May got out to a lightning start for me, continuing the torrid April pace for a while before cooling off a bit in the back end of the month. That's partially by design, as I jumped into a pair of longer games (one enormously so) which I won't finish until deeper into June, but I've also noticed I'm slowly bleeding gaming time from my evenings. As my kids get incrementally older and the days grow incrementally longer entering summer, an hour that would previously be my own is now deferred to them, and that adds up over the course of an entire month.
Not that I'd trade my kids, you understand.
(Games are presented in chronological completion order; the numerical indicator represents the YTD count.)
​
​
#27 - Contra: Hard Corps - GEN - 8/10 (Great)
It's been fascinating to watch the Contra series evolve over time, and Hard Corps on the Sega Genesis is no different. With no Mode 7 (the SNES' proprietary isometric viewpoint mode) available on the system, necessarily some of the top down content from Contra III would need to be altered or removed, and that begged the question of what would take its place: after all, a return to basic sidescrolling action might feel like a big step down, and we can't have that. So I think I expected Hard Corps to throw in a new wrinkle to keep the formula a bit more fresh. What I did not expect was for it to make three enormous changes.
For one, Hard Corps has four different characters to choose from, and each is actually unique. It's not just the look - where else can you play a cybernetic wolfman? - but they've got different sizes and hurtboxes as well. And while each starts with the same basic low power machine gun, each has a completely different loadout of possible weapon upgrades, ensuring that all four play very differently from one another outside of the fundamentals of movement. To that end, the two weapon toggle of Contra III is expanded in Hard Corps, allowing you to hold all four of your upgraded weapons simultaneously and switch between them at will, which adds a new layer of depth and strategy to the action. Building upon this notion of enhanced player choice even further, the second big change is that the game has branching paths. After the first stage you make a choice that determines where you head for the second level, and then later on you make another choice that creates further divergence, such that the game has four main endings (and a secret fifth!), all with their own dedicated unique stages. It's for that reason possibly the most replayable game so far in the franchise; I myself did a run through of each ending using a different character per run to get a feel for them all.
This leads to the final big change, which is the only one I don't regard a resounding success: the entire game is basically a boss rush. Let's zero in on the main path that I followed on my primary playthrough and add up all mini-bosses and full boss phases. What number might you expect that to come out as? A dozen or so? Well, sorry about your naiveté, but the answer is 43: it's bosses all the way down. This is a MUCH more mentally taxing load than previous Contra games where you could kind of skate through the non-boss sections with good fundamentals. And that's just one of four possible paths through the game! It's absurd! It's also way more fun than it sounds it would be from the description, but I've heard people say Hard Corps is the toughest Contra game and now I know why. I do miss just running and gunning and dropping dudes in one hit before a thrilling finale; it's hard to be properly wowed by a boss fight when that's all you ever see. But nevertheless Contra: Hard Corps is lives up to the legacy of greatness the franchise had up until that point established...just steel yourself mentally for the extensive memorization it requires of you.
​
#28 - Ancient Enemy - PC - 5.5/10 (Semi-Competent)
Solitaire is one of those games that nobody really wants to play. It’s a game of convenience and opportunity, only attractive in the absence of something better, which is to say “nearly anything else at all.” Slightly more entertaining are variations on the form, such as Mahjong Solitaire or Free Cell, where certain cards/tiles are locked until the ones above them have been cleared away. These are still just time wasting games for people with nothing else to do, but when presented as a discrete set of challenges there’s a bit more appeal. Do you know they say that every one of the 32,000 numbered games of FreeCell on classic Windows operating systems was supposedly beatable? Did you know a very bored teenage me once decided to see if I could prove it by playing and beating every single unique game of FreeCell in order? I got into the low 30s or so before I questioned what the hell I was doing with my life and wisely moved on.
Well, Ancient Enemy is a game for people with nothing better to do, masquerading as a game that would qualify as "something better to do." It’s an RPG, I guess, but the gameplay revolves entirely around a solitaire variant. You have a deck of “stock cards” numbered 0-9 and start each encounter (“hand”) by flipping the top one. Then on the board you have to collect a card with a number adjacent to the one you’re displaying - 0 serving as a bridge between 1 and 9. Getting a card reveals any card trapped immediately below it and enables that card to be collected as well. If you can’t make a move, you can flip a new stock card over to get a random new number until your deck runs out. Some levels are simple puzzles in this vein, trying to clear all the cards from the board. Most encounters though are battles, where you do the exact same thing, except the color of the card you collect enables you to attack, defend, or cast a spell. So it’s turn-based combat, except each turn is you basically clearing as many cards as you can from the board to juice up your attack or bolster your defense, and that’s about it.
Now, at first, this is actually way more fun than I’m making it sound. I mean, I like solitaire type games for what they are, and the extra mechanics definitely do enrich the experience. You get consumable wild cards, battle boards have bonus cards with instant benefits, you get powers that manipulate the board, new types of cards appear, all good stuff. The problem is that the game completely runs out of these new ideas about a quarter of the way through, at which point you’re just going through the motions until the end, accompanied by a complete nothing of a story that I was confident I had figured out, only to find that the ending was somehow worse than the cliche I’d been anticipating. Thus, the game sadly settled into that exact same niche of games it was supposed to improve upon and supplant. Which I suppose is ok…if you’ve got nothing better to do.
​
#29 - Snakebird Primer - PC - 7/10 (Good)
I follow a general rule of always playing game franchises in order, but Snakebird Primer is a unique case wherein the developers of the original Snakebird decided that it was too off-putting to new players, and so they made a sequel that they explicitly wanted newcomers to play first. A "primer" in truth to ease you into the overall Snakebird challenge, as it were. So when I decided to check out Snakebird, I thought all right: just this once I'll do it your way.
So how does Snakebird Primer shake out? Well...it's fine. It's a jaunty kind of puzzle game, with bright colors, friendly art and music, and general good vibes. In each stage you control one or more segmented "snakebirds" and have to get them all to the rainbow portal to complete the level. Sometimes you need to eat fruit to open the portal as well, but that's the entire game in a nutshell. It's a very simple concept, complicated only by the fact that a snakebird that has no body segments touching the ground will fall, and so each stage is a kind of pathing challenge, tasking you to figure out the right order of operations to reach the end. The levels are very well paced and designed if you just go in order: there aren't any hand-holdy tutorials, but new ideas are introduced organically at various intervals, and the challenge always feels reasonable, especially because you can undo any number of moves at will, like stepping through code to find an error.
There is, however, a significant difficulty spike for the last couple levels, which is pretty jarring. And when you add to that the fact that the designer of Baba Is You said he built a lot of his design philosophy around the original Snakebird, I've got to admit I'm a lot less keen on checking that one out. It's in that same realm of "enter these six dozen commands in precisely the right order" that made Baba Is You eventually feel more tedious and frustrating to me than anything else, so I think for now I'm happy to have just played the "lite" version instead.
​
#30 - It Takes Two - PS4 - 8.5/10 (Excellent)
When trying to write down a genre for It Takes Two in my tracking spreadsheet, I wanted to put "Yes". It's as though the developers wanted to make a bunch of different kinds of games and, rather than accepting any limitations (self-imposed or otherwise), they just found a way to do it all at once. It Takes Two is a platformer. It's a third-person shooter. It's a puzzle game. It's a rhythm game. It's a racing game. It's a stealth game. It's a boss battling action adventure. It's a minigame collection. It's a romantic comedy. It's an exploration playground. One minute you're flying around on a jetpack chucking Captain America shields at devils and the next you're literally playing a timed game of chess. None of the things that It Takes Two does would be characterized as masterpiece forms of their respective genres, but that's not the point. There's sufficient depth and development of each mechanic that it never feels like a lazy tack-on to check a box - and that in itself is beyond impressive - but it's the sheer number of different ideas tossed into this package that make it truly special.
It's hard for me to even review this game, frankly. Part of that is because I feel a strong bias towards the game for the audaciousness of what it tries to achieve, and for the way it inspires me to keep stretching myself in new ways however I can. But it's also hard because I don't remember the whole thing. It Takes Two is both fresh in memory, having just finished it, and yet far away and mingled in my mind with similar bits of similar other adventures (Tearaway foremost among them). Why is that? Well, I first booted up It Takes Two in May of 2022 as a co-op experience to share with my wife - quite fitting, as it turns out, given the nature of the game's plot of trying to reconcile an embattled couple. We'd only play in smaller bursts of 1-2 hours at a time, but every session we played it felt like we were playing a new, different game. Music to my ears, but much harder on my gaming-challenged wife, who took longer to adjust to each mechanical shift. Pretty soon we were playing less and less often, even as I was playing a game like Tearaway early on that occupied some similar design space in my head. Soon we stopped playing at all. When I tried to suggest resuming this title over the past year, I was repeatedly rebuffed until finally a month ago I managed to wear her down enough that we picked it up again for about an hour a week. So it is that the first half of the game is fuzzy and nebulous to me, even as I recall that I loved playing, whereas the back half is much fresher, and it's nigh impossible for me to separate my wife's frequent frustrations from my own experience - especially since I've been playing on a controller experiencing heavy stick drift, so managing the camera was a nightmare through no fault of the game's.
All that said, how could I not recommend this game? It's best played with two experienced gamers, but the story only fully lands if you play as a couple, so there's a bit of potential for a disconnect there, as I experienced. It's not a perfect game. But it is an incredibly ambitious one that had me routinely grinning from ear to ear, despite the grumblings on the couch next to me. When I pointed out to my wife that we finished the game in May 2024, almost to the day when we started back in '22, she said "They should've called it It Takes Two Years." We're both glad it's over, but I think for very different reasons.
​
#31 - Rogue Legacy 2 - PS5 - 7/10 (Good)
Some game sequels try to really shake things up and try something different from the one before. Final Fantasy is probably the biggest and most obvious example of this, but you can also see it in virtually every Super Mario Bros. game, in the Castlevania series, and the list goes on extensively from there. On the other hand, some game sequels treat their predecessors like rough drafts to be perfected. With these, the idea is to take the vision for the previous game, use the increase in time/budget/developer expertise now available, and try to execute on it more completely than was possible before. When a game like this is successful, there becomes almost zero reason to ever play the original game (other than possibly its story), because the new version has replaced it entirely as the definitive experience.
Rogue Legacy 2 is one of these latter types of games. Everything from the first game is pretty much still there (bosses excepted): enemies, basic combat and room design, character classes, traits, progression, etc. It immediately feels like "Hey, I've played this before," yet a cursory look reveals a huge wealth of additional content over the first game. Classes are better differentiated, you get new weapons, more spells, special abilities, new items, new upgrades, new explorable regions, new mechanics, new new new. It truly is a total replacement for Rogue Legacy 1 in this regard, a "go ahead and uninstall that thing forever because we've got it all right here and then some" type of mission statement. I was amazed at how I kept finding ever more avenues of progression and discovery, even many hours into the game, In fact, I never did manage to play as every class, and each class has a variant form as well, most of which I didn't even unlock. It's overflowing with stuff.
And I think that's why it didn't work quite as well for me as the first game: it's all too much. Now there are four different types of currency, all acquired in different ways, all for different upgrade paths. You're always competing with yourself on what to level up between runs because there are too many choices and all of them seem pretty good, but as you're finding your early groove the game throws a big wrench in there: labor costs. While each upgrade has a set gold cost that increases as you level it up, early on the game adds a universal tax mechanic to the entire upgrade tree, making it increasingly prohibitive to spend your money on stuff, and it feels awful. Rogue Legacy 1 had a similar system where each upgrade cost 10g more than the previous, but in the sequel these escalate far more rapidly, to the point where you'll complete a huge run and still feel like you can only afford one or two upgrades that barely move the needle. It's a pure inflationary grinding system meant to pad playtime, and I'm not about that. I played RL1 through multiple New Game + levels, but I was thrilled to beat RL2's final boss and move on because the economy is so frustrating. Other than that though, it's got quite a lot going for it.
​
#32 - Undertale - PS4 - 7/10 (Good)
When is some information too much information? Undertale is notorious for its rabid fan community insisting that there is only one "right" way to play the game, and so if you've ever heard of Undertale there's a good chance you already know what that preferred method is: pacifism. Undertale takes a unique approach to the JRPG in two primary ways: first, that defending against enemy attacks is an active system pretty much akin to dodging in a bullet hell game, and second that you almost never actually need to choose the "Fight" command from the battle menu in order to succeed in an encounter. The argument from the community is that you must play in this fully pacifist manner, largely because of a design decision that thoroughly punishes players who do not, only revealed after the game's conclusion. Thus, these players are "helping" curious newcomers by saving them from falling victim to a fairly vindictive design choice that would create a lot of frustration.
The problem with that approach is that Undertale makes it abundantly clear from the outset that you have the option for these alternative combat approaches, trains you on how to use them, and then gives you a positive feedback loop for choosing that direction with your gameplay. Which means the discourse surrounding this game effectively undermines not only the game's own ability to surprise and educate you, but also the authorial intent of that same design decision, which in context is a conscious player decision to go against the grain and suffer the possible consequences of doing so. In short, I wish I'd never heard of Undertale before I played it, as I'm sure I would've had a much better time.
As it stands, Undertale is still a highly creative take on the genre that, despite an aesthetic I didn't care for and writing that leaned a bit too hard at times into "lol I'm so random" territory for my tastes, still managed to get me invested with some of its characters and even make me laugh aloud at times. I was particularly impressed with that aforementioned approach to combat, as each enemy introduced unique hazards to avoid, so fighting a new monster was far more exciting here than in a standard turn-based RPG where the only meaningful question is "How much damage did this whatever move do to me?" So for those reasons I applaud Undertale. Even still, there's a lot of walking back and forth with no major purpose beyond "it was decided the game should be a little bit inconvenient here," adding some unnecessary tedium to the mix. In short, Undertale's a generally good time, but if you want it to be even better, just pretend you haven't read anything I just said.
​
#33 - Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - PS5 - 7.5/10 (Solid)
2018 was a big year for Miles Morales. In the fall he showed up in the PS4 title Marvel's Spider-Man as a major supporting character, and by the end of the year he was stunning cinema audiences in the fantastic Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as the primary protagonist. It's no surprise then that by 2020, with his brand so hot, Sony and Insomniac Games would cash in with a follow-up title to the hit PS4 game with Miles front and center. And for the most part, the game is what you'd expect it to be from that basic pitch: more of the same from 2018, only focusing on Miles' family, his new home of Harlem and its people, and his path to becoming a fully fledged hero in his own right. That's all fine, but here's the problem: all of it has been done better before, and recently to boot. Miles' story of personal growth and family drama was handled better in the Spider-Verse series, even though MSM:MM wisely walks chooses to walk some different beats along the way. "Superhero of Harlem" was done masterfully by Netflix with the Luke Cage series (the first season, at least) back in 2016, and MSM:MM doesn't even try to address any issues beyond the most surface level. And the "more of the same" gameplay?
Well, admittedly that's still pretty good. Web swinging is as fun as ever to the point that there's an XP challenge to web swing at high speed for a full cumulative hour of real time and I caught myself thinking, "Hmm, maybe..." There are fast travel points that unlock relatively early on, but the joy of traversal feels like the main point of the game, so why would you bother? Miles also gets some new Spidey moves related to his bio-electric powers, and these are really fun and impactful to pull off, such that "more of the same" isn't in this case a damning phrase. And yet, it's also distinctly not "more, but better." In order to emphasize your new powers, the goons you fight (now including women for the first time I can recall ever seeing in a superhero game like this) have upgraded their own abilities as well, which means the simple pleasure of chaining big combos is a bit diminished. Maybe this enemy just blocks all your basic attacks and stops you cold. Maybe this one turns the tables to dodge and counter you. Or maybe you're just constantly surrounded by a flood of dudes with guns and rocket launchers and you feel like you never get a chance to press "punch" without being thoroughly punished.
Now add to that the game's relatively brief length and general lack of meaningful activities compared to its predecessor, as well as its truly awful villains and the ho-hum plot that they service, and you've got a title that's decidedly a step back from what came before. Of course, what came before was excellent, so even a step back still lands you in territory that's quite fun to play around with. My 6-year-old summed it up best when he came downstairs to ask me a question one day and caught me playing: "Whoa...how are you Spider-Man?!" Which is to say that Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a game that really makes you feel like a wannabe Spider-Man who hasn't gotten it all figured out just yet. And I guess that's all right.
​
Coming in June:

• I've had less time for PC gaming lately for a couple of different reasons, but I'm expecting that to be a temporary thing, and I don't think I'm in danger of failing to finish Mass Effect 3 by the end of June. I didn't realize the version of the game I had included all the DLC. Nor did I actually know what any of the DLC was. So I was quite a ways into the game and feeling great about my progress when I got suspicious that the section I was playing wasn't actually base game content. I looked it up and found that, in fact, about 90% of what I'd played to date was DLC and I'd barely actually started the base game itself. That explains why the main story was taking a while to get off the ground, at any rate.
• Speaking of getting off the ground, my journey through The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom began impatiently a few months after release, but I took an extended break from the game and have now spent pretty much all of May continuing my thorough trek through the game world. I'm well over 200 hours into the game and am only several days away from having explored the entirety of the game's map. At which point I believe I'll finally advance the main quest past its initial stage.
• In my review for Rogue Legacy 2 above I mentioned the Castlevania franchise, which I feel I can speak to as a whole given that I've finished nearly every game in the series to date. Unsurprisingly I felt most drawn to the metroidvania style games, so there was a layer of disappointment in exhausting the last of those to discover. Disappointment that will soon be temporarily eradicated when I boot up Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, produced by that same creative mind.
• And more...

​
​

← Previous	2024	Next →

I (26F) have been struggling lately with my emotions and overthinking, and I could really use some advice.
Here's some background: When I was in high school, I met a boy online who was just a couple of years older than me. We dated for a while, broke up, and then got back together after I helped him through a rough patch. I even moved to the state he went to school in to be with him. I was young and naive at 18, and he was 20. Not long after moving, I found out he was cheating on me. Despite this, I took him back because I believed in our relationship.
We dated for two years until he decided to study abroad. I wasn't comfortable with this, especially after the cheating incident, but I didn't want to hold him back. Unfortunately, I caught him lying again, which led to a big fight where I said some hurtful things. When he came back after the semester, we had an awkward 7-hour hangout, and that was the last time we were really in contact.
Less than a year later, he was dating someone new, and I focused on my healing. I moved back to home to deal with some serious health issues and other serious personal stuff. I hoped he would want to work things out, but I never heard from him.
Years passed, and I moved on, even dated someone else briefly. Then, out of the blue, I heard from an old friend that my ex had been asking about reaching out to her randomly. I confronted him, but nothing came of it.
To add on... 2 more years later ... our mutual friend told me she reached out to him to just say hello because she really did like him and was happy to be friends with him. they bonded well so i wasnt upset that she missed having convos with him.
her feedback.... he never mentioned that hes still with the same girl, that they moved across country together.... and have been dating for (should be 4 years at that point). and from what she told me , it was almost like he was curious about me and said something similar to "if the universie thinks its meant to be , maybe we can be kosher" and "i thought about reaching out to her if im ever in town"...... theres no way he'd just randomly be "in town".
Recently, I saw a photo of him proposing to her. While I'm happy for him, it hurts deeply because I always imagined we'd be endgame. Seeing him move on so quickly after me has left me feeling inadequate and anxious.
In a perfect world, that night he came to drop my shirt off, I would have told him, "I love you, I'm sorry, and can we start over?" But because he was so unpredictable, I didn't want to look foolish and give him the satisfaction of knowing he could keep hurting me and I'd still stay.
I've built a career, handled my medical issues, and gotten into my dream grad program after graduating w/ my undergrad. Yet, I can't shake this gut-wrenching feeling. Did I not mean as much to him? Why was I so easily replaced? Maybe I'm delusional, but I always thought we'd get married and grow old together. Perhaps he never really felt the same and just felt stuck with me.
No one prepares you for the pain of watching your first love build a life without you. How do I move forward from this and stop feeling like I wasn't enough? How can I manage my emotions and overthinking in a healthy way? If anyone has advice on how to handle these emotions and stop overthinking, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks for reading. This felt really good to write out and validate my own feelings...
TL;DR: Struggling with emotions and overthinking after my first love moved on and got engaged. Need advice on coping and moving forward
(ps: i saw someone post about their wife being in love with their ex..... disclaimer im not her lol and i am def not married😂😂)

Hi all,
I (26F) have been struggling lately with my emotions and overthinking, and I could really use some advice.
Here's some background: When I was in high school, I met a boy online who was just a couple of years older than me. We dated for a while, broke up, and then got back together after I helped him through a rough patch. I even moved to the state he went to school in to be with him. I was young and naive at 18, and he was 20. Not long after moving, I found out he was cheating on me. Despite this, I took him back because I believed in our relationship.
We dated for two years until he decided to study abroad. I wasn't comfortable with this, especially after the cheating incident, but I didn't want to hold him back. Unfortunately, I caught him lying again, which led to a big fight where I said some hurtful things. When he came back after the semester, we had an awkward 7-hour hangout, and that was the last time we were really in contact.
Less than a year later, he was dating someone new, and I focused on my healing. I moved back to home to deal with some serious health issues and other serious personal stuff. I hoped he would want to work things out, but I never heard from him.
Years passed, and I moved on, even dated someone else briefly. Then, out of the blue, I heard from an old friend that my ex had been asking about reaching out to her randomly. I confronted him, but nothing came of it.
To add on... 2 more years later ... our mutual friend told me she reached out to him to just say hello because she really did like him and was happy to be friends with him. they bonded well so i wasnt upset that she missed having convos with him.
her feedback.... he never mentioned that hes still with the same girl, that they moved across country together.... and have been dating for (should be 4 years at that point). and from what she told me , it was almost like he was curious about me and said something similar to "if the universie thinks its meant to be , maybe we can be kosher" and "i thought about reaching out to her if im ever in town"...... theres no way he'd just randomly be "in town".
Recently, I saw a photo of him proposing to her. While I'm happy for him, it hurts deeply because I always imagined we'd be endgame. Seeing him move on so quickly after me has left me feeling inadequate and anxious.
In a perfect world, that night he came to drop my shirt off, I would have told him, "I love you, I'm sorry, and can we start over?" But because he was so unpredictable, I didn't want to look foolish and give him the satisfaction of knowing he could keep hurting me and I'd still stay.
I've built a career, handled my medical issues, and gotten into my dream grad program after graduating w/ my undergrad. Yet, I can't shake this gut-wrenching feeling. Did I not mean as much to him? Why was I so easily replaced? Maybe I'm delusional, but I always thought we'd get married and grow old together. Perhaps he never really felt the same and just felt stuck with me.
No one prepares you for the pain of watching your first love build a life without you. How do I move forward from this and stop feeling like I wasn't enough? How can I manage my emotions and overthinking in a healthy way? If anyone has advice on how to handle these emotions and stop overthinking, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks for reading. This felt really good to write out and validate my own feelings...
TL;DR: Struggling with emotions and overthinking after my first love moved on and got engaged. Need advice on coping and moving forward

Comp Bingo is a regular thread on the 1st of the month.
​
Reading is so important to learning how to write well, yet many aspiring writers have trouble finding the time and motivation to read. Well, here's some accountability!
Below, post the book you read last month and what we can learn from it about writing. This book can be fiction or nonfiction, fantasy or another genre, for fun or the bingo (explained below). Let us know what you learned from the book. We might want to read that book and learn that thing too!
If you completed your bingo card, give us the details so you can earn your special flair!
—---------—---------—---------—---------—---------—---------
Fantasywriter’s Comp Bingo
A comparative title (comp) is a published book that is somehow similar to your book. It also must be recently published, in the same genre, and targeted at the same age group. Reading your potential comps will provide ideas on how to nail certain aspects of your story. Stating your comps will help future agents and editors figure out what sorts of people are going to love your book.
Below is a bingo card that shows how to find your comps and encourages you to read them:
​
https://preview.redd.it/oh9mc9hfr8zb1.png?width=1503&format=png&auto=webp&s=cfc2aeb11d80bf4a42d325d3100891cb0770e7ad
To complete the bingo and earn a special flair:

1. Read three books that correspond to three squares in a row (or column or diagonal) or the whole card for an even special-er flair.
2. All comps must be published in the last 5 years - because that's a typical time period used for comps.
3. Other than the publication date, there is no time limit to complete the bingo. Do the bingo card sometime between the brainstorming stage and the querying stage of your novel.
4. Down below, state the books you read, why they're your comps, and their publication date.

Need recommendations on what book fits a particular Comp Bingo Square?

• Fantasy is a good place to learn what's hip nowadays. You can start a recommendation thread if you’re looking for something particular. However, they skew heavily toward adult fantasy, with only a moderate amount of discussion on YA fantasy and almost no discussion on middle-grade fantasy. They can also be an echo chamber for the 7 most popular authors.
• Goodreads.com allows you to browse recent releases. They have lists of books and a bit of code that can link you from one book to other similar books. Here are some lists to get you started:
  • Middle-grade books published in 2023 (has all genres but the fantasy ones are easy to pick out)
  • YA books published in 2023 (has all genres but the fantasy ones are easy to pick out)
  • Most anticipated adult fantasy in 2023
• ChatGPT is decent. Give it a prompt like “Please recommend five books that are 1) adult (or YA or MG), 2) fantasy, 3) published in the last five years, and 4) have themes related to [whatever you’re writing].” It’ll report back with fitting recommendations. However, it can A) be wishy-washy at the border of YA and adult, B) only give well-known titles, and C) take a wrong guess about a book's content based on its blurb and surrounding chatter. All of the above can be solved by a quick trip to Goodreads to confirm.

Feeling too poor to fill out the bingo card?
You can buy used books on Amazon or AbeBooks.com but don't forget about the library! Nowadays, apps like Libby and Hoopla coordinate with libraries to bring free ebooks and audiobooks right to your phone. It’s a huge, free selection of books!
NOTE: I shouldn't have to say this, but please don't pirate books. Publishing houses consider how well an author's previous book sold before publishing their next book. Library sales factor into that equation but pirate downloads don't.
Don't enjoy reading?
You may be reading (and writing) in the wrong subgenre. Fantasy is large, with many different niches. It spans from cynical, stabby Grimdark to optimistic, heroic Noblebright. There are the world-spanning storylines of Epic Fantasy down to the tiny, cutesy storylines of Cozy Fantasy. There are the overly rational subgenres of LitRPG and Science Fantasy, as well as the more artsy New Weird and Fairy Tales. There are also other mediums such as graphic novels, screenplays, DMing, and video game storylines. And if the last good book you read was in grade school, have you considered that you might be partial to middle-grade and YA fantasy, even as an adult?
All these subgenres are drastically different from one another in terms of atmosphere, prose, and plot expectations. Don't assume Grimdark is your chosen subgenre just because that's what all your friends are into. Explore around a bit. You'll know you've hit the right subgenre when you start loving what you're reading.
So explore what people are reading down below and think about which books you should read to up your writing game.

Do you love writing letters and snail mail? Packing envelopes full of stickers and goodies to send to friends? Just love to send care packages or post cards from your travels, or share photos and drawings? Swatches of your favorite inks, samples from your rubber stamps, and more?
Our monthly penpal signup is for you! Every first of the month, we invite our snail mail afficionados (and anyone interested in acquiring a penpal for the first time) to sign up here and acquire new pen pal friends!
How To Participate:
Comment below and fill out this form!

A/S/L (Age/Sex/Location):
Looking for international penpals? (Yes/No):
Hobbies/Interests:
Who is your ideal penpal?:
How often do you expect to correspond?:
What topics would you like to discuss, and what would you like to send?:
Which topics are off-limits?:

Browse the other comments. See anyone you'd like begin writing to? Reply to the comment of the person you'd like to write to + introduce yourself, and send them a private message/DM to exchange mailing addresses!
DO NOT:

• Do not post your mailing address publicly on ilovestationery.
• Do not share your real name publicly on ilovestationery -- if you feel comfortable doing so in private once you've agreed upon corresponding with another member, this is fine.

After securing your new pen pal and successfully sending + receiving snail mail, we'd love to see your posts here on ilovestationery sharing the goodies or beautiful (and not so beautiful) handwriting + doodles + everything stationery! 🥳
Yay!
\* Please remember: Do not share your private mailing address unless you feel safe to do so. ilovestationery is not responsible for mishandling of private information. We fully encourage the use of a public mailbox, PO Box, etc, for participation in our weekly penpal signups.

These days I have shit days and almost ok days though those are a lot more rare. Today is a shit day and I need to get this out of my head.
Everyone tells me to move on and that I'll meet someone new eventually but how am I ever meant to move on from things when her reason for ending it was that she didn't want a relationship right now? We'd met on a dating app and both wanted a long term relationship at the time. I'd honestly rather she'd said something hurtful, something critical, something I can understand as a reason for not wanting someone anymore. Tell me you hate me, tell me it's me, tell me I'm not good enough. Don't tell me we would be a great couple but it's not what you want right now.
For the first time in 32 years I felt like I had found someone that I could actually connect with. She knew me well enough in 6 months to read me like a book, better than anyone I'd been "close friends with" for over 2 decades. For the first time in my entire life I felt seen, understood and most importantly wanted. I didnt come from a wonderful home so I didn't even feel that from my own family.
How can I imagine ever moving on when I don't even have any negative feelings towards her? There was nothing I didn't like. Sure she had her own issues but they made her who she is. I saw them and they didn't matter to me. None of them were "deal breakers" or things I couldn't see passed. Everyone has flaws, hers were part of what made her beautiful.
We shared every interest I have and now that she no longer wants to be with me I can't even escape the thoughts of her no matter what I try.
We gamed together. We played boardgames together, we played tabletop games together, she read the same novels, she used to be involved in publishing and writing while living in the UK. She lived in Japan and enjoyed anime. She watched the same series, enjoyed the same memes. I feel like I can't do anything to escape the thought of her and it just hurts. I feel like I have nothing anymore. She even worked in IT. Mental health? She had similar diagnoses to me so I can't even involve myself with that without thinking about her.
The social activities and geeky things around town that I felt comfortable enough to engage with and start dipping my toes into the water in the social scene? Guess who is already a big part of that?
Now I get to live with feeling that someone that understood me to that degree rejected that, that understood so much about who I really am and decided that wasn't what they wanted "right now".
How do I move on when every part of who I am/was just reminds me of her? One of the last things she said to me when we broke up was "If I could feel what you feel, I would. We’d be such a great couple. I hate that I don’t." How do you move on when someone you were falling in love with acknowledges that you'd be great together but doesn't want you anymore? Maybe she was just trying to be kind and let me down easier but this isn't working for me. I honestly feel like the only way forward is to change who I fundamentally am. How am I ever meant to deal with this pain if everything I enjoy that should take my mind off her just reminds me of what I lost?
When people tell me I'll heal in time, maybe, but why would I ever think that this kind of thing won't just happen again? I feel discarded and unwanted. I feel hopeless. Why should I continue to fight this when it's just going to happen again? If the only person that I connected with to that degree doesn't want to be with me then how am I ever meant to believe that it won't just be exactly the same with "the next" person if I'm even ever able to get there?
Everytime I get a notification I hope it's her, even though I know it's not and that I was the one that said I needed to go no contact as I can't handle just being friends and watching from the sidelines. I want her to be happy more than anything else but it would legitimately kill me to see her flourishing in a relationship with someone else. I know she probably will and I hope she finds happiness but I can't be around to see it. I see her smile everytime I close my eyes. I remember how happy it made me to make her laugh. I remember supporting her when she was going through tough times and her telling me how lovely it was to not feel judged and that she didn't have to mask around me.
My world has been crumbling around me and those I thought I was close to before have shown me that the other connections I thought I had are shallow and superficial. In the weeks I've been like this, only one person has actually reached out and tried to be supportive. I know that it's a two way street but I just can't deal with this much longer. I feel so absolutely alone and trapped with my thoughts with no outlet that doesn't just amplify the pain. I feel like I have no real connections and only came to realise that now. When friends tell me that things like I'll heal or it will be ok all I can see is hallow platitudes meant to make them feel like they're helping.
I'm not ok. Don't tell me it will be ok.

Hey everyone, I don't expect anyone to reply to this as it'll probably be shrouded by the other posts. Just needed somewhere to write it all down.
My life has never been good. I've had moments of happiness, even for extended periods of time, but never for longer than a few months at most. I grew up in a horrible environments in and out of CPS where my Mum finally got custody of me at age 3, after I remained in a foster home for around 6 months. My Mom tried so hard for me, even until she won her court case against my birth Father. Until I was around 12, I was raised in a fairly normal environment by myself. Most of my childhood I never endured abuse or anything like that. It wasn't until I was 12, shit got real. At that age, people deemed my problems invalid because I was so young and "it couldn't be that bad" or "other people have it worse". I could never tell my Mum because I didn't want to dissapoint her and make it seem like all her efforts were for naught. As such, I sat alone with my problems, occasionally talking to people online, but nothing helped. When I turned 13, I discovered herbal cigarettes for the first time. I would roll a herb (usually something that produced a relaxing effect or a minor hallucinagen) and smoke it on my porch when my parents weren't home. After I first tried it, I told myself, "It was a good stress reliever, but I'm not gonna do this again. It's bad for me." This cycle repeated daily for around a month. Eventually, my parents found out. Despite my worries, they weren't mad. But the dissapointment in my Mum's eyes were unreal.
This was the moment where I first lost my parents trust.
Eventually, I stopped, as my parents hid everything away from me. Because of this I never wanted to be at my house, so I was with a new group of "friends: I had made. There was this one guy, who I'll name John. John shared a lot of my common interests, and would talk to me during class and we'd hang out at the centre of our city pretty often, just us two messing around and having fun, like a bunch of 8th grade boys. This lasted for a few months. I had one of the best birthdays ever with him. Around a month afterwards, this man somehow tricked me into sending nudes to him. I'm a straight man. I thought this was another one of his jokes and we'd be chill afterwards.
I was wrong.
The next day, I went to school surrounded by weirded stares and comments on the situation. I knew then, that I seriously fucked up bad. I somehow got myself out of the situation by saying it wasn't me, but my friendship with John was diminished. Despite this, he was the only friend I actually hung out with consistently after that. I dealt with his remarks in the times in the future, which grew more and more consistent as the times went on. I knew I had to let him go after he told my principle that I had a weapon on me for self defense (which basically everyone in my city does), which nearly led to me being suspended. Eventually, I abandoned him all together, and ran with whatever little amount of pride I had left. I fell into a huge state of depression after this. Even my online friends didn't want me anymore. Someone had accused me of being a pedophile and falsified screenshots. I had no one.
One day, after school, a friend who I wasn't particularly close with wanted to hang out with me after school. He mentioned his parents had a cabinet full of alcohol.
Seeing no danger with this, I accepted without hesitation. This was my first experience with alcohol. I got wasted with him, and for the first time in months, my worries washed away. Eventually, this became a weekly occurance. I would tell my parents I was going to the park, but instead I would get drunk with my friend. This soon became the only way I could live without stress. Around this time, I became closer with an acuqainted friend and his friend group, who we'll call Terry and his friends. Terry was a chill guy. We didn't share all the same interests, but he liked me for who I was. He didn't care about my past. I became closer with his friends, too. Eventually this became my new friend group. Around the time I formed this new friend group, I stopped going drinking with my other friend. Not because I didn't want to, but because he stopped pestering me to hang out with him like he did the months before. Instead, the roles were reversed at that point. Me and this friend group started hanging out more, and more, and more.
During this time, I met my first love. It was online, but it felt like the best thing in the world. We were young, and stupid. She was beautiful. I remember first talking to her on the phone on the plane ride to my Uncle's wedding. I decided to myself that I really liked this girl. I wanted her more than anything. I remember she was the only thing I dedicated myself for. Something I felt was worth being there for. I finally felt like I had some worth for the first time in forever. I should mention this was slightly before the drinking thing. We talked, we called, we loved for two whole weeks. Towards the end, I made the stupid mistake of telling her that "if I didn't meet her I probably would've killed myself". This wasn't entirely true. I was depressed before talking to her, but I don't think I was suicidal. However, this seemed to be a problem for her. Apparently, she felt trapped. Thus, she left me. I remember having to hide my heartbreak from my parents. I shortly got over it, however, and met a new girl from my school. I realize now I didn't love her, I loved the idea of being in a relationship. I remember joking to my ex about how bad my girtlfriend at the time was. After a while, she found out I was following other girls on instagram. I denied it at first, but discovered it was an opportunity to pin a breakup on her not trusting me enough, so I used that reason and dumped her. She later told the whole school I was unloyal (which I wasn't, I didn't even talk to the girls I followed). She proceeded to post shitty photos of me on her tiktok account. I remember being fuming. If sonething so small was the worst of my problems now, I would be blissful happy right now. A few weeks afterwards, I got back with my first ex. This time, it was one sided. After just over a month, I began to look at girls in my class with desire. I completely broke it off with my ex, telling her I didn't love her anymore. Years later, I still regret this decision. She accepted this, and we remained friends. Every time I felt lonely, I would talk to her again, and we would begin talking like we were together again. This repeated for around 6 months. We kept talking until around a few months ago, where I discovered she blocked me out of nowhere. I believe it was out of respect for her new boyfriend, which I respect.
After we had broken it off for the final time, I began spending time outside of school with my new friend group. Slowly, we began to hang out more and more. I even found a new girlfriend, which I had found off of quick add on snapchat, lol. Around Christmas, things went downhill. My friends asked a personal question, which was whether my girlfriend had sent me explicit pictures (i thought it would make me sound cooler if I said yes), but then they caught me in the lie, and they immediately lost trust for me. I saw the same look in their eyes as I saw in my Mother. Distrust. I tried to salvage the friendship, but I new it wouldn't be the same ever again. It still isn't. I saw the cycle repeat itself. Like last time, I left my girlfriend because I lost interest. I began to become depressed again. I started vaping and drinking to escape the pain. I didn't care as much about my looks anymore. I remember having one of the worst heartbreaks of my life afterwards. I told myself I wouldn't date ever again. I still hung out with my friends, but we all knew inside that we didnt care for each other as much as we acted. For around a month, I lived life in a cycle. A depressed cycle. One day, I caught a glimpse of a girl in my class who was exactly my type in a woman, physically and mentally. I knew she was far too good for me. I barely talked to her, and didn't have her on any social media. I eventually got the courage one afternoon to add her on snapchat, after one of my friends gave me her snap. This was after a mutual friend informed me that she found me attractive, which I didn't buy. The night I added her, we talked, and I rememebr playing games with her and her friends. It was one of the best nights I've ever had. I fucked up my sleep sdchedule just to speak to her longer. I got to know her more, and more. She was the most beautiful and perfect girl in the world. My eternal bliss lasted for a week. I had ordered flowers to ask her out with and I had the whole thing planned out with her friends. I remember going to my first work shift, and coming home, and getting a message from her:
"Hey, I think I'm lesbian. It's not your fault, I promise. I'm so sorry."
I was heartbroken, I kept tryna suffocated myself over and over again. I asked her why, what her thought process was. She eventually tired of my questions and she said that I was being a dick about it. I ended up sending her a message later that day telling her that I was sorry for being a dick about it (I still don't know what I did wrong). I didn't go to school the next day. I remember avoiding her hard for the whole rest of the school term. I was insanely depressed afterwards, the worst I've ever felt. she was the best thing that ever happened to me. I tried weed for the first time afterwards, it was mesmerising. It nearly compared to the feeling of being with her. But it was only a temporary escape. As the weeks went on, I became more and more depressed. Then, my parents found out I smoked weed, and my own mother told the police (I still dont know if thats morally right and im overthinking it) and my whole family found out and now hates me. I'm scheduled to see them tomorrow. I'm being illegally overowkred by my job, and I can;t do anything about it. I didn;t show up today, I'm probably already fired. I tried a cigarette today, it was one last thing I wanted to know before I pass. I went to one last convension today, and asked God for a sign to keep living. I ended up meeting a girl, asking for her number, and she gave me her insta and messaged me "You really thought I'd date you? Not tryna be mean".
In three hours, it'll turn midnight. I'll go to a store, find nitrous oxide, and overdose on that. Asphyxiation isn't that painful. I have nothing at all.

Like the title says, my (22F) boyfriend (22M) is extremely rude and yells at me for pretty much nothing. We have been together for a year and a half. He has always been short fused and he is often irritated, even by little things that do not bother me at all. He expresses his anger through yelling at me or being extremely rude and saying whatever comes to his mind, without the slightest bit of consideration that his words might hurt me.
Other than his anger issues though, I would like to add, he is pretty much perfect. He is sweet, caring, goofy, he loves me, listens to me and is a gentleman, except that he changes into a completely different person when he is even slightly mad. He is neurodivergent though, so I try to understand him most of the time. However, this has been really hurting me. I am a highly sensitive person and completely dislike rude people. If anyone else in my life would treat me the way he does when he is angry, I would totally cut them off my life or at least distance myself from them. But its him. The person I love with my whole heart.
Yesterday, we had an amazing day together. We had lots of fun, we sang songs, kissed and cuddled for hours, laughed till our stomachs hurt and played video games together. I was really happy. We both work part time jobs and have early morning classes too, so after our day together, we left for the job and then to our respective homes (We don't live together yet). By 10 pm, I was extremely tired and was fighting to keep my eyes open. He works later than me so I was waiting for him to finish up so we could say good night to each other. We always talk on the phone before going to sleep.
However, since the last few days, he told me that he's been feeling sleep deprived, is tired throughout the day and has no energy in his body, so we'd decided to not extend our late-night calls and try to get at least 6 hours of sleep, since we have to get up at 5 am each day for our classes (We study the same course, and that's how we met). Even yesterday, when we were together, he had told me he was tired and felt sleepy.
Sooo, last night, I could barely keep my eyes open but didn't want to go to sleep without talking to him. So I left him a text saying "Too tired, feel like I'll fall asleep. Do call me when its time for you to sleep so we can say goodnight. I'll probably won't hear the text notification" he saw the text and didn't reply.
I actually fell asleep and he didn't call me. He left me a text saying his phone was low on battery. I somehow woke up because of the sound of the notification and asked him if he wanted to talk. He said yes, and I called him. Now, I didn't want to keep him up all night. All I wanted was to ask him how work went and say goodnight. It probably would've taken five minutes. Ffs, I was tired too and I'd WOKEN up from my sleep to talk to him for a few minutes.
As soon as he answers the phone, I asked him how work went and he yells "Didn't you say you were tired?" and I am like... "What's wrong with you? Why are you mad?" and he says "I am not mad, but you said you were sleepy" and I reply "I am, but I also wanted to say good night to you" and the conversation goes on like:
"But we had decided to go to sleep early" he YELLS this like he is talking to a child.
"Dude I just wanted to say good night. Why did you say I could call if you didn't wanna talk?"
"Oh, so I shouldn't have picked up the call? Is that what you wanted?"
"No, but all I am trying to do here is have a simple, short conversation. Why do you wanna argue with me?"
"I do not wanna argue, I thought we were going to go to bed early"
"Alright then, hang up and go to sleep"
he argues back "NO, YOU HANG UP"
"Don't do this right now okay? If you don't wanna talk to me, I'll just go. I'll even deactivate my socials and won't annoy you again" I realize this was dramatic but I was extremely hurt at this point, he was constantly yelling at me.
"Do whatever tf you want to do. I don't care"
"I am hanging up too"
"I don't care"
So I hung up and cried myself to sleep. I was hoping he would call me back but he didn't. Not even once. I think he was irritated because he was running on lack of sleep, but that doesn't mean he gets to take his frustration out on me. Even I get irritated at times, but I still try to be gentle with him, to not accidentally say or do anything that might hurt him. But he doesn't consider me or my feelings at all. After the call, he probably blissfully went to sleep, while I couldn't, and just an hour ago, I had been fighting to keep my eyes open. He didn't even care. He probably didn't even realize how hurt I was by his sudden change in behavior. I even deactivated my instagram.
This morning, I waited for him to apologize for being rude to me but he hasn't yet. He replied normally to a snap I had sent him before the argument and has vanished since then. Is it too much to expect if I just want him to realize his mistake here and say sorry for hurting me? If he really just wanted to sleep, he could've told me in a better way. A simple text saying "We'll talk later, I am really tired right now. Good night" would've been perfect. It was so easy. But he decided he would rather yell at me and make me feel stupid and like I am asking for too much by asking five minutes of his time. After this I will never feel comfortable asking for his time or calling him.
Now, should I wait for him to apologize?
Or start behaving normal again since he did do what he did out of irritation and frustration? But does that give him a free pass to treat me horribly and make me cry?
Or should I send him a long paragraph expressing how he hurt me and how he should've communicated better? But shouldn't he realize it on his own? Every time we fight, I always run upto him expressing my feelings and explaining how he hurt me, but this time, I just don't feel like it. Sometimes, I want to be understood too.
What should I do?
TLDR: Boyfriend yelled at me and made me feel stupid for wanting to have a conversation with him and now is acting as if everything's normal. How do I deal with this?

Many players are not excited to talk about lands. It’s arguably the most boring part of MTG.
But we should look more closely at them because they account for around 40% of your main deck.
Think about that. 40% of the cards you will see while playing MTG are lands. Yet, we hardly see articles talking about this huge chunk of your deck.
I get it. Lands are boring compared to exciting creatures and spells. However, if you do the work of analyzing the lands of a format, you will gain an advantage over the competition because most players don’t do it.
To help you get started with this process, I’ve written this guide as a basic intro for how to think about the meta by looking at its lands.

Only Basic Lands

Imagine a format where the only lands available are:
Plains\ Island\ Swamp\ Mountain\ Forest
Wut?!
You’re probably wondering, “Why are we doing this?”
Well, it turns out one of the best ways to learn card game theory is to simplify the game by a lot. This helps you to see concepts more clearly.
For example, one of the best poker books is Play Optimal Poker. Poker is a very complex game so the author sets up a toy game with just three cards: Jack, Queen, and King.
The simple toy game has helped many people become better poker players including myself.
MTG is even more complex than poker so we’re going to set up toy metagames to help us understand the theory.
Ok, with that out of the way, in this “basic land only” format, which decks are more likely to succeed?
The best decks will probably be mono-colored.
If you try to play a two-color deck with 12 mountains and 12 forests, it won't be very consistent.
From a meta perspective, to play two colors, the cards in your deck need to be much stronger than the cards in a mono-color deck. This is because consistency is crucial to winning games. If you can't cast your spells due to a poor mana base, you'll lose. To overcome this drawback, you need to be compensated with a much higher power level from your nonland cards.
Historically, we've seen this scenario before. In a format without dual lands, players had to ensure their two-color decks were powerful enough to justify the inconsistent mana base.
Check out the winning deck of Pro Tour Osaka 2002: Simic Madness. Its mana base is an abomination. 🤣
13 Forest\ 9 Island\ 1 Tarnished Citadel
Tarnished Citadel can give either color of mana but it deals 3 damage to you each time!
But the deck did well because the Simic cards were powerful enough to overcome the crappy mana base.
I wouldn’t try this at home though unless you are a very advanced player or the deck has proven itself in competitive tournaments.
We all have our biases. We want to believe the cards we’re playing are more powerful than they really are. This leads many of us into playing suboptimal mana bases that are not worth it.
In a format with only basic lands, just stick to mono-color decks.

Adding Allied Color Pain Lands

Let’s add these five lands to our toy metagame.
Adarkar Wastes (W/U)\ Underground River (U/B)\ Sulfurous Springs (B/R)\ Karplusan Forest (G)\ Brushland (G/W)
What types of decks are going to do well in this format?
Now we can play two colors. We don’t need a huge power discrepancy over mono-color decks because the two-color decks became more consistent.
A two-color deck that used to be Tier 2 could very well become the best deck in the new format. That’s the power of a more consistent mana base. It increases your win rate by a lot.
Also, note that we only added the allied color pain lands. We did not add the enemy color versions like Llanowar Wastes (B/G).
Therefore, if you’re choosing between an aggro Boros or Gruul deck, pick Gruul unless you have clear evidence that the Boros power level is much higher.
This type of meta change, where only certain color pairs get a dual land, has happened in past Standard formats. Sometimes it’s like this example, where only allied colors get a boost. Other times, it’s a hodgepodge of additions like three allied colors and three enemy colors.
What you’ll find in these situations is the Tier 1 two-color decks are usually the ones with a dual land. For the lacking color pairs, the lower consistency is often too hard to overcome.
What about thinking in terms of the three main deck archetypes: aggro, midrange, and combo?
How do the archetypes stack up against each other?
When analyzing the metagame, check if the multi-color lands come into play untapped on turn one. Pain lands do, which benefits aggro. Aggro decks want to win with aggressive creatures on turn one.
On the other hand, control decks want to play longer games and they usually don’t have important cards to cast on turn one.
Also, these are pain lands so they cause pain. Aggro doesn’t mind. They are designed to kill before the life loss matters.
But the lands are a nonbo in control. As a control player, you don’t want to have a pain land while facing an aggro deck. The pain land damages you, making it easier for the aggro deck to kill you.
Midrange decks are also at a disadvantage, though not as much as control decks. The difference between midrange and control is length of games. Control decks will play more turns, which means taking more damage from the lands.
Therefore, if you’re comparing an aggro Gruul deck, a midrange Selesnya deck, and an Azorius control deck with equal power levels, go with aggressive strategy.

Replacing Pain Lands with Scry Lands

What if, instead of allied pain lands, we replaced them with the allied scry lands?
Temple of Enlightenment (W/U)\ Temple of Deceit (U/B)\ Temple of Malice (B/R)\ Temple of Abandon (G)\ Temple of Plenty (G/W)
We’ve actually had Standard formats where these lands were among the best lands.
In this metagame, aggro takes a big hit. Aggro is predicated on having aggressive one-drops. These lands are a hinderance to that strategy because they enter tapped.
Midrange and control have zero to few important plays on turn one. These decks thrive in a meta full of tapped lands like scry lands.

Pain Lands + Scry Lands

Let’s add back the pain lands. In fact, let’s include the enemy-colored versions of both pain lands and scry lands. So now, our meta looks like this:
10 Pain Lands\ 10 Scry Lands
Now we have something that looks like an actual Standard metagame.
How should we think about this format?
I think this is where midrange has the advantage over aggro and control.
Aggro doesn’t want to play scry lands. Control doesn’t want to play pain lands.
But midrange can use both lands effectively. It does not have important turn one plays like control so it does not mind the scry land drawback. And while pain lands are better for aggro decks, midrange are okay with them. Midrange games end faster than control games, so it won't take as much damage from pain lands.
Also, based on recent times, midrange tends to get good lifegain cards, which neutralizes the damage from pain lands. In the current Standard format, we see these midrange lifegain cards doing well in the format:
Deep Cavern Bat\ Sheoldred, the Apocalypse\ Tranquil Frillback\ Gix's Command\ Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal
Control decks can also have good lifegain cards but not as many as midrange, at least based on recent history. The Wandering Emperor is a top card in Standard. It works well in control decks by providing lifegain to survive against aggro.
With all the additional lands, you can now play eight dual lands in a two-color midrange deck. Going from one to two colors generally results in a higher power level. Therefore, if you’ve been playing a mono-color deck, it’s time to ask yourself if it’s worth it to add a color.
You’ll lose some consistency but not much since there are now eight dual lands. Oftentimes, it’s worth it to add a color to your deck when new dual lands enter the format.

Five Tri-Lands Enter the Meta

Let’s add the five shard-colored tri-lands to the mix. So now, our meta is this:
10 Pain Lands\ 10 Scry Lands
Spara's Headquarters (G/W/U)\ Raffine's Tower (WB)\ Xander's Lounge (U/B/R)\ Ziatora's Proving Ground (B/G)\ Jetmir's Garden (G/W)
Hm… this is starting to look like the current Standard format.
We have a lot of options for multi-color. You really have to have a good reason to play just one color.
Also, three-color decks become a real possibility. I would stick with midrange or control decks because the tri-lands enter tapped.
Given that this meta is similar to current Standard, we can make some observations regarding the Tier decks. The top decks with three or more colors have a matching tri- land or they have another land(s) that allows them to consistently play many colors.
Esper Midrange has Raffine's Tower.
Domain is a base Bant deck that uses Spara's Headquarters. The deck only splashes a few late game cards in the fourth and fifth colors. You can often get away with an extra color or two if you’re playing base green because it is the color of mana fixing.
The rest of the top decks with three or more colors include Temur Analyst (Land Combo), Bant Toxic, and Legends.
Temur Analyst is able to play three-colors even without the matching tri land (in this case, matching sac tri-land) because it plays 30 lands.
Bant Toxic has The Seedcore. Even with this land, the deck has the worst mana out of the top decks in Standard. It is a Tier 2 or 3 deck. If it had a better mana base, it might be a Tier 1 deck.
The Legends deck gets away with playing many colors because it plays 29 lands and has the five-color land, Plaza of Heroes. The deck can play 29 lands because it uses legendary lands like Otawara, Soaring City that can act as spells.
Notice there are no aggro decks with three colors or more except for Bant Toxic. The tapped nature of the tri-lands makes it prohibitive to play three-color aggro. Bant Toxic is an exception because it has an untapped colored land that pumps your creatures (The Seedcore).
This quick analysis of the current meta was more advanced than I intended but I hope it demonstrates how much lands affect a metagame.
You don't see Jeskai, Sultai, Abzan, or Mardu doing well because it's tough to play three colors without a tri-land. The exception is Temur because it can play 30 lands.
The analysis above is also important because Standard rotates on August 2, 2024. On that date, the new expansion Bloomburrow will be released and four sets will leave the format.
Many people may want to keep playing a three-color deck like Esper post-rotation. Maybe they found success with Esper in the recent past. Or they like the play patterns of the Esper deck.
However, I would advise against that because all the Esper tri-lands including the sac lands will leave the format. This means Esper will be much weaker unless Bloomburrow has an Esper tri-land.
This seems very unlikely based on current set information. From this wiki, Bloomburrow has “double cycles”, which are two-color combinations, not three.
Let me save you some time. Don’t build three-color decks for post-rotation. You will build bad decks and lose games.
(I'm actually writing this as a warning to myself. I have a weakness for dipping into an additional color when I shouldn't.)
Go with two colors because there are many dual lands. If you really want to play three colors, look at green because it has mana fixing.
Also, since there are many dual lands, I don’t recommend building mono-color decks as a general rule.

Pop Quiz

I hope you found this basic guide helpful. Let's take a quiz to give you some practice for analyzing the format in terms of lands.
For the following toy metagames, ask yourself, “How does it affect aggro, midrange and control?”
Answer the question in your head for each meta. This is very important for learning and self improvement.
Then, click the spoiler section to see my thoughts.
Meta #1: Fast Lands
Example: Razorverge Thicket
This meta has the 10 fast lands. All the two-color pairs are represented. Fast lands enter tapped unless you control two or fewer other lands.
This meta favors aggro. Fast lands are good on turns 1, 2, and 3, which is the sweet spot for aggro. The lands are not good with cards that cost four or more. Midrange and control have more of those cards than aggro.
Meta #2: Slow Lands
Example: Deserted Beach
This meta has the 10 slow lands. All the two-color pairs are represented. Slow lands enter tapped unless you control two or more other lands.
This meta favors midrange and control. Slow lands are bad on turns 1 and 2. They are great afterwards. Midrange and control have more cards that cost three or more than aggro.
Meta #3: Creature Lands
Example: Restless Vents
This meta has 10 creature lands like the one above. All the two-color pairs are represented. The creature lands in this meta all enter tapped.
You may think this helps aggro because the land can attack, but midrange and control also get a land that can block. Having a turn one play is so important for aggro that it gets dinged in this meta.

im honestly embarrassed writing about this in reddit. but i havent had a single person to rant to since my bf broke up with me two weeks ago. ive had a crush on this man since i was 12. im almost a senior now. when we got together last year, it was like i was dreaming. i couldnt believe i was really with the guy id liked for 5 years. everything was going AMAZING i mean i had never been happier. we spent the entire summer together. he snuck me over to his house we watched movies and ate dinner together. our first kiss was on the top of a camper while we were stargazing. i mean a literal DREAM. my last boyfriend of two years never took me on a single date, so i thought i had found the one (i still believe this) when i didnt have to constantly ask him to treat me good. hes so sweet and so thoughtful. constantly told me how pretty i was or how grateful he was for me. i was unbelievably grateful for him too. i still am. after the summer ended he moved away for college and we had to do long distance for a little while. hed still come over during holidays and random weekends including my birthday. i was still happy. long distance did nothing to us but bring us closer. constantly anticipating the next time wed see eachother, facetimeing, watching movies otp, etc. this summer started earlier for him than me cause college. about three weeks earlier. we were both so excited to see eachother for more than a week. to spend this summer together. my depression got worse because i was failing in school, girls were starting drama, mine and my mom's relationship started falling apart and my bf was the only person i could talk to about it. but i didnt. my worst habit is bottling things up, or expressing my feelings in different ways than my words. i started going randomly non verbal with him. i started picking little fights and wouldnt take responsibility. he shouldnt have had to deal with those things just because I was going through shit. i brought him down. about a week before we broke up we got in an argument and i didnt take responsibility when i absolutely should have. that was his last straw. and then that entire week leading up to the breakup he was dry. i knew it was coming. he didnt want to hang out with me he didnt want to call me. i spent the whole time preparing. i spent that whole week telling myself "itll be okay youll be okay" and then it happened. i begged and begged a begged. i embarrassed myself honestly. i didnt want him to give up. but he had every right to. the last thing he said to me gave me some kind of hope. he mentioned that we can be together again in the future, he just doesnt know how long. im not 100% he meant that but im trying to be hopeful as well as move on. its hard. we had plans. for now im trying to better myself. not just for him, but for me too. im trying to figure out how to deal with certain feelings so i dont bring people down like that. i love him. so so so much. i probably will forever. he deserves more than what i gave him. todays his birthday. its hard. i want to talk to him i want to know if he still thinks about me. i want him to know i still think about him. every second of the day. so even though he will never read this, happy birthday :) i hope its a good one. you deserve the best.

Me and my sm have always gotten along and I’ve always looked at her like she was my mom. Her and my father have been together for the past 9 years so I grew up with her. She has 2 of her own kids who we are going to call Haley and Diane. Haley was adopted by my sm. Diane is her birth kid. I don’t see Haley a lot but Diane I’ve known her since she was 3 so she is my sister and I love her so much but she irritates me from the way I get treated because of her around. You see I live with my grandmother due to the simple fact my mom was lousy and my dad wanted nothing to do with me because of my mom. My dad’s side of the family judges me all the time because of my mom. Now don’t get me wrong I love my mom but she’s not a good mom or frankly a good person. That’s why I think of my sm as a mom! However recently me and sm had a falling out for a while. Around 6 years ago I asked to move in with them since Diane lived there I figured it would also be nice for me to be apart of the family. My dad said no we can’t handle 2 kids. Jumping back to today my grandma sold our house and is moving in with her bf so instead of asking my dad again I asked my bf and his mom instead. The falling out happened with my sm because of my bfs mom. My mom, dad, and my bfs mom, who we will call Amelia, ran into each other at a festival. You see Amelia and my dad went to school together and were in the same friend group but never saw each other after. Amelia and others from the class had a nickname for my dad. So Amelia saw my dad and called out his nickname. My dad had laughed and they had a good trip down memory lane. My sm however was very jealous on the high horse she’s been riding since her “promotion” (she had literally just got promoted to county detective, who cares) wasn’t happy about their interactions at all. She screamed at Amelia and threw a temper tantrum like a 3 year old. (This is true because I’ve seen her do this countless amount of times). Flash forward to December my sm told my aunt that Amelia is trashy! And so forth. Like get over her that was like 2 months ago and she’s doing so much for me. Simply she just can’t be happy. So when I found this out I didn’t talk to her or my dad for he is letting her act like this to me and my bf. The situation is a lot worse then how it sounds and there’s a lot more to it but that’s not for todays story. Don’t worry that’s all relevant to the current problem. 3 weeks ago Haley graduated college and me Diane and my sm were walking toward Haley her husband and daughter. I had asked my sm if I should get her tickets to my graduation. She goes oh… so about that me and Diane can’t make it. I stopped!! For the past year we have been arguing about my graduation because there best friends are getting married and my dad and sm are the only ones in the party. They almost didn’t come. And there wedding is in a different state 8 hours away. I looked at my sm and said “Wait are you serious!?” She goes unfortunately yes. Diane has 6th grade move up day the same day and time. WHAT LIKE 6TH GRADE NOT SENIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL OR ANYTHING, NOT A BIG DEAL!!! She also continued to say Your dad and I can’t be in both places at once so your dad’s going to your graduation, and I’m going to Diane’s move up day. So now not only is the person I looked at like a mom not coming to my graduation but neither is my little sister. I have tears writing this. Mind you she also sprung this on me at my sisters graduation so I couldn’t have a reaction until I got home later to where I cried to my bf. So now this is where I decided to give her a week or two to think about how stupid that sounds. I had checked in 3 days ago asking if she is still not coming. She had said No I cant remember Diane’s move up day. Your dad still is. This is where I start to get pissed. So now it’s revenge. I emailed my school and got 4 extra tickets. On top of the original 6 your get. I am bringing the person she hates the most. Amelia. Not just her but my bfs aunt and little cousin who I have become really close with. Just so I can piss her off and make her jealous that they went and she didn’t especially because my dad will be there! So am I the asshole for having my bfs family come see me graduate out of spite of my stepmom?

Hi there,
Please brace yourself, this is going to be a long one and I'm going to try and be as objective and as eloquent as I possibly can. P.S I've never used Reddit before but have seen these type of content reshared on YouTube.
Alright. Let's go! So, my husband and I dated 8 years ago, and 2 years ago we decided to get married. For the story's sake, let's call him Dennis (31). Dennis was from a different country and we are the same race of people (different nationalities). He is the love of my life, I love him dearly - he is everything little me dreamed out, he's... im tearing up just thinking about how much I love him, there are no words to describe.
Now, Dennis parents rarely visited when we were dating, most of the getting to know my in-laws/introduction to the fam happened online and I don't know why I didn't see the things clearer (probably jacked up on love) that I brushed things off.
I made it clear, from our third date to Dennis that I don't want kids, never wanted them and its not something I'm going to change my mind on. I wanted him to know this from the get-go so we don't hit roadblocks and him trying to persuade me... yada yada yada. He eventually told me that the more thoughts he "thunked" on this subject, the more it made sense to not have kids and so, great! We started dating and the rest was history.
Now, about 6 years in, I went on a vacation with his family cause' well, I wanted to know them better and on Christmas Day, Dennis's father, we'll call him Tom (Ancient), sat me down in front of his 2 brothers and wife and told me how disappointment he was in me that I was not going to have kids. He then followed it up with and I'm quoting "A woman's duty is to have kids...." I blocked the rest out because I was TRAUMATIZED by these words. His family also weren't vaccinated (anti-vax) and everyone ended up getting Covid. I have Asthma (like rushed into the ICU twice and put on a ventilator bad) and though Dennis and I were vaccinated, the others weren't.
This trip ended up being one of the major hurdles both Dennis and I had to navigate through because he did not say anything, he didn't stand up for me, he basically didn't do anything. Though, he told me to not let he's father's words affect me cause who cares what he thinks and that at the end of the day it was our lives, he said and I quote "It's word fodder, tune it out" but I couldn't let it go and my view was that I was not close enough to his dad for him to be talking to me about my reproductive organs/purpose. We took a mini break but got back together with Dennis agreeing to be more aware and present when he's father pulls another one of this episodes.
Fast forward to current day - my younger sister and Dennis younger brother got together during our wedding (A whole nuanced convo for another day) and I was pissed because we were really going through a tough time financially and this mini wedding was supposed to be something nice for the both of us. My in-laws attended the wedding and added so many decorations on top of the ones Dennis and I had, my MIL put fairy lights on the tables and they had 2 huge flags of the country Dennis was from and we didn't see any of this because we were getting ready. Even during the ceremony when it was time for one of my cousin to give her speech, they hijacked the whole thing by doing some ceremony of their own. I decided to let it go because... well, Dennis and I were both so fucking tired. My wedding day was the saddest day of my life. When I look back, I cannot recall a single happy memory - I know they are there but I just... I can't look past what they did, ya know?
Anyway, 2 days after the wedding, my in laws threw a dinner for Dennis and I, we attended and Tom starts expressing his grievances as to his experience at our wedding and starts telling me that I need to start distancing myself from my family because I have now become a part of theirs - I told him no, although I am a part of his family, I will NEVER ever stop being involved in mine (I'm the oldest sister). He then proceeded to call me "damaged" because I was raised in a broken family because my parents are separated. Dennis stepped in and he quickly got shut down with Tom yelling verbal abuse at him. By then, even I knew it was time to shut our pie holes and live to fight another day.
Fast forward to present day, we have both moved to a different country and are thriving. We've never been more financially stable (I got my dream job...pinch me!), we go on coffee dates, life is good except... except for when Tom comes over to stay. He comes over twice a month and is constantly talking about masculinity and femininity and how we ought to implement it in our lives. One time, Dennis tried to stop him and Tom almost got physically abusive so I decided that instead of hiding behind my husband, I shall speak and let him know exactly what I was thinking. The next time he came over, he started talking about the same thing, imagine someone regurgitating podcast bro word vomit over and over again on an endless echo chamber? Yeah - the same talking points! So i told him that he is free to implement whatever he wants in his household but in ours, we do things differently. Tom asked me to explain and I did and he called Dennis a "simp". Dennis was not in the vicinity of the conversation at the time.
Oh yeah, one time when he came to visit, I went to the gym and I was on the treadmill doing 12-3-30 and fighting for my life when Tom decided to jump on the back of the treadmill to startle me. I had my fist rounded to punch him but stopped when I realized who it was. Slight detour, could someone explain to me what thought process goes through one's brain before deciding to jump someone?
Jokes aside, the last weekend, my sister called Dennis to mediate a fight she'd been having with my Brother-in-law. I didn't want to be a part of it but eavesdropped anyway - their fight was about my brother-in-law not feeling like he's doing feminine work when he cleans the house etc and he blamed my sister for being career driven, he said it was too masculine. Dennis in his infinite patience was trying to mediate the dumpsterfire (god bless him) but it all come to a close when brother-in law told my sister "no man is ever going to love you if you're this masculine". She immediately hung up (so proud!)
Now, she wants to break up with him but he refuses to answer her call.
Fast forward to the present day, Tom constantly shares videos to the family whatsapp group about men silencing women and how feminism is bad, blah, blah, blah... and how birth rates are falling. It's a constant thing. I've. muted and archived the family group (You gotta love technology).
Tom has also recently wrote a book on the importance of being a dad and the role a man should play within the family dynamic. It's horrendous! I read the draft and it was like watching a dead animal being plowed through miles and miles of tar. I'm not just talking about his ideologies, I'm talking about his writing style. It sounded very similar to my diary entries when I was 9 (I might come off as a little standoff-ish but I assure you, I am of quite intelligent).
Between being called "damaged", my wedding day, verbal abuse inflicted on my sister and being jumped on the treadmill (Look at that, I too do have infinite patience) I decided it was time to instead of putting band-aids on a burning fire to find a permanent solution to end this once and for all. I told Dennis that he is free to fly back to visit his parents whenever he wants to and on special occasions but I don't think I can at least for now. I told him about how I don't feel safe around Tom and his brothers and their ideologies and i implored him to understand, he gave me a huge hug and said he does and he will never force me to spend our hard earned savings and time and energy on something I don't want (What a catch!). I can't help but feel guilty because well, Dennis grew up around his family and though he spent more time in my country surrounded by my family, his family is still his. Will this create a rift in our marriage? Is this how resentment starts? I want nothing more than to see my husband laugh his heart out, and experience life for all the wonderful things it is. I have to know if he's not going to be thinking of his family and how he misses them and wants to be with them, etc. So, reddit, AITA?
For some more context, I grew up in a fairly progressive neighborhood and hosuehold. Ngl, I grew up extremely privileged and my dad often sent us to summer camps through the British Council to expand our worldview. At home, we often engaged in fierce debates around religion, worldview, politics and drugs. Hint, my dad is actually a fan of legalizing it. :) My parents eventually separated as most of ours do but I don't think we are "damaged" because of it. <3
There, I hope there is enough context.

Let's play a game, you and I.
Find a mirror and stand in front of it; naked, if it's all the same to you. Before you protest, humor me a little. Look at your body - examine it, really get in there with those beady little eyes of yours - and then, when you've gotten past the absurdity of staring at your nude reflection, count all the bones you think you can see.
If you reached the high double-digits, congratulations! You should probably eat more. A lack of food is unhealthy.
But, let's say you're on a diet. I was, once. Before everything went to shit, I was a fat fuck stowed away in the back of someone else's house, glued to their computer, scouring social media and getting angry over the pruned, fabricated, perfect lives everyone else seemed to have. I was angry - so angry that I decided that I wanted to do something about it, so - maybe like you - I went on a diet. My goal? Get thin, get control of my life, wrest it away from the clutches of impending doom, make something of my time on this planet, maybe find a purpose.
Life, however, is funny - or cruel, depending on how full your glass is. Whenever I tried dieting, something always happened to get in the way. My favorite haunt started having trivia nights - unlimited nachos. Jake, a good friend of mine, had a punch card for discounts on sub sandwiches. I once got a piece of mail that told me I won a lifetime supply of corn chips (a scam, thankfully). I started to think that life had it out for me.
Little did I know, life had it out for everyone.
We lost electricity first. As the heat waves picked up, our access to cool air was cut short. Humankind started dropping like flies, by the thousands and even more in the deserts. Some of us were able to adapt before things got too bad, but when the water started to disappear, sweating was akin to suffering.
When we reached a fever pitch in our panic, we got creative. We started breaching bunkers, ripping the rich out of their hovels and taking everything they had. Some were so desperate that they took the slogan "eat the rich" to where you're probably thinking they did. Magic trick time. Were you thinking cannibalism? What a freak.
Not you; them. They did take it literally.
Food got scarce. Starvation and dehydration set in. We lost communication with people in distant places and it felt like everything was truly coming to an end.
Do you like anecdotes?
One time, I was on scavenging duty with a friend of mine. Not Jake, unfortunately - he died two days into the apocalypse after getting hit by a bus - but this guy? He was alright. Anyway, we found a small mom-and-pop shop on a street corner. The face of the shop was dusty and beige, couldn't see through the windows but, somehow, it was untouched, or so we thought. When we broke the windows and slipped inside, the shelves were almost all empty.
My friend found a wrapped Twinkie and showed it to me. "Hey, look," he said, "found you a little treat, skinny."
When I tell you this Twinkie looked like a piece of shit only the Toxic Avenger would push out of his ass, I mean it. Heavily discolored, easily broken apart, and the only thing separating me from an impossibly complex stench of decay was this razor-thin wrapper. It must've sat in the heat for ages, horrendously warping from one of America's most beloved snack cakes into a gangrenous mockery of what could pass as food.
"Nah," I said, putting on a fake smile, "I'm on a diet."
It was a joke. It was supposed to be a joke, but like I said - life is funny.
Our heads both turned when we heard a loud thud across the room. Of course, we were shaken, didn't know what to expect, so we approached it cautiously, guns drawn, and when we had sight of the cause, we were stunned. Sitting on the floor on its side was a massive can of ranch beans. It must've weighed close to five or six pounds. Even crazier and more confusing? It was room temp, like it just appeared out of thin air, untouched by the heat.
I tested something a few days later. We were running out of bottled water. Somebody made a joke about drinking piss - not to me, just to another person, but I responded that I was on a diet. Fifteen minutes later, we had a group come back from scavenging with the widest smiles, dragging a full pallet of water bottles stacked six feet high on a pallet jack.
I started doing it more surreptitiously, any time that we needed to eat or drink something, and I learned that there were rules. For example, saying it multiple times in a row didn't do anything, the gift was singular. The number of people around me or the loudness of the statement didn't matter - the gifts were random in quantity. Abuse it, and the gift would come rotten or with some other risk.
Once I had a grasp on it, we lived well, at least for a time. When the radiation storms started to sweep through, a lot of people started getting sick, including me, and there was no gift for saying I was feeling ill. It was all so sudden and severe, and it took me before almost anyone else. Real bummer, if you ask me, because I never got to learn what happened to the rest of my group. Part of me hopes they made it out of that place and found a way to survive. If you happen to find them, tell them I said hello.
57, by the way. I counted 57 bones when I looked. Just thought you should know.
Original prompt by u/MaliciousOnions. You can (probably) find this and more on StoriesInTheStatic.

Hi. It's me, Polaris. Some of you might remember me, some might not. Some of my better works include Down on the Street, Holliday: Distraught, Incident, and Checking In. I also created the Destiny Journals Wiki that nobody uses anymore. Though I don't blame anyone for forgetting; I've been MIA for months by virtue of making a new account because I wanted a different username. Anyway. I'm back now, probably just as inconsistently as ever. With The Final Shape closer than ever, there's no better time for me to come back home. Enjoy!
The Black Garden
Polaris stared up at the Black Heart as it dissipated, a slack grip on the Ace of Spades. "It's over," he said breathlessly.
Daedalus hovered at his Guardian's side. "You've cleansed the Black Garden again, Polaris. Thanks to you, the Vex can't interfere with our work in connecting to Crow."
"Well done," Osiris said over comms. "When you return, I would suggest you make your final preparations before we enter the portal. We have no idea what awaits on the other side."
"Yeah. Yeah, I'll do that. See you soon, Osiris." Polaris cut off the connection as he returned to his sister Riven's gateway.
The Last City
Polaris assembled Fireteam Apex in the now-abandoned ruins of the Old Tower Plaza. "It's good to see you two again," he said warmly as the trio group-hugged.
"You have no idea," Hecate agreed as they stepped away from each other. "It's been so long since we were all together outside of defending the City from them." She glared up at the few Pyramid ships that had appeared above the City. The sounds of distant gunfire from the battles currently raging on echoed through the evening.
"So why now?" Nemea-13 asked. "You called us here for a reason, Polaris. Is something up?"
"You could say that." Polaris turned and faced the City. "Osiris and Mara are making good progress on opening the portal. It's only a matter of time now before we can go through and put an end to this. So, I want to make a request."
"And what's that?"
The Hunter sighed, looking back at his fireteam. "Don't come with me."
Hecate froze, taken aback. "What?"
"What are you saying?" Nemea asked, his voice cracking.
"You heard me. When I follow Crow into the portal, I don't want you to follow me. Stay here. Defend the City. Protect the people. Zavala and Ikora have already established that they'll be joining me in there. The City will need someone to stay behind and keep it safe between when we go and when we get back. That's what I want from you two. Stay behind, keep the people safe." Polaris looked back at the City. "I don't know what'll happen in there, but it'll be the most dangerous mission in Guardian history. I won't allow you two to die on me. If anyone's gotta die to stop the Witness, it'll be me. No ands, ifs, or buts."
"Oh, hell no." Hecate's confusion turned into a rising anger, though there were tears welling up in her violet eyes. "You do not get to play the 'heroic sacrifice' card on me. Not a chance." She held Polaris's hands in hers. "I won't lose you too. Especially not knowing I could've been there to stop it. I only have one life left, Polaris. I want to spend it with my brothers. Both of my brothers," she finished, looking back at Nemea.
"We're coming with you, and none of us are dying in there," Nemea agreed, pulling the smaller Guardians into a bear hug. "And there'll be no ands, ifs, or buts about that."
Polaris leaned his head on Nemea's shoulder. "This has to be my burden to bear, I know it. I think deep down, I've always known it. I started all this by killing the Black Heart. And Elsie said-"
"Screw what Elsie said," Hecate interrupted. "She may think you're the linchpin to everything, that this is your destiny. But you know what I've always known? Guardians don't fight and win against impossible odds alone. We stopped Oryx all those years ago as a team, the three of us. We'll do the same to the Witness."
"But-"
"No buts, remember?" Nemea hugged his siblings even tighter. "You're not alone, Polaris. Never have been, never will be."
Polaris gave Hecate and Nemea a tearful smile. "Alright. Alright, you guys. I get it. You're coming with me. Please let me go now before you crush a rib or something." He took a deep breath as he finally escaped Nemea's grasp. "What I said still stands, though. There's no telling what'll happen in there. We should all say our goodbyes to our other loved ones. Just in case. And get ready for the fight of our lives."
"Agreed." Hecate nodded. "These old weapons that Shaxx reprised for us should do well, but we'll need all the gear we can carry."
"Right. I'll see you guys when Mara and Crow finally make that connection, then?"
The trio nodded to one another and parted ways.
The Dreaming City, Mara's throne room
Polaris dutifully stood guard as Mara sat cross-legged on the throne in front of him. She was searching for Crow's presence, trying to establish the link and open the way into the portal. He watched as sweat gathered on her forehead and her brow furrowed with effort. With a frustrated growl, Mara opened her eyes and stood.
"Nothing?" Polaris guessed.
"Something," Mara corrected. "That is what frustrates me. I can feel Crow, but he is just beyond my reach. We're close, Polaris. I know it. Leave us," she said, turning her attention to the Corsair guards standing at attention nearby. They hurriedly left the throne room, the gateway closing behind them. Mara's shoulders slumped, and she practically crumpled into Polaris's arms, her hands resting on his chest. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong," she whispered.
"You're not doing anything wrong. C'mon, sit down." Polaris eased himself and Mara back onto the throne. "We have no idea where that portal leads. Presumably the inside of the Traveler, but we could be completely wrong about that. For all we know, you're trying to find Crow on another plane of existence."
"I... I'm scared, Polaris," Mara admitted with a sniffle. "Not just for Crow. For everyone. For everything. What if we're not strong enough? What if we die in the Traveler and the Witness enacts its Final Shape?"
"Don't even say that. You're Queen Mara goddamn Sov. The power of the Guardians plus you, and the Witness doesn't stand a chance. Fear nothing, bow to no one. Isn't that right, Your Grace?"
Mara's sob turned into a chuckle. "Sure thing, Young Wolf."
"Ouch. That's low." Polaris snickered back. "It's good to hear you speak casually. The way you are with your subjects is admirable and what I fell for all those years ago, sure, but I feel like I really know you now."
"I guess you do." Mara sighed. "Just for a few days, I'd like to just be me. Not the Queen, not My Grace. Just Mara."
"We can do that. What did you have in mind?"
"Some tea. And sleep. Preferably in your bed." Mara kissed Polaris's cheek. "I've very much enjoyed these past months together, you know."
"You and me both," Polaris agreed. "Hopefully we'll have even more time together once the Witness is dealt with."
"One can only hope. Now then. We should get going."
The Last City, a couple of days later...
Polaris and Mara cuddled together in his apartment. She was fast asleep already, while he was struggling to rest. He thought about the nearly ten years since he and Mara had first met. First the mutual curiosity, then the conflict, the allyship, and now this. She'd been the one to give him his name. He'd held a gun to her head and genuinely considered pulling the trigger. All that history, and he could only think of one thing to say to her.
"I love you," Polaris whispered, closing his eyes.
Tower Hangar
Hecate found Aunor Mahal sitting at the edge of the Hangar, her legs dangling over the side. "Hey," the younger Warlock said to the elder.
Aunor looked up. "Hey."
"How've you been?" Hecate sat down next to her former mentor.
"Busy, I guess. Preparing for the end of the world. You?"
"Same. Lots of therapy."
"How's that going?" Aunor asked.
"Boring. I don't think it's really necessary anymore. Anyway, I just wanted to say I'm sorry." Hecate sighed. "For going Dark, for killing Faye, for everything. All I ever think about is how much I regret everything I've done since learning Stasis. I abandoned everyone I've ever loved in the name of genocide."
"It's okay, Hecate. Really. The Witness used Stasis to get in your head. That's not your fault."
"No, it is. Part of my therapy has been differentiating between the Witness's influence and my own actions. And I know for sure that choosing to embrace its call was my choice. I wasn't brainwashed or possessed, that was just me. I just... if you ever see me going down that road again, please kill me."
Aunor looked Hecate in the eyes. She was deadly serious. "Hecate, I don't think I can-"
"You're the only one I can trust with this. Polaris and Nemea wouldn't be able to. So promise me. Promise you'll put me down if it needs to happen," Hecate begged.
"Okay. I promise. But it won't come to that," Aunor swore.
"I hope not. I'm gonna be joining Polaris and the Vanguard in going through the portal. Nemea and I both are. I just needed to get that out before we go so I'm in the right headspace, you know?"
"Yeah. I get it. Pre-mission clearing of the mind. Hey, why don't I come with you?" Aunor suggested. "You might need some more support."
"The City will need your support even more." Hecate shook her head. "With our leadership gone, the other Guardians will need people to rally them. You command respect from both the Praxic Order and the Hidden. They'll answer to you. Think you can handle it?"
Aunor thought for a moment. Hecate was right about the Guardians needing leadership in the Vanguard's absence. She remembered how the Hunters mostly went rogue after Cayde's death. With Ikora and Zavala both gone, there could be chaos. "I've got them covered. Just promise me you'll be safe, alright? You've got just one life left. And look out for Polaris too. You know him as well as I do- maybe better."
Hecate smirked. "What, still harboring some feelings for him? You broke up like a year ago."
"It's not that." Aunor rolled her eyes. "You know how he can get sometimes when there's a big conflict. All self-sacrificial and whatnot. Don't let him do something stupid."
"I won't. Promise."
"Good." Aunor fist-bumped Hecate. "Good luck in there. Show the Witness what the Guardians are made of, yeah?"
Somewhere in North America
Nemea stood before Ayane Takanome's unmarked grave, dozens of familiar blue flowers planted around the forest clearing. "Hi, Ayane," he began. "I know I'm a little early this year. Just wanted to visit in case things go badly. Long story short, I'm going into the Traveler soon. I don't know what'll happen in there or what's waiting on the other side, but I know there's a good chance someone doesn't come back from this. So I just wanted to tell you what I should've while you were still alive." Nemea took a deep breath. "I love you, Ayane. Really. I wish you'd been chosen by a Ghost. I kept wondering every year if I'd come and find this place dug up, or something. But it never happened, even though nobody is more worthy of the Light than you. People still follow your Rangers' roads to the City, y'know. And these flowers still grow. I guess I should go start prepping for the journey, but. If I never come back here again, well... guess that means I'll see you around, Ayane."
The Last City
Zavala, Ikora Rey, Polaris, Hecate, and Nemea gathered in the Commander's office. "You all know what's coming," Zavala began. "Osiris and the Queen are close to opening the way into the Traveler. Osiris and Saint-14 have volunteered to keep watch over the City while we are away. Lord Shaxx will aid them."
"Mithrax and Caiatl are on standby, ready to follow us through the portal if we call upon them and their forces," Ikora added. "Fireteam Apex, anything to add?"
"Well, as I told you two already, Hecate and Nemea will be joining us in the Traveler," Polaris said, crossing his arms. "We'll need them if we want to stand up to the Witness and whatever else is waiting for us in there."
"So, we'll be a five-man fireteam, then?" Zavala looked at his team. "Very well."
"Six if you count Crow," Polaris reminded him. "First thing we do once we get in there should be to make contact and rendezvous with him."
"Agreed." Ikora looked at the trio of Guardians standing across from she and Zavala. "As I'm sure you're aware, there is a very real possibility of any of us dying our final deaths in this mission. If any of you aren't prepared to face that possibility, there's no shame in backing out. You'll be just as valued as a defender outside the Traveler as you would be within."
"Ikora, with all due respect, screw that," Hecate countered. "We've discussed this already. We know the risk. Polaris even tried to talk Nemea and I into staying in the City. We're as ready for whatever comes as you are."
"That's right." Nemea nodded. "And I can think of no better fight to die in than fighting for the entire universe."
Zavala couldn't help but smile. He remembered the first time this trio had united in the Taken War, nine years prior. How awkward and unsure of one another they'd been. He remembered meeting Nemea under the Traveler before the City was anything more than a collection of tents and huts. He remembered the Battle of Twilight Gap, where Hecate proved her devotion to the people of Sol on her very first day in the City, fighting alongside Lord Shaxx's fireteam and disobeying Lord Saladin's orders. He remembered Polaris wandering into the Hall of Guardians in the old Tower, freshly risen, confused, and overwhelmed by the world he'd found himself in. They'd all grown so much over their years, as individuals and as a team. There were few Guardians that could call themselves legends, but these three were among their ranks without question.
"Everything alright, Zavala?" Polaris asked, watching the Commander's gaze become unfocused as he smiled at Fireteam Apex.
"Yes. I'm alright," Zavala assured them. "Just know that I couldn't be more proud of the heroes you've all become. Now then." His smile dropped. He was all business once more. "We could get the call to depart from the Queen at any moment. Make whatever preparations you need, and stay on alert."
Polaris nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Very well. Dismissed."
Fireteam Apex left the office together in silence, each member of the trio mentally preparing for the coming battle.
oh my god it's so good to be back. i missed writing stories like this. i really hope TFS ends up being good with how excited i am. at any rate, thank you for reading my re-debut story. I hope you liked it. See you in the Pale Heart, Guardians.
~ P.

My 1st time writting like this. No where near as good as the others here. But thought it would be fun to try! And now, the stor of a simp...
"It's not fair, mom. Why is Dad pushing that I have to do my own chores when Davey wants to help!!"
Ashley Smith stood in their suburban family's living room with her hand on her hip and the most adorable pout. She is a senior in high school this year and the most beautiful woman in the world, well, to me anyway. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm David Pousey. Same grade as Ashley, and hopelessly in love with her since 8th grade!
What started as a crush has really blossomed into true love. I'm just uh, waiting until that's reciprocated. But I can't rush something like this. Ashley is GORGEOUS. 5'10", long brunette hair, perfectly tan skin, and thin but with the most perfect breasts that draw stares and envy wherever she goes. I used to be tongue tied and have butterflies in my tummy from being in the same room with her. Well, I guess I still do. But I’m getting better!
There were times where I would be so nervous I couldn't speak.That was until I won her affection that fateful afternoon she "forgot" we had homework due:
I took my assigned seat in class 5 minutes before the bell rang. By some miracle I was assigned the seat directly behind Ashley. It was maddening to be so close, I could smell her perfume/scent. That alone would often have me close enough to the edge where I would run off and take a “bathroom break” after class. I somehow was able to get good grades by excess studying, despite spending most classes daydreaming about wedding bells in chapels. Mr. and Mrs. Ashley Smith has such a nice ring to it!
"Shit. I completely forgot the assignment was due today. I went over to Jason's last night and totally spaced". Ashley was talking to her best friend, Jessica, before class started.
"Yea, I bet you 'spaced', spaced those legs out real wide" Jessica said with a wink and a laugh.
Ashley giggled back. "Seriously! Miss Stevens is gonna totally flunk me. My dad is gonna kill me"
I mustered all the courage. This was my big shot. I had sat behind these 2 all year and never managed to make a peep. This was it. The moment that changed everything.
I stuttered out, "You, you, uh, um, oh excuse me, uh, you can have my h-homework..."
They both looked back at me, as if just noticing I was sitting there for the 1st time.
"Hi, h-hi, A-Ashley. You can um, you can take my essay. I actually have a good average in th-this class, so 1 assignment is no b-bother. Really".
Jessica's signature grin crept across her face. "Your just gonna give her your homework? Her name isn't even printed at the top, idiot".
Ashley just sat there taking me in. She looked at me after Jessica's question , waiting how I would answer. She had the most adorable furrowed brow.
"I, Oh, I, um, have it saved on my flashdrive h-here. I can run to the school library and update the names q-quick, um, you know, if you want me to?"
Jessica put her palm to her forehead and could no longer contain her contempt with a slight laugh and a groan, “Oh god… where do you find these guys, ash?"
Ashley's questioned look morphed into 1 of pure relief. "Aw stop it Jess! He's being sweet. That would be great, uh, Daniel, right?"
"It-It's um, uh, D-David."
"Oh right! That's it, Davey!
I cringed inwardly. I didn't like that variant of my name so much. Coming from her mouth it didn't sound so bad though.
Ahley looked at me with an expectant look. "Well, you know class is starting soon..."
Jessica leaned in. "Yea better scurry off, simp. The library is across the building."
There was no defending me from Jessica this time. Ashley just looked at me and gently nodded along.
And with that, I of course flung out of my seat and went to run to the library. Of course, in my flustered state, I tripped over Ashley's bookbag as I was leaving and tumbled to the floor. The whole class laughed, maybe Jessica the hardest, but not my Ashley. I looked up at her from my position on the floor, and she just smiled and shooed me off with her hand. But she did it with a smile and a nod. It may have been mixed with pity, but it made me feel like no matter what happens, no matter the humiliation, or sacrificing my own grade to help hers, it was all going to be okay. As long as Ashley was happy, it was all worth it!
And that day started our friendship. I was always at her beck and call. Somewhere along the way I even managed to suck up to her and blur the lines of our friendship, no, we weren't in a "relationship" exactly. Actually, pretty far from it unfortunately, from a classic boyfriend/girlfriend. But something else entirely. But if I play my cards right, she might start seeing me as boyfriend material, then maybe, even husband material...
"It's BULLSHIT!" Ashley blurted out.
I was ripped back to the present. Ashley argued with her mother in front of me.
"Language, young lady!"
Ashley's mom, Mrs. Smith, was another knockout. At 45, though her hair was lighter, she pretty much just looked like an older version of Ashley. She had gained a slight “fuller" look in her older years, but to me it was as if it pretty much only padded only the most desirable areas. It was very clear that I guess a large bust runs in the family. The whole family included them, their charming and confident father, Mr. Smith, and Ashley's sister, Liz, who was a freshman in our school. While Ashley and I were 18.
"You know how your father is, dear. He's just old fashioned. He grew up doing his chores, and now he wants you to build character by doing them yourself."
"Building character, Mom? Seriously?" Ashley and her mom would sometimes get into small arguments like this, but it was never serious. They had a playful, sisterly energy. But I never knew what to do when I was over during one. When I felt weird or awkward, I found the safest bet was to just stand off to the side with my eyes down until I was called.
"Plus, you KNOW Davey loves this shit. You should see him when me and Jess eat lunch at the cafeteria! He jumps as soon as Jess snaps her fingers and Davey throws everything out. The practically sweeps up our crumbs! We don't even have to lift a finger! It’s awesome. Plus he loves it!"
My therapist says I'm a people pleaser. I'm working on it.
“He does not ‘love’ it, young lady! The poor thing is scared half to death of your little partner in crime. He’d probably eat your trash if Jessica gave him a stern look!”
“No, it’s true Mom. You love cleaning and shit, right, Davey?” Ashley looked over at me expectantly.
I started to mumble out a response of “Er, well, I love being helpful to-“
"And he's so good at it too!" Ashley cut in, now addressing her mother. I guess my time for contribution was over. "You saw how he got that stain out of your blouse!"
Mrs. Smith addressed me for the 1st time, "Oh, I have to thank you for that Davey! Honestly wine on a white blouse like that! I thought it was destined for the trash! But all it needed was 40 minutes of being locked in the laundry room with you, and you showed that stain who's boss!"
"See! What's the point of me doing some stupid chores if Davey can do it anyway, and I'm no good with that maid stuff anyway!"
I could tell Ashley was winning this arguement. But I wasn't thrilled about trying to be helpful for her referred to as "maid stuff".
"Oh alright", Mrs. Smith relented. "But don't tell your father! Have Davey HELP you with picking up your room. And I do mean HELP. I don't want to have the poor thing on his hands and knees in there while you kick your feet up!"
"Yayyyy, yes Mom! I promise!" She ran over and gave her a quick hug. It was a sweet moment. I usually keep my eyes down, but looked up just in time to see them embrace. As they hugged I saw the slight shifting in their breasts as they smooshed together in their hug. I shifted in place as my small erection pushed up against my bikini brief underwear.
"Thanks Mom!" Ashley walked toward the stairs as she called over her shoulder "Come, Davey!"
Almost as if a trance I went to follow her upstairs at her command when Mrs. Smith called me back. She was now sitting on her expansive sofa with her feet up and sipping a glass of wine.
"Davey, make sure my little brat of a daughter actually helps you this time! I'm not trying to raise some slob!" she said with a smile.
"Oh- oh,, um, yes, Ma'am. I-I'll be sure to um, well, yes Ma'am, Miss Smith, Ma'am.
Mrs. Smith chuckled, mostly to herself.
"Such a sweet boy... you know between you and me there's a few more items that need tending to in the laundry room. Don't tell Mr. Smith, but it would be great if I had someone to really put some effort and elbow grease into cleaning those more annoying stains. Nothing major; just some of Liz's soccer shorts, grass stains, Mr. smith has some stains on his underwear I’d rather not touch, oh!, and there was some smudge on one of my tops, not sure what. And seeing as you are here and really you have quite a talent for these domestic things. Honestly, you're going to make some nice man a very nice housewife someday!" Mrs. Smith said with a hearty laugh.
I played along and gave a slight laugh at my expense. "Yes, of course, Mrs. Smith I'll um, I of course can um, help, in any way".
I was hoping to get back home at a normal hour tonight. My parents both work long and late hours, so they are never home, or are sleeping in their bedroom, so they won't notice my absence. But since doing the majority of Ashley's homework, mine has been getting a little neglected. And the thought of getting a decent night's sleep sounded soooo nice. I never realized how much being at someone's constant beck and call would drain me. Oh well, I guess I'll be scrubbing away in the Smith family laundry room instead!
"Such a sweet, sweet boy" Mrs. Smith said as she sat and looked at me shaking her head. It was almost a mix of pity, disbelief and amusement. "Okay, off you go now! I don't need Ash getting mad at me that I kept her little loverboy all to myself", and with that she smiled and looked away, looking to see what was on tv. She was done with me for now.
I scurried upstairs nervous I had spent too long downstairs and Ashley would be upset with me.

Hi Reddit,
I (26F) have been struggling lately with my emotions and overthinking, and I could really use some advice.
Here's some background: When I was in high school, I met a boy online who was just a couple of years older than me. We dated for a while, broke up, and then got back together after I helped him through a rough patch. I even moved to the state he went to school in to be with him. I was young and naive at 18, and he was 20. Not long after moving, I found out he was cheating on me. Despite this, I took him back because I believed in our relationship.
We dated for two years until he decided to study abroad. I wasn't comfortable with this, especially after the cheating incident, but I didn't want to hold him back. Unfortunately, I caught him lying again, which led to a big fight where I said some hurtful things. When he came back after the semester, we had an awkward 7-hour hangout, and that was the last time we were really in contact.
Less than a year later, he was dating someone new, and I focused on my healing. I moved back to home to deal with some serious health issues and other serious personal stuff. I hoped he would want to work things out, but I never heard from him.
Years passed, and I moved on, even dated someone else briefly. Then, out of the blue, I heard from an old friend that my ex had been asking about reaching out to her randomly. I confronted him, but nothing came of it.
To add on... 2 more years later ... our mutual friend told me she reached out to him to just say hello because she really did like him and was happy to be friends with him. they bonded well so i wasnt upset that she missed having convos with him.
her feedback.... he never mentioned that hes still with the same girl, that they moved across country together.... and have been dating for (should be 4 years at that point). and from what she told me , it was almost like he was curious about me and said something similar to "if the universie thinks its meant to be , maybe we can be kosher" and "i thought about reaching out to her if im ever in town"...... theres no way he'd just randomly be "in town".
Recently, I saw a photo of him proposing to her. While I'm happy for him, it hurts deeply because I always imagined we'd be endgame. Seeing him move on so quickly after me has left me feeling inadequate and anxious.
In a perfect world, that night he came to drop my shirt off, I would have told him, "I love you, I'm sorry, and can we start over?" But because he was so unpredictable, I didn't want to look foolish and give him the satisfaction of knowing he could keep hurting me and I'd still stay.
I've built a career, handled my medical issues, and gotten into my dream grad program after graduating w/ my undergrad. Yet, I can't shake this gut-wrenching feeling. Did I not mean as much to him? Why was I so easily replaced? Maybe I'm delusional, but I always thought we'd get married and grow old together. Perhaps he never really felt the same and just felt stuck with me.
No one prepares you for the pain of watching your first love build a life without you. How do I move forward from this and stop feeling like I wasn't enough? How can I manage my emotions and overthinking in a healthy way? If anyone has advice on how to handle these emotions and stop overthinking, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks for reading. This felt really good to write out and validate my own feelings...
TL;DR: Struggling with emotions and overthinking after my first love moved on and got engaged. Need advice on coping and moving forward

Pitt tried and tried unbroken to no reward, violently trashing with all his will against the hands of the inevitable machine that is Death. Realistically, he knew he would some day die, he just didn't picture it being this ugly-here he lay in his room, using every last ounce of his sane mind to try and convince himself not to follow through with his plans, while his body takes auto pilot and promptly locates every medicine bottle it can get its hands on, along with a half-drank fifth of his favorite moonshine, a joint, and some records. That's the tragedy of it, really--it isn't an honorable casualty or assassination that would go down in history, nor is it a peaceful fleeting memory with his family that he would leave this world with. No, it's exactly what it looks like--a pitiful sob story and a prime example of what life not to live. He sits down at his desk, spreads out his supplies, and begins his final testimony with the lines:
Dear Death,

 You are the only person who will be 

reading this note. I have nothing-no one, no
where, and now officially, no future.
He pauses and takes a shot, careful to savor the taste and the burn in his throat. It might be one of the last sensations or feelings he would ever feel. He lights his joint, looks out the window, and begins to think about all the things wrong with his life.
These past few months have been nothing
but torture. Between waking up in a burning
apartment building and getting fired for
testing positive on a drug test, I think
anyone could tell with one look my life is
going to hell in a handbasket.
Then, he begins to think about his regrets. With shaky hands, he takes a shot and picks his pencil back up.
I pushed everyone away. Especially Olivia.
Not a day went by that I didn't take my
anger out on her, screamed at her,
threatened to hurt her, cheated on her,
ignored her, or just made her feel like she
was worth nothing. She believed in me and
that I could be someone, and I ruined her.
There's nothing I could do to take the
countless hours of misery I caused her
away.
Then, Pitt stops to think. Is there something he could do to take it all back?
"No", he quickly concludes. Maybe he's just drunk, or high--he's taking hits and sips in between each couple of words, and he had already been dipping his toes in the spirits. "And even if there was, it still wouldn't change a thing."
Then, he realizes something--he had never tried to fix anything between him and Olivia. The night he left, the argument was ablaze--she took a stand against him and he told her how he never loved her, how he was still cheating after he had already gotten caught, that she was a disgrace, a weak suckup, all in a flurry of words and slammed the door with an elevated "Fuck you."
What would have happened if he tried to save their relationship? Would he never have left Joseph's Crossing? Would him and his best friend have opened their dream joint tech-music shop? Would he have a child? Where would he be now? Would he be safe and sound, asleep with his loving wife? Would he be with someone else, half way around the world hiking up to the top of a mountain? Or would he still be in the position he was in now--all alone, in the middle of nowhere, depressed and crossfaded?
But, more importantly and confusingly, what could he have said? Could he have told her that all the things he did to her were simply the product of a bad childhood? That it was her fault for not communicating how she felt, that he was hurting her? There was nothing he could have told Olivia that would have made up for his actions, and he knew it--it ate him alive. But was there something he could have done?
He continues writing.
I have no realistic dreams or aspirations and
nothing to live for. I got halfway through
college before I became a heavy alcoholic
and decided all I actually wanted to do was
sit back, relax, and drink. I thought I was
smart when I found out a way to sit around
and rot in my apartment for the rest of my
life, when in reality it was the stupidest
choice I ever could have made.
Pitt is smart. He knows he has no one to blame for his decisions, but his question isn't who, rather why--Why did he do the things he did?? Why did he make the choices he made, or say the things he said? Pitt found himself asking these questions time and time again, but the answer was never clear. Sometimes it almost drove him crazy. If he didn't know why he was an asshole, or a bum, or a crook, or a cheat, then how was it his fault? And why did it matter??
Then, Pitt thinks. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe instead of dreading all the things he did and can't change, he should dread all the things he wants to do and can change. If he'll never know why he did his crimes, maybe, for what it's worth, he could do the time.
Then, he thinks a little more. Why hadn't he concluded this 14 years ago?? Why had he never tried to look back and make a change?? And suddenly, he realizes that it was the same reason he never saw Olivia again, the same reason he dropped out of college, the same reason he was sitting alone at his desk writing his final testimony. Swiftly, he decides that, instead of his last, this will be his first testimony--the testimony to a new life.
He continues writing.
And yet, in spite of all of this, upset and
drama, I am still alive. I'm alive because
something, or someone, or somehow, has
decided that Pitt Haley isn't done. We are all the
product of the lives we have lived so far.
And, today, mine came close to a finish.
But, if after all that I've been through, I'm
still alive, then something out there so
strongly believes in me, and stacked the cards in
my favor--not me, but Pitt Haley. The Pitt Haley
that's kind, strong,and handsome, and
gentlemanly, and polite, and successful--the
young man who I have so poorly reflected, who
from now on I will strive every day to be.
He pauses. Who will really be signing this letter? He smirks and turns away and, in a few quick strokes, begins his new life.

 - Death 

Hello all!
For some context, I (29F) will be marrying my FH (32M) in October. We have sent out invitations and started seating charts and all the fun things. While reviewing seating charts with my moms (I have 2) my bio mom asked where my sister would be seated. I made the comment that I chose not to invite her. My mom did not take that well and we quickly left to go home.
Some backstory on myself sister and me. We are about 10 years apart with her being older. She has 4 children: 19M, 16M, 13F, and 11M. I currently and for the past 4 years have been fully raising her 13F, while my mother raises her younger two boys. The oldest is moved out but still relys on my mom for financial support as he refuses to work.
Anyways, I was 10 when my sister had her first child, and we never built a close bond. She also has a long history with drugs and terrible men, that only recently (maybe 6 months-9months) seems to be stopped or slowed. She does not contribute to her kids in any way, and we don’t communicate at all unless it is about her getting permission to do something with the 13F child, IE take her out of school early.
There is a ton more could write, but it is also important to note that my FH and I are paying for the wedding ourselves. Anyways! So I had a sit down with my mother and she expressed her disapproval with my decision and had called several people to discuss my “terrible decision” and how she should handle it. She even insinuated that if I didn’t invite both my sister and her oldest (he has burned his own bridges with my and my FH for the past few years)
After many tears, I relented as the stress was causing problems with my health(I have a mild heart condition that can be debilitating if not managed properly and low stress levels)
I am not asking for advice on what to do/say to my mother, I chose not to push so hard that I ruin the relationship I have with my moms. I simply want to know if I am the asshole for not wanting my sister at my wedding?
Thank you in advance, and I apologize in advance if I don’t respond much. I’m so busy it’s crazy. We are also in the middle of building our own house at the same time 😵‍💫🙃

Okay so back when that movie came out— and it was a great movie— I remember how we all thought Big was just the hugest POS ever, and we wanted to kill him haha. We all felt so bad for her when she couldn’t even eat in Mexico and Sam had to spoon feed her. 🥹 Big was just the worst and it was all his fault
But when i look back, at least as a bit older of a woman who isn’t as immature and dumb anymore. We see things differently, you know?
The tragedy of that whole plot line was the awful timing, and various characters actions. The tragedy was that he DID change his mind but moments too late. He says aloud “what am I doing?! Turn around!” (“Sir I can’t, it’s a one way street!”)
He did her dirty by leaving at all, but she also did him dirty, in a way. With the whole wedding thing. She misrepresented to him about what the wedding would be like, made a unilateral decision, invited hundreds of people— then just foisted it upon him after he expressed how uncomfortable he was with it
Then she had the nerve to blame it on the dress, “It’s the dress” and cute Carrie shrug lol. I’m sorry but that dress never looked right on her, it had HUGE gaping at the top, that her bust could not fill out, and it was just wearing her. Just the size of that box was ridiculous, let alone for a woman who’s like 105lbs soaking wet, I digress
I understand the beliefs that many people hold, is that a wedding is all about the bride, this is her princess dream day fantasy, and thus she should get everything she wants, because she deserves it. Like you hear people say “it’s her day.” But is that a healthy idea?
Shouldn’t she have better known the man she chose? He wasn’t one of those meek men who just says “ok honey I’ll do anything you want,” he was an older mature man, set in his ways. He wasn’t a lovey emotional man. If anything, he’d definitely be “avoidant attachment style.” Yet she did all this, ignored his feelings, and even expected him to write his own vows, even after he’d expressed he couldn’t do it
Carrie, if you wanted that, you should have appreciated Aiden. He was all of that. He was reliable, too. Big was never as into Carrie as she needed him to be but she wouldn’t move on
Big didn’t technically leave her at the altar. He honestly did want to marry her, he just freaked out for 15 min and then desperately wanted to run back to the library
I’m not sure how far he’d even gone, but it seemed fairly close? If he was truly running away, he’d have kept his head low in the towncar as they passed, not got out or yelled out to get her attention. He was trying to talk to her. That’s all he needed
He was trying to call her. Something was up. Carrie, in true drama queen form, immediately drops the phone when he says “I just left…” boom, drama drop. Limp. Dying wail. Can’t even say let’s sit down a min or let’s go, demands her friends get her out of there.
I’m sorry, but I would have clutched that phone said “GET BACK HERE NOW” or at least gotten a full confirmation that this was actually happening… but she immediately just drops the phone! Dude let the man finish his sentence. I need to hear him say it for sure, directly what the fuck he is up to, before I go murder him lol
It was also Charlottes actions that stopped him from being able to tell Carrie he wants to marry her. Tell her he just needed a minute was panicking, and had called her to tell her, he was just looping around and let’s go get married! But Charlotte acted like totally nuts and blocked him from her like he’s an attacker, screaming at him. Like im sorry isn’t Carrie an adult woman.

Over the past year, a friend and I have designed a cube with 300 custom cards. Custom cards are an extreme extension of cube design and there's a lot more potential for things to go wrong. Here's what I've learned.

Play with your Designs as Soon as Possible

Design four cards. Print them, put them into two old draft decks, and play a game. If they're not in the right colours, treat them as colourless. If you don't have someone to help, play against yourself.
This is the most important and urgent task. There are things you learn in 20 seconds of gameplay that you couldn't learn from hours of thinking. A custom card doesn't exist until it's been cast.

Custom Cards are Too Powerful

Cards you design are stronger than you expect, even when you think you're being careful. There are two causes:

• People underestimate new cards. Nobody expected Oko or The One Ring to be powerful because we hadn't seen powerful cards with those types of effects before. Smuggler's Copter, Umezawa's Jitte, and White Plume Adventurer were similar mistakes.
• You like the cards you design. You want them to get attention, and players like powerful cards. Emrakul, the Promised End was too strong in standard because she was too important to be weak.

There's a longer discussion about the role of power and when imbalance is good. Just be aware that your custom cards will be more powerful than you think.

Custom Cards are Too Weird

By far the most common pitfall. People design weird cards because if they wanted normal cards they would just use the official ones. However, wotc manages to design cards every year that are both normal and exciting. Many problems come from weird cards:

• They're hard to understand. Often they have lots of text, behave differently than you expect, or have their strength buried under distractions. Remember that people who have never seen these cards before need to quickly read them, understand them, and compare them to 14 other cards. Necropotence is popular now but suffered on release from this. People don't give custom cards the same chance.
• They don't do anything. These tend to be situational gotchas or overly linear buildarounds, which makes deckbuilding less interesting. Lions Eye Diamond and Dark Depths are cool, but they have provenance and history that your custom cards don't have. Lions Eye Diamond was also hated for years.
• They disrupt the structure of the game. A powerful weird card draws too much attention to itself or a small aspect of the game, making other things irrelevant. Not every card is the star of the story. Many early prison cards like Moat, Armageddon, or Winter Orb do this. When people dislike monarch or initiative, it's usually because they warp the game around themselves.
• They have too many ideas. When someone makes their first custom card, they have years worth of ideas waiting to be shared. Trust me, you will run out of ideas before you run out of places to put them. A card only needs a single idea and sometimes I design multiple cards based on a single idea. Split it into two cards, or write the idea down and come back to it later. If it's a good idea, you'll find a place for it later.

You might think normal/simple cards don't let you express yourself, but there's still important decisions to make. For Cyber Dragon, I had to decide how much it would cost when discounted. By making it 3 mana, it gives you the choice of whether to play a 2-drop before and makes you think about if that 2-drop will die by next turn. A 4/3 flier is an inefficient distribution of rate, and a 2 mana discount is meaningful without being necessary.
You can create fun and novel experiences with simple textboxes, flavour, and the right numbers. Summon Boulder, Ancestral Migraine, Espresso Kami, The Knight, Rakdos Charm 3, and Parhelion III are all simple designs I'm proud of.

Believe in your Cards

My advice is mostly negative so I want to underscore that you can make fun cards. Whenever you playtest you discover some cards are not as fun as you thought, but you also discover seemingly boring cards that are a lot of fun. I thought Monastery Swift Mentor Spear wouldn't be fun, but after playing with it I love it. When you playtest early and often you can afford to take risks and find really new designs.
Believing in your cards means putting your best work in the spotlight. Your most powerful cards should be cards that people will love. What's important is to earn your audience's trust. People are less forgiving with custom cards, so all it takes is one Moat or Daze to turn them off. That trust is like the willing suspension of disbelief and lets people overlook frustrating experiences. Jadelight Ranger and Huntmaster of the Fells were everywhere in standard, but still beloved because they were so fun to play with.
It's also okay to have cards you have less faith in. Usually it's something that's fun to read or play occasionally, but annoying when it's a pillar of the format. Make them weak or narrow and let people enjoy the idea. Mill can be annoying to lose to, which is why wotc keeps it as a fringe or unplayable strategy for the die-hard mill fans.

Put it on the Back Burner

A Valve developer said that to make a good game, you have to make two games and throw one of them away. Designing cards is hard, and it feels bad to discard something you worked on. But you need to accept that sometimes you reach a dead end. If a card doesn't spark joy when you play with it, set it aside and come back to it later. I have about 50 cards I've designed, many with illustrations and names, that I've cut so that people can focus on the cards I really believe in.

Red Flags

Effects I try to minimise. They show up often in initial designs, so it's important to only do when necessary.
"Draw a Card"
"Draw a card" is secretly the opposite of believing in your cards. It usually means that your card needs to do something, but you're not sure what. You're basically making it a copy of another random card in their deck. Part of strategy in magic is how different effects are better at different times. Sometimes you have to find a use for a 3/3 when they have a 4/4, or use a removal spell in the right way at the right time. Card draw is just always good, not concerned with timing or decisions, and fits into any strategy.
It also gets problematic in large doses. A deck of all card draw never actually does anything. It lets players get ahead without interacting. It causes mana flood. Full hands in the late game present too many options. The wincon-less Teferi, Hero of Dominaria decks were emblematic of this. The deck was only interested in drawing cards, making mana, and staying alive. It would be less frustrating if it played Baneslayer Angel or The Wandering Emperor.
The paradox is that players love card draw because there's no risk of it being bad. You don't need players to like your card if it replaces itself with another. But remember that you're designing a puzzle and you can't just give players all the answers. You have to make them work for it.
1 Power Creatures
It's important for games to reach a conclusion. 1 power creatures tend towards long drawn out games where creature combat and damage doesn't matter. Drafters of Dominaria (2018) had games where both players walled up behind 1/3s and just passed turn until they found a bomb to win with.
1-2 mana creatures are hard to design because you don't want a lot of 1 power creatures, but giving them more power can end the game too quickly. I like to make them small to start with, but get bigger later on or under certain conditions.
Relatedly, you need to make some 4 power creatures. This helps games end, adds excitement, and provides variety in creature sizes. It's hard because you don't have room for a lot of expensive creatures. And if your 5 mana creatures have good abilities (eg. Mulldrifter) then you have to make them small, which takes up space for big creatures. Again, you can pick up some of the slack with creatures that change size.
Repeatable Effects
Doing something every turn is a red flag. It encourages players to stall to get more activations. Fortunately magic has many fixes.

• Limited number of uses (Sagas, Mazemind Tome, flashback)
• Doesn't accumulate between turns (Birds of Paradise, Rootwalla)
• Diminishing returns over multiple uses (Chronomaton, Prodigal Pyromancer)
• Consumes a finite resource (Phyrexian Arena, Stoneforge Mystic, escape)
• Ends the game (Planeswalkers with ultimates, Sheoldred)
• Easy to disrupt (Planeswalkers, attack triggers)
• Switches to doing something else (Bloodline Keeper, saga creatures, Treasure Map)

Mana Denial
This sounds unnecessary, but you'll underestimate how often you get an opportunity to mana screw your opponent. Just do what wotc does and write nonland on everything.
Similarity
When two cards are very similar, it invites comparison between them. Whichever one is weaker will be hated by players, even if it's only a little weaker. If it's similar to an existing card that's powerful, it will either be overpowered or hated. People used to complain that Serum Visions was too weak for modern, despite it seeing frequent play in tier 1 decks, because it's similar to Preordain. You can get away with weaker versions of cards if the original is very obviously too powerful for the cube.

Concepts about Power

Inefficient Distribution of Rate
Credit to Patrick Sullivan for this concept. Every card has multiple aspects, and it's important to understand when those aspects are pointing towards the same strategy. For example, Fireblast lets you sacrifice two lands to deal 4 damage. The drawback (sacrificing two lands) is minor if the game ends shortly afterwards, and dealing 4 damage is likely doing that. That is an efficient distribution. But say Fireblast had a different effect worth about 4 mana: destroy all creatures. Despite having a theoretically stronger effect, in practice this is a weaker card because it wants a short game but the effect is prolonging the game. That is an inefficient distribution.
Generally speaking, inefficient distributions are more fun. They allow you to make cards that are exciting because they look overpowered, without actually being overpowered. They also reward deckbuilders who can find a way to marry the conflicting strategies into a single deck. Llanowar Elves is an inefficient distribution, since giving opponents a target for Shock is a big drawback in ramp decks. If Llanowar Elves was an enchantment, ramp decks could play no small creatures, making it hard for opponents to use their cheap removal. Llanowar Elves provides more ways to interact with ramp decks, and rewards players for finding ways to use the 'inefficiency' with Birthing Pod or Craterhoof Behemoth. Monastery Swiftspear and Arclight Phoenix are 'storm' payoffs that lean in a totally different direction to typical storm decks, creating new archetypes that play with creatures and don't kill in one turn.
Power vs Impact
High impact cards include big creatures, sweepers, planeswalkers, or cards with repeatable effects. They give games excitement and momentum, but they also get more scrutiny. It's easy to be upset about losing to Grave Titan when what really beat you was turn 1 Birds of Paradise. For that reason I'm more willing to take risks on low impact cards and keep high impact cards at a lower power level. But you also need people to play high impact cards to get games over with. Brainstorm and Polluted Delta are powerful cards with low impact, whereas Grave Titan and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria are comparatively weak but feel strong because they're high impact. High impact cards can get people excited about weak cards because they still sometimes win games.

Playtesting Advice

• Powerful cards get data faster. If something is really weird, test it at a high power and tone it down once you know how it plays.
• Removal can obfuscate testing. Removal is an important part of magic, but part of why it's good is the way it 'smooths over' problems with an environment. If you test with little removal, it's more obvious when a card is causing problems. Remember that your players won't always have removal when they need it.
• Look for the root of a problem. Often an unfun card has a specific flaw that can be addressed. Sometimes you need to reduce a card's impact, reduce the frequency of an effect, or simply increase the mana cost. It is surprising how many things are more fun when you have to spend more mana to do them.

Card design is something you could study for a lifetime. While I've learned a lot of things about specific aspects of it, these are my most universal tips.

”Stop.”
I really needed the bathroom.
For fifty painstaking minutes, I had been staring at the clock on the wall, willing it to go faster, uncomfortably shifting side to side in my seat so much that I was starting to get weird looks.
2:52pm.
Eight minutes, I thought dizzily, squeezing my legs together.
Which was just two chunks of four minutes.
Four chunks of two minutes.
The pain started like normal stomach pain, the kind I could deal with.
I swallowed two Tylenol with lukewarm soda.
But this was different.
This kind of pain was contorting and twisting my gut so much, I had to keep leaning onto my left buttock for relief.
I must have done it so many times, I caught the attention of the guy sitting next to me. Roman Hemlock who was half asleep, dark blonde curls hanging in half lidded eyes, his chin leaning on his fist. He shot me a look. I couldn't tell if it was Are you okay? or Can you stop moving around so much?
From the single crease in his brow, the slight curl in his lip, I guessed the latter.
It's not like Roman was helping.
For half the class, he'd been tapping his foot on the floor, then his chair leg, and to complete the orchestra, his fingers joined in, tap, tap, tapping on the edge of his desk. I didn't know if it was a bored thing, an ADHD thing, or he was trying to keep himself awake. It was easy to tolerate without the pain, but with it, the boy’s incessant tapping was more akin to a dentist drill splitting my skull open. I already felt nauseous, the sad looking chicken nuggets I forced down at lunch making an unwelcome appearance at the back of my throat.
It was too fucking hot, the stuffy summer air glueing my hair to the back of my neck. The material of my shirt was making me cringe, sticky against my skin.
Tipping my head back, the lights were too bright. Every sound was too loud. Imogen Prairie, who was sitting behind me chewing her gum a little too loudly.
Kaz Samuels scribbling notes like a maniac.
I could hear every stroke of his pencil, every time he paused, looked up at the presentation, and continued writing.
When I leaned forward in my chair, I could smell exactly what Isabella Trinity had eaten for lunch, the stink hanging in the air.
It became a case of sucking in my stomach and taking slow, deep breaths.
I’d never had these kinds of stomach cramps before. But it didn't take me long to figure out what they were.
I was yet to start my period at the grand age of sixteen, which meant this was it.
After countless sessions with the doctor, and feeling like a social outcast among my group of friends who started their periods in middle school, it had finally happened. The cramps in my gut that felt like my torso was being ripped apart, was in fact me entering womanhood. When my breath started to quicken, my mouth watering, I raised my hand, biting my lip against a cry.
Fuck.
Something lurched in my gut, a wave of nausea crashing into me.
I was going to throw up.
“Mr Brighton.”
Roman spoke up before me, waving his arm. “Can I use the bathroom?”
The teacher’s answer was always the same. Which was why I had been crossing my legs for the entirety of the class, unable to focus on anything but my gut trying to twist itself inside out.
Mr Brighton leaned against the wall, his eyes glued to the PowerPoint awash in our faces. We had been staring at the exact same slide for maybe five minutes now, and our physics teacher was yet to speak, his gaze somewhere else.
Mr Brighton was my Dad’s age, a greying man in his early fifties who always wore the exact same suit with the exact same stain on his collar.
The man was about as interesting as watching paint dry.
Normally, I would drift off myself, lulled into slumber by the low drone of his voice.
But the pain ripping me apart was keeping me awake.
“Mr Brighton.” Roman said, louder. His voice snapped me out of it. “Can I use the bathroom?” He paused, exaggerating a loud sigh. ”Please?”
The teacher straightened up, folding his arms.
“Mr Hemlock, you know the rules. Why didn't you go before class?”
“I didn't need to go an hour ago, did I?”
“You will no longer need to go to the bathroom, Mr Hemlock.”
Roman made a snorting noise.
“What?”
The low murmur of my classmates collapsed into white noise.
Glancing at the clock, I was anticipating the school bell.
The sickness swimming in the pit of my belly was reaching dangerous territory.
2:52pm.
Something ice cold trickled down my spine.
It was 2:52 the last time I checked, and five minutes had surely passed.
This time, I waited a whole minute and counted the seconds under my breath. The clock still didn't move. The ticker was frozen halfway between three and four.
Slowly, the same realisation began to hit the twelve of us. The clock on the wall had stopped. But it wasn't the only thing that had stopped. The cool breeze drifting through the window was gone.
The sound of birds outside, and the cheer squad practising their routine.
Everything had stopped. Trying to ignore a sickly slither of panic twisting its way through me, I checked my phone under my desk. There was a text from my Mom lighting up my notifications. When I tried to swipe it open, nothing happened. My lock screen was frozen, stuck at 2:52pm.
With my hands growing clammy around my phone, I stared at the time, willing it to move, to flick to 2:53.
But nothing happened, the numbers stubbornly staying at 2:52.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Roman’s voice brought me back to reality, though I was sure I'd dropped my phone. I heard it hit the floor with a sickening crack. Whatever he was saying, though, faded into dull murmur, when I turned toward the window.
Something was wrong outside.
The cheer squad were nowhere to be seen.
Being on the top floor gave us a front row seat to their practice sessions.
I stopped watching when their flyer did a death defying flip, almost breaking her neck. 2:52pm. I couldn't see the cheer squad. But I did see Jessie Carson mid-sprint across the track field, strawberry blonde curls suspended in a halo around her.
I could see exactly where she had frozen in place, her left foot hovering off of the ground, her right foot driving momentum. It wasn't just Jessie who had stopped. The dirt she was kicking into a cloud behind her was hovering, caught in mid-air.
Studying the faces around me, my mouth went dry.
Roman Hemlock, mid-argument with our physics teacher.
His eyes were wide, lips curved into what would have been a yell.
Fuck.
Was I the only one?
But then Roman blinked, and I realized the boy wasn't frozen. He was trying to think of a comeback. “What do you mean I won't need the bathroom anymore?”
“Mr Hemlock, please lower your voice.”
“Why? You can't dictate to me when I do and don't need the bathroom, dude!”
Moving onto the rest of my class, the others were still moving.
It was too quiet, though.
Yes, Roman was still tapping his foot.
Imogen was still chewing her gum.
Kaz was still scribbling notes like a psychopath.
But they were the only noise I could hear.
I wasn't the only one confused. The classroom had pricked with a sense of urgency. Kids were checking their phones, their gazes glued to the clock. Even Roman, who was still arguing, was starting to notice. I watched his gaze lazily roll to the clock on the wall.
I pretended not to see his cheeks visibly paling.
We had all come to the exact same terrifying conclusion.
2:52pm.
Time had come to a halt, and somehow, we had not.
“Is that clock broken?” Roman interrupted, leaning forward in his chair.
Kaz twisted around, settling the boy with an eye-roll.
“Check your phone, dumbass.”
“I broke my phone.”
Imogen threw her iPhone at him, narrowly missing hitting him in the face.
“Everything is frozen,” She said, her voice shuddering. “It's not just the clock.”
I waited for Roman’s response. For once, though, he was speechless.
“Well done, Imogen. That is correct.” Mr Brighton spoke up, tearing a piece of paper from a workbook and striding over to the door, glueing it over the glass window. When we started to protest, some of us were shouting, while others bursting into tears, he calmly took out his key and locked us in.
I should have been surprised that our teacher had spontaneously decided to take his entire class hostage, but the rumor mill had been churning.
According to Becca Jason, the guy’s wife divorced him and took his kids.
I could feel myself sinking into my chair, phantom bugs filling my mouth.
So, this guy had nothing to lose.
Taking his place in front of his desk, the man settled us with a patient smile.
“From now on, you will stay inside this room.” He said. “In case you haven't noticed, time is currently frozen at fifty two minutes past two. The thirteen of us are tucked into the twenty first second, and will be, for the foreseeable future.”
I could tell the others wanted to argue, but we couldn't deny that time had stopped. Kaz was staring down at his frozen phone, Imogen hyperventilating behind me, Roman glaring at the clock, chewing on a pencil. We wanted it to be a prank, a joke, some kind of glitch in the matrix that would fix itself.
But then a whole minute passed by. Followed by another. Kaz threw his phone on the floor, hissing in frustration. Imogen let out a wet sounding sob.
Roman’s pencil split in his mouth, slipping from his fingers. We couldn't pretend it wasn't happening or call our teacher out on his BS, because it was everywhere around us. The sudden absence of outdoor ambience, birdsong, planes flying overhead, and traffic outside the school gates. Everyone and everything had stopped, and we were the only ones left.
This was a nightmare, surely.
My physics class were some of the most boring and pretentious people in the school, and somehow the world had been reduced to the twelve of us inside our classroom. We were scared, of course we were. But reality had stopped making sense, crashing and burning in a single second. We had no choice but to listen to our teacher. “Now, before you freak out, it may not feel like it, but the twelve of you have also stopped.”
Mr Brighton held out his own hand, and placed it on his heart.
He was right.
I was so busy trying to understand what was happening, I had failed to realize my period cramps were gone.
“Do me a favor, and press your hand over your heart.”
“You mean like, in a culty way?” Imogen whispered.
“Obviously.” Roman grumbled, halfway out of his seat. He was hesitant, though, in case our teacher was armed. It only took one glance from our teacher, and he slumped back into his chair. “This crazy fucker clearly wants to play mind games with us.”
“No, I'm just asking you to feel for your heart.”
I felt for mine, and there was nothing, my stomach twisting.
Roman stabbed his fingers into his neck, feeling for a pulse.
He tried his wrist.
Then his heart.
Nothing.
“The twelve of you are currently in a state of stasis,” the teacher explained to us, “You are not alive, nor are you dead. Your bodily functions are also on pause, such as your heartbeat and your pulse. In this state there will be no need for food and water, or going to the bathroom.” His gaze found a ghastly looking Roman, who looked like he was going to faint. “Your minds, however, as you can see, are working as usual.”
“But why?” Imogen demanded in a shriek.
Mr Brighton’s lip curled. “I would rather not answer that question.”
“Because you're lonely.” Roman spoke up. He swung back on his chair, narrowed eyes glued to the teacher.
“Your wife and kids left you, so you're asserting power over a group of sixteen year olds. Which is kinda fucking pathetic.”
Mr Brighton’s expression darkened, and something slimy crept up my throat.
The worst thing any of us could do was threaten him. He had taken kidnapping to a whole new level, and we were alone with this psychopath, trapped inside a second. I waited for the man to stride forward and attack the kid. But he didn't. Instead, the teacher leaned back on his desk. “Yes.” The man nodded.
“I suppose you could say I am.”
“But why us?!” Kaz hissed.
“Because you are children.” Mr Brighton responded casually.
He straightened up, taking slow, intimidating steps towards Roman’s desk. The rest of us leaned back. I tried to pull my desk with me, but it was glued to the floor. Frozen. Mr Brighton’s shoes went click-clack across the hardwood floor.
“You are right,” the man said in a murmur, “I am lonely. My wife and kids did leave me, and I have nobody left to control. I have nobody else to contort and use to my advantage.” Reaching Roman’s desk, he leaned in close until he was nose to nose with the kid.
“Congratulations, Mr Hemlock. You have just earned yourself detention.”
Roman stayed stubbornly still, but he was visibly afraid. I could see him very slowly backing away. Roman was all bark and no bite. He was a loud mouth, sure, but he was also the least confrontational person in the class.
“What?” He spluttered. “You trap us in a time loop or time trap, or whatever, and you still want to act like a teacher?”
“Stand up.” The teacher ordered.
“What if I don't?”
Mr Brighton’s expression didn't waver. “You said it yourself. I can and have trapped you inside a single second. What else do you think I'm capable of?”
Roman stood, kicking his chair out of the way.
“What are you planning on doing to me, old man?”
The teacher maintained his smile. “Stand up straight, and close your mouth.”
To my confusion, Roman Hemlock did all the above.
He straightened up, and closed his mouth.
“Do not fight me.” The teacher said calmly, “Do as you are told, and follow me.”
The boy did exactly as instructed.
His jaw slackened, that rebellious light in his eyes fizzling out.
I think that's when we all collectively agreed that going against this teacher and trying to escape was mental suicide.
“I will use Mr Hemlock as an example to all of you,” Mr Brighton said, turning to the rest of us. “If you break the rules or are derogatory in any way, you will be given detention.”
He grabbed the boy’s shoulders, forcing him to walk towards the supply closet. Roman moved like a robot, slightly off balance, his gaze glued to thin air, like he was tracking invisible butterflies.
"Your time in detention will depend on the severity of your rule-break.” He opened the door, gently pushing Roman inside, and following suit. When the door closed behind them, there was a pause, and I remembered how to breathe.
Kaz Samuels slowly got up from his desk, inching towards the closet.
“This guy is a certified nut.” He announced.
He turned towards us. “Whatever he's doing to Hemlock, we’re probably next.”
“He stopped time.” I spoke up, my own voice barely a croak. “He’s capable of anything.”
“But how did he stop time?” Kaz whistled, tipping his head back. The boy was slow, his fingers grasping each desk as he slid down the aisle. “He said he was lonely, right? But why take it out on us? What did we do to him?”
“Check his desk for a weapon!” Imogen whisper-shrieked.
Kaz nodded, striding over to the man's desk, his hands moving frantically, shoving paper on the floor. He took an uncertain seat on the man's chair. “There's nothing here,” he murmured, lifting stained coffee mugs and ancient textbooks. “It's just…test papers.” Kaz ducked from view, trying the drawers.
“He's a fan of Pokémon,” he said, “There's a tonne of Pokémon cards,” Kaz straightened up, running a hand through his hair. “No sign of a weapon, though.”
He picked up a ruler, waving it around. “This could work. If we plunge it in his eye.”
“Try his laptop!” Imogen was halfway out of her seat.
Kaz did, slamming the keys. “It's locked.”
“Look harder!” Ren Clarke threw a pencil at him.
“I am!”
After a minute of searching, Kaz grabbed a single piece of paper.
He held it up, and I squinted.
It was a list of our names, with several of them highlighted.
“Fuck.” Kaz dropped the list, his expression crumpling. The stubborn bravado facade transforming him into our sort of leader dissipated, hollowing him out into exactly what he was. Just a scared kid. Kaz’s hands were shaking.
“Mr Brighton’s got a hit list.” He whispered. “He's going to kill us.”
“How do you know that?” I found myself asking.
Kaz slowly dropped into a crouch, picking up the paper and holding it up.
“Look.” He pointed to a capitalised name at the top of the list highlighted in red.
ROMAN HEMLOCK.
There were six names highlighted in red, including mine.
CRISTA ADAMS.
As if on cue, Roman’s cry rang out from the supply closet, suddenly, freezing us all in place. Kaz jumped up, adapting the expression of a deer caught in headlights, eyes wide, almost unseeing.
He fell over himself to tidy up the desk, putting everything back where he had found it, sliding the list between a pile of test papers. Kaz took slow, stumbled steps back, his feverish gaze glued to the closet, before turning and making a break for it and diving into his seat.
“Brighton’s got a hit liiiist,” Kaz said, in a mocking sing-song, “And we’re all on it.”
What followed was deathly silence. I think we were expecting Roman to cry out again. But when he didn't, the class started to stir. Some kids started praying to a god they didn't believe in, while others were in varying states of denial, trying to call their parents with dead phones.
I wasn't sure what parts of me had stopped, but I was still alive, still felt like my lungs were deprived of oxygen, my chest aching. I'm not sure how long I sat there, trying to find my voice, a shriek trying and failing to rip through my mouth. Being kidnapped and held hostage is one thing, but being imprisoned inside a single, never ending second, was an existential hell worse than death. Slowly, I pressed my palm over my heart once again. Then I breathed into my cupped hands.
I was expecting it, but no longer being able to feel my own heartbeat and breath, was fear I didn't think was possible. The kind that glued me to my seat, hollowing me out completely until I was nothing, an empty shell with no heartbeat, no breath, no thoughts, except denial, followed by acceptance.
And finally, regret.
I regretted not hugging my mother goodbye before I left for school.
I regretted acting like a spoiled brat when my parents refused to drive me halfway across the country so I could attend Coachella.
I regretted stepping inside Mr Brighton’s fourth period physics class.
Mr Brighton reappeared, slamming the door behind him and locking the boy inside. Part of me flinched, while the rest of me remembered not to move a muscle. I was barely aware of time passing. Or it wasn't. Time had stopped, so now long had I been sitting there?
I could no longer measure the passage of time with hunger or thirst, and my body felt the same. I wasn't stiff or tired or achy. Looking out of the window, the sky was the exact same crystal blue, every cloud in the exact same place.
Jessie Carson was still frozen mid-run, strands of dark red hair caught around her.
“What's wrong with you guys?” Mr Brighton chuckled, and I twisted back to the front, a shiver writhing down my spine. “Why don't you give me a smile?”
The teacher returned to his desk, and I was already subconsciously sitting up straight in my seat, forcing my lips into a jaw-breaking grin, following Brighton’s instructions. In the corner of my eye, Imogen was sitting very still, forcing an award-winning cheesy smile, while Kaz grinned through gritted teeth.
“Mr Hemlock just earned himself two weeks inside the supply closet.” he said casually, perching himself on the edge of his desk. The man studied each of us, taking his time to rip every shred of us apart.
Mind, body, and soul.
I struggled to maintain my stupid smile, shoving my shaking hands in my lap.
“Would anyone like to join him, or are you going to follow the rules?”
The rest of us stayed silent. I don't think any of us breathed.
Our teacher nodded to Kaz, inclining his head.
“Samuels. Are you all right?”
Kaz’s smile faltered slightly. He shifted in his chair. I could see sweat trickling down his right temple. “Uh, yeah.” He swiped at his forehead, like he couldn't believe he was sweating. “Yeah, I'm good.”
The teacher’s eyes narrowed. He moved toward his desk, and we all held our breaths. Mr Brighton seemed to study his hit-list, lips curving into a frown.
His gaze flicked to the boy, and then the paper.
He knew, I thought dizzily.
Mr Brighton knew the kid had been rummaging through his desk. But this was all about control. The teacher was using fear to control us, to manipulate our thoughts without having to get physical. He could have called out the boy right then, but Brighton was settling with mental torture instead. He just wanted to make my classmate squirm.
Without a word, the man folded up the piece of paper and slipped it into his pocket. “Mr Samuels, you are sweating,” our physics teacher said, mocking a frown. “Are you feeling okay?”
Kaz hesitated, tapping his shoe in a rhythm.
Being one of the smartest kids in the room definitely gave him an advantage.
I could already see the cogs turning behind half lidded eyes. Kaz was weighing each scenario, sorting them into positives and negatives.
The positives of answering would mean he was one step towards being in the clear, but there were two negatives.
Brighton would question him if he had left his seat, and then demand how his hit-list had magically moved across the desk.
Talking back was surely a rule-break, as well as outright lying.
Opening his mouth would get him in trouble, either way, and Kaz knew that.
So, he just nodded, forcing an even bigger smile.
Brighton’s lips pricked, his gaze straying on Kaz. “Good!” He cleared his throat, turning to the class. Kaz slumped in his seat with a sharp breath, resting his head in his arms. If Mr Brighton noticed, he didn't say anything. “Ignore the sweating. It should stop, along with hunger and thirst.”
Our teacher seemed to be able to manipulate everything in his vicinity.
Time.
Minds.
And slowly… contorting us into his own.
In the single second we were trapped inside, I felt days go by in a dizzying whirlwind that was like being permanently high. When I stood up, I felt like I was floating.
When I sat down, hours could go by, even days, and I wouldn't even feel them. I did try and count the days, initially, scribbling them on a scrap piece of paper, but somewhere around the thirteenth or fourteenth day, I lost count. The world around us never changed, in permanent stasis, and maybe that was sending us a little crazy.
After a while of being stuck at our desks, Mr Brighton allowed us to wander the classroom, as long as we stayed away from the door. I lay on the floor for days, counting ceiling tiles.
Sometimes, Imogen would join me.
I couldn't sleep, but I could pretend to sleep, imagining a world that was back to normal. I didn't feel hungry, but my brain did like to remind me of food at the weirdest times. I was aware of weeks passing us by, and then months.
I never grew hungry or tired, and my bodily functions were none existent.
I couldn't remember what pain felt like, or the urge to go to the bathroom. Even the concept of eating and drinking became foreign to me. Putting something in your mouth and chewing to sustain yourself?
That sounded odd.
The only thing that was changing was our slowly unravelling metal state.
I don't know how it started. Weekends and Tuesdays blended together. On one particular SaturTuesday, I was hanging upside down from my desk, watching Kaz and Imogen doodle on the whiteboard.
Kaz had a plan to escape, but after a while, his ‘plan’ to distract the teacher, had gone nowhere. After passing notes between us, the twelve of us had decided that we needed a weapon.
That was maybe a month ago. I wasn't sure what mind games our teacher was playing, but Kaz Samuels, who we were counting on to be our brains, was slowly falling under his spell. Their game had been going on for three days. The two of them were having a competition to see who could draw the craziest thing.
Mr Brighton was at his desk as usual, marking papers.
Imogen was drawing a weird looking ‘skateboard’ when the doors to the storage closet flew open.
Roman Hemlock appeared, and to my surprise, wasn't a hollow eyed shell.
He held up his hand in a wave, his lips forming a small smile.
“Yo.”
Roman’s reappearance was enough to snap us out of it. Kaz and Imogen stopped arguing, the rest of the class going silent. I sat up, blinking rapidly.
I was sure our collective consensus was that Roman Hemlock was dead.
Mr Brighton lifted his head and gave the boy a civil nod. “Mr Hemlock will be rejoining us,” he said, his gaze going back to marking papers. “Please make him feel comfortable. I'm sure he's very excited to be able to talk to you again.”
Instead of going to his desk, the boy immediately joined the others, snatching the marker off of a baffled looking Kaz, and drawing an overly artistic sketch of a penis. I wasn't sure what confused me more. The fact that Roman Hemlock had some serious artistic skills, or that he seemed suspiciously fine for someone who had been locked in the storage closet for two weeks with no social interaction.
With my last few lingering brain cells still clinging on, I studied the boy.
There were no signs of bruises or scratches.
His eyes seemed normal, not diluted or half lidded.
Unable to stop myself, I jumped off of my desk and joined the others, where Kaz was already interrogating the guy.
“WHAT–”
Imogen nudged him, and he lowered his voice, leaning against the wall. “What did he do to you?”
Roman shrugged, rolling his eyes. “Relax, dude. He didn't do anything to me.”
“Then what was that yell?” Imogen hissed.
The boy cocked his head. “Yell?”
“You yelled out,” Kaz folded his arms, narrowing his eyes. He was already suspecting one of us had been compromised– or worse, brainwashed into compliance. Kaz stepped closer, backing Roman into the desk. “You cried out when you first went in there,” he murmured, “So, what was that?”
Something in Roman’s eyes darkened. “Oh,” He said, his lip curling. “That.”
Kaz’s expression softened. He rested his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Yeah,” He whispered. “What did he do to you?”
Imogen shoved Kaz out of the way, shooting the boy a glare.
“You don't have to tell us, you know.” She said in a small voice. “If it's too traumatising, or he did something you don't want to talk about–”
Roman cut her off with a laugh, and suddenly, all eyes were on him.
The remaining nine of us were eagerly awaiting an explanation.
“Are you fucking serious?”
When Kaz didn't respond, Roman gathered us in a kind of hustle, the four of us grouped together. I felt like I was on the football field. Still, though, if the guy’s goal was to look as suspicious as possible, he was doing a great job.
Roman studied each of us, one eyebrow cocked. When Mr Brighton glanced up from his work, Roman shot him a grin, lowering his voice to a hiss.
“You seriously think our fifty year old physics teacher has been abusing me in the storage closet?
“Then why did you cry out?” Kaz demanded. “Did he hit you?”
Roman stuck out his bottom lip. “I'm pretty sure he didn't hit me.”
“So, you cried out for no reason.”
“Why are you covering for him?” Imogen poked his forehead. “Are you lobotomised?”
Roman wafted her hand away. “Stop prodding me, and no, I'm 100% good.” He backed away from us, like we were observers, and he was the zoo attraction.
“I won't be, if you keep treating me like I'm senile.”
“Okay, fine,” Kaz sighed. “Just answer one.”
“Shoot.”
“When you first went in there, you made an unmistakable sound of distress–”
“Not this again,” Roman groaned. “Of course I yelled! I was shoved into a pitch black storage closet on my own! What, did you expect me to stay silent?”
Kaz didn't look convinced, Imogen nervously sucking her teeth.
The boy leaned back, resting his head against the wall. His eyes flickered shut.
“Stop looking at me like that, there's nothing to tell you,” he murmured, “Brighton didn't do shit to me. I was just freaked out.” Prying one eye open, he fixed us with a glare. “I am so sorry for reacting like a human. Next time, I'll make sure to attack him and pin him to the ground.”
It's not like we believed him. I don't think Roman believed himself.
Something significant had changed in him. He was no longer argumentative, like half of his personality had been torn away. Roman set a precedent. Because once he was following instructions and walking around with a dazed smile, others began to follow. I can't remember how much time had passed since I thought about escaping.
Days and weeks and months had collapsed into fleeting seconds I only noticed when I wasn't playing games.
I wasn't aware of my own lack of sanity until I found myself, on a random SaturWednesday. I was laughing, gathered with the others on the floor, around a Monopoly board. The game had been going on for almost a week.
Reality hit me when I was laughing so hard I tipped back.
I can't remember why I was laughing. I think Imogen told a bad joke.
“Hand it over.” Roman, who was the King of Monopoly, held out his hand, demanding my last 250 bucks. I remember noticing his smile, my foggy brain trying to find hints that he was in some kind of trance, or being controlled by Brighton. But no. His smile was real.
Genuine.
To my shock and confusion, so was mine.
I wasn't in a trance or any type of mind manipulation. I was completely conscious.
Was this… Stockholm syndrome? I thought dizzily.
Was I enjoying this?
My thoughts were like cotton candy, disconnected and wrong, and they barely felt like my own. My gaze found Imogen and Kaz, the two of them sitting shoulder to shoulder, enveloped in the game.
They looked exactly the same, their hair, clothes, everything about them staying stagnant. It was them themselves who had drastically changed. I had never seen them look so carefree. Imogen was a hotheaded cheerleader, and Kaz was the smart kid who gave himself nosebleeds from overworking himself. But now, they were laughing, nudging each other, caught up in an inside joke. Blinking slowly, my gaze strayed on them.
Sure, it could be manipulation. It could be brainwashing. But it could also be real.
Kaz caught my eye, raising a brow.
“You good, Christa?”
Again, my smile felt real. Like I was having fun.
“Good. It's your turn.”
I picked up the dice, throwing them across the board.
Two sixes.
“I can already see her landing on one of my hotels.” Roman murmured. He sat up, resting his chin on his knees. “As the clear winner, I have a proposition.”
Ignoring him, I moved my piece– immediately landing on Park Place.
“I'll give you 500,” Roman announced, “If you give up New York avenue.”
“That's all I've got!”
Imogen nudged me. “Don't do it. If you give him New York Avenue, he only needs one more.”
“One thousand.” Roman waved the notes in my face.
“My final offer.”
When I reached for the cash, he held it back.
“New York Avenue, he said, with a grin.
“And your pride.”
Reluctantly, I handed my only property over.
Kaz threw the dice and moved his piece, and I half remembered we had an escape plan. “Community chest.” Kaz picked up a card. “Go straight to jail.”*
Roman spluttered. “That's karma,” he said, “For stealing from the bank.”
“You were stealing too!”
We had a plan.
We had…. a plan.
After discussing it in detail, Imogen and I were going to try and get onto Brighton’s laptop. It wasn't a perfect way to escape, but it was coherent.
So, what happened?
We were going to get out, so what… what was this?
Kaz’s earlier words hit me from months ago.
“Mr Brighton *is the thing keeping us here,”* he explained. “If we kill him, I'm like, 98% sure we’ll go back to normal.”
“Okay, and what if he dies and we’re *stuck?”* Imogen whisper-shrieked.
“I said 98% for a reason. Yes, there's a small chance his power will die with him. But there's a bigger chance that its effects will die when he does.”
Ren nodded slowly. “Right, and where exactly did you learn this information?”
“You'll feel a lot better if I don't answer that.”
“Okay.” Ren gritted his teeth. “So, we just need to find a weapon, right?”
“And don't tell Hemlock,” Kaz rolled his eyes. “I don't care what he says, that boy definitely had his mind fucked with. Hemlock is a liability. If we tell Roman, he tells Brighton, and we’re screwed.” Kaz nodded to me, then the others. “Keep your mouths shut.”
Presently, I wasn't sure the boy wanted to escape.
Slowly, I rolled my eyes over to Mr Brighton, who had joined us to play.
He was happily marking papers, taking part when he could.
It felt…right.
Not like we had been forced or manipulated, but more like he belonged. Part of me wanted to question why I felt like this, but I found that I didn't care. I didn't care that we were essentially dead, in a never ending stasis and stuck inside fifty two minutes past two. I stopped thinking about the outside world a long time ago.
I couldn't even remember my Mom’s face.
I made my decision, dazedly watching Imogen throw a chance card at Roman.
He flung one back, threatening to tip the board.
I wanted to stay.
In the corner of my eye, however, someone was still awake.
Ren, who had been sitting next to me, kept moving, further and further away. I didn't notice until he was inching towards our teacher, a box cutter clenched between his fist. There must have been a point when we found a box cutter, when we made it our weapon of choice.
But somewhere along the way, I think we just… lost the longing to want to escape.
I didn't see the exact moment the boy stabbed the blade into the man's neck, plunging it through his flesh, but I did feel a sudden jolt, like time itself was starting to falter and tremble.
Mr Brighton dropped to the ground, and I found my gaze flashing to the frozen clock.
Which was moving, suddenly.
Slowly creeping towards 2:53pm.
Something sticky ran underneath me, warm and wet.
Blood.
Blood that was running.
Roman’s half lidded eyes found mine, and he blinked, dropping the dice.
Like he'd been asleep for a long time.
2:53pm.
We were free.
The cool spring breeze grazing my cheeks was back. I could feel my own heartbeat, sticky sweat on my forehead.
And outside, Jessie Carson let out a gut-churning scream.
For a disorienting moment, I don't think any of us believed we were free.
Roman twisted around, his gaze on the doorway.
The piece of paper the teacher had stuck to the glass slipped away.
But Roman’s gaze was glued to the door, his cheeks paling.
His lips parted into a silent cry.
Following his eyes, I glimpsed a shadow.
A shadow that was frozen at 2:52pm.
2:53pm.
“Fuck.” Roman whispered, stumbling to his feet.
He turned to the rest of us, his eyes wild.
“Get DOWN!”
I dropped onto my knees, crawling under a desk, the classroom exploding around me.
2:54.
Blood splattered the walls, and I was crawling in it, stained in my friends.
2:55.
I grabbed Mr Brighton's hand, squeezing for dear life.
Roman joined me, his trembling fingers feeling for a pulse.
A gunshot rang in my ears, rattling my skull.
When Roman went limp next to me, I wrapped my arms around my teacher.
“Mr Brighton, say Stop.”
He was so cold…
“Mr Brighton! Take us back!”
Footsteps coming towards me.
2:56.