"Why Does Life Slumber?" - Dreams, Entropy, and the Many-Worlds of Quantum Mechanics
Part two of a two-part exploration of the theme of dreams across the Honkai-verse
Disclaimer: this is the second part of my two-part article regarding the topic of dreams in the Honkai-verse. The first part of this article isn’t absolutely necessary in order to understand this second part, but I do recommend that you read it first, as I will be making references to and building on the themes and ideas that I explored there throughout this second part. You can find that first part here.
Also, this is a very long article, so I would strongly recommend against reading it all at once; you should read it in pieces instead, at your leisure. Taking breaks after each section would likely yield the best experience.
I probably should’ve broken this up into multiple articles… oh well.
If you play Honkai Impact 3rd and Honkai Star Rail, I’m sure you’ve noticed that the theme of dreams have become a prominent part of both games’ narrative as of late (as I pointed out in the first part of this article). By way of a little recap in that regard: the protagonist of Part 2 of HI3rd is nicknamed the ‘Dreamseeker’, and Chapter 1 of Part 2 more or less begins with a dream sequence.1 Meanwhile, in HSR, Penacony is all about Dreamscapes, and the brand new Trailblaze Mission in 2.0 likewise begins with a dream sequence.2 There are many more similarities between HI3rd and HSR in relation to dreams, but we’ll be exploring the rest of it soon enough, so let’s hold off on that for now.
(As a side note, isn’t it hilarious that the Dreamseeker’s dream involves a beautiful dance with Senadina, while the Trailblazer just straight-up gets ‘murdered’ by Acheron?)
Anyway, this may seem like it’s just an odd series of coincidences, but if you delve deeper into what these two games have to say about the nature of dreams and the way they’ve weaved their narratives around it, then you will find that these similarities go far beyond skin deep (as was evident in the first part of this article for Part 1 of HI3rd), which is exactly what we will be exploring here; and as I promised, this time, we will be focusing more specifically on the similarities and differences between Part 2 of HI3rd and the Penacony storyline of HSR 2.0, though as before, I will still be making references to Part 1 of HI3rd.
One more disclaimer: if it wasn’t obvious already, most of this second part article contains major spoilers for recent story chapters in HI3rd and HSR, and a lot of it is my own personal theories and speculations (as well as the community’s), and not official confirmed lore - unless specified otherwise (i.e. through direct quotes) - so do be advised.
Now then, without further ado…
Sweet dreams, oh reader mine.
Elysium Everlasting Unto Death - Psychoanalysis in Penacony
First of all, I would like to begin with Penacony, as I believe that we can see the ideas that we explored in the first part article appear even more explicitly here. As I have shown before, Penacony has quite a few references to Freudian psychoanalysis: Dr Edward’s line regarding the “magic of psychoanalysis”,3 the ‘Introduction to Psychoanalysis’ achievement,4 the soundtrack names ‘Lustprinzip’ and ‘Realitätsprinzip’ (which are important concepts in psychoanalysis),56 Dr Edvard Moser’s reference to Freud’s methodology in the ‘Knowing the Universe - Approaching Dreams’ official video,7 and so on and so forth; you get the point.
These references aren’t just a matter of trivia, as we can quite clearly see that Penacony’s Dreamscape functions according to the principles of psychoanalysis; which is to say, the pleasure and reality principles. To reiterate: the pleasure principle is the psychological tendency to gain pleasure and avoid displeasure, which drives the functioning of living beings, whereas the reality principle is the mechanism by which the psyche attempts to reconcile with the reality of its circumstances in order to ultimately gain that pleasure, even if these circumstances are not necessarily pleasurable or straightforwardly filled with displeasure, since reality, by its nature, limits the fulfilment of our desires to some extent. In the context of these two principles of psychic functioning then, Freud posited that dreams are the fulfilment of wishes that we have failed to fulfil in reality, a reminder of the dominance of the pleasure principle within our unconscious mind.
As I have pointed out in the first part of this article, we may even take this as an answer to the question: “Why does life slumber?” that was hidden in the invitations to Penacony; in short, the dreams we have during our slumber are a result of the drives that fundamentally lie behind the psychic functioning of living beings as well as its conflicting relationship with the reality that we live in during our waking hours.
With that in mind, Penacony’s Dreamscape does seem to be a domain where the pleasure principle reigns supreme, a paradise that serves as a reprieve from the hardships that we have to endure in reality; a mere temporary one for some, and a more permanent one for others. As we have also explored in the first part article, the dominance of the pleasure principle implies the dominance of another psychic principle: the principle of constancy. The conflict and tension between the pleasure principle and the reality principle paradoxically goes against the pleasure principle itself, since it is a form of displeasure. The principle of constancy, as the foundation and extension of the pleasure principle, seeks to minimise this tension or to otherwise keep it at a constant level, thereby maintaining the equilibrium and stability of the psyche.
The Dreamscape of Penacony fulfils its inhabitants’ every desire and maintains its own equilibrium and stability in so doing; by maintaining the equilibrium and stability of its inhabitants’ psyche, that is. In fact, it does so to such an extent that it seems like an eternal paradise, a true Elysium Everlasting, for it has seemingly done away with what is perhaps the greatest form and source of displeasure of all: which is to say, death.
Or has it?
The notion of an eternal paradise is something that anyone would be wary of due to how far away it is from the reality we live in; and once again, if you recall the first part article, we examined this idea with regards to Project Stigma in the final story arc to HI3rd’s Part 1. In that case, the Dreamland was a prison that held all humanity captive, staunching the flow of time itself by staunching the collective desires of humanity through its instant and perpetual fulfilment in a false eternity; so who’s to say that the aims of The Family with Penacony is any different?
Some lore enthusiasts in the fandom have even speculated that we never really woke up from the opening dream sequence with Acheron, and that The Reverie that we see in our so-called ‘reality’ is just another layer of Penacony’s Dreamscape (full credits to @synonyms26 on Twitter for this theory), which lends credence to the idea that Penacony is a trap that ensnares all who even dare approach the Asdana star system. In light of that, it does seem to live up to the portmanteau from which its name is derived, which belies its perhaps not so distant past: Penacony, the penal colony.
Beyond this false paradise, within the true Dreamscape - what Freud may call the “navel of the dream” - death abounds; for is it not an essential part of the cycle of life and death and the passage of time itself, which Penacony disavows in its attempt to grasp eternity?
When we think about death in Penacony, there is of course one thing in particular that immediately comes to mind: the Memory Zone meme “Something Unto Death”, as well as Firefly’s demise in its fatal clutches. If we apply the framework of Freudian psychoanalysis here, it’s easy to see how the Memory Zone meme represents the death drive (Thanatos) to Penacony’s pleasure principle (the so-called ‘life drives’ (Eros)). Moreover, we can see yet another important psychic mechanism at work: the mechanism of repression, where displeasure - or in this case, the death drive - is buried deep within the depths of the unconscious for the sake of the dominance of the pleasure principle and the stability of the whole psychic apparatus in accordance with the principle of constancy; and since Penacony hosts the many unconscious of its patrons, we could perhaps think of this phenomenon as a form of collective psychic repression of the death drive.
That being said…
What does death even mean in Penacony’s Dreamscape?
Do people who die in the Dreamscape die in reality too, or are they simply ejected from it, back to reality? People were certainly quick to grieve Firefly’s unjust fate, but do we even know for sure that she is dead? And, rather… is not the eternal slumber which Penacony supposedly strives towards a kind of death too, in a manner of speaking?
Perhaps we need to examine the notion of death more closely; certainly within the context of Penacony’s Dreamscape, though perhaps our examination thereof will prove fruitful outside of it as well. In any case, let’s start from the beginning; the very beginning.
Death indeed lurks in the depths of the Dreamscape, but just like how Freud discovered the death drive through his musings on the notion of abiogenesis - that is, the idea of life originating from inorganic matter - death has indeed always been there since the very beginning in Penacony, permeating throughout the polished veneer of the Golden Hour. As a matter of fact, before we’ve even arrived at Penacony proper, we can already hear its subtle echoes in the background.
This soundtrack plays in the background each time you enter The Reverie inside of the Dreamscape, and it was the first piece of soundtrack introduced in HSR’s 2.0 storyline. It is titled ‘The Big Sleep’,8 which is a reference to the title of Raymond Carver’s novel (as well as the two film adaptations with the same name), itself an allusion to the ‘one last big sleep’ at the end of a person’s life; namely, death. In this context then, instead of the immortalization of the fundamental drives that supposedly constitute the activity of life itself, could we not think of Penacony’s Dreamscape as a kind of stagnancy that represents death indeed?
Perhaps this is why life slumbers; because in our fear of death, we court it ever closer to us in our sleep.
Death, the big sleep; sleep, the little death.
In that case, there is something else that I believe we should turn our attention to; another death-bringer that roams the hallways and corridors of Penacony, an Emanator of a yet-unknown Path:
Acheron.
Perhaps quite appropriately, ‘The Big Sleep’ OST first played during the Trailblazer’s first meeting with her; so let us take a closer look at that scene and the self-proclaimed Galaxy Ranger that we encountered therein, starting with the cultural connotations surrounding her name.
To Cross the Rivers of Hell - The Myth of Acheron
“Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.”9
This is the opening passage of Sigmund Freud’s book The Interpretation of Dreams, which was where he laid out his psychoanalytic method of dream interpretation. He was quoting the ancient Roman poet Virgil, whose epic poem - The Aeneid - was where this passage originally came from. It means:
“If I cannot deflect the will of the superior powers, then I shall move the River Acheron.”
It is also more commonly translated as:
“If I cannot deflect the will of heaven, then I shall move hell.”
As you may have guessed, besides being a mythical river to the underworld, Acheron is also a real river in Greece, which is what the Greek myth is based on. It is also synonymous with the river Styx, since they’re both rivers of the underworld in Greek mythology, alongside Cocytus, Lethe, and Phlegethon. Either way, perhaps Freud considered the unconscious mind to be an underworld of sorts - certainly not heaven or a paradise - and his method of dream interpretation as a way of ‘moving’ its mysterious will, in a sense. Whether or not he fully understood how apt this allusion was - bearing in mind the way psychoanalysis would be caught up in notions of life and death - when he placed this quotation in The Interpretation of Dreams… who can say, really.
In any case, we know for certain that the name ‘Acheron’ - the character in HSR, that is - came from this mythology of the rivers of the underworld, considering the themes of death, finality, and nihility in her character. That said, perhaps ‘Acheron’ was chosen specifically for this added connotation of being a reference to what is perhaps Freud’s most important text, taking into account her prominence and importance in the collective unconscious of Penacony. As Black Swan said: “during this golden soiree… she is the dance’s centrepiece”.10 But what is Acheron’s role in this Dreamscape, exactly?
The river Acheron may carry these abstract and generalised connotations of death and the underworld, but it is also inextricably tied to the myth of Charon, the psychopomp ferryman who carries departed souls across these rivers, towards the underworld. If we are to take the unconscious - and therefore Penacony’s Dreamscape - as some kind of underworld as Freud did, then we can see that Acheron seems to have taken on this duty unto herself on several occasions.
Throughout the opening dream sequence where we first met her, she guided us through the Dreamscape and back out into reality, albeit by some quite… extreme methods. Later on in the story, after Firefly’s death, she caught the fleeting fragments of what appeared to be Firefly’s departing soul and gave her a blessing: “May death be the end of your boundless dream… Guiding you back… to the waking world”; and perhaps not so coincidentally, this is also the point in the story where the player obtains the phonograph record for ‘The Big Sleep’ soundtrack. From the way she acted, it didn’t seem as if it was the first time she had done these kinds of things either; hell, the first words we heard come out of her mouth was: “Not another one…”. Lastly, as she awakened (‘murdered’?) the Trailblazer from the opening dream sequence, she also told us: “You can return to the waking world. That’s where we all find our answers”.11
Pay closer attention to those words:
“You can return to the waking world. That’s where we all find our answers.”
“May death be the end of your boundless dream… Guiding you back… to the waking world.”
You see, Charon is known in various mythologies to not only ferry souls towards the underworld, but also out of it; so instead of guiding lost souls through the Dreamscape, perhaps Acheron guides them out of the eternal dream of Penacony instead, maybe even seeking to end the dream in its entirety by uncovering the death drive that has been repressed in its depths, though she doesn’t seem fully cognizant of her own actions. In either case, if we are to understand death as the ultimate foreclosing of the passage of time, then what Acheron brings to the Dreamscape may not be death at all - or rather, a different kind of death - a kind of paradigm shift that presents the continuation of the passage of time as change, transformation, and becoming.
Towards the end of the opening dream sequence, Acheron asked us various questions: about whether we fear losing the bonds that we have forged with those close to us, whether we would accept a dreamscape where everyone lives happily ever after without the fear or pain of separation and death, and if we would still embark on a journey even after having conceived its tragic end beforehand.12 Though it may appear as if she was playing her part as the supposed harbinger of death here, it seems to me at least to be a different notion of death; one that is not simply a fatal and ultimate end.
Rather, it seems that the ‘death’ that Acheron brings is one that is, again, inseparable from the cycle of life and death that constitutes the passage of time, for to embrace that passage is to embrace the possibility, but not the certainty, of death. What the Dreamscape of Penacony repressed, perhaps, is not death itself, but rather an uncertain future that includes the possibility of death. In this context, dreams do not simply reflect one psychic tendency over another, but rather - as we’ve discussed in the first part article - the multiplicity of these drives and desires as fractured images of alternate possibilities melded together.
Indeed, this conception of dreams should be something HSR shares with HI3rd; and to be more specific, when we speak of the notion of alternate possibilities, questions surrounding the broader cosmology of the Honkai-verse inevitably come to mind. So, in order that we can start exploring these ideas in that context, let’s begin comparing these two stories in earnest, shall we?
Once again, let’s take it from the top.
Do Emanators Dream of Other Worlds? - The Many-Worlds of Quantum Mechanics
In the opening dream sequences for both Chapter 1 of Part 2 of HI3rd (with Dreamseeker and Senadina), as well as HSR’s Penacony storyline (with Trailblazer and Acheron), we are presented with the notion that, one way or another, these characters are dreaming of ‘other worlds’.
In the case of HI3rd, the Dreamseeker straightforwardly dreams of Luoxing (Mars) within the proper world, a billion years after it has been ravaged by Finality, outside of the bubble world that she currently lives in. In that same dream, Senadina also bestowed her a vision of what appears to be the other bubble worlds where the now-fractured civilization of Luoxing has taken refuge.13
Meanwhile, in the case of HSR, there are several pieces of dialogue that hint at this idea of dreams of other worlds, but one line in particular stands out in this regard. After finishing her long series of foreboding questions, Acheron made this offhand comment directed at the Trailblazer:
“How interesting. For a split second, it felt like countless versions of you, alike yet distinct, gave entirely different responses.”14
Of course, the idea of other worlds and alternate/parallel universes is a staple; or rather, the basis of the entire cosmology of the Honkai-verse, which contains both of the worlds that HI3rd and HSR takes place in. Thus, in order to further discuss these dreams of other worlds, we need to get into some… Honkai-verse deep lore; which is to say, quantum mechanics.
Indeed, the very idea of the Honkai-verse is inspired by scientific theories about alternate/parallel worlds, though I must emphasise the theory part, since it is understandably very difficult, if not straightforwardly impossible to experimentally verify the existence of these other worlds. Either way, that hasn’t stopped sci-fi writers from exploring the concept of other worlds in fictional settings, and miHoYo is no exception. The Honkai-verse is a combination of around half-a-dozen different multiverse theories, but in particular, the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics plays a substantial role in it, to say the least. Explaining this would be as good a start as any, so let’s begin with the basics of quantum mechanics:
Everyday macroscopic objects such as cups, chairs, or tables can exist in certain and determinate states; for example, in terms of their position in space, they are either ‘here’ or ‘there’, but not both simultaneously. On the other hand however, according to quantum mechanics, things don’t really exist in discrete states on the sub-atomic scales of the universe; rather, they exist as the probabilities of all their possible states. Indeed, quantum objects such as subatomic particles can exist in a ‘superposition’ of all its possible states at once - both ‘here’ and ‘there’ - with varying degrees of probabilities described by their ‘wavefunctions’ (don’t worry about this for now). This superposition of states only ‘collapses’ into its discrete individual states (‘here’ or ‘there’) when the quantum object is ‘observed’ (or, technically speaking, when they ‘interact’ with their environment; we’ll get into this later on).
Obviously, this is very counterintuitive and makes no sense for us humans, so there are a number of different interpretations of what is actually going on behind all this quantum weirdness. One of these interpretations is the Many-Worlds Interpretation proposed by physicist Hugh Everett, which states that this quantum superposition of states never actually ‘collapses’ into discrete, individual states; rather, they split into alternate, parallel ‘branches’ of the universe, where the quantum object in question assumes different individual states in each branch of these alternate worlds: it is ‘here’ in one branch of the world, and ‘there’ in another branch of the world. The reason we never see these alternate worlds, or alternate branches of the world, is because each of these states, along with us as observers, are inextricably tied with our respective branches of the so-called ‘multiverse’; and again, we’ll go deeper into this later on.
(For a more detailed explanation, watch this video by PBS Space Time)15
In Chapter 10 of HI3rd, (Lieserl Albert) Einstein makes direct reference to the Many-Worlds Interpretation to explain the Sea of Quanta specifically, though we should specify that they don’t quite map one to one; rather, the Sea of Quanta is a dimension that exists ‘in-between’ these alternate branches of the world:
“All matters in the universe are formed by quanta, and each of them brings innate uncertainty. Once observed, a quantum collapses countless parallel universes to form one specific universe. This is the basis of the famous Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) [...] Assume the Universe as a glass of water surrounded by an infinite number of other glasses of water. Overflowing water will flow along the glass walls to form a puddle in the middle of the table. This puddle does not belong to any glass... but the water of the puddle may be from any glass. People of the Previous Era found this “puddle” dimension between the parallel universes. This “puddle” was named as the Sea of Quanta.” - Einstein, Chapter 10 of HI3rd.16
Arguably, the Many-Worlds Interpretation is also applicable to the concept of the Imaginary Tree, considering how it has been described throughout both HI3rd and HSR and how closely connected it is to the Sea of Quanta; though to my knowledge, the Imaginary Tree has never been explicitly linked to the Many-Worlds Interpretation in the lore of either of these Honkai-verse games. Suffice to say however, one can safely assume that the ‘branches’ from which the Sea of Quanta originates - the so-called “glasses of water” from which this puddle dimension emerged - are the branches of the Imaginary Tree. We can see the relationship between the Tree and the Sea in Otto’s explanation in Chapter 17, for example:
“Let us now imagine a tree - the Imaginary Tree. A massive tree whose crown cannot be seen, whose canopy of branches and leaves blots out the sky. The Tree emerged from an endless Sea of unfathomable depths and boundaries. The Tree and Sea are alone in the Universe. Thus began their never-ending rivalry. The Sea swells while the Tree extends its roots. One seeks to flood. The other seeks to absorb. The Tree has drunk from the Sea and endured an asamkhya of time and grown a nayuta of branches, and leaves [...] Time flows in the trunk of the Imaginary Tree and branches out into an infinity of worlds.” - Otto, Chapter 17 of HI3rd.17
Here, we can see that the Sea of Quanta and the Imaginary Tree are inextricably tied to one another, and somewhat paradoxically even, both are the origin of the other - the Tree emerged from depths of the Sea, just as the Sea emerged from the branches of the Tree - almost like a cosmic chicken-or-egg dilemma; and we’ll get further into this later on. Of course, the Imaginary Tree is also mentioned throughout HSR - primarily through the theories of the Pathstriders of Erudition, mostly contained within its many lore-filled Data Banks - but I believe that HI3rd’s explanations will suffice for our purposes here.
With all this in mind, it’s quite simple to discern how the two opening dream sequences would relate to the Many-Worlds Interpretation. The bubble worlds of Mars which Senadina revealed to the Dreamseeker are explicitly linked to it, as they are situated within the so-called Sea of Data, a subset of the Sea of Quanta. Senadina even makes several oblique and metaphorical references to the workings of the Many-Worlds (in the context of the Honkai-verse, of course):
“All civilizations and all forms of life disappeared from the universe aeons ago, leaving only specks of light scattered between dimensions [...] Time always bifurcates and leads to countless futures.”18
Acheron’s case is a little more subtle, and is mostly just speculation on my part; however, I do believe that the countless versions of the Trailblazer that she supposedly saw after her cryptic pop-quiz are visions of these Many-Worlds. As a matter of fact, I believe that the enigmatic red text that appears in her dialogue every so often is an indication of the precise junctures where the world diverges into different versions in her perception, as that red text always appears in cases where either her dialogue randomly changes for different players (apart from one exception that is entirely dependent on the gender of the Trailblazer), or where we, the Trailblazer, have a variety of different dialogue options in response to her own dialogue, thus signifying events that are, well, significant enough to cause the world to split into parallel realities.
(Full credits to oinka on YouTube)19
On top of that, some people in the community - mostly HI3rd players (and fellow members of Hyperion Team 3rd at that) - have also speculated that she has encountered, interacted with, or seen some HI3rd characters (or at the very least their variants in HSR) through these oneiric visions, spurred on by the fact that she is almost certainly a variant of Raiden Mei from HI3rd; and this idea has practically been corroborated by the devs themselves - specifically Shaoji, the writer of the Penacony storyline - in the 2.1 special program livestream (‘Into the Yawning Chasm’).20
https://twitter.com/voidarchivess/status/1755192806996369570
(full credits to @voidarchivess on Twitter)
https://twitter.com/MartyPCSR/status/1755032025814520033
(full credits to @MartyPCSR on Twitter)
We may thus conjecture that - at least in the context of the Honkai-verse - dreams are somehow a way in which one can see and interact with other worlds in its various forms. Furthermore, we may also make some more conjectures of a poetic or metaphorical nature regarding what this implies for the ways in which dreams are related to notions of life and death; although, that said, I genuinely believe that the writers of these games are hard at work trying to formulat some semi-systematic notion of how dreams figure in relation to their cosmology, though I must emphasise that it would all still be decidedly within the realm of fiction. We’re doing literary analysis here after all, not scientific research.
In any case, this isn’t quite the full picture of the Honkai-verse - if there could ever even be one - but regardless, as it is, we still have one very important piece of the cosmological puzzle missing here that will help us connect these frameworks of dream analysis together; that is, the relationship between dreams and the cycle of life and death and the idea of dreams of other worlds.
The missing piece in question is the notion of ‘entropy’.
The Sea Is Singing With a Voice of Fire - Entropy and the Dance of Life and Death
Entropy has popped up here and there throughout Part 2 of HI3rd and HSR’s 2.0 storyline, and mostly in ways that seem to be connected to dreams, one way or another. For example, you can choose your own name for the Dreamseeker, but her default name is ‘Entropy’,21 and a slightly more hidden reference is Helia’s signature ‘Von Neumann’ stigmata set which came out in Version 7.3, which is a reference to John Von Neumann, a physicist that invented a type of entropy (which will be relevant later on).
Meanwhile, in HSR, Firefly mentioned a condition called ‘Entropy Loss Syndrome’ which she suffers from, and which causes those who suffer it to experience time more and more slowly and gradually fade away, until eventually, the boundary separating themselves and the rest of the world become so blurred that they will no longer be able distinguish dreams from reality.22
Otherwise, this concept has always been scattered across the lore and narrative of both of these games. In HI3rd, there is an organisation called ‘Anti-Entropy’ - which Welt was formerly the Sovereign of - and in HSR, Nanook, the Aeon of Destruction, is referred to as an “avatar of entropy” in one of the Data Banks;23 and so on and so forth.
So, with all that being said…
What the hell is entropy anyway?
That is a very good question, one whose answer differs quite wildly depending on the context in which one defines it. It was first invented in the milieu of thermodynamics, the field of physics concerned with heat, gases, steam engines, and so on. It also has a lot to do with statistical mechanics and information theory, and of course, it can likewise be applied to quantum mechanics. For our purposes here however, we can perhaps begin with one of the simpler definitions of entropy: as a measure of ‘disorder’ within a system, though I should mention that although ‘disorder’ is the simplest term for this, it’s not the most accurate.
In the context of thermodynamics, ‘disorder’ corresponds with the amount of heat or thermal energy within a system. This is because ‘heat’ is what is known as a macroscopic property, a statistical approximation of all of the random microscopic movement of the particles within a system. This random motion is what is broadly taken as the basis for the thermodynamic notion of ‘disorder’. Imagine a box that is filled with gas; the less spread out the gas particles are, the lower its entropy, the more spread out the gas particles are, the higher its entropy. The more the gas particles move around as a consequence of their random motion, the more spread out they become; hence, entropy rises. The notions of order and disorder are themselves macroscopic approximations of these microscopic statistical distributions, not unlike the notion of ‘heat’.
Moreover, entropy follows certain rules, and one in particular is relevant to us: the notorious Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that entropy must rise within a closed system; which is to say, a system that is self-contained and does not interact with its environment or with other systems. This rise in entropy dictates the flow of energy in a system, i.e. heat moves from hotter objects/places to colder objects/places. In other words, it assigns a directionality to physical processes, i.e. an ice cube in a glass of water melts due to the relatively higher temperature of its surroundings, but the temperature of a glass of water does not spontaneously drop to form an ice cube. This, of course, also applies to living beings; we only grow older, and never younger, and this process is irreversible and unidirectional. Therefore, physicists take this to be a physical formulation of the so-called ‘arrow of time’, which is to say the forward movement of time itself.
Physical processes will continue to move towards the direction of higher entropy until they reach a point known as maximum thermal equilibrium, where there will no longer be a flow of energy, and this applies to the entire universe. Physicists often predict that, in the very, very, very far future, the universe will exhaust all of the energy contained within it, and at that point, every star will have died, every subatomic particle and every single black hole will have decayed, and there will no longer even be any movement whatsoever. Everything will fall silent as the universe slowly drifts into a vast, empty, cold nothingness. This is what is known as the heat death of the universe, the ultimate physical expression of the inevitability of death. It is quite reminiscent of the philosophy of IX, the Aeon of Nihility; perhaps through no small coincidence.
(For a more detailed explanation, watch this video by Veritasium)24
In fact, is this not precisely what the Honkai and Finality is? That is, an embodiment or manifestation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the Honkai-verse? After all, the Japanese word ‘Honkai’ or ‘Houkai’ (‘崩壊’) (‘Benghuai’ (‘崩坏’) in Chinese) means ‘collapse’; in short, it is the inevitable collapse of all things, baked into the very cosmological foundations of the Honkai-verse. One could perhaps say that this is something it shares with the Path of Destruction, for Nanook has also been described as the “avatar of entropy” in one of the Data Banks in HSR.25
Let’s pick up from where Otto left off with his explanation of the Tree and the Sea:
“The Tree has drunk from the Sea and endured an asamkhya of time and grown a nayuta of branches, and leaves [...] Time flows in the trunk of the Imaginary Tree and branches out into an infinity of worlds […] But growth is countered by a force - a selective and corrective system in the Tree’s rivalry against the Sea. A natural system based upon the Imaginary mechanics. It breeds, nurtures, tests, and removes. This is what humanity describes as the Honkai. Indeed. Humanity will never escape the Honkai. We must press forward because the Tree must grow. Those who fail become wilted shadows in the Sea of Quanta.” - Otto, Chapter 17 of HI3rd.26
According to Otto’s account of the Imaginary Tree, its growth is practically synonymous with the inexorable forward movement of time, and it is precisely by virtue of this very same process of growth that the leaves on the branches of this Tree must eventually wilt and die to become mere shadows in the Sea of Quanta, a process facilitated by the Honkai and Finality. Thus, we could certainly conceive of this whole cosmic mechanism as a kind of fictionalised version of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
To draw an equivalence with psychoanalysis, since we are witnessing the dynamics of life and death play out on a cosmological scale here, we may also think of the Second Law - and by extension the Honkai - as a cosmic death drive of sorts, though perhaps it could be the other way around instead; perhaps the death drive is a psychic manifestation of the Second Law, the natural decay of all physical processes imprinted deep within our unconscious.
Either way, interestingly enough, there has even been some academic work that has been done along these lines, though I can’t comment on its validity, reliability, or scientific status, which tends to be the case with most psychoanalytic research, despite the aims of Freud and his followers; again, not that we’re doing science here. Perhaps the moniker of the so-called ‘soft sciences’ is more appropriate for this type of research:
Frontiers | From the Principle of Inertia to the Death Drive: The Influence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics on the Freudian Theory of the Psychical Apparatus27
Beyond the death drive: Entropy and free energy28
PEP | Read - The Principle of Entropy and the Death Instinct29
Of course, if the tendency of increasing entropy described by the Second Law could be understood as both physical and psychic manifestations of the tendency of all matter towards death, then it follows that life and the drives that we associate with it (i.e. the pleasure and constancy principle) should be the opposite of it, right?
Indeed, a scientist by the name of Erwin Schrodinger - one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics and most famously known for the ‘Schrodinger's cat’ thought experiment - wrote a book about this, titled: What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell, in which he formulated a physicalist conception of life based on the notion of ‘negative entropy’, which is precisely the opposite of the tendency of rising entropy described by the Second Law. This concept is also known as ‘negentropy’, ‘syntropy’, or… you guessed it; ‘anti-entropy’, which in all likelihood is probably where the name ‘Anti-Entropy’ came from to begin with. Quite appropriate for an organisation that is dedicated to fighting the Honkai, isn’t it?
According to Schrodinger, life first arose from the principle of ‘order-from-disorder’; that is, that the processes of rising entropy described by the Second Law can give rise to local decreases in entropy without necessarily violating the Second Law, since it describes the general statistical tendency of the movement of entropy. Moreover, these local decreases in entropy have the capacity to enter into feedback loops that allow them to homeostatically maintain their own equilibrium, which is the principle of ‘order-from-order’. In other words, life is a system of negative entropy that feeds on negative entropy from their environment. In exchange, they increase the entropy of their environment by a greater margin (i.e. we radiate heat from our bodies), thus maintaining the Second Law. In this context, one could think of time as a river whose overall current moves in one direction, but which can still have local eddies, swirls, and other counter-currents that move against that general direction, which can then sustain their own movement for a limited amount of time.
“Every process, event, happening - call it what you will; in a word, everything that is going on in Nature means an increase of the entropy of the part of the world where it is going on. Thus a living organism continually increases its entropy - or, as you may say, produces positive entropy - and thus tends to approach the dangerous state of maximum entropy, which is death. It can only keep aloof from it, i.e. alive, by continually drawing from its environment negative entropy - which is something very positive as we shall immediately see. What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive [nanodesu].” - Schrodinger, What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell (1944), p. 71.30
To give a more concrete idea of this, the notion of abiogenesis is once again an excellent example. First and foremost, the oceans of Earth have a large difference in temperature - which means a large difference in entropy - between the cold depths and the warmer surface. This means that the water within the ocean along with everything that it contains is constantly moving and swirling to try to equalise this difference and reach thermodynamic equilibrium. This process in turn triggers chemical reactions that form molecules of increasing complexity that are essential for organic matter (i.e. carbon). These molecules, in their turn, slowly grow into cellular life, which then feeds on other forms of cellular life to sustain itself. Following this up with Freud’s framework of psychoanalysis, we could then say that the pleasure and constancy principles (life drives) that conscious life follows is yet another continuation of this self-preserving ‘order-from-order’ tendency of the living organism, and dreams are therefore a reflection of that tendency.
(For a more detailed explanation, watch this video by PBS Space Time)31
We now have a relatively decent idea of how both the physical and psychic tendencies of life and death reflect each other; so again, it follows that this should all also apply to our dreams and the unconscious. Indeed, we find ourselves in a similar place that we were in with regards to dreams in the context of Freud’s psychoanalytic paradigm. On the one hand, we have dreams as a form of wish-fulfilment - following the tendencies of the pleasure principle, or the life drives - which could be said to correspond to the tendency of negative entropy that Schrodinger associated with life; and this even accords with the notion of life as a system that maintains its own homeostatic equilibrium, in both senses of its physical and psychic stability. On the other hand, we have dreams - or nightmares, to be precise - as a manifestation of the death drive, an unceasing reminder that, just as the processes of negative entropy that constitute life itself arose from the overall tendency of rising entropy to begin with, so must it return thereto, inexorably careening unto the inertia of death in the same stroke with which life blooms and unfolds, no matter how stable the organism, no matter how much it is repressed.
We can now also use this to explain how the Dreamseeker and Firefly are connected to their respective notions of entropy. Firefly’s ‘Entropy Loss Syndrome’ could perhaps be understood as the processes of negative entropy that constitute life going out of control; hence, ‘Entropy Loss Syndrome’. This would also explain why those who suffer from it experience time more and more slowly, as that runaway process of negative entropy would be going against the general tendency of rising entropy that constitutes the arrow of time going forward. On top of that, if we take dreams as a reflection of that process of negative entropy, it’d also explain why dreams would come to dominate the reality of those suffering from this syndrome.
Meanwhile, for the Dreamseeker, we found out in Chapter 1 of Part 2 that the Sea of Data semi-regularly gives birth to entire human beings wholesale, and both the Dreamseeker herself (as well as Senadina) are examples of this phenomena. Vita even alludes to a similar phenomena in reference to this very process: the Star Whisperers, which appeared in the Durandal visual novel, explained by Schrodinger herself (and also (Anna) Charles Darwin) explicitly in terms of negative entropy.32 This is likely why ‘Entropy’ is the Dreamseeker’s default name; perhaps ‘Negative Entropy’ as a name would be laying it on a bit too thick, even by Honkai standards. Moreover, Vita also specified that this process within the Sea of Data is akin to “a Star Whisperer born from a dream”, indicating the same association with dreams and negative entropy.33 There are more observations that we can make here regarding the wider cosmology of the Honkai-verse, but we will be addressing that soon enough.
All that being said, we have already spent the first half of this article (and the last half of the first article) interrogating and critiquing these notions of life and death in relation to the unity - or lack thereof - of the psyche and its organism, emphasising in turn the multiplicity of desire, and the fact that the unconscious does not exist strictly for the sake of the satisfaction of its desires through pleasure, nor for the sake of its final demise through death, but for the sake of the process itself.
Considering how much Freudian psychoanalysis seems to overlap with notions of thermodynamic entropy in terms of their description of the behaviour and tendencies of living organisms, I believe that we can also perform a similar critique of this physicalist notion of the psyche, for just as how psychoanalysis has been thoroughly critiqued within the past century, many physicists have cast their doubts over the sanctity of the Second Law of Thermodynamics; and one of the predominant ways in which it has been problematized is, in fact, through quantum mechanics. Indeed, what better way to explore the multiplicity of possibilities that constitute our world(s) than with the Many-Worlds Interpretation?
So, let us return once more to the Tree and the Sea to re-examine the cosmology of the Honkai-verse and the role that dreams play within it.
Extinguished Starlight, Rekindled Embers - Beyond the Second Law
I mentioned earlier that entropy has different definitions depending on the context in which one defines it, and this, of course, is also the case with quantum mechanics; so let’s get talking about quantum entropy, also known as Von Neumann entropy; again, named after the physicist (among a number of other things), John Von Neumann.
I did say that it would be relevant later.
Firstly, we should briefly touch on the idea of information entropy. Within the context of information theory, entropy is defined by how much information one can gain when making a measurement of a given system; the more information one gains, the higher the entropy of the system. Think of the box of gas from earlier: the less the particles are spread out, the less information one can gain from a measurement - since there is more certainty with regards to the exact position and momentum of the particles - and the lower its entropy; and the more the particles are spread out, the more information that one can gain, the higher its entropy. We could also say that there is more information hidden through uncertainty in the latter than the former. The quantity of hidden information in a given system corresponds to its information entropy, and so the Second Law can thus be expressed in terms of the loss of information in a given system.
This directly ties into how entropy is formulated in quantum mechanics. As I mentioned earlier, a quantum system that is in a superposition of all its possible states is described by its wavefunction, which contains all the information about the system. In this sense, the wavefunction not only has low information entropy, it has zero information entropy, since there is no hidden information about the system; we know for a fact that it is in all of its possible states at once. However, when we make a measurement, we no longer have access to the whole wavefunction; it ‘collapses’ into a single state. The entropy of the system has thereby risen, since there is hidden information about the rest of the possible states in the ‘collapsed’ wavefunction that we no longer have access to. Thus, in quantum mechanics, the very act of measurement increases the entropy of a given quantum system.
To be more precise, the so-called ‘collapse’ of the wavefunction (or its transformation from a superposition of states into a single state) occurs through a specific phenomenon: that of ‘entanglement’, which Einstein famously described as ‘spooky action at a distance’. Any interaction between multiple quantum systems causes them to be entangled; that is, the state of one system becomes dependent on the state of another and vice versa, and the information about their possible states becomes increasingly embedded within the part of the wavefunction related to the other. Throughout the existence of a quantum system, it continually interacts with all the countless other quantum systems that constitute their macroscopic environment, and becomes increasingly entangled with them. This then causes the information about their states to become increasingly hidden, and thus, entanglement causes entropy to rise; and at last, we have quantum entropy. As a footnote, when we are measuring a quantum system, we must necessarily interact and become entangled with it as part of its environment, which, again, is why measurement causes entropy to rise.
(For a more detailed explanation, watch this video by PBS Space Time)34
In addition to this, this web of entanglement between all of the countless quantum systems that constitute a macroscopic environment grows so rapidly to the point that it quickly becomes impossible to access the entire wavefunction; and this is a phenomenon known as ‘decoherence’, a more formalised notion of the collapse of the wavefunction. Not so coincidentally, decoherence is also commonly taken to be the point where the universe diverges into parallel worlds in the Many-Worlds Interpretation (since the wavefunction never collapses in Many-Worlds); we only observe our branch of the world and not the entire wavefunction because, again, we are inextricably entangled with our branch of the world as our environment. Therefore, in the Many-Worlds Interpretation, the branching of the world and the ‘creation’ of alternate/parallel worlds is exactly what causes entropy to rise. Lastly, this web of entanglement encompasses the entire universe, and is known as the universal wavefunction; a network of information that contains all the possible states of every single quantum system in the universe - or rather, the ‘multiverse’ - though we may never be able to access it and verify its existence.
An Imaginary Tree of sorts.
Indeed, this corresponds closely with Nagamitsu’s explanation of the Imaginary Tree as the data server of a video game containing all the information regarding its countless game worlds. With all this in mind then, one could say that the Imaginary Tree is precisely this quantum information network that continually grows by diverging its branches into alternate/parallel worlds, whereby entropy grows alongside it according to the principles of entanglement and decoherence, and the arrow of time thereby flows along its branches.
“[The Imaginary Tree is] a server that holds all the game data. The server has all kinds of mechanisms to generate countless game worlds, and you… are just a character in one of those worlds. The server records every action you take at every moment. You can see the records, but you don’t have the ability to change them. The game server that is called the “Imaginary Tree” can use the save file from any moment in time to generate a new parallel universe.” - Nagamitsu, Chapter 26.35
This, in turn, begs a certain question: what does negative quantum entropy entail in this context, exactly? Well, it would be to somehow access the unbounded universal wavefunction of the universe(/multiverse) - that is, the Imaginary Tree - and thus recover quantum information that has been hidden and lost through entanglement and decoherence. In reality, this would be impossible because of our entanglement with our respective branch of the world, but… this is science fiction. In fact, one could argue that this was precisely what Otto’s regression to the past was all about; going against the tendency of rising entropy to ‘time travel’ back to the past and force a ‘dead’ branch of the Imaginary Tree to diverge and sprout leaves once more.
Of course, we already discussed the idea of Honkai-verse characters dreaming of other worlds earlier on, so how exactly do dreams and the unconscious figure with regards to the cosmology of the Honkai-verse in light of everything we’ve explored here? Our aims were to avoid strictly assigning it to the dichotomy of life and death and the corresponding conflict between negative and positive entropy, and instead emphasise the multiplicity of the processes of the unconscious; and indeed, we may speculate that dreams are a way by which these characters gain some form of access to the universal wavefunction embedded within the imaginary spaces of the Imaginary Tree and the Sea of Quanta, which explain how these characters are capable to dreaming of other worlds to begin with. In other words, dreams are the weaving of these entangled threads of possibility that intertwine countless worlds together, a quantum unconscious of sorts connecting the Many-Worlds of the Honkai-verse and opening them up to each other; which, of course, has additional implications with regards to entropy.
Recall the definition of the Second Law: entropy must rise in a closed system, which is to say systems that do not interact with their environment or with other systems. Physicists have always assumed that our universe is one such closed system (after all, the idea of an ‘outside’ to the universe seems meaningless) - hence their prediction of heat death as its ultimate fate - but what if our universe is not a closed system? The concepts of heat death, the rise of entropy, or perhaps even entropy itself would then be at question. At the very least, that seems to me to be the question that the narratives of the Honkai-verse is asking in conceiving of these other worlds as something accessible through higher-dimensional space. Considering the equivalences we’ve made between the Honkai/Finality and the Second Law, this interrogation of the rise of entropy unto heat death is a central theme in these narratives, so of course quantum mechanics would play this role of defying fate by opening up the countless possibilities contained in other worlds.
For example, let’s follow Nagamitsu’s explanation a little further; she speculated that the Second Law and the arrow of time are not fundamental laws of our universe, but rather properties of it that are contingent upon its structure. Consequently, higher-dimensional structures that lie ‘outside’ of our world - such as the Imaginary Tree - do not have such restrictions with regards to time and entropy; “one can travel [...] in time freely, no different from travelling through spatial dimensions”. This is all to say that although time flows in a linear and unidirectional fashion in the proper world - that is, within the branches of the Imaginary Tree - this is not the case from the broader perspective of the Tree itself.
“As you probably know, our world isn’t the limit of existence. Outside of our world, the Imaginary Tree and the Sea of Quanta also affect our fate [...] This is something we learned from multiple experiments. Through activating the second Divine Key and linking the bubble universe to the Imaginary Tree - We determined that outside our world, time still abides by certain rules and won’t degenerate into chaos. To be more specific… There, one can travel backward in time freely, no different from travelling through spatial dimensions. On this basis, it follows some other basic principles. Similar to other dimensions, it has various types of energy restrictions. And some of these restrictions cause time to flow in a fixed direction in various subspaces, limiting the capabilities of objects in those spaces. We believe that is the reason for the existence of everything in our world. That is to say, the “arrow of time” is not a basic principle - it is a consequence of the existence of our world.” - Nagamitsu, Chapter 26.36
Believe it or not, this is all quite similar to a lot of the criticisms that some physicists have levelled against the Second Law, especially those who are proponents of the Many-Worlds Interpretation. As an example, physicist Sean Carroll has argued thusly: “[...] the ensemble of universes can always increase in entropy by making more universes, so there is no equilibrium, there is no maximum entropy state for the entire unbounded wavefunction of the universe”.37 This is to say that although entropy could still be said to rise in the context of the Many-Worlds Interpretation, it no longer has maximum thermodynamic equilibrium as its final end goal. Individual universes may die, but new ones will be born ad infinitum through the workings of quantum mechanics. Therefore, from the perspective of the entire multiverse, there is no such thing as a final end in heat death; only an endless cycle of death and rebirth.
This dynamic is best demonstrated in the Honkai-verse in Su’s explanation of it in the Second Key manga, where the Imaginary Tree and the Sea of Quanta are no longer just higher-dimensional constructs that are inextricably intertwined; rather, they are two sides of the same cosmic coin. The Tree absorbs the Sea to grow more branches and leaves, and when the leaves wilt, they fall into the Sea to once again become a source of nourishment for the growth of the Tree, in a cycle that we now know as the Samsara of Finality:
“Each leaf represents a likely alternative universe in the Honkai War. Alas, this universe has lost the war, and like all the other defeated universes… it has wilted, falling from the tree to become a mere husk of itself. I have kept my vigil for millennia. The leaves that wilted and fell are just as numerous as the sand grains of the Ganga. I’ve yet to find a leaf that never wilts. Nothing lasts. Countless civilizations eventually fell after brief moments of brilliance. But whenever I raised my head… I would only see that the crown of this tree remained as green and lush as before. While withered leaves fell with the breeze, fresh buds sprout to take their places. Nothing lasts, not even me, yet the leaves are beyond counting.” - Su, Chapter 1 of Second Key.38
Here, we see that neither life defined as self-contained organisms with definite boundaries - whether it be a single individual creature or an entire universe - nor death defined as the inexorable tendency towards disorder, are primary to the cosmology of the Honkai-verse; they are emergent phenomena of something even deeper and more profound. The so-called ‘fates’ of the branches and leaves of the Imaginary Tree and the bubble worlds of the Sea of Quanta are both shaped by the tendency of both to further proliferate the multiplicities of alternate possibilities which constitute their very existence in an unbounded feedback loop of divergence and differentiation. And so, we have returned to Deleuze and Guattari; for is this not precisely the processes of multiplicities, becomings, flows of desire and fragmentations of partial objects that are utterly fundamental to their conception of the unconscious playing out on a cosmological scale?
In fact, this was implicitly contained in the notion of entropy itself, though it took a closer examination of the Second Law to reveal this: whether it’s the random motion that drives thermodynamic entropy or the entanglement that drives quantum entropy, both are cases of matter trying to explore the possibilities of its own existence through change, growth, and becoming; this is the fundamental ‘nature’ of reality, what we know as life itself. We only think of it as an impulse unto death because of the arbitrary limit and false unity of a ‘closed system’ that we imposed on it, whether it’s a single box of gas or the entire universe. Indeed, this notion of an open system is essential to life in the context of entropy, both in our limited sense of it - for the oceans that gave birth to life on Earth are not thermodynamically closed systems, but rather forms a circuit of energy with other systems (i.e. the Sun), which is now responsible for its continued existence - and, it seems, beyond it too. Thus, these quantum dreams give us a glimpse of visions beyond the limits of our world, images of embryonic futures containing infinite and limitless possibilities of a fundamentally open and incomplete multiverse which does not merely exist, but which also grows, flourishes, becomes.
Thus, we have arrived at yet another answer to the Watchmaker’s question of “Why does life slumber?”: that is, the dreams that we witness during our sleep are vestiges of the processes which constitute life in all its boundless possibilities.
In this sense, there is quite a bit of resonance between these notions of dreams; dreams in relation to time, entropy, and life and death, and dreams of other worlds; and in fact, one may call them dreams of future possibilities instead. Indeed, we can see this idea play out throughout the Penacony storyline. In the opening dream sequence, we witness several future events that have yet to pass, such as conversations between characters that will appear in Penacony later on, Misha greeting the Trailblazer in the hotel lobby, or Acheron introducing herself as a Galaxy Ranger and asking the Trailblazer if they have previously met her.39 Perhaps these are the futures that do bear fruit within our branch of the world, while other futures diverge into other branches upon the dreamers’ awakening. It’s commonly accepted that dreams are made of memories, but who's to say that they must be memories of the past? Although, perhaps memories of the future isn’t quite the right term to describe dreams, since they are mostly forgotten upon waking and only manifest in reality through a vague sense of deja vu. Perhaps this is a testament to their nature as fleeting images of the future.
Nevertheless, we can also see this logic of dreams as images of the future playing out in Part 2 of HI3rd. To begin with, The opening dream sequence revealed to the Dreamseeker the bubble worlds of Luoxing that we will in all likelihood be visiting in the near future throughout our Martian journey; and lo and behold, we do get to visit one of them - Langqiu - very shortly after awakening from that opening dream sequence. We also have the Dreamseeker’s meeting with Senadina, which wasn’t merely precipitated by the dream - where the Dreamseeker met Senadina’s ‘Cocoon’ version before they then meet again in the Sea of Data immediately afterwards - but was even made entirely possible by it, as Senadina herself was supposedly born from said dream through the mechanisms of (quantum) negative entropy that we discussed earlier.40
Besides that, not long after the opening dream sequence, the Dreamseeker also experienced an episode of what she herself speculated to be a ‘prophetic’ or ‘divination’ dream of Songque upon entering Langqiu;4142 though if we consider the special rules present within the bubble worlds of Luoxing and the Sea of Data (such as the shadows of Langqiu, the mechanism of Fear Gathering, and the existence of Source Matter), it might be better to say that these dreams manifest the futures they envision rather than just predicting them, whether it be events (Songque’s appearance), objects (Astral Rings), or even human beings (Senadina). Perhaps this could also be the case for Misha and Acheron in the opening dream sequence to Penacony.
We may also ascribe these phenomena to the workings of quantum mechanics as well, since it seems to correspond somewhat to the way in which the mere act of observing a quantum system counts as a form of interaction that then splits the ‘embryonic’ wavefunction into the distinct branches of the Many-Worlds through the mechanisms of entanglement and decoherence; which is to say that these quantum dreams create the future which they foresee, a veritable part of the processes that constitute the passage of time. In fact, we could very well apply the dream logic of Penacony to the bubble worlds of Luoxing as a whole; Ai Lambda and Vita have even explicitly referred to the events of Part 2’s story as “dreams” a few times.43 Indeed, whether it’s Langqiu or Oxia, reality seems more malleable in these bubble worlds compared to the way it is in the proper world, and specifically in a way that seems to violate the Second Law; that is, the residents of these bubble worlds are capable of manifesting everyday objects or resources seemingly out of thin air, whether through gathering their fears in the case of the shadows of Langqiu, or through the programming that is conducted by the Data Research Institute in the case of Oxia and the Sea of Data’s source matter.
In the case of Langqiu, the connection between the special rules of the bubble worlds with dreams and the unconscious is perhaps more obvious, since it is tied to the people’s fears, with Coralie comparing it to the case of Salt Snow Holy City, where Sa’s Authority manifested people’s desires into reality to some degree,44 not to mention the fact that Songque mentioned that the shadows could be thought of as Langqiu itself.45 There’s even an added thematic resonance with Penacony here, what with Duonigue - a beast formed by the shadows of Langqiu - being a Cerberus, a three-headed hound serving as guardian of the underworld; and if you recall, we’ve discussed connections between mythical underworlds and the unconscious earlier. Either way, Helia explicitly speculated that Langqiu have become capable of harnessing Honkai energy - which would normally drive the increase of entropy within the proper world - into a perpetual motion machine,46 a hypothetical machine that explicitly breaks the Second Law by serving as an infinite source of energy, whereas such ostensibly impossible mechanisms seems to have become part of the theoretical basis for the Data Research Institute’s academic curriculum, as formulated by Youyun, the Dreamseeker’s teacher.
Of course, since the rise of entropy determines the forward arrow of time, the bubble worlds of Luoxing have been frozen in time; the one billion years since the Great Eruption that destroyed the civilization of Luoxing in the proper world has passed in only a hundred years in Langqiu and Oxia. In light of all this, perhaps they are not very different indeed from the Dreamscape of Penacony, where time is at a standstill in the Golden Hour; though of course, this cannot last forever. One way or another, the dream must end, the dreamer must awaken, and the passage of time must flow once again. Just as how death in its various forms struggles to resurface against the yoke of Penacony’s collective repression in the true Dreamscape, the frozen time within the bubble worlds of Luoxing is indicative of a mere postponement of Finality, not its eternal banishment; and certainly not its embrace, as in the case of Kiana and the civilization of Earth. Maybe this is why the Dreamseeker dreams of future possibilities; they are an indication that those postponed futures are returning.
Speaking of which, it is of course upon these dreams that time begins to flow once again in the bubble worlds of Luoxing; or rather, if the bubble worlds of Luoxing are indeed dreams, perhaps the notion of dreams within dreams in this context - that is, the context of the opening dream sequence - signals the awakening of the dreamer instead, whoever that may be (Senadina?), for the flow of time would eventually carry them to their postponed fate of doom. However, we have learned to question this process as something that leads towards an ultimate ending; and indeed, Senadina has been hard at work in averting this destiny, reaching towards yet another world - though in a different sense this time - in order to seek aid and weave their dreams and futures together. To briefly return to the first part article, the absence of Kiana’s dreams does not entail the satisfaction nor the final end of her desires, but the continuation of it; into reality, and into other dreams of other worlds.47
Thus, despite this recommencing of the passage of frozen time and awakening of dreams within dreams, these acts of dreamweaving likewise will not lead to a fate of ultimate demise, but rather the proliferation of these worlds’ infinite possibilities unto an open future. In these dreams, new saplings will emerge from scorched earth to bloom against the morning sun, and the starry sky, beautiful as life yet eternal like death, flows like a river, until they eventually fall. The word ‘desire’ itself contains a kernel of this meaning, for it descended from the old English word ‘desiderate’, in turn descended from the Latin word ‘desiderare’, which is itself composed of ‘de’ and ‘sider’; ‘down’ and ‘star’: falling stars. Thus, to desire is to wish upon a shooting star, so that our dreams may go beyond these symbols of eternity, to the moment when the stars fall.
As I have mentioned in the first part article, these stories too are our dreams, our ways of exploring the alternate possibilities of our lives, our worlds, and existence itself, within and beyond our imagination. We can’t help but feel the desire to weave these dreams together, and this is my own feeble attempt at it. Of course, there is always more to explore with Honkai-verse lore - it’s as deep as you’re willing to fall, after all - but I will have to stop here, as this article is getting way too long already.
So, to summarise then: we started with psychoanalysis in Penacony, retreading the ideas that we explored in the first part article. Then, we once again problematised those ideas, this time via the myth of the river Acheron and its connotations of life and death. After that, we explored in earnest the role of dreams in relation to the wider cosmology of the Honkai-verse through the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, the concept of entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and lastly, combining these frameworks to finally arrive at quantum thermodynamics, where we return to the idea of dreams as a part of the multiplicities of our worlds’ possibilities and the processes of becoming fundamental to existence itself.
Last but not least, I very much look forward to wherever these stories are going with the theme of dreams, and I am certainly awaiting the next stop of these journeys with bated breath.
And now, at long last, although it’s been a wonderful dream…
It’s time to wake up, Dreamseekers.
solentestuaries is a writer, a fan of Honkai Impact 3rd, and one of the contributors in Hyperion Team 3rd. You can follow her social media at https://twitter.com/solentestuaries
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PBS Space Time, ‘The Physics of Life (ft. It's Okay to be Smart & PBS Eons!)’ (11 April 2018)
miHoYo, Durandal, Chapter 21, trans. By Abyss Labs [Durandal Beta - Abyss Lab]
Aira Delasse, ‘Honkai Impact - Part 2 Chapter 1: Hundred Years of Solitary Shadow - Phase 1, Part 1 (Playthrough)’
PBS Space Time, ‘How Quantum Entanglement Creates Entropy’ (23 June 2021)
Night. K, ‘Honkai Impact 3 - Chapter 26: The Birth of Tragedy [Story]’ (11 December 2021)
Night. K, ‘Honkai Impact 3 - Chapter 26: The Birth of Tragedy [Story]’ (11 December 2021)
Maryland Quantum Thermodynamics Hub, ‘Sean Carroll - Philosophical Issues in Quantum Thermodynamics’ (20 March 2023)
miHoYo, Second Key, Chapter 1 [Second Key — Honkai Impact 3rd Manga Station]
Kyu-Kyu, ‘The Sound and the Fury (Full playthrough) | Honkai Star Rail Version 2.0’
Aira Delasse, ‘Honkai Impact - Part 2 Chapter 1: Hundred Years of Solitary Shadow - Phase 1, Part 1 (Playthrough)’
Aira Delasse, ‘Honkai Impact - Part 2 Chapter 1: Hundred Years of Solitary Shadow - Story Only (Part 3)’ (1 March 2024)
Aira Delasse, ‘Honkai Impact - Part 2 Chapter 1: Hundred Years of Solitary Shadow - Story Only (Part 8)’ (7 March 2024)
Aira Delasse, ‘Honkai Impact - Part 2 Chapter 1: Hundred Years of Solitary Shadow - Story Only (Part 5)’ (2 March 2024)
Aira Delasse, ‘Honkai Impact - Part 2 Chapter 1: Hundred Years of Solitary Shadow - Story Only (Part 4)’ (2 March 2024)
Aira Delasse, ‘Honkai Impact - Part 2 Chapter 1: Hundred Years of Solitary Shadow - Story Only (Part 3)’
Aira Delasse, ‘Honkai Impact - Part 2 Chapter 1: Hundred Years of Solitary Shadow - Story Only (Part 4)’
Gudaoko, ‘Honkai Impact Part 2 Prologue: The Star Which the Moon Gazes Upon Act 2 | Full Story JP Dub EN Sub’ (19 January 2024)