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ages past episode 24 - what do we really know about X as a person; I overanalyze X for too many words

so I posted some art a while ago with the tag 'x has issues: an essay' and here is part of the essay bc i want to write about him more. ever since this wonderful guy showed up for his first real conversations in episode 21 and then 24, i've been wanting to pick his brain apart and rotate it like a rotisserie chicken. I have a ton of rambling to do about X and why I think he needs therapy.

To keep this focused this post will be about Smile, mostly his first convo we see with him in episode 21. I'm also trying to focus on extrapolating from canon information (?) if that makes sense ? if you asked me how i'd characterize X in a fanfiction I'd go deeper than this. I feel like most of this is pretty surface level.

side tangents will look like this. Also, I will be sticking this in the place of "episode 24" in my tbhx masterpost because.. yeah i never got around to making an episode 24 thoughts post and by now its too late to put my genuine reactions right after it so an x themed post is close enough I think

I also want to talk about the theme of loneliness in To Be Hero X. TBHX asks us, what does it take to be a hero? Throughout each character's arc, their circumstances are all different, but they all have to navigate the obstacle of loneliness - of being alone, of losing the people in your life and trying to find them again. Most of them start lonely and end lonely, the exceptions being the DOS heroes who stick together, and possibly Ghostblade as he's at least in a better position than he was.

This is immediately consistent with X's appearance. He insists that he likes being alone, and acts distant with Smile ("why are you here?") although clearly he trusts him with his identity and gets drunk with him. After Smile dies, he's truly alone*, with his next closest relationship probably being with...Ahu. dang.

*unless nine and tarot girl are still around. or other characters we have yet to see

X interacts with one other hero, being Nice. Nice dies soon after he encounters him. in fact, it almost seems like X put him there on the roof because of the sound cue?? anyways, now that Nice is BACK, somehow, there's going to be some kind of further weird interaction between them in season two.

Smile obviously doesn't buy that X is not lonely, but what I find more interesting is that this loneliness seems to be the common basis of their relationship, and that they have two different understandings about loneliness. X sees Smile as a very different kind of person to himself, being extroverted, jovial and optimistic. Smile seeks out companionship when he's alone, and is very aware of the love in his life like when he talks about his daughter. He also keeps up a hero persona, but he lets it down quickly:

Ah, yes Smile. what a conspicuous thing to say to a guy with no wife, no kids, and no warm bed. Smile at least feels that he has a lot in common with X because they both feel alone. Smile DOES on paper have these things, and to top it off he smiles through it all. X, insisting on loneliness, thinks Smile can't possibly be like him. Hence, I believe this is why X responds: "I don't believe you."

I now headcanon that X cries himself to sleep at night and that's why he wears a facemask so nobody can see /hj

X sees heroism as an enduring act of work for the entirety of it's duration. He thinks of Smile as a genuine person, which is at odds with keeping up a smile you don't mean constantly. X himself smiles as part of his work, his hero persona, but even then he isn't able to do it constantly. X isn't the type who feels he is able to smile when he doesn't feel good. IMO I think from what we've seen we can confidently say that he is performing in his hero form rather than forcibly altering his personality via powers, especially in episode 22. However, I think it's possible that although his personality doesn't vanish it might be easier to maintain a certain way via trust? like the people believe he's too cool and such so he is?

OK but then Smile Dies!

I speculate that perhaps X is distant from other people in an effort to keep himself and others safe, and that this has been the case for a while - perhaps since whatever happened with NINE and company, which is a whole other can of worms. Why is Smile the exception? I would say it's because Smile has proved himself incredibly resilient, sticking around in the top ten for over forty years. There's a sense of safety in being around them. They're also genuinely a heroic person who X can trust as an ally. It's REALLY unlucky that the moment X let someone get close enough for him to take for granted, they got doomed.

In this scene in the CN sub, he actually yells "什么情况?" which means "what's going on" or "what's the problem?" I assume the subtitles localize to "where is he" to make it more obvious that he's going to go deal with dragon boy. also, what he says to nice is more along the lines of "just a little later and you would have been gone." (gone, as in 没了）

A detail I haven't seen a lot of people talk about that I wanna see more is exactly why and how X knows where he has to be, and why he isn't there sooner. It's not Smile's fault that he's dead of course, but I would like to point out that if it weren't for Smile offering human connection via copious amounts of alcohol X probably would have got there fast enough to save Smile since he spent some time puking (poor guy). X clearly has some kind of outside knowledge telling him that something is going on, but it's not perfect. He doesn't know the nature of the situation, only that it's happening, and urgent. Maybe this impulse was in response to Nice's situation instead of Smile's, since we know all the main characters are intertwined with X's destiny or something.

How does Smile's death affect X's character? For one, he definitely takes heroism more seriously. we don't hear a single inkling about "fate" and all that baloney until after this, making me think it's possible that X didn't press too hard into the Commission's corruption and the nature of trust and godhood until it took his friend from him. The X of before was content to just let someone be X. By the time he decided otherwise, the Commission was already after him. Before his death, X hadn't developed in a lot of ways as a character into the person we see in the season finale, and after the finale he's still got a long way to go.

After Smile is gone, it's also much more obvious just how empty his apartment is. the decor is all abstract - we don't see any keepsakes like in Luo Li's room. he avoids his coworkers and clocks out at the earliest possible moment so he can be... reading news about himself by the dimmest lamp I've ever seen and otherwise just eating takeout in the dark. This man performs for an invisible audience. Also I could be delusional but just like Smile, X asks Ahu for his "reason for coming". again, distancing himself from connection.

Ahu accuses, "you're afraid of becoming a demon, surely," and Ahu STRIKES A NERVE. X just straight up denies this but he knows EXACTLY what Ahu means- the corruption of a hero by fear. Ahu means this in the godlike Zero sense, but X is remembering Smile as his basis - the person who, despite outwards differences, shares the similarity of loneliness. I think this is a pretty reasonable fear to have personally.

he could also be thinking of that one scary tarot lady looking person with many arms from inertia 2 outro

one final bit for this post - this is mostly kind of crack, but I do want to talk about X and alcohol/caffeine consumption. I really wonder if his use of substances or even just constant drinking of energy drinks is actually going to be a Thing...? if so, that's another consequence we can trace to Smile because he didn't use to drink alone, probably.

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