Who Gave Her That. What The Hell

yeah ok I was right, rewatched it and I enjoyed it much more the second go around

Hmmm ep 3 didn't hit as hard for me ngl. Like don't get me wrong, absolutely fucked how badly the public's perception can screw you over, poor man couldn't shit or sleep properly, that's some body horror right there. I like how this episode reinforced how you have to be careful with your image or stuff like that can happen, but also that was already shown pretty well with Moon only teleporting to Nice and Lin Ling developing OCD (or pre exising ocd getting worse idk). I guess it was showing the physical effects rather than powers and mental effects as well as commenting on toxic masculinity, but something about it just didn't really hit me.

Again though, something didn't feel right to me. Perhaps that was due to this feeling more like a stop gap between ep2 and ep4 as well as getting Nice/Lin Ling to the top ten. (but also like him not already being top ten didn't need to happen sooooo) Overall the episode did not feel bad, just not at the same level. Which I can't expect tbhx to be constantly going actually insane, so that's on me. (not a dis on the show, I just set the bar at Pluto after the first 2 episodes, need to bring that back down to like, maybe the moon, which is still insane, but i have faith) I also maybe just need to rewatch ep3, i could've missed a detail that would make me lose it. The facial expression on that one guy's face in the Firmman backstory segment was hilarious tho. 10/10 background character

my pitch for why Wanderer and Furina should be friends (and that they should meet through an interlude quest like Itto and Xiao)

"viewed as flawed for being too human" vs "viewed as perfect due to being human". (aka false god trauma yknow.)

they both wear blue (blue besties!!!)

half of their dialogue would be trying to say they're better than the other, but neither of them actually believe that

furina loves sweets. wanderer hates sweets. battle to the death.

in one of her character lines, furina says she loves to surf, so furina teaching the wanderer how to surf would be the funniest fucking thing ever and i will not take any arguments on this

BOTH OF THEM HAVE WHOLE THINGS INVOLVING CRYING??? FURINA'S PROPHECY VS WANDERER CRYING WHEN RAIDEN TRIED PUTTING THE GNOSIS IN HIM??? (this ones in all caps cause i realized it while making this post)

the only two characters to have received a vision on screen should get to be besties methinks

furina having to learn how to act inhuman vs the wanderer having to learn how to act human

"why did you give your hydro pets such complicated names" "I- you- well- uh- YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE A NAME" "HEY-"

i just think it'd be both funny and angsty and bro thats the perfect combination when it comes to media. they are THE gap between a tragedy and comedy

how does this work what

Thank you, it’s been Nice but I got it on my own from here

Yeah, this all pretty accurately describes my experience and opinions.

For me to understand math I have to go very in-depth with it, like if I don't understand the purpose I won't understand the equation. Part of that deeper understanding is what made it so fun for me. But school barely let me have time for that deeper understanding so I started to fall behind at a certain point. Like I used to dedicate time to re-teach myself math by deciphering the notes I blindly copied. I shouldn't have had to do that. I will also learn advanced calculus just to spite my friends.

A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory.

“We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.”

Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or composer.

Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory.

Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school. As for the primary and secondary schools, their mission is to train students to use this language— to jiggle symbols around according to a fixed set of rules:

“Music class is where we take out our staff paper, our teacher puts some notes on the board, and we copy them or transpose them into a different key. We have to make sure to get the clefs and key signatures right, and our teacher is very picky about making sure we fill in our quarter-notes completely. One time we had a chromatic scale problem and I did it right, but the teacher gave me no credit because I had the stems pointing the wrong way.”

In their wisdom, educators soon realize that even very young children can be given this kind of musical instruction. In fact it is considered quite shameful if one’s third-grader hasn’t completely memorized his circle of fifth.

“I’ll have to get my son a music tutor. He simply won’t apply himself to his music homework. He says it’s boring. He just sits there staring out the window, humming tunes to himself and making up silly songs.”

In the higher grades the pressure is really on. After all, the students must be prepared for the standardized tests and college admissions exams. Students must take courses in Scales and Modes, Meter, Harmony, and Counterpoint.

“It’s a lot for them to learn, but later in college when they finally get to hear all this stuff, they’ll really appreciate all the work they did in high school.”

Of course, not many students actually go on to concentrate in music, so only a few will ever get to hear the sounds that the black dots represent. Nevertheless, it is important that every member of society be able to recognize a modulation or a fugal passage, regardless of the fact that they will never hear one.

“To tell you the truth, most students just aren’t very good at music. They are bored in class, their skills are terrible, and their homework is barely legible. Most of them couldn’t care less about how important music is in today’s world; they just want to take the minimum number of music courses and be done with it. I guess there are just music people and non-music people. I had this one kid, though, man was she sensational! Her sheets were impeccable— every note in the right place, perfect calligraphy, sharps, flats, just beautiful. She’s going to make one hell of a musician someday.”

Waking up in a cold sweat, the musician realizes, gratefully, that it was all just a crazy dream. “Of course!” he reassures himself, “No society would ever reduce such a beautiful and meaningful art form to something so mindless and trivial; no culture could be so cruel to its children as to deprive them of such a natural, satisfying means of human expression. How absurd!”

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, a painter has just awakened from a similar nightmare...

I was surprised to find myself in a regular school classroom— no easels, no tubes of paint.

“Oh we don’t actually apply paint until high school,” I was told by the students. “In seventh grade we mostly study colors and applicators.” They showed me a worksheet. On one side were swatches of color with blank spaces next to them. They were told to write in the names. “I like painting,” one of them remarked, “they tell me what to do and I do it. It’s easy!”

After class I spoke with the teacher. “So your students don’t actually do any painting?” I asked.

“Well, next year they take Pre-Paint-by-Numbers. That prepares them for the main Paint-by-Numbers sequence in high school. So they’ll get to use what they’ve learned here and apply it to real-life painting situations— dipping the brush into paint, wiping it off, stuff like that. Of course we track our students by ability. The really excellent painters— the ones who know their colors and brushes backwards and forwards— they get to the actual painting a little sooner, and some of them even take the Advanced Placement classes for college credit. But mostly we’re just trying to give these kids a good foundation in what painting is all about, so when they get out there in the real world and paint their kitchen they don’t make a total mess of it.”

“Um, these high school classes you mentioned...”

“You mean Paint-by-Numbers? We’re seeing much higher enrollments lately. I think it’s mostly coming from parents wanting to make sure their kid gets into a good college. Nothing looks better than Advanced Paint-by-Numbers on a high school transcript.”

“Why do colleges care if you can fill in numbered regions with the corresponding color?”

“Oh, well, you know, it shows clear-headed logical thinking. And of course if a student is planning to major in one of the visual sciences, like fashion or interior decorating, then it’s really a good idea to get your painting requirements out of the way in high school.”

“I see. And when do students get to paint freely, on a blank canvas?”

“You sound like one of my professors! They were always going on about expressing yourself and your feelings and things like that—really way-out-there abstract stuff. I’ve got a degree in Painting myself, but I’ve never really worked much with blank canvasses. I just use the Paint-by-Numbers kits supplied by the school board.”

Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is precisely this kind of nightmare. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul- crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

Everyone knows that something is wrong. The politicians say, “we need higher standards.” The schools say, “we need more money and equipment.” Educators say one thing, and teachers say another. They are all wrong.

The only people who understand what is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard: the students. They say, “math class is stupid and boring,” and they are right.

—Introduction to "A Mathematician's Lament" by mathematics educator Paul Lockhart. Full essay here:

https://href.li/?https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

LH0's Q&A sesh on L0's arc (it's implied he'll do this type of Q&A after the conclusion of every arc)

EDIT: summary below the cut now 👍 please lmk if i got anything wrong etc

So first off, L0's arc is chronologically the last events that happen in this season, so OG Nice absolutely will show up in the later episodes as well. There's mention of OG Nice going berserk/黑化 (corrupted from light to darkness) and LH0 is looking forward to when the audience gets to see those scenes. (and uh the off-handed mention of "will L0 also succumb to those pressures/turn dark?" is sllllightly worrying lol)

LH0 also says Nice isn't just a facade/role, but has his own character and story, which reflects the cruelty of the world they're in. It's interesting that he talks about "未來奈斯的命運 the future fate of Nice (or the fate of a future Nice?)" can still be explored, which could mean either OG Nice isn't actually dead, some other schmuck becomes Nice, or just means his story ('fate') is yet to be revealed. I personally think it's 1 or 3 (leaning more towards 3) but who knows. He did kinda put emphasis on "it may be shown later on" so like. take it as you will.

As for L0, LH0 says his story starts off as a typical "wage slave/underappreciated office worker wins prestige and respect" fantasy, but with the end of ep 4 it shows that the world of TBHX can be very harsh and cruel. As for L0's future development, there's tons of possibility for exploration so I guess we gotta wait and see.

About the pacing, the first 4 eps are deliberately fast, but each hero's arc will have a different rhythm since they have different themes. The Top 10 will also have more of a presence in the others' stories.

LH0 clarified that, although Lu Guang from Link Click and Mo Sha/Ghostblade both have white hair, the two works are independent from one another. I'm pretty sure he just likes white hair character designs (tbhx alone has 4 heroes with white hair within the top 10). He thinks Ghostblade's story will probably take us all by surprise, and he's a little worried about whether people will like it/accept a story like that.

The next question is about whether Nice gets startled by his giant statue in the middle of the night. LH0 intended the statue to be kind of ironic, and confirmed that it's a reminder/symbol for Nice to believe in himself (or like, a reminder of the faith that is put on him as his persona as Nice). As to whether the heroes are more like employees clocking in (打公仔) than heroes, LH0 says each hero has their own ideals, but are also caged by those ideals—the essence of the story is to explore them as people who have faith placed upon them, and how they choose to live their life with those ideals.

Last question reveals that Hero Tower only houses the top 100 heroes, meaning Enlighter was not a resident at rank 249. The lowest floor can fit 2 rooms + 1 living room, so it's decently spacious even for the 100th hero. That said, I personally feel like this makes the competition (especially among the lower ranks) fierce, since they will lose housing if they don't maintain their place. And given how Firm Man was presumably kicked out of the Tower by the end of ep 3, a single shift in perception can cost you your accommodations. (I also kinda assumed family or significant others can move in, since Moon was supposedly living with Nice... we never knew her rankings but ep 2 did say she was not very well-known until her 'relationship' with Nice.)

(this also raises the question of what happens if multiple ranked heroes decide to bunk together/live on the same floor—with how it works I assume that means floors would be empty? for example if no. 25 and no. 46 decided to live together, does that mean one of their floors would stay empty until rankings change?

also nobody knows who X is, so idk if he even lives at the tower...)

Hmmm ep 3 didn't hit as hard for me ngl. Like don't get me wrong, absolutely fucked how badly the public's perception can screw you over, poor man couldn't shit or sleep properly, that's some body horror right there. I like how this episode reinforced how you have to be careful with your image or stuff like that can happen, but also that was already shown pretty well with Moon only teleporting to Nice and Lin Ling developing OCD (or pre exising ocd getting worse idk). I guess it was showing the physical effects rather than powers and mental effects as well as commenting on toxic masculinity, but something about it just didn't really hit me.

Again though, something didn't feel right to me. Perhaps that was due to this feeling more like a stop gap between ep2 and ep4 as well as getting Nice/Lin Ling to the top ten. (but also like him not already being top ten didn't need to happen sooooo) Overall the episode did not feel bad, just not at the same level. Which I can't expect tbhx to be constantly going actually insane, so that's on me. (not a dis on the show, I just set the bar at Pluto after the first 2 episodes, need to bring that back down to like, maybe the moon, which is still insane, but i have faith) I also maybe just need to rewatch ep3, i could've missed a detail that would make me lose it. The facial expression on that one guy's face in the Firmman backstory segment was hilarious tho. 10/10 background character

林凌: The Commoner

History Will Say They Were Roommates

CRUNCHYROLL?!

I just finished watching the 4 episode of tbhx and like... the way that your fans can make you literally do things that you don't want to do is so terrifying? Lin Ling was literally IMMOBILIZED while he was playing Nice, just because some of his hardcore fans didn't want him to go and save the person he loves.

I can't help but think - what if that's the one of the reasons why Nice killed himself? What if just one too many people, got fed up by his sickeningly sweet image and lashed out thinking "Fuck you, go kill yourself"? What if Lin Ling's "You're going to be replaced" was the thing that tipped the scales towards that?

And we've seen that heroes pretty much can't do things that people aren't expecting of them to do. So why was Nice able to simply fall and die? If people really believed in him and his perfection wouldn't he be physically unable to just fall to his death? That once again leads me to believe that maybe one of reasons why Nice did it, was because a lot of people WANTED him to do it.