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

[nullicaput]

skinner and the rat. X

Pairing: Han Su-Gang x Reader

Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Obsessive Behavior, Possessive Behavior, Obsession, Teacher-Student Relationship, Power Imbalance, Reverse Power Imbalance, Age Difference, Dark, Su-gang being deranged as hell

Summary: Familiar faces and familiar violence—you thought after almost ten years, the kid you left would never remember you, but you were wrong.

Word count: 2116

previous chapter.

"Teacher [Name], a first-year is looking for you," someone said from the door. "Teacher?" 

A tap on your shoulder successfully snapped you out of your focus. Your eyes, which have been staring intently at the papers you were grading one by one, flew onto the person who disturbed you, and when they did, you saw your colleague with a high hairline smiling down at you expectantly.

"Yes?"

"A student's looking for you." 

You tilted your head—it took you a good minute to understand what he just said. 

"Oh," you finally acknowledged. "Where?" 

He raised a hand in the direction where this supposed student was standing, and upon looking, you saw the kid you temporarily saved from Su-Gang. Putting your pen down, you muttered a quick thanks to your coworker and made your way to Jin-Hyung.

"Good afternoon, miss." He bowed, handing you a folded cloth. "This was yours." 

"Sorry?" 

You eyed the cloth—it was your handkerchief.

"I washed it, so it's clean."

You took it with tender hands, your heart swelling at the sight of fading bruises littering his neck. 

"Thank you." 

Honestly, you forgot about you lending him that after all the havoc Su-Gang has done in a span of what you could estimate as ten minutes.

"Uhm, can I talk to you?" he asked—no, pleaded. 

"Regarding what?" You put the handkerchief in your pocket. "I don't remember holding a subject of first-years', child."

He pursed his lip and averted his eyes.

"Let's talk somewhere more silent," you offered, feeling the stares coming from behind. 

While leading him to the tutoring room, you maintained more than a respectable distance from him and kept your hands behind your back. The two of you entered, silence and discomfort mixing with each other the moment the door was closed. 

In all honesty, you would prefer to have this conversation outside, but you knew that although physical boundaries were an important factor to student-teacher interaction, confidentiality was, too. Whatever it was he wished to talk about it you must remain unknown to others, unless he was the one to disclose it. 

You stood at the opposite side of the room, and leaned onto one of the shelves, while you let him be seated near the entrance of the room.

"What's it, then?" you said, breaking the ice. "Don't worry. This room's soundproofed. People can see us through the door lite, but no one can hear."

He nodded, and opened his mouth. He closed it, and he opened it again. 

"I'm sorry that you got involved with my problem," he said, his voice breaking.

"Problem?" You massaged your temples. "You mean the bullying you were going through?" 

If you were to be technical, it should be you apologizing to him. Your involvement with this could cause him either safety or far more danger, but the latter seemed a lot more plausible. Still, as a teacher, you could not tell him details about your personal life.

When you saw him stiffen, you added, "What I did was something a teacher ideally should do in that situation."

Those words caused his eyes to widen, as though what you told him was a divine revelation. 

Poor kid must have undoubtedly been suffering so much despite the academic year barely being quarterway. 

"You shouldn't apologize for the faults you didn't do." You crossed your arms in front of your chest. "I don't think anyone would want to be hurt and mistreated by their peers."

You were far away from him, and during your talk with him, you have never touched him. You did not put your hand on your shoulder, nor did you offer him any physical comforts. Even then, he has never felt any safer than this moment. It was as if your presence were enough as it is for him to feel understood—to be heard by anyone without them trying to invalidate what he was experiencing and making it seem that he was in the wrong for being wounded by his upperclassman's sadistic ways to satisfy his lack of entertainment.

"What if he misplace his anger on you?" 

What if? He already did. He already does. 

"Who knows?" you said. 

Of course, it was not enough to make his fear die down. In fact, it only made it worse to see you be so dismissive about this. 

"Jin-Hyung, you should go home early," you shifted the topic—or ended it. "It's rainy season, and the clouds are really dark today."

You came back to your fellow teachers waiting for you like kittens waiting for treats. 

"What did the two of you talked about?" the first-year Language teacher pried. "You're teaching second years, no?"

A teacher breaking the code of ethics and wanting to gossip about students' concerns. 

How hilarious. 

Disgusting. 

"He asked me not to tell anyone."

Without saying anything more, you sat back and returned to your work.

A minute or so passed, and Mathematics teacher came back from wherever he went. 

"Oh, you're still checking essays." 

"Yes. A lot of the ones I've checked were well written. I still don't know about the others."

Feeling stressed at the number of grammatical errors from the paper you were reading, you subconsciously dug your upper left canine into the flesh of your lower lip. To make it worse, your checking pen has ran out of ink, an you did not have anything to replace it.

"Here," your male coworker said, lending you a blue pen.

"Thanks."

Concentrated on your task, you did not notice the particular way he looked at you. In an outsider's eyes, it could be described as him being interested in you instead of the topic of students' essay quality. 

"I've heard that you're good in English." 

"I can say that I'm able to communicate my thoughts properly." 

"Did you graduate from a good school?" 

"Not at all," you said, taking note of the fact that he could not read the room. "Just decent." 

"Self-taught?" 

"Yes."

Irritation was growing inside of you, and you were one question away from telling him off.

He really should be thankful of his good pen that you were being slightly more patient than him that you usually would with people who could not take a hint.

"Your left hand."

Is this bastard daft or what? 

"Oh, the scars?" 

"Where are they from?"

Oh, wrong move. 

"From a fork." 

"From a—I'm sorry."

With that, the blabbermouth has stopped at last. 

"It's fine. I don't even remember the kid who did this to me."

For a good hour, you were left in your solitude while you checked essays after essays. Some were unreadable, handwriting and content-wise, but thankfully, there are some that were remarkable.

You yawned, feeling the weight of your head becoming denser and denser.

"Teacher [Name], we're leaving," the English teacher said using the language. "Why don't you just take these papers home?"

You stretched your arms and tilted your head to loosen the knots that were building up along your neck. 

"I live a little far from the school." You grunted softly. "It's better for me to go home a little later than carry these all with me." 

Whichever of the two options you choose, you could not possibly go bother Kwon-Jung with such a trivial matter.

"Well, it's already quarter to six."

The faculty closes at seven, and the school closes at eight.

"I'll keep that in mind." 

You bid them goodbye, and soon, the only ones that remained inside the room were you and the vice-principal inside his office. 

You glanced at your phone and read the time. Debating whether to rest or power through your sleepiness, you decided to do the former. You set an alarm and put the right side of your head over its corresponding arm. You placed your left hand on your phone, so you could quickly stop it from ringing.

"Just fifteen minutes."

"Su-Gang, where are you going?"

After cutting all his classes that followed yours, Su-Gang left the rooftop without bringing his bag with him. To his so-called friends' surprise, he took the direction that would lead him to the principal's office and, eventually, the whole faculty's room. 

"Mind your damned business, you little shit." He pulled his vape out of his pocket and dumped it into the nearest bin. "Fucking cocksucker." 

Su-Gang was still not in the best mood after finding out that his crew lied to him last Friday. 

To think that they thought they would be spared for hiding the truth from him and trying to cover it up—brainless idiots. 

And to think that if he had not drive that car, he would never learn that you were holding hands with a man—a man he had no way of recognizing—and those bitches would be there with him, mooching off of his parents' money, internally laughing at his ignorance. 

He stepped foot inside the teachers' lounge without any thought in mind. Simultaneously, the vice-principal emerged from his cave, briefcase in hand and ready to leave. 

"Su-Gang," the old man squeaked. "What are you, er, what are you doing here?" 

"Are you ordering me to tell you what I'm here for?" 

"No!" he hastily replied. "Not at all!" 

Not risking to be the target, he got out of the room, not even noticing that there was still someone inside aside from him and the devil spawn. 

Su-Gang wandered inside the teachers' lounge, his eyes raking over the tables filled with clutter and picture frames of family members he could not care less about knowing. 

"Teacher [Name]?" 

He made himself comfortable beside you, sitting on the swivel chair of whoever was placed at your left. 

"Hey." 

When you did not answer him, he poked your forehead. 

You were indeed asleep. 

You were napping defenselessly at a place you knew he resided. 

He did not know whether to admire you for that or ridicule you. 

"A bitch like you shouldn't be getting on my nerves," he huffed. "But here we are." 

You have lived a life that had nothing to do with him, while all he had done after you left was for you. 

Rather, to have you.

He enhanced his physique so if he were to grab you and carry you, no one could pry his hands off of you the way those leech-like maids held him back after he stabbed you with a fork. He studied driving so if he were to abduct you, the both of you could easily get away from the public's eyes before they even notice you were gone. He did the things he had done for the sake of having you, and yet, you have lived your life that way. 

It was apparent that you were happy with the way your life had turned out after you left him. It was apparent, seen from the way you laughed. Your laughter with that guy was wider and happier than any of the ones you gave him nine years ago. That smile you had seemed so genuine, and he knew that the times you grinned at him were fake and full of fear. 

Normally, he would be elated at the idea of someone being terrified of him, but you—what he have for you—were nowhere near normal.

If you asked him to have you be hired as a teacher here, he would even give you double the salary of the principal. If you asked him to quit his vices, he would stop even with the risk of relapsing. If you asked him to take his studies seriously again, just like he used to do in his childhood, he would. If you asked him to push those kids who latched at him everyday from a height, he would do it in a heartbeat. 

With a price, of course. With the price being you, obviously. Nothing in this day and age is free. 

You changed, and so did he.

Not too much change on his end, though. After all, if you were the payment, he would never hesitate to do it. 

"Miss," he mumbled. 

He moved closer with the swivel chair and rested his temple against the cubicle divider, watching your evidently tired eyes flicker as you slept peacefully. He took your left hand and put it close to his mouth. He planted soft kissed onto your scars, admiring the way they persistently marked you even when the years have went by.

Similar to those scars, you could never get rid of him. 

"Miss."

He could kill you right here and right now without any difficulty, and no one would even rat him out.

"You made the wrong choice of continuing to teach here." 

And he does not forgive mistakes, no matter how small.

next chapter.

tag section.

@nickibunny23 @ghostedhymn @ashayein @yinyangcchii @ashayein @ruruyiin @mirwors @crazyhead333 @d4ily-s-nsh1ne @san-axa0 @4ria790 @nijru @iiwsmr @littlebignoona @hisokaupbitch3525

author's note.

Again, I apologize for the mistakes, especially when it comes to the teacher stuff. I'm not a teacher, and the program I'm studying is not Education.

Thank you for the support!

[sxpphotales]

the discussion about season 3 and why i personally hated it (i swear it’s not js hyunju bias)

intense, raw, violent, but still bad somehow. why? TW for season 3 spoilers

— first of all, i really liked how everyone’s mental and psychological state was explored in this season. especially with min su and nam gyu. after feeling like they were literally just dust and a pile of shxt, they manage to recover some of that dignity at the cost of their sanity (with the pills). the thoughts that thanos and semi (and technically even nam gyu for min su) somewhat still haunt them is a pretty nice representation of how drugs mess up your mind. just basically a big showcase of how addiction can fulfill bits of your fear, but it will constantly bring up your own past fears in order to avoid momentary anxiety.

— i have very mixed feelings about dae-ho. he was genuinely one of my favorite characters and i wanted to look more into his backstory, but the director lowkey trashed it by just saying he “was lying about his marine background.” i feel like the concept that his father was a strict marine officer and as the only one, dae-ho being forced to be a part of the marines would’ve made not only so much sense but it would’ve described dae-ho’s character perfectly. however, the personality switch up is something that i would consider semi-realistic and semi-reasonable and something that matches with dae-ho’s canonical backstory now. dae-ho was one of the three survivors of that entire rebellion. he backed out reasonably because he was genuinely scared. he didn’t want to join in, but it’s that subtle peer pressure. it’s not that someone forced him to fight, but that he feels like he /has/ to fight or else everyone’ll condemn him. imagine being forced to get into a practical battlefield out of nowhere with no training, a weapon with barely any ammo, and no armor. dae-ho had every right to be scared, even if it costed the life of many. it was cowardly and the wrong decision, but it wasn’t inaccurate to think his way. and i feel like dae-ho’s crash out is definitely realistic. why? because it’s a representation of guilt. he feels guilty over everyone’s death and failing everyone. but he doesn’t know /how/ to express it. especially after he saw everyone’s corpses now, he feels like gi hun is judging him with that stare. he feels judged; he knows it’s his fault but he’s terrified to admit it.

— i personally wish dae-ho had more screen time and a better screenwriter for his backstory. he could have been such a complex character with a nice, clean death that symbolized all of his past actions and behavior. i will also discuss abt gihun at the end.

— hyunju, junhee, and geum ja trio were the three characters that were handled the best in this season. jun hee genuinely showed her maternal determination and it was a nice wrap up to her character. the season demonstrated her character, personality, and goals very clearly. geum ja’s death was agonizing, but i expected it, just not in the format in which she died in. i thought she would’ve died in hide and seek or even the jump rope, but i can see why sxicide also fits her character’s death nicely. she played a major part in this season, i don’t see enough glazing of her. now for hyunju. i genuinely expected her to 1v1 gihun at the end. but her death in hide and seek does show her personality quite well. she acknowledges success and power, but she chose to risk it for the two people she genuinely cared about (though she lost the gamble but saved the other two in response). ultimately, her selflessness overpowered her determination and actually ended hand in hand. saddening and devastating but fitting death.

— yong sik’s death seriously ached me like i genuinely loved him so much. i hoped to see him straighten up, go batshit, and kill someone then return with fear to his mother, but eventually, he couldn’t. and please don’t blame geum ja too much y’all. she felt a surge of adrenaline to protect another mother. her fears were too channeled and it caused her to act out of hand (like how a child screams at a parent in the heat of an argument, but then regrets it). geum ja and yong sik deserved a better ending though.

— nam gyu died in the way i genuinely think fits him. side antagonist, mentally unstable, overly dependent on pills and crazed. similarly with min su, though as one of the semi-main cast that made it to the last game, i expected more.

— myung gi’s character is just a jumble of mix that i can’t understand. one second he’s risking it all for his ‘family’ and the next he’s tryna kill them. he faced a villainous and violent death which i didn’t anticipate, but at least it showed his true feelings about the concept of a family. good thing he didn’t win; he would’ve been a horrible father. i hate 333 x 222. one of the worst ships here.

— there were multiple characters whose backstories were left out in the open and some of them didn’t even get proper personality reveals even though they made it to be last few survivors. i kinda hated that. and the multiple people last round kinda annoyed me too. the 1v1 in season 1 was the best one so far.

— overall, i feel like everyone’s death explain their character and who they truly are. it explains their inner personality, goals, and ideals. i really liked that since well, people say that humans show their true colors at the face of death.

— season 3 however was bad because of one major component: lack of mc. the main character, seong gi-hun, didn’t feel like an mc at all. in season 1, they juggled his character very well and showed parts of him that felt like he was supposed to survive and make a change in history. but season 3, they literally eradicated gihun’s existence until the last episode then killed him off (which i genuinely didn’t expect but could tell after myung gi’s death). season 3 was too focused on side characters and trying to portray the background people, but director hwang, you literally have an mc. focus on HIS interactions with other characters.

— season 1 was the best season. the sangwoo gihun fight was a display of raw human emotion and energy. it showed gihun’s growth and a showcase of how he couldn’t change his devastation even with practically an infinite sum of money. he ended up broken and shattered nonetheless. it should’ve ended at season 1. season 2 was lost in plot and season 3 was too rushed in trying to kill everyone off. overall, i didn’t like season 3, but i did like some aspects that they did explore. feel free to disagree in the replies.

— also, gyeong suk and no eul genuinely had more prominence than gihun bro. the two most side characters became main out of nowhere, so it felt icky. and the entire ordeal with jun ho was also more like a side show panel than a true part of the plot cause practically nothing other than jun ho’s realization of the games and his brother changed. i expected jun ho to kill in ho but no, it’s just another goodbye with no explanation.

— unpopular opinion but in ho should’ve died. it would’ve wrapped his character perfectly, but they dragged him on endlessly. he’s the perfect antagonist with a past and there was none of that explored except for that murderous scene with the knife and last game (though that explained a lot about him as a character and his role as frontman). but what happened to his wife? how did he become frontman? why did he agree? what happened? all unanswered and disappointing.

— practically everyone’s predictions were wrong except for 333 is gonna be a finalist. i preferred the fan theories over ts. season 1 should’ve been the only season. season 2-3 were just like fillers in naruto. ima pretend i never watched them.

[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

[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

[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.

[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 !

[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.

[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

[brown-little-robin]

ALL OF THESE MIDDLE SCHOOLERS ARE BEING SO MEAN TO MY SON THE GO PRODIGY TOYA AKIRA

[koushirouizumi]

Various places Reminding: It's the 24th anniversary of DigiAdv's U.S. premiere!!! ME, LAUGHING LOWLY INTO MY VOID, KNOWING I Missed That Premiere but dANG DID I CATCH UP FAST:

[ambrosia-and-starlight]

i know i told you that a petty part of me wanted to flaunt my closeness with everyone else but i refused to like succumb to those urges

but does it really count as succumbing when im just yapping with them more now bc like...my main yapping partner (you) is gone so im having to make do

[sleebyconfy]

..