#even though it’s technically not my fault it IS my fault

[maxdibert]

Hi, regarding your "People who defend James’s stripping Severus in front of the entire school" Post. I am struggling with this from time to time, but I also like to ponder and discuss so:

I really like the fandom version of the Marauders, and I honestly do not really care for Snape because in the fics and art I interact with he is usually not part of. (I also read a lot of Muggle AU etc.. And I think another huge part is that I never really thought about how young he technically still was as a teacher because of Alan Rickman´s age. As a child I simply disliked him and never had an opinion on the Marauders as they appear so little in the movies. I guess it´s hard to move on from that?) What the Marauders did in Canon to Severus, and probably other students, was horrible. I agree. I also think Snape has his faults too, but the abuse against him shouldn´t be excused "because he was mean too". If you abuse and abuser, it´s still abuse.

I guess my question is what´s your opinion on the take to like the fanon version but not the canon version?

"The lengths some people go to twist facts and canon to conveniently excuse their favourite characters’ actions because they can’t accept them as they were is honestly incredible. Or maybe they just need to tell themselves they’re not fans of a couple of rich, abusive bullies because deep down they’d feel terrible about it—who knows."

To take the potential the Marauders have, the idea of a tight friend group in a magical school, explore different family dynamics... I like to play around with that and what was made of it. I think I can do that while acknowledging that what they did in canon was bad. It´s why I struggle with canon compliant stories, like their behaviour sucked. If I only knew the canon version I would not like them because I wouldn´t like "rich, abusive bullies". But changing the characters and their actions is, to me, part of what makes fanfics fun?

And of course I could do the same for Snape. But I didn´t and there is probably a lot to unpack on why I mostly ignore him. But. ultimately, to like him I would have to change him a lot from canon too. What the Marauders did as kids might have actually been worse (?) but how he became later makes me dislike him and for the Marauders we have more freedom to interpret how they turned out as adults. (Even though I just said changing the story is part of fandom and I could just make Snape nice... There are so many contradictions in all my thoughts on this topic)

Okay, this got really long and aybe a bit all over the place. You don´t have to answer this. But if you have any thought´s I´d be interested in hearing them :) This is also my first ever anon ask and I really don´t want to fight on this topic I just have a lot of thoughts.

My problem is precisely that the characters this new generation of the fandom has invented are unbearably boring. A bunch of normie kids who dress like Zendaya and her friends in Euphoria and have average teen drama issues that seem straight out of a cheap Netflix series. I mean, where’s the appeal in that? Where’s the appeal in turning Sirius into a whiny twink who just goes around pining for Remus Lupin—who, by the way, has suddenly become some sort of sassy alpha male—when their canon dynamic is way more interesting? When Sirius in canon is a guy with temper issues who thinks that just because he went to Gryffindor and has the “right ideas,” he’s managed to shake off the stigma of being a Black, yet remains as arrogant and violent as the rest of his family? When he has good intentions but has never really confronted who he is, where he comes from, and how ignoring that won’t make his behavior any less problematic? When he’s willing to do anything for James but simultaneously capable of deliberately ignoring Remus’s well-being? When he’s a rebel but still falls into the same abusive, hegemonic behaviors he was raised in? When it seems like his opposition to his family is a conscious choice, but it’s actually just the result of his mommy issues? He’s an incredibly complex character in canon, full of contradictions, and there’s so much interesting psychological exploration to be done with him. And you’re seriously telling me you prefer an OC with his name invented by the fandom who just cries over his non-canon boyfriend and feels validated because he paints his nails? Seriously???

Are you seriously telling me that James from the fandom—the goofy puppy dog protagonist pulled straight out of every cliché teen movie—is more interesting than canon James Potter, who is blessed with the wonderful depth of class hypocrisy for analysis and exploration? Are you really saying that a flat, soap-opera-level stereotype is better to write or develop than a rich kid who had every reason to be a Cedric Diggory but chose to be a Draco Malfoy? Are you really telling me it’s more interesting to write about the feminist girlboss icon of the 21st century that you’ve turned Lily Evans into rather than a complex, contradictory female character like the one in canon: a girl from a working-class town, spoiled and adored by her parents, who finds herself for the first time in a world that makes her feel even more special but where she doesn’t quite fit because of her background? Someone who, in her effort to fit in and be recognized, creates an image of herself as moralistic and perfect, yet in truth doesn’t stand up for or care about anything unless it directly affects her? The bullies target Mary Macdonald, and she doesn’t lift a finger or say a word until it suits her to end her friendship with Severus. She’s supposedly Severus’s best friend, but at the same time, she downplays the bullying he endures and even flirts with his abuser. She’s supposedly the epitome of morality, yet she marries a bully. Do you know how much room there is to flesh out those gaps? The things that aren’t clear? The sheer depth you can draw from that? And you seriously prefer a character ripped out of a 2012 Taylor Swift song over that? Is that honestly more interesting to you?

Do you really think that the sassy alpha-male version of Remus Lupin, full of quick-witted one-liners, is more compelling than the kid who disapproved of his friends’ actions but stayed silent out of desperation to preserve the safe space they represented for him? Who felt consistently left out of the bond James and Sirius shared? Who, even when what they did seemed utterly immoral, stepped aside because deep down he was so afraid of rejection that it made him a coward and a hypocrite? Who eventually drifted away from his entire group of friends because of his inferiority complex to the point that they even thought he was a traitor? One of his supposed friends nearly used him as a weapon to commit murder, and he forgave him without a word because he knew that standing up to him might mean losing everything. Are you really telling me that the cheap romantic drama version is more interesting than all of that in terms of exploring a character and the dynamics of dysfunctional friendships within that group? Really? Are you seriously saying you’d rather pretend Peter was just “there” than delve into how they treated him like a pet because he went along with all their mischief and they underestimated him so much they never realized they had a sadist among them? You prefer a convenient, nice Peter over a dark, deeply flawed one? Really?

Yes, the dynamic among the Marauders is fascinating, but it’s fascinating because it’s dysfunctional, full of power imbalances, clear differences in the relationships within the group, and a ton of things that don’t make sense unless you provide a coherent and in-depth explanation. It’s in that dysfunction where the intrigue, the plot, and the character exploration lie—not in creating an idyllic, problem-free group of friends whose drama arises from stereotypical romantic relationships. Not in creating OCs with canon names who bear no resemblance to the actual characters and have the depth of a sheet of paper. Sorry, but no.

And sorry, but I’m not buying the argument that the Marauders are “easier to explore” just because Sirius and Remus made it to adulthood, and Thewlis and Oldman were already in their 40s when they played their characters, making them middle-aged like Rickman. And Snape was their same age and spent the same school years with them.

So yeah, it’s fine if you’re not interested in a character, but the excuse is always, “I haven’t seen much of that character to be interested in them.” Well, if you only move in your own echo chamber, and that chamber happens to be full of haters, obviously you’re not going to see much. There’s a huge Snape fandom with tons of headcanons, people constantly creating and writing all kinds of content with all sorts of pairings and perspectives on him—you just have to look for it. I mean, literally, everything we know about the Marauders is because of Snape. Their youth only exists to enrich and explain Snape’s character. If we know anything about Lily and James, it’s because they serve to fill in Snape’s backstory. Otherwise, we would have only had the adult versions Harry imagines or knows (Remus, Sirius, and Peter), and we’d know nothing about what happened before. There is no Marauders fandom without Snape, because the concept of the Marauders as teenagers exists because of and for Snape’s backstory.

So honestly, my problem isn’t with the fandom but with the new fandom and its vision of the characters. Characters that don’t exist because they don’t resemble canon and instead feel like self-inserts with canon names. And I find it a waste because canon is so rich, and its characters are so unexplored, yes, but if explored coherently, they’re far more interesting than if they’re just turned into inconsistent projections.

[unforgivable-thatswhatiam]

Aziraphale intentionally "summons" Crowley with his trouble, isn't that so? I'm quite sure it's simply because he misses him, though, and their mutual feelings allow them to find each other and sense when the other is in danger (💕). After all, eight years is a long time between un unofficial and an official opening (1793-1800), and C. tells he already knows that A. is opening a bookshop. This suggests he's been kept up to date: who knows, maybe C. occasionally visits A.'s home (the angel has owned the land since the 17th century) and they discuss friendly.

I think you are right, Paris 1793 is a turning point in their story: until then, it really seems like their meetings were strictly 'technically' tied to the Arrangement, perhaps out of fear of outside interference or rejection - especially if they hadn't really understood their feelings yet (Azi is SO happy to see Crowley and to be rescued, even if he seems to me way too confident about it and C. perfectly understands this subtext… 😉).

The deleted scene is canon, because NG confirmed it; the scene was cut, but it remains in the script. It seems contradictory, but I don't think it is, actually. In the scene, Gabriel and Sandalphon want to take Aziraphale back to heaven as a reward for his success on Earth; so, to make them believe that the angel is the only one that can succeed against him, Crowley goes where they can hear him and says:

"If only I could understand why my evil plans are always so brilliantly thwarted. It's as if the forces of Heaven have a champion here on Earth who thwarts me... thwartingly...".

Then he pretends that one of his minions replies:

"(...) the angel Aziraphale, your nemesis, is being sent back to Heaven."

In this way, Crowley makes the angels think he's aware that it's all Aziraphale's fault if his plans are thwarted, but at the same time he doesn't seems to know at all his nemesis.

4. As a bonus point, it follows my personal opinion about Gabriel's line in s1e1. As you wrote, G. says: "It's a miracle hasn't spotted you yet". However, I think that Gabriel is self-centered and unpleasant, but he isn't a complete fool: Crowley was important, in heaven - a throne, as I think, or a dominion or above - and he has a recognizable appearance; Saraqael remembers Crowley from their working time on Nebula, in s2 (6000+ years after the Fall); Gabriel was the supreme archangel of all heaven by the time of Job's minisode (2500 a.C., less than 2000 years after the Fall), and he could easily recognize C., while Michael seems to be suspicious of Bildad the Shuhite; he doesn't seem surprised when Michael shows him the photo-evidence of contacts between A. and C., but suggests that there would be a perfectly normal explanation to this.

If you remember, when in s1e2 Gabriel and Sandalphon go to the bookshop, Sandalphon - the implacable angel that has destroyed Sodoma and killed its inhabitants for their sodomy, aka the 'sin' of homosexual behaviour/intercourses - says that "something smells evil" (his evil=homosexuality, and we can image who is guilty); in the meantime, Gabriel deflects Sandalphon's attention in multiple ways. It could be Sandalphon himself that "hasn't spotted" them ("you") yet in the scene of episode 1. I don't exclude that either in 1800 G. wanted to take Aziraphale back (safe) because of concerns - his? Sandalphon's? - about A.'s relationship with the demon: heaven may have given to A. a medal, but actually none there seem to truly appreciate him or believe he has done a good job; they criticize indeed him more than once for being soft, for having been on Earth too long, etc.

To summarize, I think that in episode 1 Gabriel was pretending ignorance with Aziraphale. As a boss like him, it makes sense to pretend he didn't know the extent of A.+C.'s interactions, even if he was aware of some of it. He wasn't particularly concerned about it, until the work was done. Nonetheless, in the end of s1 Aziraphale disobeyed orders, averted an apocalypse with his "boyfriend in the dark glasses" (quote from s1e4, with the return of Sandalphon, threating and smiting A.) and C+A's relationship has thwarted heaven's plan. At that point, Gabriel had to do his job and "to make exemple of" the traitor: he was upset, but it wasn't a personal decision to punish Aziraphale; if he didn't do it, he himself could have been involved in the treason, lost his position and punished in the same way). Until then, however, he didn't want to go too far with Aziraphale.

A lot to read, sorry... I love so much GO ❤️

So, I have no idea when Aziraphale actually opens his bookshop, but I have a thought that I really really like:

Paris, 1793. Crowley says that angel "was opening a bookshop". He knows about it but haven't seen it or been there, it's been a work in progress for some time now.

Weell, my thought is... Aziraphale intentionally "summons" Crowley with his trouble in order to invite him for the opening or (which is better) to have their own unofficial opening. Just for themselves.

At this point they already arrange meetings (eg. Shakespear's theatre), but only if it has something to do with the Arrangement and work stuff. Looking for a simple dinner and showing a bookshop without a reason would feel strange and awkward: they're still adjusting to their friendship and mostly hold on to the Arrangement. Despite the fact that they both clearly enjoy each other's company, there are still many barriers in their communication, including the fear of outside interference and witnesses.

And Aziraphale takes the first step in 1793. He uses their arrangement as well ("land a hand when needed"), and god he is SO happy to see that Crowely actually comes to rescue him!! It's just an excuse to buy him lunch (for the record: the best french crepes, he has chosen the place to celebrate the event, hasn't he?)

Would be just nice and fine to go back to England together and... well, have a look at the bookshop, wouldn't it? Or at least Aziraphale could give Crowely a formal invitation on when he should visit his newly established bookshop.

The bookshop, the sign of which invitingly displays "A.Z. Fell & Co".

Update: I've found a deleted scene about the opening in 1800. WELL, it could mean that Crowely was invited indeed, but... I honestly don't see this scene as a part of canon, it has been cut after all. Mostly I think it's not canon 'cause the dialog between angels here kinda conradicts the stated in s1e1 "It's a miracle [Crowley] hasn't spotted you yet".

So yeah, untill proven wrong in the actual show (where I haven't really seen any dates about the bookshop) this is my headcanon which I sincerely love: 1793 was another important turn in their relationship and it's the time when Aziraphale takes the first step and lets Crowely into their bookshop.

[shepscapades]

Hey! i’m really into the dbch story and i was wondering if doc and xisuma ever tell bdubs the specifics of why etho lost his memories, cause if they do that is prime self blaming angst for bdubs

I’m inclined to believe they don’t. Actually (and maybe I should do a small comic for this so more people see it) I imagine, once a month or a few pass and they finally return etho to bdubs as reset, I imagine they are VERY serious about warning bdubs not to try to force Etho to re-deviate— they don’t go into specifics, but they probably tell bdubs that whatever happened had to do with something that was emotionally overwhelming, and that forcing him to redeviate/not letting it happen naturally could trigger the same error. They have no idea what could happen so bdubs needs to be very careful and let Etho find himself again on his own.

Whether or not bdubs gets impatient or can only go so long before he doubts it would be that bad if he tried pushing Etho in the right direction is another story.

But yeah. I don’t think Xisuma or Doc really… tell anyone that this happened. Etho’s error seemed like a very specific one-off scenario, so it’s not something the other hermits should be trying to avoid or be careful about happening to their own android friends, and the only thing telling people would do is make them worried about the situation. All they need to know is that etho was broken and that they need to be careful with him. I don’t agree with their decision to keep what happened to themselves but I understand it I think. Xisuma “i don’t want to worry the hermits” Void and Docm “eh this isn’t the first time I’ve replaced this arm, people won’t question it” 77

[vulpinesaint]

Eddie Brock + Kissing Death by MOTHICA

[im-smart-i-swear]

water of the womb.

now that i think abt it this can kinda function as an unintentional companion piece to this thing! if i had a nickel for every time i drew a kuron piece that involved fetuses et cetera et cetera

[nikatyler]

Rahat’s Looks ✨

Links

[halfdent]

/ so banner change , I have no idea whether I'll stick it or not since I'm not sure how I feel about it but for now I want to focus on writing !

[foggyfanfic]

There comes a point when you are doing too much research for fanfic, and that point is probably way before you’re looking up the interactions between the Cocos and Nazcas plates in order to decide where you would put a fictional island if you want it off the coast of Colombia.

[memento-morri-writes]

I've been thinking a lot about how Rook's reunion with his former mentor, Zara, is going to go, and since I can't predict what the DM is going to have her do or say, I can only dwell on what I know is going to happen. Which happens to include taking off the illusion ring that's been hiding his injuries from her. So have a snippet of the description I have planned for that moment:

tw for description of (mostly healed) injuries

He hesitates, twisting a ring on his finger. Looking at it more closely, she can tell it’s very finely crafted, and must have been very expensive. A large emerald is set into the band. Rook sighs, and pulls the ring off his finger in one quick motion.  Immediately she’s struck by the difference in his appearance as the illusion melts away. He looks awful. His warm, healthy skin fades to a dull and sickly grey. There’s huge bags under his deeply sunken eyes, and his cheeks are hollowed, as though they have been carved out by an overeager sculptor. He looks like he’s recently risen from the grave.  While he was thin before, now she can see his ribs under the skin, and his collarbones are exaggeratedly pronounce. Thin white lines left by dozens upon dozens of recently healed cuts are scattered across his body. On top of that, faded bruises cover most of his visible skin, a mottled mosaic of purple and yellow. They’re clearly days, maybe weeks old, and she can only begin to imagine what they must have looked like when fresh. Bandages are barely visible under his shirt, wrapping around his back, hinting at even more injuries.

[quibbs126]

So question, in Shattered Glass, how do the events change? Is it that the events happen to the same characters as they did in the regular timeline, or so the events switch to a swapped counterpart of theirs?

Like for example, in Animated, would it be SG Megatron left as just a head for 50 years, or would it be SG Optimus?

I feel like I’ve heard cases of both, so I just want clarification on the matter

[nathaniacolver]

i think the cute latina nurse at the hospital just flirted with me HELPPPPPPPP i literallyyyyyyyyy have not felt my face burn for like at least a year now and it just got hot

[bookwyrminspiration]

WHAT possessed me to take a foreign language being instructed in a language im not completely fluent in. WHO let me do that. im gonna make it work or explode trying but my GOD

[sexynetra]

Contemplating throwing myself off the tallest roof I can find because I couldn’t finish rawnsyf today due to power outages so enjoy this adorable photo of Marcia and the chapter will be up tomorrow assuming I don’t throw myself on the blade first.

[winderrific]

57 sessions in, our party had their very first group hug :)

[kulliare]

i’m aware it’s past 10 but allow me

[cospinol]

supremely late as usual but yayyy it's finally time for the winter season's isekai (and rpg fantasy and miscellaneous reincarnation plot) log~ i initially expected the average score of the shows in this log to turn out significantly higher than average but instead it's only very slightly higher than usual because the one essential truth in seasonal anime is that everything will always let you down except for kingdom.

kicking things off is the one that i think is the most Actively and Consistently good , saijaku tamer, which is (certainly not incidentally) the one whose isekai aspect is by far the least relevant to/present the actual show, not just among this season's crop but across the entire genre as i know it : the 'reincarnated person' is not just a completely separate character from the protagonist, it's a disembodied voice in her head that no one else can hear (including the audience!) and whose knowledge/commentary she remarks on less than once an episode. it's the kind of thing that immediately makes you assume it's only there for marketing purposes but it's also not in the title or in any synopsis or trailer, so...? anyways this show made me cry during that trailer and then kept that momentum the whole time; it's absolutely laser-focused one thing, which is extracting as much feelsbait as possible out of various scenarios of ivy cautiously allowing herself to be foster-parented by different types of people (and animals) along her journey, which is also fortunately also the thing it's really good at (when the plot occasionally requires it to show you something else, like the worst action sequence you've ever seen in your life, it's deeply apologetic about it). what if kino's journey was moe! this is the platonic ideal of a 7/10

just below it in the 'you should've earned yourself a 7 as well' shame box we have ishura and chiyu mahou, neither of which is actively bad in its own right but ultimately can't cash the checks they started out writing. ishura does a lot of things right for most of the season, and while i know a lot of people bounced off its structure of 'half a cour of isolated character introduction segments, half a cour of these people showing up in the same place to kill each other', i love a stupid death game in almost any form it's offered to me. unfortunately, though, it ended up getting on my nerves by only distantly promising the eventual murder tournament and centring its actual plot around its military politics, only to reveal that absolutely everything that happened this season was just in service of taking a few pieces off the board before we go to the real plot, which will be... the tournament itself...... this is way too meaty an arc to just be a prologue but its ending is so dismissive of it that it makes me wish neither i nor anyone involved had bothered and we were just watching the tournament instead. it's such a shame... still, the actual pvp section of the show is excellent, and my favourite part of this entire anime season was when it aired its Bandit Vs Spider episode as an apéritif for the Bandit Vs Spider episode of kingdom later in the same week lol

it's hard to place the full blame on chiyu mahou for failing to live up to expectations when i know full well that when one of these shows promises that its characters will go off to War With Demons later in the season, it's never going to be the kind of detailed military campaign i want to see. the problem is that this series is very character-focused (..comparatively, for the genre) and all of its major character arcs and theming revolve around individual sense of responsibility towards one's role on the battlefield, so it's incredibly hard not to get your hopes up that that theme will be explored... and then find them dashed as we get further and further into the season having done nothing but increasingly basic training arcs and slice of life antics and more training and multiple episodes of flashback and even more training until momentum is completely at a standstill, and then we spend barely two episodes on what amounts to a single boss battle against one demon, before returning to training and time-killing with little no reflection on what impact the alleged war had on anyone involved. i was especially put off when the captive Strongest Demon Knight was immediately and effortlessly recruited into the main party (and then they make her train with them, of course); it felt blatantly harem-y in a way this show had managed to avoid up until that point and made me lose a lot of my remaining respect for it. the best thing i can say about that character is that it is a hilarious move to shell out for aoi yuuki for your main villain only to then down-pitch and reverb-effect her voice beyond recognition in almost every scene she's in (as if there's any viewer at this point who sees a big suit of armour with a conspicuously weird voice effect and doesn't immediately assume the person inside is a cute girl...? it's not a twist, guys)... anyways i'm grateful for the sequence of teasers for upcoming characters/arcs that this show ends with because it appears to confirm they're going to magic school next, which means i don't have to spend a moment wondering if the story actually gets good eventually

in the lower-achieving class is sasaki to pii-chan, which did manage to pleasantly surprise me just a little bit, though not in the way it was aiming for. the reaction it's obviously trying to get is "wait, it's an isekai and a magical girl show and a psychic secret agent drama??!!!!!!???? all at once?????!!!!!!??" by throwing the simplest tropes imaginable from each of those settings at you, so obviously i won't be entertaining that; the aspect i actually enjoyed was the simplest and most straightforward of them, its Standard Isekai Setting which is decently comfortable and, critically, the one that has lord mueller in it, who is sincerely charming in the role of 'the one kind of character i usually like in these things' and orchestrates a really fun little fake-succession-drama episode. unfortunately, back on the other side of the isekai portal in modern japan, there is very little fun to be had; the writing has and follows exactly one good instinct in immediately swapping out the unbearably irritating hoshino for the significantly more dynamic shizuka as sasaki's main scene partner pretty early in his employment, but even she can't do much to salvage this series's absolutely abysmal production and pacing. please, mr. sasaki, stop narrating events that happened to someone else somewhere else and let a scene happen organically for once, why don't you

mofunade's main raison-d'être is (or at least should be) being extremely comfortable, which it mostly succeeds at, even if it is on the most basic level of cute girl + fluffy animal service; its problem is that it actually also has a ton of action-and-politics plot for some reason (significantly more than saijaku tamer, for example) and none of it is good, to the point where i really couldn't think of a stand-out character or plotline to bump this up to a 5 despite there being tons of them to pick from. also, this is a dumb complaint, but i can't get over the main character doing all of this stuff while being four years old, it's so stupid and immersion-breaking for no reason at all, you guys don't know she's an isekai protagonist stop bringing your baby to the battlefield!!!!

akuyaku reijou lvl 99 scores a little higher than the chaff on sub-genre basis alone - and can you believe it, it's a villainess story that not only has a dedicated romance but a really cute one between a charming pair of characters with some extremely entertaining micro-dramas and one-on-one moments! unfortunately absolutely nothing else in the show is particularly good, and it has nothing to say about its i-know-the-plot-of-this-game causality plot and yet is determined to forefront both it and its baffling oppression metaphor (which it completely backs down on multiple times before suddenly concluding that entryism works don't worry about it) at the worst possible moments, including a big enough swath of the finale to leave a slightly bitter taste in my mouth - but ultimately the balance is in favour of yumiella's solo antics and romantic endeavours and i won't hold the rest of the show's trappings against it enough to deny it a low pass

at the bottom of this season's scores (with the lowest of our low 4s) is kekkon yubiwa monogatari which is such a default harem that i don't think i even have a paragraph in me about it, nothing is egregiously bad or got on my nerves enough to drop this down to the pit of 3/10s but it also has no real defining characteristics of note at all. the girls are all okay to cute (okay, fine, i do think nephritis kind of owns) the protagonist's a wet noodle with no romantic chemistry with any of them, the plot and set-dressing are trope-default on a level that's impressive even for one of these, there's nothing here to write home about at all. even the uncensored version of this is an archetypal 'semi-background noise while you do something else' watch

andddddd tsukimichi 2 doesn't get a full review since it's incomprehensibly entered a second cour (preliminary diagnosis: builds up a decent head of good-will by spending its first few episodes on non-makoto activities and then blows all of it immediately by spending the rest of the season spinning its wheels at magic school, go figure) but i want to mention it briefly here just because one of its stronger elements in my personal estimation is the Lich Boy Best Friend Main Party Member and it got absolutely smokedddddddd in that respect by... saikyou tank, a show that made it onto this list on the technicality of having a 'kicked out of the hero's party' plot, in probably the weakest iteration i've ever seen, if you're at the point where the hero has personally apologized to our protagonist and admitted that he's sooo much cooler and stronger than him by episode four why even bother? but that absolutely does not matter at all (nor do any of this show's myriad other idiot plot backwaters and protagonist-worship tendencies and basic harem nonsense) because it features one of this season's absolute best boy characters, right there in the main party, and that's the only meal i personally am here for. catch me on the right day and this high-6 score could easily be a 7, marius is so cute, that's all i ask from these shows really