A Speculation om Paimon's indentity
[SUMMARY AVAILABLE AT THE END]
DISCLAIMER: ALL TEXTS IS SPECULATIVE UNTIL PROVEN OR DISPROVEN BY CANNON AND THIS IS ONLY ONE OF MANY POSSIBLE THEORIES REGARDING PAIMON'S INDENTITY.
“A human is but a machine with a certain level of complexity” - Il Dottore.
To a certain extent Dottore's isn't wrong here assuming that organs are but machinery components to said machine, and thus can be taken apart and enhanced, creating something close to a god. But what if you reverse the process?
Could a machine be optimized enough that they begin to be indistinguishable from life? Genshin is no stranger to life mimicry, a form of technology whereby machines are meant to replicate the capabilities of living creatures.
Therefore “a machine is but a living being, operating on a separate set of organs", should also be a correct statement to a certain extent. Now I want you to keep that in mind as I present my theory.
Part 1: Life Mimicry
On the topic of life mimicry: How alive is a machine? To note this statement applies to anything that isn't a naturally living being, and is created precisely to be a form of machinery/technological advancement. Therefore this question doesn't apply to Oceanids or elemental lifeforms as those are clearly living beings. It does however apply to mechanical lifeforms, puppets, and alchemically created beings.
Food for thought: how alive is Karkata? The mechanical life form from Tighnari's SQ. Depending on how you answered that question will shape your reception of the full analysis. And now how about Wanderer? And to extend further Ineffa and Albedo? Are they considered living beings or a specific kind of complex machinery?
To get to Paimon then and why all that setup mattered. Because technological life mimicry isn't foreign to Genshin, and complex AIs have been introduced, would it then be far-fetched to theorize that perhaps Paimon is one said complex AI? A machine made to mimic living beings, to a point where they are indistinguishable from it?
Part 2: AI
I think the most common, and certainly not a new theory, is that she is an AI, but what kind of AI or which one. As an AI she would need to use a form data center to be trained on- her vast knowledge of Teyvat does imply might’ve been fed on data stored within Irminsul. Her knowledge is also somewhat outdated, while not completely irrelevant, it’s also important to not that she is affected by Irminsul. We do know objects like books, and puppets like Wanderer are affected so being a living thing isn’t precedent for being affected- it simply needs to be Teyvat in origin. Which does imply she is Teyvat in origin that’s for sure.
To further the idea that she is in fact an AI or at least a form of complex machinery she is not affected by the abyss or most things that affect others, while it makes why Traveler isn’t affected why her? We could look at pattern recognition and see what else is resistant to the abyss- so back to Wanderer we go. Wanderer when he was Baladeer was resistant enough to the abyss that he was often sent there, although it doesn't seem like alchemical lifeforms are resistant to it though so it might be the difference in built with organic vs inorganic materials. Where the former is a product extracted by living things thus is more susceptible to decay and rot (abyssal rot in this case) and the latter is non living and therefore susceptible to long term wear and tear but not rot itself. Paimon could very well be that kind of AI built from organic materials rather than inorganic ones. But I do have an alternative theory, well two of them but I will only be expanding on one in this.
Part 3: Virus
The possibility that Paimon is a form of both biological and computer virus. I will start with the biological angle as it relates more closely to my theory. A biological virus is not a living thing despite being able into the characteristics of living things almost perfectly. Rather, it is pseudo alive within its own category. It requires a host to live. If Paimon functions similarly to a virus than she is embedded into the Teyvat itself as her host.
Additionally there are dormant and active viruses- where an active one directly causes harm as it enters the body, a dormant one can remain undetected for years, replicating and performing tasks while blending almost perfectly with the existing system. Paimon herself is an anomaly within Teyvat, yet somehow remains unquestioned, she blends well with other characters and creatures in general. She could very well be a form of dormant virus that remains undetected within Teyvat while being a somewhat foreign object still.
A computer virus on the other hand needs to write its own code within an existing one, which could potentially explain why Paimon has various reference to exiting”Admins” of Teyvat if we run by Teyvat being a computer. The Teyvat admins include the archons who have demon names and she has a demon name (3rd descender), the moon sisters to which Paimon has the three moons in her cape, and currently Traveler is an added new user and she is constantly around Traveler almost like studying her. Not necessarily malicious but definitely data mining. It also means she is almost undetectable by the base system.
In both case her existence is not based on herself but on the fact that she is connected to an already existing host within the system- i.e her living status is dependent not individual. If the host dies so does she.
Part 3: Is she an object?
Notably so, despite clearly showing traits of being sentient, she is often referred to by non-living terms. Be it object, emergency food, balloon or ghost- the only notable exceptions are seelie and fairy, in both cases the former is an a supposedly near extinct race and the other is a husk of an a bygone race.
The reason why I bring these up is that the fact that she is often treated as an object. Which brings me to my final point: The Temple of Space. Paimon wasn’t dragged to hell, not because she lacked any desires, I think we all know she does be it treasure or traveler, she has attachment, rather the system itself did not identify her desires as desires but coding. To bring back my previous question: How alive is Karkata? And to further it, was Karkata’s grief over the loss of it’s creator a result of simple coding or actual expression of grief as proof of mechanical lifeforms being capable of emotions. If we assume the world believes it is the former then Temple could very read Paimon’s desires as such and thus not seeing it as real desires to begin with.
Part 3: Summary (TL;DR)
Paimon is a sentient non-living being. She is either an AI or a virus in Teyvat. The temple of space does not acknowledge her actual sentience as sentience and instead as complex coding and thus did not validate her desires.
By the way this isn't meant to be a conclusive theory but a proposition one, simply analyzing patterns based on existing data and making a proposition based on that- it is specifically made to be debated, argued and falsified as much as possible. In a sense it's my form of a null hypothesis. So please give all your suggestions in the commonets on whether you agree or not, and what could be added or discarded.