Byleth > Itsuki:

There aren't as many good men as good women in fiction, but there is one ultra-cool man I've passed by up until now.  Byleth, the 'sensei' from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, is the protagonist of the best game ever, something you can play for 1,000 hours and never tire of.  His extreme power, constant interaction with every other character in the game, and wonderful character design (and badass stretchy Sword of the Creator), make him one of the coolest men in all of fiction.  Why has he been neglected until now?  Because Byleth can also be played as a woman, and aside from some romantic scenes at the very end of the game, very little varies between the male and female version of the story.  It's like Byleth is androgynous or something.

Nevertheless, I think everyone knows Byleth is actually a man because he plays a very male role in the game -- Professor, army commander, king, mercenary, his whole life is traditional apex male jobs.  Furthermore, I mostly played Byleth as a man and his male character design is way better than his female design, so we can all just agree he's a boy and be done with it.  Helpfully, in the book it says Yoru had a son named Byleth, so there's no possibility for confusion in the text which Byleth I'm discussing.

Byleth replaces a much worse man, Itsuki from Haruhi Suzumiya.  He's a psychic yes-man who does whatever Haruhi wants and puts up with whatever she says.  He serves more as an explainer for how things got to where they are, and an explanation for how all of Haruhi's audacious and extravagant plans, as a high school girl, keep getting funded and supported.  He's certainly pivotal to the plot of the series, but as an individual human being, there isn't much to be said in his favor.  He doesn't make any decisions himself and doesn't show any human emotions, keeping up a fake smile his whole life.  He's a non-entity.  Compared to Byleth he's nothing.

While I was at it I changed 'dimpled' cheek to 'puffed' cheek because that's more in line with what a pout looks like.  So two more improvements to '100 Waifus' made to order.  Now there's only 3 men and 2 women I hope to replace for better people left.  So close to done!

Meanwhile, I defeated all the crown contestants in Tales of Arise, but that just opened up a new saga.  This game clearly doesn't want to end any time soon.  But I do love Alphen, Law and Rinwell more and more the longer the game goes and the more characterization they get.  The blooming romance between Law and Rinwell is so adorable, their interactions are the best.  My initial instincts to include them in '100 Waifus' have been proven correct.

The playoffs had some close games and upsets but mainly it went as the seeding would expect.  The Jaguars comeback against the Chargers was incredible, but when you stop and think about it the Jaguars were seeded higher than the Chargers so it isn't all that surprising.  Next week's games aren't going to be that thrilling either, given that the Chiefs and Eagles get to beat up on the lowest seeded teams left in their conferences.  Really the best moment of the playoffs will be the week after that, when all the riffraff have been eliminated and it's just the 4 best teams in the league facing off against each other.  But the Bills-Bengals game will be exciting in a sort of morbid way, as the game that was previously cancelled by a heart attack returns.  Now we'll get to see who would have won that game if it hadn't been prematurely stopped.