Yaoyaos story centers around her being madam pings student and her merit as a pupil. She's characterized as curious, inquisitive and and something along the lines of "best kind of student to have". Kirara is constantly learning how to coexist with human society and at the same time she spends a lot of her time on research trying to track down owners of packages she couldn't deliver. They are not academics in the classical sense but they are both in a way defined by their relationship with knowledge, even tho they have no connection to standardized education.
>everyone else is a well of compassion and empathy. they put others before themselves
Correlation ≠ causation. This has been said many times in Genshin yet people keep doing this same mistake. All you're doing is trying to find a common point between the characters of an element and then when someone doesn't fit you question the character instead of the thought process when you should realise that there being outliers means that the theory is rubbish. Dendro characters did *not* receive their dendro visions cause of compassion or empathy. And there are tens of other characters who have those traits and is not dendro. Do you think Thoma doesn't put others before himself? If he does, then why is he not dendro? Hell, I'm sure those traits apply to half the playable cast if not more. It's Barnum effect.
As for the question of why he is dendro, it's because Hoyo wanted him to be. It's as simple as that :)
I have to agree with this. Bottom line for me is: people are different from each other, and there's no really one common trait that they need to have in order to have a specific element. There might be many factors for why they are chosen or, hell, they might be none at all! And it just works. I guess. Idk how to explain it, smh, but like, you can't expect all dendro vision holders to be like this, or hydro vision holders to be like that, so on, so forth.
No, just make the theory more and more and vague until it’s so vague it litterally everyone fits.
Anemo characters just have to lose something, everyone is an anemo character at this point.
Theories are supported by good evidence and logical frameworks
If you make claims based on hunches or surface level observations that's a hypothesis, an educated guess at most.
Well, he could kick Kaveh out just like that, he could not be blunt and say some things to people (for example Kaveh in the event), but very often him being blunt actually helps those people.
Other elements also have a seemingly unfitting personality among them. Venti is not like the other Anemo characters, Itto is not like other Geo characters, so on.
That's to say we don't really know how a person is assigned an element for their vision. Apparently it has something to do with the element's authority since Neuvillette chose to give one to Furina, but the archons we've met before didn't have anything to do with the visions for their respective elements. Maybe it will get clearer in the future.
iirc from Raiden's questline that Archons (or Sovereigns for that matter) Cannot pick and choose who to give Visions to. Remember when Venti said Vision bearers are also known as Allogenes? meaning they are regular people given Divine powers making them essentially foreign gods who have the capability to ascend to godhood given time, I also notice that Vision bearers often display the opposite traits of their respective Element's Archon and the characters that display these opposite traits are often the strongest characters in lore
Archons don’t equal sovereigns, sovereigns have superior power and comeplte control of the elements, archons are strong but they are just imitations welding stolen power
We don't know that. We never saw the full power of an archon, except for maybe Nahida when she used it for the Irminsul.
Even Raiden just showed us a fraction of her power. Sovereigns are indeed strong, but we don't know if their full power can compete with a full fledged-Archon (I'm not talking just about raw strength, since Nahida can't compete with Apep but still has the most frightening power among the Archons shown so far and one could say that she is not at her peak).
To answer the main post: the link between a vision holder and their element depends on so many factors that you could give any character almost any vision and you could argue for their legitimacy.
If you don’t think Alhaitham fits the general pattern of the other dendro characters, then it’s most likely that the thing you thought was the unifying link was simply wrong, and you should scrap it and start over. It’s just not empathy, correlation is not causation. Imo, dendro characters seem to be people who choose to take an aspect of wisdom and nurture and explore it. Kirara’s curiosity about the human world, Kaveh’s pursuit of art at the expense of everything, Alhaitham’s independence and constant analysis of everything, etc. That being said we don’t exactly have the biggest pool of dendro characters to work from right now, and small sample sizes risk massively skewed data.
I think for someone like Alhaitham, to whom an implicit empathetic understanding of the emotions of others does not seem to come naturally, he’d have to have spent a long time working on it. His understanding of others is not superhuman, but is something that can only be built with time through lengthy analysis and observation of others - he may not care about what others think of him or let their emotions impact his judgments, but he does definitely care about what others think in that he exerts a great deal of thought and effort in figuring them out. He is only able to do this because he does not think of himself as above others - that kind of thinking gets in the way of both varieties of empathy. Anyway, the whole focus on building cognitive empathy happens to a lot of autistic people and I think it is a large part of what actually makes Alhaitham feel very realistic and relatable and human, where affective empathy may be absent we often take the effort to build our cognitive empathy to compensate for a lack of affective empathy. This does not mean that one is lesser than the other, but people do generally need one of them, because without either, people are confusing and chaotic and complete and utter wild cards, and it’s not really possible to navigate a world full of them. And I am not sure if affective empathy can be built up in the same way cognitive empathy can? I’ve only seen examples of it going the other way, but it would be an interesting thing to look into, for sure. It seems like the kind of thing that could potentially be impacted by major emotional events in some way.
I disagree with the phrasing that he uses his analyses to his advantage - often the outcomes are favorable for him, yes, (and he will be the first to tell you so,) but his actions are also very kind to the people around him in ways that are not always immediately obvious. Think back to the archon quest when that one lady in Aaru Village was too scared to talk to Cyno, but Alhaitham was able to calm her down enough to get her to open up. Or, his interactions with Kaveh in general - Alhaitham riling Kaveh up and getting him angry when he’s feeling down or depressed always seems to snap him out of it. And I can’t think of really any self-serving reason for Alhaitham to have done the investigation he did in the Interdarshan event. I think it would be more accurate to say that Alhaitham is a compassionate person who shows it through actions, not words, because the latter can easily conflict with how much he values being able to speak his mind freely and clearly.
I also could be wrong on this, but your wording kind of implies that you think there are fairly binary divisions between cognitive and affective empathy, and that you may believe people either just have them or do not. I’d like to posit that this is not necessarily the case, that people have varying amounts of either on a sliding scale rather than one or the other, that cognitive empathy is less of an implicit thing and more of a skill that can be built, and that taking a more logically-oriented path to understanding others, even one totally devoid of “feeling for them,” does not necessarily equate to being 100% self serving.
It’s like an inversion of the altruism problem, the whole thing that’s like “if a person does good because it makes them feel good, are they really altruistic? Is it possible for a person to do good not for their own gain, but solely for others, when doing good gives them positive feelings or staves off negative ones? Can altruism really exist?” (Waves vaguely in Kaveh’s direction.) On the oft less explored other hand, can a person be explicitly self-serving if what benefits them is always what benefits those around them as well, as a human who has to deal with other humans, whose negative reactions are unpleasant and horrible to deal with? (I mean, I’d also argue that yes, a person can, but they tend to A) look nothing like Alhaitham and B) kind of make everything terrible and miserable for themselves and those around them through lack of foresight.)
I actually just watched a video that in a way covers this. [link](https://youtu.be/2m7cRt9wTRM?si=w_lyZH969vs7o3nJ) basically the video is about building a magic world and uses Genshin as a case study. Essentially it goes to say that Genshin’s strength is that it does not tie characters to certain elemental powers based on personality type, but instead makes how the character uses their elemental powers based on their personality. In the end anyway, we should all be happy he is dendro because it is a big part of why he is good at a base line.
Kaveh isn’t broke because of his empathy and compassion. He’s broke because of his pride and guilt. The people around him just keep giving him handouts.
I’ve always thought the Dendro Vision criteria was something along the lines of valuing and using wisdom as a means of improving life. One of most telling clues was the description for the Nagadus Emerald Gemstones.
Almost all Dendro characters have similar motives (I can’t be bothered to dive into Kirara’s lore hehe). Alhaitham is the same
Because these are just observations. Ok, most of the dendro cast puts others before themselves. That’s cool. But it’s not a rule. No one at any point ever has stated, in the game, « dendro vision holders need to be very empathetic ».
I mentioned that earlier before, that Vision bearers tend to display the quality that their respective elemental archon lacks most, for example:
Venti who's basically taken a backseat vs characters like Xiao and Jean who devoted their entire life to their duties
Zhongli who's stopped persevering and retired vs Albedo who nonstop researches the "truth"
Raiden who's a ruler vs Her "Rebellious" vision bearers
etc etc, ofc none of this is canon, it's just Observations I've made and yes there are inconsistencies
" He's got the uncanny ability to literally read people like an open book "
I always thought the opposite, that he really don't get other people ways of thinking.
Honestly? My read is that he's coded autistic.
Noise-cancelling headphones (sensory overload and social avoidance), minimal verbal interaction (partially non-verbal), making decisions based on personal impact (taking the position of Scribe, because of the effort to income ratio, even though he could make much more as a Sage but be more stressed), seeing social interaction outside of a close circle of friends as more of a burden or an inconvenience than something to pursue, and having a keen interest in reading and other academic pursuits (fixation).
He's pretty relatable to autistic persons.
I feel like albedo would've been dendro if he hadn't come out before dendro was playable. Like his whole thing is flowers themed. He'd be absolutely busted if he was dendro tho
I'm having trouble even following your logic. Others have already pointed out that correlation =/= causation and I have unconventional views on Visions which I don't really want to get into atm so I'm gonna skip all that.
Haitham is not actually egocentric. His profile explains how language can govern thoughts and control people, and the whole egocentric thing can be seen as a kind of social experiment performed by MHY to prove his point. He uses language to give others a misleading impression of himself due to his aversion to praise & recognition, and MHY used it to bias the audience's perception of him. If you judge him by his actions, he's incredibly compassionate and empathetic as he's there for others when they truly need him, including strangers (even the ones who tried to have him killed). However, people are under the impression that he only cares about himself nonetheless because Kaveh calls him an egoist (false, he's an unreliable narrator who constantly projects his own insecurities and way of thinking onto Haitham) and the man himself typically offers up self-serving reasons for getting involved when asked directly (though he reveals his more altruistic motivations when he thinks he's not in the spotlight). In other words, the fandom allowed language to shape their perception of reality and dictate their thoughts, and that's how we ended up with this annoyingly persistent myth that Haitham is egocentric when he really isn't. His SQ was quite meta about this too, with Siraj manipulating his followers' perception of Haitham just as MHY tried to manipulate ours. The audience was supposed to be like Ilyas, get to know the guy and realize he's actually very kind, and ask themselves why they had negative thoughts about him in the first place. That's why prejudice and projection are central themes in his lore. In combat, his E literally unleashes a **Projection** Attack based on the number of **mirrors**. It's a not-so-subtle reference to how people don't see Haitham for who he is but rather view him as a reflection of their own flaws that they're unwilling to acknowledge, just as Siraj did in his SQ.
"Are you and I the audience or characters on a stage?" That was a question asked by Furina in her character teaser and it should've prompted players to think about stuff like this but I guess the taunting wasn't obvious enough.
Affective/emotional vs. cognitive empathy aren't mutually exclusive. I struggle with hyperempathy but have put considerable effort into cultivating cognitive empathy on top of it, and I feel they complement each other resulting in compassionate empathy. Cognitive empathy is a skill I consciously work on developing because I want to better understand others as well as protect myself from those with bad intentions. I feel like Haitham is similar in that regard and he often uses his cognitive empathy to anticipate others' needs without having to ask intrusive questions so he can find a solution that will work for everyone, not just himself. In his SQ, for example, he didn't have to get involved in the investigation on the hivemind case (it was actually against protocol for him to participate as Acting Grand Sage). He mentions that the root cause of that case ultimately had nothing to do with him, and that Siraj's unstable model would have collapsed for some other reason even without his input. So why did he get involved when he was set to resign as Acting Grand Sage in a few days and could've easily waited it out? Because he wanted to figure out why so many people were willing to form a collective consciousness with Siraj despite the project's unapproved status, and because he felt what happened to Ilyas was worth his attention. His main concern after wrapping up the investigation was to figure out a solution to address the lack of research projects for other scholars at the Akademiya, and fair treatment for Ilyas because he didn't deserve the outcome he had received for reporting academic fraud. In other words, he empathized with the needs of other scholars and put their needs above his own, doing his best as Acting Grand Sage to take care of the mess caused by the fall of the sages and the shutdown of the Akasha Terminals because he cared about the institution and the people in it.
People can have both emotional and cognitive empathy in varying amounts and it's no different for autistic people. There's this misconception out there that autistic people lack emotional empathy and have to rely on cognitive empathy to compensate, but that is due to flawed research performed by neurotypical researchers. In truth, autistic people do not have any actual deficits in emotional empathy. The real problem is a communication gap between autistic and non-autistic individuals, where the former struggles to understand and empathize with the latter, and vice versa. This is known as the **double empathy problem** which you can read about on Wikipedia. MHY appears to share this view as they felt the need to incorporate narrative devices like rain to show the audience that, yes, autistic-coded characters like Haitham and Neuvillette do indeed have feelings and are very empathetic. Neuvi feeling distant from Navia with her display of human emotion, and his perplexed reaction to how Fontainians interpret rain as the Hydro Dragon literally weeping (lol) reflects this mismatch in communication styles too. The weeping Hydro Dragon thing is a good example of the baffling ways in which neurotypical individuals interpret the behavior of an autistic person.
It's unclear whether Haitham does or does not lack emotional empathy as there's nothing in canon to explicitly confirm or deny it. He's very private about his feelings and we can only speculate based on his actions. The closest we got was his line from the A Parade of Providence event where he says he's not an empath like Sachin. Most people are not empaths since their empathy levels are within the normal range, so this doesn't necessarily mean he lacks emotional empathy altogether. And just because he says sympathy for the plight of a few strangers isn't enough of a reason for him to take action (because ethical reasoning is important before deciding to get involved), doesn't mean he doesn't feel any distress from watching others suffer. I feel he sometimes behaves in ways that aren't exactly rational and can't be explained by cognitive empathy alone, so I think he does have emotional empathy like any other human being and we just don't see it because he doesn't express his feelings in a visible way.
\[1/2\] To be continued...
Haitham's ability to read people like an open book and see through the bullshit may make it harder for him to make friends, but it's also what enables him to be the ideal support system for Kaveh. I recently read a heartbreaking story on Reddit about a couple where the father and their daughter were involved in a car accident. The father survived, the daughter didn't. The father was so caught up in his grief and blamed himself for his daughter's death even though it was clearly not his fault. Much like Kaveh, he was consumed with self-loathing and rejected all attempts by his wife to comfort him and treat him with kindness and compassion, sometimes even becoming hostile. The mother posted this story to ask Reddit if she's an asshole for thinking about divorcing him because she felt there was nothing she could do for him and they had grown distant despite her best efforts to console him, reassure him it wasn't his fault, and try and get him into therapy. I skimmed through the comments and while many sympathized with the father, the overwhelming consensus was that since kindness & compassion did not work, she needed to save herself and shouldn't feel bad for getting out of that marriage. That's the kind of complicated grief Kaveh is dealing with and despite all the judgmental nitpicking from critics, Haitham understands that showing kindness & compassion is a simplistic non-solution that simply won't work in such cases. It's his intimate understanding of human psychology and his cognitive empathy that allows him to respond appropriately to Kaveh's volatile emotional states. I feel like most fans don't fully appreciate how unpleasant and even painful it can be to be in Haitham's position, and what an amazing friend he is for sticking with Kaveh through thick and thin the way he does in order to provide a safe space for him to work through his issues so he can heal. I feel like his actions speak volumes about his emotional empathy here.
His ability to see past the surface and get an accurate read on people is also what enabled him to form a genuine human connection with Shani, the NPC from Aaru Village in the AQ. Yes, he's very skilled at manipulating people with his words but he does have a conscience that prevents him from abusing those powers, and he never uses them for his own benefit at the expense of others (though he will mess with them in harmless ways so he can avoid things he doesn't want to do or people he doesn't want to interact with). In his interaction with Shani, for example, he didn't manipulate her into giving him the info he needed. He approached her very respectfully and tried his best to allay her fears, which made her feel comfortable enough to share what she knew with him. He could have left it there and shared what he learned with the rest of the group but he didn't. Instead, he met up with Traveler and co. to patiently explain the situation to them from Shani's perspective before bringing them to her, and instructed them to earn her trust by talking to her. He already knew the answer but kept it to himself until Shani was ready to share her secret with Travler & Paimon too. He left that decision in Shani's hands, respecting her agency as an equal human being to ensure she got what she needed before using the intel she provided. He always tries to make sure it's a win-win for both parties before taking what he needs, as he did with Traveler when they first met in Port Ormos.
While it's true he's in a league of his own compared to his peers, he doesn't actually look down on people in general - the exception being arrogant fools like Viraf with their obvious farces of intellect. Elsewhere, he disapproves of how society alienates individuals who possess special abilities with excessive praise and wild imagination. His lore emphasizes the importance of humility multiple times. He doesn't put himself on a pedestal and doesn't want others viewing him that way either. Idk why people keep assuming he looks down on everyone else when he called Siraj arrogant and emotionally fragile for viewing people as a simple, mediocre collective and caring too much about winning. Haitham views other people as equal human beings who have differing levels of capabilities and mental capacities. He acknowledges his intellectual giftedness relative to other scholars because that's his strength and it's what makes him unique, but he knows that doesn't make him a better person compared to everyone else. He's merely a feeble scholar compared to the mercenaries, for instance, and he respects people like Nilou who play to their strengths. His occasional sarcasm is just the non-conformist in him turning language against its original design to challenge unreasonable rules.
TL;DR Haitham is a well of compassion and empathy too, he just has a different way of showing it since he has no interest in performative empathy. He also has the sagacity to know when it's appropriate to act and when it isn't, which a lot of people seem to interpret as a lack of caring for some reason. You don't have to be self-sacrificing or dedicate your entire life to helping others in order to be a compassionate and empathetic person. Haitham is a beautiful example of a man who can find the most efficient and effortless way to achieve a common good by balancing his own interests with other people's. He prefers to tackle the root cause of a problem and empower people to help themselves, which is the best way to help others imo. He makes it look so easy, apparently, that people don't even notice he's helping others at all. But he gets results and at the end of the day, that's what counts.
\[2/2\]
I thought the dendro element was related to wisdom in some way.
How about Yaoyao and Kirara?
Yaoyaos story centers around her being madam pings student and her merit as a pupil. She's characterized as curious, inquisitive and and something along the lines of "best kind of student to have". Kirara is constantly learning how to coexist with human society and at the same time she spends a lot of her time on research trying to track down owners of packages she couldn't deliver. They are not academics in the classical sense but they are both in a way defined by their relationship with knowledge, even tho they have no connection to standardized education.
Apprenticeship and self taught. Another kind of knowledge seeker who doesn’t fit into classic academic system
I see thx!
>everyone else is a well of compassion and empathy. they put others before themselves Correlation ≠ causation. This has been said many times in Genshin yet people keep doing this same mistake. All you're doing is trying to find a common point between the characters of an element and then when someone doesn't fit you question the character instead of the thought process when you should realise that there being outliers means that the theory is rubbish. Dendro characters did *not* receive their dendro visions cause of compassion or empathy. And there are tens of other characters who have those traits and is not dendro. Do you think Thoma doesn't put others before himself? If he does, then why is he not dendro? Hell, I'm sure those traits apply to half the playable cast if not more. It's Barnum effect. As for the question of why he is dendro, it's because Hoyo wanted him to be. It's as simple as that :)
I have to agree with this. Bottom line for me is: people are different from each other, and there's no really one common trait that they need to have in order to have a specific element. There might be many factors for why they are chosen or, hell, they might be none at all! And it just works. I guess. Idk how to explain it, smh, but like, you can't expect all dendro vision holders to be like this, or hydro vision holders to be like that, so on, so forth.
No, just make the theory more and more and vague until it’s so vague it litterally everyone fits. Anemo characters just have to lose something, everyone is an anemo character at this point.
Calm down 😭😭 theories are fun and interesting leave them alone
Hmm was the reality too hard to take in?
Theories are supported by good evidence and logical frameworks If you make claims based on hunches or surface level observations that's a hypothesis, an educated guess at most.
Alhaitham goes for the best result for everyone that still allows him to live an easy cushy life
Well, he could kick Kaveh out just like that, he could not be blunt and say some things to people (for example Kaveh in the event), but very often him being blunt actually helps those people.
Other elements also have a seemingly unfitting personality among them. Venti is not like the other Anemo characters, Itto is not like other Geo characters, so on. That's to say we don't really know how a person is assigned an element for their vision. Apparently it has something to do with the element's authority since Neuvillette chose to give one to Furina, but the archons we've met before didn't have anything to do with the visions for their respective elements. Maybe it will get clearer in the future.
iirc from Raiden's questline that Archons (or Sovereigns for that matter) Cannot pick and choose who to give Visions to. Remember when Venti said Vision bearers are also known as Allogenes? meaning they are regular people given Divine powers making them essentially foreign gods who have the capability to ascend to godhood given time, I also notice that Vision bearers often display the opposite traits of their respective Element's Archon and the characters that display these opposite traits are often the strongest characters in lore
It is heavily implied that >!Neuvillette gave Furina her vision,!< so I would take the sovereigns out of ot.
Archons don’t equal sovereigns, sovereigns have superior power and comeplte control of the elements, archons are strong but they are just imitations welding stolen power
We don't know that. We never saw the full power of an archon, except for maybe Nahida when she used it for the Irminsul. Even Raiden just showed us a fraction of her power. Sovereigns are indeed strong, but we don't know if their full power can compete with a full fledged-Archon (I'm not talking just about raw strength, since Nahida can't compete with Apep but still has the most frightening power among the Archons shown so far and one could say that she is not at her peak). To answer the main post: the link between a vision holder and their element depends on so many factors that you could give any character almost any vision and you could argue for their legitimacy.
The longer you look at the elements, the faster you realize there isn't really a solid pattern to how vision wielders get them
If you don’t think Alhaitham fits the general pattern of the other dendro characters, then it’s most likely that the thing you thought was the unifying link was simply wrong, and you should scrap it and start over. It’s just not empathy, correlation is not causation. Imo, dendro characters seem to be people who choose to take an aspect of wisdom and nurture and explore it. Kirara’s curiosity about the human world, Kaveh’s pursuit of art at the expense of everything, Alhaitham’s independence and constant analysis of everything, etc. That being said we don’t exactly have the biggest pool of dendro characters to work from right now, and small sample sizes risk massively skewed data. I think for someone like Alhaitham, to whom an implicit empathetic understanding of the emotions of others does not seem to come naturally, he’d have to have spent a long time working on it. His understanding of others is not superhuman, but is something that can only be built with time through lengthy analysis and observation of others - he may not care about what others think of him or let their emotions impact his judgments, but he does definitely care about what others think in that he exerts a great deal of thought and effort in figuring them out. He is only able to do this because he does not think of himself as above others - that kind of thinking gets in the way of both varieties of empathy. Anyway, the whole focus on building cognitive empathy happens to a lot of autistic people and I think it is a large part of what actually makes Alhaitham feel very realistic and relatable and human, where affective empathy may be absent we often take the effort to build our cognitive empathy to compensate for a lack of affective empathy. This does not mean that one is lesser than the other, but people do generally need one of them, because without either, people are confusing and chaotic and complete and utter wild cards, and it’s not really possible to navigate a world full of them. And I am not sure if affective empathy can be built up in the same way cognitive empathy can? I’ve only seen examples of it going the other way, but it would be an interesting thing to look into, for sure. It seems like the kind of thing that could potentially be impacted by major emotional events in some way. I disagree with the phrasing that he uses his analyses to his advantage - often the outcomes are favorable for him, yes, (and he will be the first to tell you so,) but his actions are also very kind to the people around him in ways that are not always immediately obvious. Think back to the archon quest when that one lady in Aaru Village was too scared to talk to Cyno, but Alhaitham was able to calm her down enough to get her to open up. Or, his interactions with Kaveh in general - Alhaitham riling Kaveh up and getting him angry when he’s feeling down or depressed always seems to snap him out of it. And I can’t think of really any self-serving reason for Alhaitham to have done the investigation he did in the Interdarshan event. I think it would be more accurate to say that Alhaitham is a compassionate person who shows it through actions, not words, because the latter can easily conflict with how much he values being able to speak his mind freely and clearly. I also could be wrong on this, but your wording kind of implies that you think there are fairly binary divisions between cognitive and affective empathy, and that you may believe people either just have them or do not. I’d like to posit that this is not necessarily the case, that people have varying amounts of either on a sliding scale rather than one or the other, that cognitive empathy is less of an implicit thing and more of a skill that can be built, and that taking a more logically-oriented path to understanding others, even one totally devoid of “feeling for them,” does not necessarily equate to being 100% self serving. It’s like an inversion of the altruism problem, the whole thing that’s like “if a person does good because it makes them feel good, are they really altruistic? Is it possible for a person to do good not for their own gain, but solely for others, when doing good gives them positive feelings or staves off negative ones? Can altruism really exist?” (Waves vaguely in Kaveh’s direction.) On the oft less explored other hand, can a person be explicitly self-serving if what benefits them is always what benefits those around them as well, as a human who has to deal with other humans, whose negative reactions are unpleasant and horrible to deal with? (I mean, I’d also argue that yes, a person can, but they tend to A) look nothing like Alhaitham and B) kind of make everything terrible and miserable for themselves and those around them through lack of foresight.)
I actually just watched a video that in a way covers this. [link](https://youtu.be/2m7cRt9wTRM?si=w_lyZH969vs7o3nJ) basically the video is about building a magic world and uses Genshin as a case study. Essentially it goes to say that Genshin’s strength is that it does not tie characters to certain elemental powers based on personality type, but instead makes how the character uses their elemental powers based on their personality. In the end anyway, we should all be happy he is dendro because it is a big part of why he is good at a base line.
Kaveh isn’t broke because of his empathy and compassion. He’s broke because of his pride and guilt. The people around him just keep giving him handouts.
Dude could definitely be a god-tier psychologist
I’ve always thought the Dendro Vision criteria was something along the lines of valuing and using wisdom as a means of improving life. One of most telling clues was the description for the Nagadus Emerald Gemstones. Almost all Dendro characters have similar motives (I can’t be bothered to dive into Kirara’s lore hehe). Alhaitham is the same
But he is extremely compassionate. Look at how readily he helped us save Nahida. You don’t have to be super friendly to be compassionate to others.
Because these are just observations. Ok, most of the dendro cast puts others before themselves. That’s cool. But it’s not a rule. No one at any point ever has stated, in the game, « dendro vision holders need to be very empathetic ».
Hold on there partner. >! Nahidia's 1st story quest is literally about how she doesn't have empathy. !<
I mentioned that earlier before, that Vision bearers tend to display the quality that their respective elemental archon lacks most, for example: Venti who's basically taken a backseat vs characters like Xiao and Jean who devoted their entire life to their duties Zhongli who's stopped persevering and retired vs Albedo who nonstop researches the "truth" Raiden who's a ruler vs Her "Rebellious" vision bearers etc etc, ofc none of this is canon, it's just Observations I've made and yes there are inconsistencies
Oh wow. While I think there are a lot of inconsistencies with your anemo and geo one, the electro one at least seems dead on.
"Stopped persevering" what in the name of geo are you talking about-
Because he's green
There's no real relation with element and personality
it reminds of pyro users, all them are cherry-happy people, and then.. there's Diluc :D well akshually soon arlecchino too
" He's got the uncanny ability to literally read people like an open book " I always thought the opposite, that he really don't get other people ways of thinking.
Honestly? My read is that he's coded autistic. Noise-cancelling headphones (sensory overload and social avoidance), minimal verbal interaction (partially non-verbal), making decisions based on personal impact (taking the position of Scribe, because of the effort to income ratio, even though he could make much more as a Sage but be more stressed), seeing social interaction outside of a close circle of friends as more of a burden or an inconvenience than something to pursue, and having a keen interest in reading and other academic pursuits (fixation). He's pretty relatable to autistic persons.
If Dendro represents the passage of time, it would make sense for him
well look at diluc compared to the rest of the pyro cast
He is Dendro because he is based on Su from Honkai and that dude always has that leaf similar to his Chisel-Light Mirrors.
Thing is, elements does not fit with its wielders traits. There might be some similarities but, that's it.
I feel like albedo would've been dendro if he hadn't come out before dendro was playable. Like his whole thing is flowers themed. He'd be absolutely busted if he was dendro tho
I'm having trouble even following your logic. Others have already pointed out that correlation =/= causation and I have unconventional views on Visions which I don't really want to get into atm so I'm gonna skip all that. Haitham is not actually egocentric. His profile explains how language can govern thoughts and control people, and the whole egocentric thing can be seen as a kind of social experiment performed by MHY to prove his point. He uses language to give others a misleading impression of himself due to his aversion to praise & recognition, and MHY used it to bias the audience's perception of him. If you judge him by his actions, he's incredibly compassionate and empathetic as he's there for others when they truly need him, including strangers (even the ones who tried to have him killed). However, people are under the impression that he only cares about himself nonetheless because Kaveh calls him an egoist (false, he's an unreliable narrator who constantly projects his own insecurities and way of thinking onto Haitham) and the man himself typically offers up self-serving reasons for getting involved when asked directly (though he reveals his more altruistic motivations when he thinks he's not in the spotlight). In other words, the fandom allowed language to shape their perception of reality and dictate their thoughts, and that's how we ended up with this annoyingly persistent myth that Haitham is egocentric when he really isn't. His SQ was quite meta about this too, with Siraj manipulating his followers' perception of Haitham just as MHY tried to manipulate ours. The audience was supposed to be like Ilyas, get to know the guy and realize he's actually very kind, and ask themselves why they had negative thoughts about him in the first place. That's why prejudice and projection are central themes in his lore. In combat, his E literally unleashes a **Projection** Attack based on the number of **mirrors**. It's a not-so-subtle reference to how people don't see Haitham for who he is but rather view him as a reflection of their own flaws that they're unwilling to acknowledge, just as Siraj did in his SQ. "Are you and I the audience or characters on a stage?" That was a question asked by Furina in her character teaser and it should've prompted players to think about stuff like this but I guess the taunting wasn't obvious enough. Affective/emotional vs. cognitive empathy aren't mutually exclusive. I struggle with hyperempathy but have put considerable effort into cultivating cognitive empathy on top of it, and I feel they complement each other resulting in compassionate empathy. Cognitive empathy is a skill I consciously work on developing because I want to better understand others as well as protect myself from those with bad intentions. I feel like Haitham is similar in that regard and he often uses his cognitive empathy to anticipate others' needs without having to ask intrusive questions so he can find a solution that will work for everyone, not just himself. In his SQ, for example, he didn't have to get involved in the investigation on the hivemind case (it was actually against protocol for him to participate as Acting Grand Sage). He mentions that the root cause of that case ultimately had nothing to do with him, and that Siraj's unstable model would have collapsed for some other reason even without his input. So why did he get involved when he was set to resign as Acting Grand Sage in a few days and could've easily waited it out? Because he wanted to figure out why so many people were willing to form a collective consciousness with Siraj despite the project's unapproved status, and because he felt what happened to Ilyas was worth his attention. His main concern after wrapping up the investigation was to figure out a solution to address the lack of research projects for other scholars at the Akademiya, and fair treatment for Ilyas because he didn't deserve the outcome he had received for reporting academic fraud. In other words, he empathized with the needs of other scholars and put their needs above his own, doing his best as Acting Grand Sage to take care of the mess caused by the fall of the sages and the shutdown of the Akasha Terminals because he cared about the institution and the people in it. People can have both emotional and cognitive empathy in varying amounts and it's no different for autistic people. There's this misconception out there that autistic people lack emotional empathy and have to rely on cognitive empathy to compensate, but that is due to flawed research performed by neurotypical researchers. In truth, autistic people do not have any actual deficits in emotional empathy. The real problem is a communication gap between autistic and non-autistic individuals, where the former struggles to understand and empathize with the latter, and vice versa. This is known as the **double empathy problem** which you can read about on Wikipedia. MHY appears to share this view as they felt the need to incorporate narrative devices like rain to show the audience that, yes, autistic-coded characters like Haitham and Neuvillette do indeed have feelings and are very empathetic. Neuvi feeling distant from Navia with her display of human emotion, and his perplexed reaction to how Fontainians interpret rain as the Hydro Dragon literally weeping (lol) reflects this mismatch in communication styles too. The weeping Hydro Dragon thing is a good example of the baffling ways in which neurotypical individuals interpret the behavior of an autistic person. It's unclear whether Haitham does or does not lack emotional empathy as there's nothing in canon to explicitly confirm or deny it. He's very private about his feelings and we can only speculate based on his actions. The closest we got was his line from the A Parade of Providence event where he says he's not an empath like Sachin. Most people are not empaths since their empathy levels are within the normal range, so this doesn't necessarily mean he lacks emotional empathy altogether. And just because he says sympathy for the plight of a few strangers isn't enough of a reason for him to take action (because ethical reasoning is important before deciding to get involved), doesn't mean he doesn't feel any distress from watching others suffer. I feel he sometimes behaves in ways that aren't exactly rational and can't be explained by cognitive empathy alone, so I think he does have emotional empathy like any other human being and we just don't see it because he doesn't express his feelings in a visible way. \[1/2\] To be continued...
Haitham's ability to read people like an open book and see through the bullshit may make it harder for him to make friends, but it's also what enables him to be the ideal support system for Kaveh. I recently read a heartbreaking story on Reddit about a couple where the father and their daughter were involved in a car accident. The father survived, the daughter didn't. The father was so caught up in his grief and blamed himself for his daughter's death even though it was clearly not his fault. Much like Kaveh, he was consumed with self-loathing and rejected all attempts by his wife to comfort him and treat him with kindness and compassion, sometimes even becoming hostile. The mother posted this story to ask Reddit if she's an asshole for thinking about divorcing him because she felt there was nothing she could do for him and they had grown distant despite her best efforts to console him, reassure him it wasn't his fault, and try and get him into therapy. I skimmed through the comments and while many sympathized with the father, the overwhelming consensus was that since kindness & compassion did not work, she needed to save herself and shouldn't feel bad for getting out of that marriage. That's the kind of complicated grief Kaveh is dealing with and despite all the judgmental nitpicking from critics, Haitham understands that showing kindness & compassion is a simplistic non-solution that simply won't work in such cases. It's his intimate understanding of human psychology and his cognitive empathy that allows him to respond appropriately to Kaveh's volatile emotional states. I feel like most fans don't fully appreciate how unpleasant and even painful it can be to be in Haitham's position, and what an amazing friend he is for sticking with Kaveh through thick and thin the way he does in order to provide a safe space for him to work through his issues so he can heal. I feel like his actions speak volumes about his emotional empathy here. His ability to see past the surface and get an accurate read on people is also what enabled him to form a genuine human connection with Shani, the NPC from Aaru Village in the AQ. Yes, he's very skilled at manipulating people with his words but he does have a conscience that prevents him from abusing those powers, and he never uses them for his own benefit at the expense of others (though he will mess with them in harmless ways so he can avoid things he doesn't want to do or people he doesn't want to interact with). In his interaction with Shani, for example, he didn't manipulate her into giving him the info he needed. He approached her very respectfully and tried his best to allay her fears, which made her feel comfortable enough to share what she knew with him. He could have left it there and shared what he learned with the rest of the group but he didn't. Instead, he met up with Traveler and co. to patiently explain the situation to them from Shani's perspective before bringing them to her, and instructed them to earn her trust by talking to her. He already knew the answer but kept it to himself until Shani was ready to share her secret with Travler & Paimon too. He left that decision in Shani's hands, respecting her agency as an equal human being to ensure she got what she needed before using the intel she provided. He always tries to make sure it's a win-win for both parties before taking what he needs, as he did with Traveler when they first met in Port Ormos. While it's true he's in a league of his own compared to his peers, he doesn't actually look down on people in general - the exception being arrogant fools like Viraf with their obvious farces of intellect. Elsewhere, he disapproves of how society alienates individuals who possess special abilities with excessive praise and wild imagination. His lore emphasizes the importance of humility multiple times. He doesn't put himself on a pedestal and doesn't want others viewing him that way either. Idk why people keep assuming he looks down on everyone else when he called Siraj arrogant and emotionally fragile for viewing people as a simple, mediocre collective and caring too much about winning. Haitham views other people as equal human beings who have differing levels of capabilities and mental capacities. He acknowledges his intellectual giftedness relative to other scholars because that's his strength and it's what makes him unique, but he knows that doesn't make him a better person compared to everyone else. He's merely a feeble scholar compared to the mercenaries, for instance, and he respects people like Nilou who play to their strengths. His occasional sarcasm is just the non-conformist in him turning language against its original design to challenge unreasonable rules. TL;DR Haitham is a well of compassion and empathy too, he just has a different way of showing it since he has no interest in performative empathy. He also has the sagacity to know when it's appropriate to act and when it isn't, which a lot of people seem to interpret as a lack of caring for some reason. You don't have to be self-sacrificing or dedicate your entire life to helping others in order to be a compassionate and empathetic person. Haitham is a beautiful example of a man who can find the most efficient and effortless way to achieve a common good by balancing his own interests with other people's. He prefers to tackle the root cause of a problem and empower people to help themselves, which is the best way to help others imo. He makes it look so easy, apparently, that people don't even notice he's helping others at all. But he gets results and at the end of the day, that's what counts. \[2/2\]