fictional work, Genshin Impact. I will be discussing the reasons for this choice later, and will be going in-depth about the themes, messages, and signals used in narrative and metanarrative choices.

To do this, I will be engaging in critical linguistics theory, a theory brought up by Roger Fowler and Gunther Kress (Fowler, Roger, and Gunther Kress. “Critical Linguistics.” Language and Control, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1979, pp. 185–213) that thoroughly analyzes the language used and the sociological ideologies behind them that are largely influenced by a creator’s politics, intentions, and background, which then affects the messages being sent to the audience.

This will all be done to answer the following questions:

1. What are the generic portrayals of indigents in fictional media?
2. How do these portrayals affect attitudes towards indigents? Have there been reasons for these pervasive portrayals?
3. Have these portrayals affected activism/advocacies for indigents?

Before answering these questions, we must first turn to understanding the broader concepts involved in this discussion.

Mythification and evils in mass media

Dr. Arendt’s essays on the Eichmann trials (Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem : A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin Books, 2006. Internet Archive) are essential in any discussion about moral messaging and mass narratives. The most notable quote from Arendt comes not within the essays, but by the end of them, commenting on Eichmann’s blasé account as a Nazi while he stood trial in Israel.

In explaining her oft-quoted statement ‘the banality of evil,’ Arendt wrote, “Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, [Eichmann] had no motives at all. […] He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing.” (Eichmann in Jerusalem : A Report on the Banality of Evil. p. 287).

This has been discussed extensively by scholars after the fact. Dr. Arendt was stating that it was too easy a narrative (Bird, David. “Hannah Arendt, Political Scientist Dead.” The New York Times, 6 Dec. 1975. NYTimes.com) to give Eichmann all that power when, in essence, the fault of an entire ideology falls on the shoulders of those who enabled it, passively or actively— other countries, other Germans, fellow Jews, etc. There is a mythification involved in both viewing someone as evil or heroic, in pinning the blame of years of suffering and the death of thousands on one specific person or figurehead. Giving the target a face, so to speak. 

This process of mythification can be done with a group of people as well. Conservative American politicians do this with just about any minority group, reactionary Filipino politicians do this with anyone opposing the current presidency. By turning people into a faceless mob, they then begin the process of dehumanizing them and trivializing their concerns, then pinning the blame on some idea to fear—socialists, communists, terrorists, whichever is easier. At the end of the day, this process of mythification succeeds and the people who believe these claims and care not to fact-check will then buy into this us-vs-them narrative. 

This was efficiently summarized by Bronwen Martin when discussing ways to analyze texts produced for the masses (Martin, Bronwen. “Semiotics and the Media.” The Handbook of Media and Mass Communication Theory, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2014, pp. 56–73. Wiley Online Library). Not only is it pertinent to understand what a text is saying, one also must understand what it has willingly left out or is implying through the words it is and isn’t using. In tandem with those factors, on the side of fictional works, one also must consider who the target audience is, if it is age-restricted, and how far-reaching has it been with regard to its advertising, etc.

This sort of analysis was what Catheryne van Kessel and Ryan Cowley did in their analysis of educational texts for history and the social sciences (van Kessel, Cathryn, and Ryan M. Crowley. “Villainification and Evil in Social Studies Education.” Theory & Research in Social Education, vol. 45, no. 4, Oct. 2017, pp. 427–55. Taylor and Francis+NEJM).  Particularly, their analysis had a focus on the harms of villainification narratives in historical texts— the act of over-simplifying realities and histories in order to pin all the blame on one person or group of people, looping back to Arendt’s understanding of evil— stating that, “The task of anti-villainification […] removes our false sense of comfort that evil is other, and not “us,” and calls upon us to engage with a more complete analysis of historical actors and contingencies, with an emphasis on the personal implications.”

Discussion

The villainification of indigents

It is rather the point of this paper to point out that most villainification is implied and redirected. Though povertyism is systemic, the state and the media are not hard-pressed to reveal that they’d rather indigents remain poor. They must be subtle about it, to maintain class disparity.

So, when people below the poverty line begin holding the state accountable through activism or other such means, the press will refer to them pejoratively– thugs, insurgents, socialists, communists, terrorists, anti-fascists etc. Their troubles are trivialized and, ultimately, dismissed.

This is exemplified by the intersectionalities of marginalized groups and poverty. Povertyism is anti-Queer, anti-Black, racist, misogynistic, etc. 

Politicians will assert that indigents remain poor because of their insistence towards indolence. 

In news stories, indigents are considered not educated enough in topics beyond their station like wanting policy changes or exposing what blatantly looks like extortion from politicians. 

People begging on the streets are not to be given handouts. 

Immigrants are “stealing jobs” from locals. 

Petty thieves are dishonest and lack the merit for getting a “proper” job. 

People dealing with drugs are “ruining people’s lives” and therefore their deaths are and should be justified.

And so on.

Therein lies the process of dehumanizing the poor, over-simplifying events, and pinning blame. If giving rights to indigents and the disenfranchised could potentially steal power from the ruling class, the state and the press start villainizing them.

Genshin Impact

On its way to its sixth major patch, Genshin Impact (Chinese: 原神; pinyin: Yuánshén) is a free-to-play role-playing game developed and published by miHoYo (known internationally as HoYoverse). It is an open-world, action-based, live service game with gacha monetization. It was released in September 2020 and has since been releasing patch updates yearly.

The game is about twin intergalactic travelers trapped in the world of Teyvat for unknown reasons. One twin is taken while the other becomes the playable narrative character, referred to as the Traveler. With them is the floating fairy, Paimon. Their goal: to meet the gods of each dominion on Teyvat in hopes of finding out what happened and reuniting with their twin in the process.

Underlying this rescue mission is the conflict in every region the Traveler and Paimon arrive in, ranging from world-ending to government-shaking depending on the conflict. These are called Archon Quests (AQ), the main storyline that progresses the Traveler’s journey to the truth. Story Quests (SQ) have mostly to do with notable figures within each nation featuring a playable character, the themes and ideas they represent, and cementing their bond with the Traveler. The other quests, called World Quests (WQ), involve more environmental and localized issues that do not heavily implicate currently living gods or notable figures, dealing with non-playable characters (NPCs) that reveal contextual lore of the histories, policies, and legends within the chosen nation.

Admittedly, Genshin Impact was the primary reason for this paper. Because of one simple factor: with the 101 characters currently available from its roster (soon-to-be 102, at time of writing, 28 July 2025) , none experience absolute indigency. I found this quite unusual and started to try to understand whether this had any bearing on what the messaging for the game was when it comes to wealth and morality. 

See, for most of the AQs’ narratives, the game has an overwhelming theme of good-vs-evil and while this over-simplification is suitable for the medium of the story, it does more harm than good when it comes to deeper lore involved in WQs and the metacommentary regarding morality.

Genshin Impact is not a game with overly complex themes, nor does it run deeper or darker than it could as a free-to-play game. At times, horrific incidents happen after a fade-to-black screen with text overlayed to convey the events not shown. If a player is not paying attention, these incidents could be largely ignored altogether unless revisited.

At the same time, it also is a game interested in utilizing multicultural storytelling per nation. It has conversations about the themes of freedom of choice, investing in the future vs. maintaining tradition, resistance against tyranny and religious oppression, etc. Meaning to say, the developers do add complexities to the narrative, it is just that they do not remain consistent, maintaining their storytelling boundaries within what they deem interesting to the playerbase.

Othering

Consider the following table. 

Four common-to-elite mob enemies in the game are known to experience extreme and absolute poverty.

In observing these factions, the ways in which they are characterized within lore, and the deeper implications involved, villainification’s over-simplification becomes obvious and alarming. 

Beyond just some of the shallower reasons why these mob enemies and factions are villainized, the game’s narrative and system itself do not allow players to opt out of altercations with them entirely. 

As common-to-elite mob enemies that drop character level-up materials, players are incentivized to fight and defeat these enemies. They also have relatively high aggression levels that, upon approach, will warrant an immediate battle. This is in stark contrast to the common mob enemies in the region of Natlan, which have included a caution/warning system where approaching so-called ‘Sauroform Tribal Warriors’ and Saurians do not immediately trigger an encounter.

Some of these factions have individuals featured in WQs, particularly the Fatui and the Eremites.

For the Fatui, players learn that some of the lowest rung of members involved in espionage are indoctrinated directly from an international orphanage founded by the Knave Crucabena, currently led by the Knave Arlecchino (The Replacement's Secret), the House of Hearth. The few who want to leave either end up dead (The Bad Guy in Vimara Village) or must fake their deaths to properly desert the organization * (The Price; “Birds in a Cage,” When the Hearth-Flame Goes Out.)

Discussion of morals is skewed against the Fatui as a whole, as part of the hostility against them is due to their constant foreign meddling and violent methods of extortion. As an alleged diplomatic organization funded by their own god, this behavior is technically divinely sanctioned and any move against them could cause foreign tensions. Xenophobia, then, is the first thing locals turn to within the narrative.

For the Eremites, players learn that most desert-born mercenaries are learned and brutally honest about their faith in a dead god and their situation because of the Akademiya, Sumeru’s local government. 

Sumeru’s regional conflict is about religious oppression, so this much is unsurprising. The rest of the hostility against desert-born NPCs and enemy mobs are due mostly to the developers’ own limited ideas of enacting religious oppression and their own bigotry.

Ethnocentrist racism is common practice to the Chinese government. It is undeniable from the amount of persecution African and Black American/British migrants are subjected to, to the Uighur conflict in Xinjiang, etc. (The Strategic Consequences of Chinese Racism: A Strategic Asymmetry for the United States. U.S. Department of Defense, 7 Jan. 2013) . Chinese exceptionalism, to borrow the term from Skip Intro (timestamp 5:27, Team America World Police: MCU. Written by Skip Intro, Video Essay, vol. 6, 2021. YouTube), is a prevailing concept in most of the Chinese media I’ve seen, an ethnocentrism that sees Chinese peoples as superior in all aspects: religion, morality, intellect, government etc. 

In short, historically speaking, religious oppression in China is rooted in exceptionalism. And though I cannot identify if MiHouo was commentating or emulating this exceptionalism when portraying the Sumeru Akademiya and the Eremites, the themes are similar: from the superiority complex, the “ungrateful” narrative they are pushing upon the unwilling other, to the colorism and cultural oppression.

Even just the term with which they refer to the Eremites is indicative of this. Prior to Version 2.6, the term for Sumeru’s desert-dwellers in the English localization was Golden Brigade, a literal translation of the words 镀金旅团 (pinyin: Dùjīn Lǚtuán), meaning Gilded Brigade, with “gilded” figuratively meaning “to make something ordinary seem special,” the entire phrase referring to people who accumulate qualifications despite the lack of skill. This term in Chinese has not been changed since the faction was spoken about in Version 2.2 (“The Eremites”) .

In truth, this exceptionalism is the greatest common factor among these factions: that the reason they are poor and need to be dealt with through violence or bigotry is because they do not agree with the “conventional” moral correctness.

The religious oppression present in Sumeru’s AQ is the tip of the iceberg. 

The Akademiya once almost disbanded and banned the community theater, a group often picking up orphans, runaways, and fellow worshippers of Lesser Lord Kusanali, the region’s current god that is often ridiculed by the Akademiya. Ritual worship is banned, art forms are banned, and eventually even Sheikh Zubayr’s theater troupe is banned despite it being a cultural center-point of the city’s peoples * (“Show Canceled,” To the Wise; “The Coming of the Sabzeruz Festival,” The Morn a Thousand Roses Bring) .

Beyond the Akademiya’s oppression of Kusanali’s worshippers is their ethnocentrist oppression of desert dwellers– refusing entry from the desert and into the forest (“Dehya: Dawn Over the Sand”), exiling their mentally disabled scholars to Aaru Village, belittling and devaluing desert-born knowledge, (“An Introduction to Indoor Archaeology,” Golden Slumber). The list goes on.

With the release of Sethos in Version 4.7, after the reveal of the Temple of Silence in Cyno’s second SQ and its previous involvement with the Akademiya, the thematic resolution of the desert and forest peoples seemed to be upon the horizon.

Despite this, at 5.7, there still has not been any resolution of the sort.

Tangent aside, beyond these mob enemies, another notable thing about Genshin Impact’s portrayal of its indigents is just how unremarkable they are.

Criminalization

Mondstadt has an extensive history of resistance against totalitarian rule—from the tyranny of the dead god Decarabian to the slave society of Mondstadt’s aristocracy around 2000 to 1000 years before the game’s events.

What’s commonly unremarked upon is that Genshin Impact’s uprisings always end as god-sanctioned and funded/assisted by chosen aristocratic families.

The figures notable from Mondstadt’s ancient history and beyond are from the ruling class (“History of Kings and Clans: Prologue”; “Biography of Gunnhildr”; Royal Series), a few clans within the same aristocracy that would eventually enslave an entire group of Natlan nomads (allegedly Natlanese; they have since disappeared from Mondstadt entirely, leaving only the legacy of the one slave that Barbatos, god of the region, actually favored^[5]).

Mondstadt’s governance is both a theocracy and a police state. The Church of Favonius deals with the welfare of the nation while the Ordo Favonius enforces the law. The judicial aspect is handled by both (“Crimes One and Two,” Paralogism). As most of the character roster in Mondstadt are members of the church or its order, it shouldn’t be so surprising that a lot of the stories involving the Ordo feature the arrest of Treasure Hoarders. 

However common crackdowns on Treasure Hoarders are within the Ordo, knights often fabricate intel to arrest people they have yet to gather evidence of crime for (“Kaeya’s Gain,” Secret Pirate Treasure; “Mondstadt Glider,” Wind, Courage, and Wings). Teyvat may have different laws, but that is still, as discussed, extrajudicial arrests of dehumanized and villainized indigents.

And more damning still is that a majority of the church and its order come from the same aristocratic clans that did nothing until their god sanctioned the abolition of slavery, thus establishing about a thousand year continued reign of aristocratic clans and families in positions of power– a political dynasty, if you will. Refer to the following table for further reference.

I bring this up not as a condemnation of the morals of Mondstadt’s character roster, but rather a point of contention with Genshin Impact’s lack of nuance. Supposedly a nation of freedom and song, Mondstadt has the concerning tendency towards fascist actions.

More to the point, we have multiple playable Harbingers (Tartaglia, Wanderer, Arlecchino) and Fatui (aforementioned Harbingers, Lyney, Lynette, Freminet), yet have no playable Treasure Hoarders, Nobushi, or Eremites– clearly signalling towards the dehumanization of each group, and the complete in-narrative justification to villainize and criminalize them without impunity.

This and the amount of well-to-do aristocrats, nobles, socialites, authority figures etc. within the character roster continuously criminalizing them is just the cherry on the top.

Well then, what happens when Genshin Impact doesn’t do that to their indigent NPCs?

Accessory

Similar to Mondstadt’s history, the civil war in Inazuma was also largely state-sanctioned despite its themes of resistance and independence. 

Written as a fight against the god of the region and the people who bear Visions [6], Inazuma’s fight actually devolves into a conflict between faiths and ideologies. The Vision bearers who did not want to relinquish their right to power sided with the Watatsumi Army, an autonomous region within the nation that worships the deceased god, Orobashi, and bears hostility against the Raiden Shogun for having slain him some time ago.

The Watatsumi Army, written as a resistance against Narukami, is funded almost entirely by one of Narukami’s own noble clans, the Kamisatos (“As the Courtyard in Spring Once Appeared,” Summertime Odyssey). Though yes, a majority of the army are Watatsumi citizens, the narrative itself shows that they could not have gotten to the peace talks stage if the Traveler or the Yashiro Commission had not helped extensively.

Despite this denial, the subtext speaks louder. Even after the events of the AQ, Watatsumi remains destitute and vulnerable to potential corruption from Narukami’s Tri-Comission and Shogunate Army, with the Sangonomiya clan requiring books on agricultural sciences (“Pen Pals, Book Reviews, and the Super Lucky General,” Hues of the Violet Garden) and smuggling of resources* due to the taxation of fishing and trade in Narukami territories ** (*“The Missing Thing,” Trap ‘Em by Storm; **“New Beginning,” Warriors’ Dream Like Spring Grass Renewing).

In summary, Watatsumi had no chance of being heard by the ruling power of their nation had it not been for the help of a foreigner (the Traveler) and a noble family who had no interest in taking the fall for them (The Kamisatos).

One could say that this is indicative of realistic portrayals of revolutionary movements and marginalized populations. And you would be correct in asserting that but note again that Genshin Impact is only interested in adding in complex writing when they deem it interesting to their audience.

Of the disputes mentioned, thematic to the region’s AQ though they are, none have been explored or resolved in any in-game quests. The last quest trying to resolve such disputes between Watatsumi and Narukami existed in a limited event about a regional tournament for an in-universe card game (“Cards Out! Grievances Begone,” Duel! The Summoner’s Summit!).

Nothing better exemplifies this complete lack of nuanced thematic exploration of poverty and power than Fontaine.

Fontaine, widely regarded as Teyvat’s nation of justice, has an Archon Quest leaning more towards Genshin Impact’s more fantastical elements. There are prophecies and legends, and the central point of the region’s AQ is about the judgment of Fontaine’s humans– once water spirits who wished to become human, slowly evolving and forgetting their origins. The flood is the judgment awaiting their crime of evolution.

Fontaine’s prophecy is one about flood, and yet none of its AQ cast is interested in the safety of citizens living in slums like Fleuve Cendre (located underground in the sewers), and Poisson (located more in the countryside, in a hole right next to Fontaine’s grand lake).

Of course, these locations are considered set pieces and one particular main character of the AQ, Navia Caspar, is often related to these locations due to her organization, the Spina di Rosula. But the Spina is a non-government organization interested in giving Fontainians legal (or illegal, according to Navia herself) assistance, not helping them with the rising waters due to the imminent prophecy supposed to flood the land.

Once again, the ones interested in assisting in this regard is the Fatui, particularly the House of the Hearth. Orphan twins Lyney and Lynette, and fellow foster sibling Freminet are the few and only characters seen concerned about evacuation efforts, though they are often seen handing out evacuation kits to people by harbors outside of Fontaine or the Court (the nation’s capital city), and not Fleuve Cendre or Poisson.

Fontaine, throughout all acts of its AQs, was not at all interested in the goings-on of its slums and impoverished settlements. In fact, the only acknowledgement of these areas’ poverty and current state exists in readables noting that a majority of its populations were people who came out of the Fortress of Meropide after a period of exil, and the families of those people, as Fontainians are not wont to hire ex-convicts for any of their businesses.

The region parades the idea of justice and equity to its players, but never once sees interest in providing such ideas to its own and indigents.

Perhaps it is a sobering reflection of reality, with our own earthly nations, using ideas of freedom and social mobility against our own lower class citizens. 

This conclusion, used as a concession for Genshin Impact’s continued good-vs-evil narrative, continues to ring hollow.

Conclusion: Commodification, pandering, and realities

Fiction is entertainment, so it is understandable to believe that due to the very nature of these media, everything within it is commodified, whether coerced, by choice, or even without (the consumer or producer’s) knowing—especially in today’s online environment of user-generated content (Maloney, Lauren. “The Commodification of Human Beings.” Northeastern University Law Journal, Nov. 2015).

In this sense, the use of poverty and indigent collectives as set dressing and cosmetics is widespread within fictional media. It is evident in the lack of agency and voice they give the appointed mob enemy factions, and the lack of collective power with the various indigent and minority populations of Teyvat. The message is clear: the poor are not here to riot or be catalysts for change, they are not individuals with power and are not people. They are in these stories, to quote Lindsay Ellis, to “Look Pretty and Do As Little as Possible.” 

As a researcher I may be unable to fully root out whether the pervasiveness of these tropes in fiction is a result of the ideological influence of neoliberalism and fascism or the other way around. Though arguments for formalist readings of fiction are common, this is a case in which traditional criticism that calls for a thorough understanding of the creators’ backgrounds and circumstances are warranted because their politics and the choices they make in real life affect the fictions that they are crafting.

Due to this, the writing itself suffers, turning themes of class disparity, collective violence, and resistance moot as the interpersonal lives of individual characters take center stage. This signals to the audience that poverty is not a special or an urgent matter. Poverty, homelessness, and scarcity is not a looming threat even in fantasy fiction, it is the setting, the background, the flavor text, the lore

Thus, the focus shifts from such topics and aims towards the optics involved in the political involvement of individuals from indigent backgrounds and the idea of self-commodification. 

Is it worth it to dehumanize and commodify oneself for the sake of a collective that will only recognize convenient and controllable symbols rather than individuals with free will? This was an idea explained by Margaret Jane Radin (Contested Commodities: The Trouble with Trade in Sex, Children, Body Parts, and Other Things. Harvard University Press, 2001), stating that, “The person cannot be an entity exercising free will (from the person’s own point of view) if the person is simultaneously a manipulable object of monetizable value (from the point of view of others).”

For Genshin Impact, that indication is much more apparent. 

As a game and live service that is interested in serving its userbase, the developers are more likely to simplify certain aspects they deem marketable and acceptable within the legal confines of Chinese government censorship. As in a pact signed by up to 231 gaming companies in 2021 (Ye, Josh. “Headache for China’s Game Developers as Memo Details Beijing’s Red Lines.” South China Morning Post, 29 Sept. 2021), “Content deemed “politically harmful” or “historically nihilistic” will also be eliminated”. Adjusting to these regulations heavily impact the writing and marketing for the game. Of course, for a game that has passed 10.88 million words worth of text (timestamp 50:07-50:25 To the Stars Shining in the Depths: Version 4.1 Special Program. Special Program, 2023. YouTube), the few instances of somewhat critical choices might have slipped the regulation bans, but that’s just speculation. 

In the end, those ideas fade in the background of what are glaringly anti-indigent/pro-elite ideas even just within the confines of the more accessible parts of gameplay (e.g., the AQs and open-world exploration and combat).

I would like to acknowledge after this conclusion that poverty in mainstream fictional fantasy media is not always written and portrayed like this. 

As mentioned in the introduction, most works are aware of the complexities of poverty and often churn out resilience porn or maintain nihilistic views regarding living in the modern day. Similar works in the fantasy genre, they have crime tropes and, at times, power fantasies (e.g., Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Thirteen, any heist film, essentially). 

As I’ve already indicated some of my reasons in the discussion above, I will admit to having chosen fantasy fiction over non-fantasy fictional portrayals of poverty because of the limitations of the themes existing in poverty-centric non-fantasy fiction (Rodriguez, J. D., and J. R. Solomon. Filmed Poor(Trayals): A Critical Discourse Analysis of Poverty Portrayals in Selected Philippine Mainstreame and Non-Mainstream Films Produced from 2000 to 2016. 2017. University of the Philippines Diliman). 

Often in these works, indigent characters stay within the confines of their indigency, the prevailing narrative being that indigents should be content with what they have, that they should not look beyond their station. These works also have murkier moral implications, as the lines blur between emulation of personal politics and commenting on surrounding ones. 

Nevertheless, these types of works commodify the almost-real lived experience of indigents and simplify the moral complexities between what is legal and illegal, whereas moral messaging and implication in fantasy fiction is a lot easier to surmise from evident aspects and omitted ones. Choices to base morality on legality has an implication on the creators when placed upon a world that is fantastical and therefore somewhat devoid of reality.

Footnotes

 [1] Particular to Rosaria, who had to kill her own father-figure as a way out of poverty. ^Return

 [2] Thinly veiled violent extortion as work for the Northland Bank. ^Return

 [3] By both the narrative and the characters. ^Return

 [4] Japanese: 野伏; Lit. Wild warrior. Highwaymen, historically known as armed peasants in medieval Japan. ^Return

 [5] It is unknown at time of writing (28 July 2025), whether the manhua series for Genshin Impact has been retconned. Localization differences name Venessa’s tribe as Natlanese (specifically using Murata as a demonym), but no such location in Natlan has been mentioned in character dialogue or readable. It has also been contested by Mavuika herself that leaving Natlan has adverse side effects and must be officiated by public officials (the Archon, the tribal leaders). As an unnamed group, Venessa, her tribe, and their successors seem to be non-existent as of 5.7. (Added 7 Aug 2025: In 5.8, a confirmation of their Natlanese origins has been given, but no such clue as to where they are currently.)^Return

 [6] A divinely given indicator that enables a person to use the elements at will. A majority of the playable cast have these. ^Return