#like my cn keyboard has 凸^-^凸 as a preset emoticon

[starthaw]

hey its been a while. been busy with programs (learning latex) and tutoring my friend in japanese (beginner level, working her way up to ~n4) and apparently also being a chef (I make some banging noodles...). let's talk about more fun things like tbhx art

for those that recall, last year there were a series of images posted ft. each hero independently with a shared theme of "photos". most of the top 10 heroes were, in these images, looking at the camera lens (exception for hero x looking at the camera through his mirror reflection, but that's a hero x thing)

the only two heroes who were not, at the moment of the photo being taken, aware of the camera/looking at it were ghostblade and ahu

i think this is rather interesting; because with all the other photos, we have at least some context for the photographer. nice is taking a selfie, e-soul is captured in a recording, the johnnies were doing PR, both lucky cyan and loli were posing for their photos, and dragon boy is in an ad, queen walking into a movie shoot(?), then hero x seen preparing for his broadcast.

but who took the photos for ghostblade and ahu?

by reading the captions (which I cannot be assed to translate all that here. im tired as fuck), you'll notice an unseen 小凸/Xiao Tu behind every photo. these images are from xiao tu's POV; who, then, is xiao tu?

in our perspective as viewers, perhaps they are part of a running gag for this actor-eqsue au, as one of the staff members? maybe they're a camera guy???

in universe (assuming these photos are, in fact, within the same plane of reality as the animated story will be), I would expect whoever fulfills the role of xiao tu to be a member of the hero commission or a character that appears in the last 3 episodes... whomp whomp

not exactly the point. my point is, whoever is taking this image, has done so without (as far as I can tell) the explicit permission of ghostblade and ahu + ahu's owner. and again, these photos are experienced and seen by xiao tu, but not necessarily taken by them; most of the photos in this series were discovered by xiao tu, and it's implied someone else captured it in photo.

who would take a photo of ghostblade like this? who would want a picture of ahu like this?

i'm not so sure for ghostblade, but my best guess for ahu... I think it was a villain, maybe the not darth-vader clone man. or some other villain idk. nefarious. what's up with a dog and his owner huh. what's so special about this unremarkable moment!!!

one more thing of note: queen is the only one, other than the aforementioned above two, who has her photo in "layers". that is, the degree of separation between "queen" and you, the viewer, occurs in 2 steps: first, in the initial photo that captures queen on set, then again as that photo is set to be a computer wallpaper of sorts. (this technically also occurs for the other girls, but the context is slightly different, so I'm not going to count them; you could also make the argument to include the johnnies, I guess, but I'm being arbitrary with this)

I also want to point out that the captions for these photos have been mostly about a set, with characters akin to actors, and the camera pointed at them for the purpose of filming their action. these choices are intentional. there are meant to be cameras pointed at queen, and the film reel around ghostblade is also intended to convey that this moment, intimate as it is, serves as lens into a personal life beyond the scope of a hero

you remember in the opening, that guy starting at an image of queen, and all of the heroes represented by their "image" in cards? yeah. what's up with that!

even hero x is filmed, with his image as a gif, captured "live".