Hi! Dealing with some feelings as I prepare to plan my own wedding. My boyfriend is going to propose soon, and we’ve started laying the groundwork for a wedding next year, but I dont even want to tell my BFF about our plans because of how she treated me when I was her maid of honor.
Last year, my best friend got married and I was her MOH. The bridal party was just MOH/best man, no other bridesmaids or groomsmen. The wedding was in her in-laws’ backyard and to be honest, it was a nightmare. A beautiful wedding, but zero consideration for the guests.
I live out of state and I went to stay with her for a week before the wedding, so we could get our nails done, finish DIY projects, prep the venue space, etc. Honestly she seemed MISERABLE all week. Was short with everyone. I heard her say “thank you” maybe twice the whole time I was there. This is usually not like her! So I figured hmm…we’ll wait til the wedding day is over and see if she feels happier.
I was so excited to spend the actual wedding DAY with her but we barely saw each other. We got her ready for photos (I did her hair and makeup) but she left me alone in her apartment to get ready solo. I had no one to zip my dress, put my hairpiece in, etc. I had to walk to the venue myself, carrying buckets of flowers she’d forgotten to make arrangements for.
During the cocktail hour and reception, I missed group photos because I was working. There was NO WATER or other nonalcoholic beverages out for the guests, so I prepped those and got them into the coolers/dispensers. I barely had time to sit and eat because I was the designated “go to” person for questions, so guests would find me if they needed directions to town, help finding the bathroom, etc.
Here’s the part that really hurts my feelings: when I was shopping for my bestie’s bridal shower, I found thank-you cards that matched her invites EXACTLY. It was incredible! I sent a pic and said “hey — want me to buy these???” She responded with a huge yes. They were on clearance at TJ MAXX so ~100 cards for $10. Not a huge expense at all. But…
It’s been a year and I haven’t received a thank-you card. No one has. And I get that, no one wants to do thank-you cards! But I haven’t received ANY acknowledgment for my efforts. And it really hurts. The day before the wedding, her now-husband was excitedly showing me the thank-you gift package he had chosen and assembled for his best man. I know the best man received his thank-you gift the day after the wedding because he posted about it in his wedding photo dump.
It’s been a year and I haven’t received a single thank you from my “bestie.” Her husband has shown more gratitude to me than she did. And now that I’m planning to get engaged…I don’t know if I should bring this up ahead of time and clear the air, or if I should leave it be. Our friendship feeeeels pretty normal and we talk regularly, but every time I think about this, it makes me want to NOT invite her to the wedding. I don’t even care if it’s not as elaborate as what the best man received, I just want SOME acknowledgement of my effort. There’s definitely some added bitterness because she is a stay-at-home wife and lives off her husband’s income, so I feel jealous she has time for craft projects and creative/leisure activities that I have to fit into my demanding career…but she can’t find time to send me a thank you? Ugh. I feel so dumb but after 15 years of friendship, I just want my effort to be acknowledged in SOME way. :(

It was an early morning in the Border Collie Household. The sun was just beginning to peek through the curtains, casting a warm glow into the living room where Mackenzie, Minnie, and Little Mack were sitting, looking rather bored.
Mackenzie, the eldest of the three siblings, let out a sigh as he tossed his stuffed Bilby, Billy, up in the air and caught it repeatedly. "I'm so bored," he grumbled, glancing over at his younger siblings.
Minnie, her bright eyes filled with mischief, grinned mischievously. "I know! Let's go bug Mom and Dad until they play with us!"
Little Mack's face lit up at the suggestion. "Yeah! That sounds like fun!"
“Alright, alright. Let's go see what they're up to." Mackenzie said as he placed Billy next to Bandido and lead his siblings out of his room and to the kitchen.
Meanwhile in the kitchen, Hunter and Queen were in the kitchen, having just finished the coffee they made a couple of minutes before.
“Honey?” Queen called.
“Yeah babe?” Hunter asked.
“What’s your stopwatch say?” Queen asked. Hunter looked at the stopwatch on the table next to them.
“12:22.” Hunter said. The two of them looked at each other for five seconds and then smirked.
“Three...two...one.” They both counted down. As they reached "one," Mackenzie, Minnie, and Little Mack burst into the kitchen, their faces filled with excitement.
"We're bored!" Minnie declared dramatically, throwing herself onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Can you play with us?”
“I don’t see why not.” Hunter answered as he turned to face the three. “What game do you wanna play?”
That was the thing. They didn’t exactly know what they wanted to play. Queen glanced at Hunter with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
"I have an idea," she said, her lips curling into a playful grin. "How about we play... Smoochy Tag?"
“Smoochy Tag? Now THAT is a game I haven’t played in a long time.” Hunter said with a laugh.
“What’s smoochy tag?” Little Mack asked.
“It’s like normal tag, but you have to smooch someone to tag them. When you tag them, they help you tag the others. It’s really fun!” Mackenzie said as his tail wagged a bit.
“I’ll be it first. Mackenzie, can you pick a number between one and ten?” Queen asked. Mackenzie paused for a moment.
“Seven!” Mackenzie said happily.
“Seven.” Queen repeated, then she smirked. “Six…Five…Four-”
Realizing she was counting down, Hunter and the kids took off running. Hunter opened the front door and ran out of the house with the laughing children. Queen reached one and then grabbed her coffee mug.
“I’ll just finish this first.” She stated while also putting Hunter’s mug in the sink.
After a couple of seconds of running, the four of them stopped for a moment and looked around.
“We need to hide.” Hunter said as he looked around.
“But where?” Mackenzie asked. That’s when they heard a door open, they all turned to see Bandit standing at the opening.
“Oh, morning Border Collies!” Bandit said with a wave.
“Morning Bluey’s Dad, can we hide in your house?” Mackenzie asked. Bandit raised an eyebrow almost immediately, leaving Hunter to clarify.
“We’re playing a game and Queen is it.” Hunter told him.
“Say no more, c’mon in.” Bandit said almost immediately, opening the door a little bit more for them. The four Border Collies ran inside and Bandit closed the door, looking through the peephole.
“Sorry to involve you in our game Bandit.” Hunter told him. Bandit turned to him and waved it away.
“No worries, we do that to our neighbor Pat all the time. Looks like karma finally caught up.” Bandit said, he then walked away from the door. “What game are you playing?”
“We call it smoochy tag.” Hunter said, that’s when the doorbell rang. Bandit walked over to open it and saw that no one was there.
“Huh, no one. Weird.” Bandit said before closing the door and walking back to Hunter. “What’s Smoochy tag?”
“Basically a cross between tag and playing zombies, but a kiss is how you tag the others.” Hunter answered. The doorbell rang again. Bandit opened the door and looked around this time, again, seeing no one.
“Kids playing ding dong ditch?” Hunter asked. Bandit closed the door and walked back over.
“Probably.” Bandit said as Chilli walked into the room.
“Who’s dinging the doorbell?” Chilli asked.
“Probably the kids.” Bandit said. That was before he saw Bluey and Bingo hiding Mackenzie and Little Mack somewhere in the living room, and then hearing the doorbell again. “Okay, definitely not the kids.”This time, Hunter walked over to the door to open it, and when he did, Queen grabbed his arm and pulled him outside.
“Gotcha! C’mere you!” Queen smirked as she attempted to pull him into a kiss. However, Bandit and Chilli grabbed Hunter to pull him into the house, joining the game.
“Not so fast!” Bandit said as he pulled Hunter into the house. Chilli also pulled, whilst chuckling.
“It’s not gonna be that easy.” Chilli told her. Queen continued trying to kiss Hunter, but Hunter was pulled away and Chilli got a cushion to poke Queen back out of the house. “Out, out with ya.”
With Queen back out of the house, Chilli closed the door. Chilli wiped her brow with a ‘phew’ and looked at Bandit.
“What was that all about?” Chilli asked.
“It’s a game called Smoochy Tag.” Bandit told her.
“Sounds fun, I’ll ask the kids if they wanna play.” Chilli said as she walked to the living room. Bandit looked at Hunter with wide eyes.
“Run upstairs, quick.” Bandit told him. Hunter nodded and ran upstairs with Bandit. Chilli walked to the living room where she saw Bingo hiding Little Mack behind the plant.
"Hey, Bingo," Chilli said with a warm smile. "Are you and your new friend playing Smoochy Tag too?"
Bingo looked up from her hiding spot with a wide grin. "Yeah, Mum! We're helping hide Little Mack from his mum."
“Well guess what, your dad and I are playing too. But I need to know the rules first.” Chilli said as he kneeled down to Little Mack’s height. “Can you tell me the rules?”
Little Mack got out from under the table and began to explain the rules of the game.
“It’s like normal tag, but you have to smooch someone to tag them. When you tag them, they help you tag the others. Mackenzie says it’s really fun.” Little Mack answers. Chilli tapped her chin.
“Smooch someone, like this?” Chilli asked, placing a kiss on Little Mack’s forehead. Little Mack giggled.
“Yes, exactly like that.” Little Mack said.
“Good. Looks like we’re helping your mom now.” Chilli said, revealing she made herself it when she played the game. Which also meant she that Little Mack was also it. Much to the four year old’s playful disappointment.
“Aw bugger.” Little Mack said. Then both of them turned to Bingo. She quickly turned around to run.
“Quick, let’s get her!” Chilli exclaimed as she and Little Mack ran after her. The moment they were out of the living room, Bluey and Mackenzie ran out from behind the couch and ran to the backyard where they got cut off by Queen.
“Going somewhere?” She teased before running after them. Bluey and Mackenzie playfully screamed before running back inside. Queen ran after them and was gaining on them pretty quickly. She would’ve caught up if it wasn’t for Minnie running in front of her, running away from Bingo who was also running away from Chilli and Little Mack. Switching targets, Queen grabbed Minnie and kissed her forehead.“No!” Minnie exclaimed while laughing. Bingo was gonna run past, but Queen grabbed her too and kissed her on the forehead as well. Now the only ones left were Mackenzie, Bluey, Hunter and Bandit. Bluey and Mackenzie were seen running up stairs. Upstairs, the hallway presented several doors, providing ample hiding spots. Bluey gestured excitedly to the linen closet. "Quick, hide in here!" she whispered urgently to Mackenzie.
Mackenzie nodded, running into the closet with Bluey. Bluey closed the door, while Hunter and Bandit veered into the Heeler bedroom just as they heard footsteps approaching. Inside the linen closet, Bluey and Mackenzie huddled together, barely able to contain their giggles. Bluey put a finger to her lips, motioning for Mackenzie to stay quiet as they listened to the footsteps draw closer. They held their breath as the footsteps walked towards them, stopped, and then walked away from them. Allowing them to let out a sigh of relief.
In the bedroom, Hunter and Bandit were both were under the bed, and practically arguing with each other silently.
“Find your own hiding spot!” Bandit whisper yelled to him.
“I don’t know this house! This is the best I can do!” Hunter replied. The two of them where still arguing when Queen and Chilli walked into the room, and from the footsteps abruptly stopping, they more than likely got found out.
“You think they heard us?” Bandit asked. Suddenly, Hunter’s ankles were grabbed and he was yanked out from under the bed. Bandit’s wrists were grabbed and he was pulled out as well. When they were out, they realized that the other’s wife had pulled them out. Bandit was pulled out by Queen and Hunter was pulled out by Chilli. The two ladies looked at each other, smirked, nodded and switched locations, kissing their husbands to tag them.
“And then there were two.” Hunter said as he stood up looking out in the hall.
“I heard whispering in the closet before walking in here.” Chilli said as she pointed to the linen closet. Queen and Hunter started to walk towards that door and counted backwards from three before opening the door and seeing….nothing.
“Huh?” Queen questioned. Inside Bluey’s room, Mackenzie and Bluey were sneaking back down the stairs and was making their way to the playroom. On the way there, Mackenzie accidentally bumped into one of the dressers and knocked over the lamp. Mackenzie was fast enough to catch the lamp before it could hit the ground.
“That was close.” Mackenzie said in relief.
“He’s downstairs!” Little Mack exclaimed, having heard him. Mackenzie put the lamp back and he and Bluey ran out to the backyard. Little Mack was the first to go outside to try and catch at least one of them. Minnie ran outside too and both were going straight for Mackenzie, who was not too keen with getting caught so he kept dodging and juking them like he was playing a game of rugby. Bluey on the other hand was running from Bingo and ran right into Bandit who picked her up and kissed her on the nose.
“Gotcha Bluey!” Bandit told her. He then looked at Mackenzie who juked Little Mack and made him run into Minnie. Mackenzie was gonna run back inside, but Hunter was guarding the door. “Let’s get em Bluey.”
Mackenzie turned around and Queen was blocking his path back.
“Where’re you gonna go now mate?” Hunter asked him. Mackenzie looked right and saw Bandit and Bluey walking towards him.
“Going left!” Mackenzie said as he ran left. He was gonna run down the left side of the house to go to the front yard, but the moment he ran around the corner, Chilli was right there. Mackenzie turned around to run again, but he was grabbed by Hunter, who jumped over the railing the moment he went around the corner. Mackenzie laughed as he was caught, squirming playfully in Hunter's grasp.
"Nice try, buddy." Hunter chuckled before planting a kiss on his son’s forehead, ending the game. “Man, you’re getting faster kid.”
"You're not too bad yourself, Dad." Mackenzie replied, his tail wagging happily. "That was so much fun!"
"You did great, champ," Hunter said, ruffling Mackenzie's hair. "But all that running around has made me hungry, lets go get brunch.”
Mackenzie's stomach growled in agreement, and he nodded eagerly. "Yeah, brunch sounds awesome!"
Chilli and Bandit looked at each other and then nodded before turning back over to the Border Collies.
“Would you like to stay for Brunch?” Chilli asked them.
"That sounds lovely," Queen replied with a smile, glancing at Hunter for confirmation.
Hunter nodded, returning the smile. "Yeah, we'd love to stay. Thanks for the invitation."
Chilli beamed. "Great! Let's head to the kitchen then. I'll whip up something delicious for all of us."
“Allow me to help.” Queen said as she and Chilli walked upstairs to the kitchen. Hunter and Bandit played with the kids to keep them occupied. s they all made their way to the kitchen, the Border Collies chatted happily, their laughter filling the air. Hunter and Bandit found themselves engaged in a playful game of catch with Mackenzie, Bluey, Minnie, and Little Mack, while Queen and Chilli worked together to prepare brunch.
In the kitchen, Queen and Chilli shared stories and laughter as they cooked, enjoying each other's company. Queen expertly cracked eggs into a bowl while Chilli chopped vegetables for an omelet. The aroma of sizzling bacon filled the air, making everyone's stomachs growl in anticipation.
Meanwhile, downstairs, Hunter and Bandit continued their game with the kids, tossing a ball back and forth and dodging around the furniture. Mackenzie's tail wagged furiously as he chased after the ball, his laughter echoing through the house.
As brunch neared completion, Queen and Chilli set the table with plates, utensils, and glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice. The tantalizing smell of food wafted through the house, drawing everyone to the kitchen.
With everything ready, they all gathered around the table, exchanging smiles and stories as they enjoyed the delicious brunch together. Plates were filled with fluffy omelets, crispy bacon, and buttery toast, and the conversation flowed effortlessly as they savored the meal.
Later on, Queen and Chilli were playing with the kids as Hunter and Bandit were on the balcony watching them as they played, drinking some soda as they watched.
“Made quite the first impression you know.” Bandit said to Hunter, who chuckled.
“Sweet as, Bandit. You know I was a bit skeptical about the move but now...” Hunter responded, watching as Bluey playfully managed to tackle Mackenzie to the ground. “..I think I made the right choice.”
“While I don’t doubt that mate, I’m sure we’ll see.” Bandit told him.
“Yeah…we’ll see.” Hunter replied. Soon, it was time for the Border Collies to head home and the Heelers waved goodbye to them as they walked off.
“You know, I think I like our new neighbors.” Chilli said to her family.
“Will they be back to play again?” Bingo asked her dad. Bandit smiled and watched the Border Collies walk off.
“We’ll see.”

The little we saw of it, at least.
Back when the show was airing, a lot of people theorized that the Yuyas were fragments of some evil god of darkness, and the Yuzus fragments of a goddess of light. Which was very plausible.
But then it turns out Yuzu is just Akaba Leo's daughter. I actually like this a lot. It explains why Akaba Leo abandoned his family to pursue his plan, why he is so hellbent on collecting the girls, why he is willing to go to the lengths he did.
There is another interesting thing regarding this. Yuzu has a father but no mother. Ruri has a brother. They're the only family that any of the bracelet girls have. What currently living family does Ray have? A father and a brother. People say this twist came out of nowhere but I'm not sure about that.
As for Yuya, who some believed was a fragment of essentially a Zorc or Don Thousand figure of Arc-V... it turns out he was just... Yuya. In his past life he sought to entertain just as he does now. He was essentially the same person then that he is now. He simply chose to walk the path of evil in the past, and it is his very same desire to entertain that caused him to do so. This I really like.
Interestingly the whole thing also recontextualizes Yuya's whole entertainment schtick. Up to that point, we all thought Yuya wanted to be an entertainer because of his dad... but it turns out that's not true at all. He did not want to be an entertainer because he was Yusho's son. In fact it's exactly the opposite: he was Yusho's son because he wanted to be an entertainer.
This is confusing so let me explain. Yusho speculated that Zarc and Ray were able to influence their places in the new reality, and that is why Yuya and Yuzu ended up where they did. It was through Zarc's influence that Yuya ended up in the family that he did. Now, Yusho speculated that the reason Yuya ended up in his family was so that he could bring Zarc back to power. Here, I believe Yusho was wrong. There are many people other than Yusho who could have done that. I don't believe Zarc consciously influenced reality to put Yuya in the Sakaki family, I believe he did so subconsciously. It was his subconscious desire to entertain that decided Yuya's place in the new reality, not some grand master plan to return himself to power. Yuya didn't become Yusho's son to restore his power, but to resurrect him as an entertainer.
Now there is one glaring flaw with the backstory: we were given no information on what kind of relationship Zarc and Ray had. And I absolutely do not buy that they had no relationship at all, There has to be a reason Ray wanted to face Zarc so badly, there has to be a reason the counterparts love each other. The idea that the two never knew each other makes no narrative sense at all.
Other than that though, the problems were more with the wider narrative. Two things in particular:

1. This narrative does not work unless Yuzu is a proper deuteragonist and the one to take down Zarc!Yuya at the end. It simply does not. There is no other satisfying way to take him down. She is the one who took him down in the past ffs, the whole narrative kind of revolves around her. If you watch season 1, it seems like things could have been headed in that direction... but her treatment afterwards pretty much threw that out the window.

Imagine Bakura is the protagonist. And Yugi does nothing the whole show except get kidnapped again and again and eventually killed off.
Now, come the final arc, Bakura's evil spirit from the past obviously takes control and enacts his final plan. We obviously find out that Yugi was the one who defeated this evil in the past. But wait, Yugi's a nothing character who just got kidnapped and then subsequently killed off.
That is basically what Arc-V did. Yuya is Zorc and Yuzu is Atem. But Yuzu is... well, a nothing character who just got kidnapped and then subsequently killed off.

1. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever that Akaba Leo did not immediately attempt to kill Yuri.

Now, Yuri being the evil version of Yuya is fine, as is him being Yuya's final boss duel. It was actually one of the highlights of Arc-V post standard arc. But he actually does not need to be affiliated with Academia to do this, in fact at the end he really wasn't, he was pretty much just pursuing his own agenda.
I think you kind of had to write Yuri as a second main villain who was actually opposed to Leo as well as the protagonists. Could be difficult... but that's basically how it ended up anyway.

(Im sorry if my english is bad) For starters me (19M) and my best friend (18M) have known eachother since birth. We are both in a friend group that resulted from all of our parents being friends with eachother. The group consists of us two, another guy (19M) and two girls (18F) and (19F). We all grew up very close in Russia, however I am ukrainian. We went to school together, went on vacations together and generally were all doing everything together. Not long ago, when picking out collages, my best friend was telling me about how he wishes he could stay in Russia and how he cant because of some reasons I will not share here, and so naturally I offered that I could go to college with him in another country. Fast forward a few months later we both got into a pretty good collage in Finland. Now about our backround basically my best friend is very close with one of the girls in the group but they both stated that they do not like eachother and if you ask me, they didnt seem to have any kind of spark between eachother. However he was also very close to the other guy in the group. By close I mean that they literally acted like a couple. Whenever we would have school summer camps they would share a bed and sometimes I would even catch them cuddle, they would hug a lot etc. and generally make a lot of jokes about being gay for eachoter and liking eachother. You should know that my best friend is extremely handsome, I mean like model handsome. He is tall, not too muscular and not too skinny, pale skin, green eyes, soft blonde hair and very beautiful features. He looks so beautiful from every single angle, he looks beautiful while he sleeps, when he laughs, when he cries and is probably the most beautiful person I have ever met in my entire life. Despite that, he has never been in a relationship. A lot of girls have liked him in the past but he rejected them and he is pretty popular on social media and gets praised for his looks online as well. Aside from his looks he is also very smart. He is passionated about history and linguistics, he is good at maths and in general he is a very cultured person. He is very kind, funny, loving and has this sensitive side that he doesnt show too often. He just lights up the room everytime even though he is not that kind of positive and happy person you would imagine. He has gone through a lot in his childhood, things that I will not mention. On his 18th birthday, some things happened and I was lucky enough to be in time to stop them, which resulted into him bursting in tears in my arms and telling me how he feels about his life. A lot of time has passed since that event. Now we share an apartament here in Finland and go to college together. He seems happier, or maybe since he doesn’t spend that much time alone anymore he is just distracting himself from all the things he was going through. It is currently risky for me to go back in my home country and so I usually just go to Russia together with him on holidays. I am really enjoying all the time spent with him and I have never felt happier for such a long period of time. Recently he started hanging out with another guy from the same college and not going to lie but I feel kind of jealous. Since then I started to question my feelings for him. I never pictured myself or him actually being gay, let alone together in a relationship. I feel scared and nervous. My mother and her boyfriend will definitely hate me more than they already do and my father will probably think Im a disappointment. I feel as if I am betraying my religion and my identity but at the same time I feel so happy with this man. And here comes the biggest problem of all, what if after all he isnt gay and I will ruin our friendship. Yesterday night he went over to the new guys house.The guy likes him, he told me, asking for advice and more things about my best friend. I was kind of mad that I didnt get invited too, especially when he knows how close we are. Before going, I acted kind of rude towards him, which I regret, but he brushed it off and just left. Later at night when he came home, I was already in bed, pretending to sleep. I heard him change and get straight into his bed. A few moments later he started crying. He was crying very badly and I could tell he was trying to keep quiet. I dont know if anything happened there or if he was crying about my response or about his past because I simply didnt get up or have any kind of reaction, which again, I regret. I tried talking to him today in the morning, I didnt tell him I heard how he cried, I just acted normal, and although he wasnt his usual self, he didnt act sad or anything. I dont know wether I should or should not ask him about last night. And most importantly I dont know if I should tell him about my feelings for him and explain the situation.

All Names used are Fake!
Context: In 2022, I (14FtM, haven't transioned bc parents don't support) changed class periods in my old school, I met him (15M, let's call him Jake) on my new class bc the seating chart put me infront of him. We got along really fast since we were both part of the community and didn't have accepting parents, he told me he was Pansexual and the only reason that they woudn't curse at him was that they believed it was a phase and he would go back to his senses. We became best friends and spent the entire year hanging out and having fun, he would go to my house to do school projects so my parents knew him, i only met his parents months later because his mom invited me to a sleepover. Jake also told me that the reason his parents liked me was because they saw me as a 'well behaved girl' and that i was a good influence on Jake. On january 2023, my parent decided to move, so we packed our bags, said goodbye to family members and friends and went to live in a different city 3 hours away.
All of the main people mentioned in this post know eachother from the same class in 2022.
Story : In 2023, a week after our friendship bithday, his mom invites me to go on a trip with them to an amusement park (she said she would pay for me), I ended up going and we had a really good day. At the end of day when we were leaving the park, Jake stops me and gives me a silver ring with his name engraved into it and shows me his hand with a matching ring (we had matching jewelry already, matching bracelets and those bff necklaces, so i didn't think much of it and just brushed it of as another gift). After the trip I went back to my city and we didn't see each other until 3 months later (we would travel every few weeks to visit family, but my parent had been really busy). When I came back to visit, we got together to throw a secret birthday party to a friend of ours the day of the party comes, our friend was super happy because she thought she was going to be spending her birthday alone, it wasn't a big party either, just our 5 friends in Jake's parent's house, a few presents and a pretty cake but we were all having fun. Less than an hour after the party started, his godmother, who was in the house with us to make sure we didn't do any stupid teenager thing, calls for me and Jake and says that she wanted to take a picture of the rings to send it to they're family groupchat, I was confused but let her take the picture anyway, then she asked me when could they meet my family so that we could be an official couple. That's when it dawned on me that I was dating my best friend for almost 4 months and didn't know. I spent the next 3 months lying to him and saying that my parents were to busy with work and that we wouldn't be visiting for a while, when in reality we were actually there already, many anxious nights asking a few trusted friends on what I should do, because while I didn't have any romantic feelings for him and didn't want to be in a relationship, he was still my best friend and I knew that it wouldn't be the same after it (also the fact that my parents didn't know about this and were already upset with me because my grades weren't the best). After all this time ignoring him I ended up losing the ring and couldn't bring myself to ever look him in the eyes again so I deleted his number and just never messaged him again.
Now this year, he made a few moves to try and get in contact with me after i moved again (still 3 hours away, just moved to a nicer house) so i went ahead and changed numbers, i've heard from the 2 friends i kept contact and still hang out with that he sometimes questions about me, but as per my request, they just give vague answers. (Important to mention that these friends are also Jake's acquaintances, and it doesn't bother me that they talk, even if it did that would be my personal issue)
I hadn't heard from Jake since march, until last weekend. We went to visit family again and i had planned to hangout with my friend (16M) on saturday, we just walked around the city, got ice cream and talked for the few hours we were together and it was really fun, we also posted a few things on social media. And it was from these pictures that a girl from our class in 2022 (Anne) that still followed me on Instagram, messaged me and asked if i was dating this friend, to which i responded with no, and then just a few hours later my friend told me that Jake had messaged him and talked about Anne, saying she had been exposing my texts with her from 2023 ever since jake announed that i had broken up with him. Turns out she was telling him all about texts from when i was looking for advice on how to break up with Jake up to pictures on my socials of other male friends from my new school, she would always ask me on every single photo i had with a boy if i was dating them and always be really pushy about getting a 'Yes' for an answer, which she never did.
After my friend told me about this i blocked her on all acounts (she had 3 and followed me on all of them) I also deleted every text i had with her. I hope i never have to see her again.

Warning this story contains sexual assault, i wil not be describing this, there is also mention of mental abuse (i don't really know what to call it, i'm sorry)
My ex-boyfriend(27m) Jason and i (26f) have been broken up for 4 years, yes, we broke up during the pandemic however it was a long time coming. We stayed friends, as we have a lot of friends in common and frequently meet up. Over time i have come to a conclusion that i don't want to be near him anymore and need help or advice on what to do with our mutual friends.
I''l give you a bit of history. We were together for 4 years, so when we were about 17-18. Both of us have a tumultuous history and when we met, we bonded over that. It is important to the story i share a bit of my history, i was sexually assaulted when i was a child and had kept it to myself until i was about 17, my healing proces started around the same time(i have ptsd). Jason went throug an abusive relationship, this is all i'm going to say as it is not mine to share. Both of us needed help, we held on to eachother, i became what he needed. He tried to help but i guess he got lost. He manipulated, sexually assaulted, raped me and made me believe i was at fault for it. He compared me to his ex, who was always compared to a contolling monster, it made me feel like i was one. He counted the amount of days we didn't have sex to say that he was great for not cheating, reiterating that he is a great person for putting up with my trauma and problems. I don't want to say i was a perfect person, i can only imagine it is difficult to have a partner with my baggage. I'm also not saying it was all bad or that i think he is a monster but he left me with more trauma than i started with. Even though i only came to this realisation after we broke up.
When we broke up we decided that we would stay friends, after al we never fought. I've know my friends since i was about 12 years old, Jason became a part of that friendgroep when we started dating. My friends are my family, they are amasing people, who i never want to lose. Jason is a guy that will let you feel if he thinks you of lesser intelligence. He has people in our group where he thinks himself better because he is more intelligent. In my opinion he takes whatever he reads and accepts it as his own opinion, he often does not speak in nuance or his own expirience, or with enough reliable sources. For example he thought it was not hard to get a vasectomy for woman, or at least just as hard for men with just as much consequenses. (idiot) Please don't take this as fully true, i might just have short sight where he is concerned.
Let's get to where i need help. Around Christmass this year a couple in our friendgroup broke up, it was a rough time for them and they leaned on their friends for help, obviously. It got heated cause one of them was moving on with a different person from our group while the other wanted to hold on to their relationship. At one point jason needed to take a step back, because he cound't handle being in between the two camp, which i understand, one of them was going throug heavy mental struggles.
When he decided to take a step back from the situation i reached out to him, to check up on him, cause i knew he sometimes struggled with this kind of stuff. In the last couple of years we never really talked, i really stuggled with being "nice" , this is in quotation cause i can be quit passive agressive towards him. i see his red flags more than others maybe?
We started talking about how we handled our break up and how it was easier for us cause of the pandemic, we didn't need to see eachother. He started to talkabout maybe dating again soon and i playfully, not really playfully give him advice. I quote 'Maybe don't count the days you don't have sex, comparing them to you're horrible ex, just some advice haha' he immidiatly confirmed the dick move. This started a conversation where he admitted and apologized for raping me and abusing me, his words. He admitted to being abusive! I cound't believ it, i never thought he would realise what he did let alone admit this to me. I can't tell you how relieved i was, i never talked to anybody exept my psycholigist. I din't feel like i had the right to tell our friends cause WE decided we were friends, i didn't want to come off as a scorned ex, i didn't think they would believe me. Maybe they would think i was just seeing the bad things and exagerating. After the converstation we decided to meet and have a face to face conversation. A lot of crying and me saying it to his face that he raped me during our 4 year relationship i felt drained. He also gave me 'permission' to talk to our friends about it.
Before i wanted to share with them i needed to breath again, in my life i go though shit and i need moment to just be able to really relatavize things. Just two days after our conversation he texted to meet up again, he needed tot talk to me... I panicked and immidiently said yes, i thought he was going to take everything back and say i overeacted, that i was at fault, which i was definetly not. We met, he wanted to know what i meant by guilt.... WTF, what do you mean? Guilt, yes you are guilty, you did this, maybe not with violence but i said no, you did it anyways, dickhead. No, he wanted me to tell him i don't think he is a rapist now, or i don't think he is a monster. And while yes, i don't think he is a bad guy or a monster, he was to me in that time. He might have changed. I think he did, he's admittance is prove of that. Let me tell you tho i yelled at this man, why do you need me to help you deal with this, you did this to me and now you want to play victim to me. Poor you, you raped me? I told him to leave me alone, that i needed him to not involve me in this cause i can't. Again he is making me feel bad because something that happened between us harms him.
It has been a month and last week was the first time i told my girlfriends, who are part of this friendgroup, what a relieve. They told me in no uncertain terms that they believed me and that i get to make decision in if i'm comfertable with him around me, i love them. They both have reached out to me if i need totalk about it they are here for me. They have also expressed disgust haha.
I'm not planning on not sharing what happened between us with my friends, i always felt like a burden by sharing but i need support and i'm learning that they want to be there for me. A couple of others know and they are also there for me, whatever i need.
Now here is where i need your advice. I don't want my friends to feel like they need to not be friends with him. I decided that i don't want him near me anymore, the way that second conversation went really striked me the wrong way, i'm done with him. Now i know he is not a monster, he is a different Jason to me than he is for the others. He was a best man at the wedding of my bestfriends, he was there for them when they have had a difficult time, i don't want them to feel ike i want them out of their lives for me. A lot of us view our friendship as family, i don't want them to lose that. What do i do? How do i handle this? I need help, i need any advice you can give me.
Thank you for reading, also English is not my first language, i appoligize for any weird mistakes.
Again thank you.

3/6 Emotional Generator, (defined gates from ESP: 30, 19-49 , 37-40 )
First off, they're not familiar human design so I couldn't help them understand things from that perspective.
Not to be confused with my emotional wave but being around them makes me feel very unsafe, I progressively feel distrusting and simply cannot even pretend anymore –I cannot open myself up in any way, not even through eye contact or change of posture towards them when speaking. It's been interesting in my time of experimenting, especially in the beginning, that whenever I had resistance to something i would feel clenching in my gut, it's hardly till now that I've had a such a visceral full body 'back off' towards someone consistently – well, it's been a while...
I've felt through my emotional wave about last 3months on how to react over what I feel, the place they should have in my life and how much to let them in. I've felt the underlying truth for some time but I just allowed myself to go through the motions & various, small situations would somewhat destabilise things too causing me to doubt myself or sometimes question myself in a healthy way.
As much as I still experience guilt over what I feel and my mind gets involved, its very clear to me according to following my emotional authority that all of me wants nothing to do with ALL of this individual, not even speaking briefly or simple eye contact, nothing. And it's challenging...
Primarily because I live with this person, I'm not able to physically be out of the situation right now, so me being this way has caused tension for weeks. The person is very fond of me but I really don't want a relationship with them. I wouldn't even feel safe to communicate how I feel but part of me thinks it would only be fair to say something, let them know cs it clearly has been hurting them that I'm not the same with them anymore and in no way do i feel like letting in them anymore not even in the smallest of ways.

I (28f) am seeing a longtime friend (28m) of an ex (27m). I'm unsure if we're doing anything wrong or if it's all just too complicated.
I (28f) started talking to an old mutual friend (28m), let's call him Scott, of an ex (27m), let's call him Logan, from high school/early undergraduate. I broke up with Logan after about 2 and a half years of dating. The breakup was not mutual and he had asked me to marry him a few weeks prior. I ended up calling things off because he was becoming physically abusive and controlling and we were moving too fast for our ages. The relationship was toxic and I know I didn't help to alleviate any issues we had. We would get into spats often and I had horrible anger management back then. He isolated me from my friend groups and even his own at a point. His parents bought us a house in a larger city. I say "us" but it was always meant for him. It was one of those "we were already looking for a house for him but since you're dating, you can both live there and start a family," type of things. Long story short, it was a lot of developing and conflicting things happening in the span of our relationship. This was about 9 years ago. I started dating someone else about a year later but that didn't last for similar reasons, and he was a lot older. Logan had found out about that and harassed me for the entirety of that relationship, not knowing it was just as bad as my relationship with him. Cops wouldn't listen when I wanted to file a report and didn't even want to look at the evidence I had, text, phone record and emails. It was just all around bad.
Now, I'm finishing up my post baccalaureate and I started chatting and going on dates with Scott for about a month. Scott was friends with another guy I dated for an incredibly short time in high school before Logan and was part of Logan's friend circle. Scott and Logan have been passive friends for years and are still in some amount of contact. Scott had no idea about Logan's treatment of me as he went to college in another city before coming back to town and nobody told him. I doubt many of his friend group were even aware, which I don't blame them. So, its just that extra layer of removal from the situation. We talked about their closeness on our first date and he assured me that they were never that close. He even informed me of him hearing about something similar happening with someone Logan dated recently. So, he wasn't all that surprised, but he doesn't know the full extent either, just bits.
Where I'm concerned if there's a line being crossed is that Scott is pretty close to Logan's best friend (m28), let's call him Bobby. Bobby and Scott still talk and even hangout when they can, but Bobby is still very close to Logan and always had been, even when Logan is in a totally different city. Scott and I have been taking things slow, but we are both realizing this may end up as a long-term relationship but we're still feeling things out. Scott knows he's going to have to sit Bobby and other friends, from the old group that he still talks to, down and tell them that we're dating, when things become official. It's still too soon to do that, but we felt it best to discuss the possibility of him having to do that. I've told Scott that I don't want to come between him and his friends. He's made it clear that he doesn't care but I don't want him to be isolated from his friends like I had been.
I really like Scott. He seems to really like me too. Things are still new and fresh so they could sour but we both hope that doesn't happen. We are doing our best to communicate with each other and share our needs. We plan on continuing to see each other and even more during the summer, we're both educators, and know if that goes well, then the talk will have to happen. But, are we crossing a line that shouldn't be crossed?
I didn't get many answers when i posted on rrelationshipadvice. However, Scott is starting to have doubts about the relationship. We've been spending more time together and even started little traditions. Nothing big but just starting series together and trying new restaurants together. He told me that during the quiet and slow times when he can start acknowledging or seeing us as a couple that he can't help but think about his relationships with Bobby and his other friends. He mentioned that he has gone on vacations and trips with Bobby and Bobby's friends and often those vacations include Logan because they're so close. They're planning to take a trip next month and Logan will more than likely be joining them. I told him that I wouldn't go with him because of Logan and I wouldn't stop him from going. I also told him that he can't unknow what he's knows about Logan. He agreed that he doesn't know how he'll feel when he sees Logan again but he knows if Logan finds out that we're dating he will cut off all ties with him and Bobby will follow him, Logan. He said it may cause a kind of divide between the friend group over his relationship with me. I reiterated that I don't want to come between him and his friends. He asked if I would be hurt if he ended up ending our relationship and I was honest with him. I told him that I would be hurt but that shouldn't make him want to stay with me. He needs to decide that for himself. I told him he needs to think it over and really decide for himself where he wants to take this. It's only been 2 months so it wouldn't be a huge deal, in a time sense. I just really like him but now I'm starting to have doubts with how much of his life is reliant on these guys. It could just be because it's me but I don't know that for sure.
We met up this past week and had a talk. He was ready to end things but he seemed to not want to say it. When I asked why, he said it was indeed because of his relationship with Logan. He made it seem like it wasn't a super close relationship at first but now it's sounding like it was close enough for him to feel some amount of guilt. I told him I was more hurt that he was choosing to continue a friendship with someone who actively hurts women, as I'm not the only one Logan has hurt, but the other woman didn't seem as hurt, if that makes sense. I also told him I didn't blame him because they were friends longer than we were seeing each other and that I know everything is complicated. We kept talking and he started voicing more that he wants me in the picture and hopes I can win his friends over. He asked if I could ever make amends with Logan and I said "no." I explained why, which was a lot of what the reasons why we broke up in the first place, but I wasn't explicit with what exactly happened. I didn't want to share because a part of me felt like it was still not the place to do so. He asked me if I could wait until he gets back from his trip and sees if 1) Logan shows any remorse, 2) See Logan period, and 3) See if Bobby would be adult enough to see why he wants to date me. He wants me to be his girlfriend but has said he needs a break until he can do all of those things.
Any advice?

So, before you answer, I need to give some specifics and background.
We were together for a year and half. We live 30 mins from each other, which is relatively close but enough distance that my home environment is a different place than hers, since she lives and studies in the city centre and I live in the outskirts but have to comute pretty much every day to the city centre for our university campus.
We both had met each other’s family, including more distanced relatives and had several future plans, such as summer vacations and even new years trips.
Regarding uni, I’m on a different year but have several classes with her since I switched courses. While we were still together, we decided to be on several group projects together with two other mutual friends (she was already friends with both and I became friends with them by being “the boyfriend”), also because the rest of the class for some reason doesn’t really embraces us and made us feel like outsiders, specifically me, since I didn’t share many classes with them.
So fast forward to the present, we have broken, it’s has been 3 weeks, so while it’s very fresh and I still have my ups and downs, I feel time is starting to heal some wounds.
I feel mainly good when I’m distracted with friends and family, when working/studying or doing something I enjoy. When I’m between tasks, just doing nothing or when something triggers a memory, I feel sad, melancholic and all the usual breakup emotions.
But the worse feeling is caused by being with her and the group at the project classes.
The main issue is that she has adopted a strategy which causes me a great deal of pain: she doesn’t interact with me, doesn’t even acknowledges in group talks, it’s literally like I’m not even there. Recently, even the other two members, who now have completely taken her side, also stopped interacting with me. The project is found of the rails of course and it’s no longer possible to change groups or to do the work alone.
Outside of classes, when we see each other coincidentally, if she’s alone she’ll wave or just say hi but if she’s with both of them or anyone else, she just looks at me.
All of that plus talking with both of her friends about her life, what she has done or will do in the week, including details of several plans and parties and expressing interest in meeting new people in front of me is making me feel the worse I have ever felt.
I got support from friends, family and even therapy which I had for other motives have been life saving. But no one can understand how deep my sadness and anxiety before the days I know I’ll meet her.

NB: If you prefer to read this article from Google Docs, with embedded Scryfall card images, follow this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ipGx-NpPmVbRfnmiNpMlB4V6YA341UuZrBYQFSyyHrE/edit

INTRO

Hello! My name is GlosuU (https://x.com/GlosuUMTG). I'm a Limited MTG enthusiast with a humble portfolio: I qualified for and participated in the AC4 and AC5, and will be participating in PT Amsterdam at the end of June. In the AC5 I teamed up with Ryan Condon (AC5 runner-up) and Ethan Saks (Lord Tupperware), all 3 of us bringing Quintorius Combo as our Explorer deck of choice for the AC5. I was in a feature match versus the AC5 champ, Toni Ramis Pascual, where I lost my win-and-in to the top 8, and ended 12th out of 32. You might also know me for the "Ode to WAR'' article that I wrote and posted when WAR came as a flashback format some months ago: https://www.reddit.com/lrcast/comments/1bhpxb2/an\_ode\_to\_war\_of\_the\_spark/ . I'm not a content creator, but I do produce some stuff here and there when I feel like it (deep analysis of my AC5 matches are posted in my YouTube channel, I had Ryan Condon analyze them together with me - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jhdl85xrunw&list=PLtfDMdAYlZqlVE-Bo_Gh5FsxujrFTEUyK&ab_channel=GlosuUMTG ). With my "credentials'' out of the way, I'm back with a new article, this time to praise IKO! We are getting IKO Premier Drafts on MTGA this Tuesday, so hopefully I can get you excited!
Disclaimer: WAR was my favorite set when I wrote the previous article, and I have to admit the flashback on Arena soured my experience of it a bit (Grixis colors were too open in the pods I felt, and the vanilla creatures in WAR stood out like a sore thumb compared to the FIRE ones). IKO is an all-timer for me and I'm really hoping the cycling deck will not be consistently open in the flashback pods, because that would be a bummer… Regardless, I do truly believe that WAR and IKO are amazing sets, and I hope I can convince you to love IKO in the same way I do, similarly to how I tried to convince you to love WAR!

My 17L tier list

If tier lists are your thing, I have no problem sharing mine with you: https://www.17lands.com/tier_list/dfdd3d0c69664a0b8ffbd7372848ab5f
NOTE: creating the tier list for IKO felt more difficult than for WAR. There are a LOT of cards that are contextually powerful, and it was hard to decide for me if I would P1P1 a Fire Prophecy (floor is extremely high, ceiling is pretty good too) or a Chevill (ceiling much higher, but gold card). Still, I did my best.

IKORIA: Lair of Behemoths setting

The main theme that inspired the IKO setting was giant monsters (Godzilla, King Kong, Mothra… you name it). Many of the mythics and rares had some silly Godzilla alt-arts, so if you are a fan of this genre, do NOT skip this set! The flashy new mechanic for the set was Mutate, which has some complex rules, but did its best to capture the flavor of beasts and creatures mutating into scary abominations. In opposition to the giant, wild monsters are the nimble humans that need to group together to stand a chance. Now, whenever the MTG team tries to design a battlecruiser-like format (giant creatures clashing with each other), it has been very difficult for them to balance it well for sweaty spikes. Most recently, we had BRO, where the theme was supposed to be giant robot machines clashing with each other, but the Prototype mechanic flopped really hard, and playing small, dinky creatures and getting value with Unearth was the way to go. Similarly, Mutate pales in comparison to the small humans and the cycling strategies, but I'm happy to say that it's still a viable strategy if open, it is much better than Prototype in BRO!
The set was also designed with wedges in mind (3 color combinations where one color and its enemy colors are present), but it was NOT marketed as a 3 color set. The big support is for the enemy color pairs, allied color pairs are just lightly supported with keyword themes. Do not expect to draft 3-color decks constantly like in KTK, but do expect to draft enemy color pairs (with and without splash) frequently. Colors are a bit loose in IKO anyway, since the focus is on archetypes and synergies.

MECHANICS

I. Cycling (and the Tier 0 RW cycling deck)

Let's start with the elephant in the room: the infamous cycling deck. MTG, as a card game, has variance baked in, especially with the mana (lands) system. The designers have made some mechanics that feel really good to play with because they smooth out your draws. For example: scrying, looting and… yes, cycling. Topdecked a useless card? Well, it's a great feeling to pitch it to redraw another card. Ask those who played with Blood tokens in VOW. Cycling has made its appearance here and there, and they made it a big part of IKO. But… they went overboard with it in this set. Not only did they design plenty and powerful cycling payoffs (which… honestly, does cycling need payoffs? Cycling is just a good mechanic, period, why does it need payoffs?), but they also put cycling in a lot of cards and, most importantly, they put SINGLE COLORLESS cycling in a lot of cards. This means that a dedicated RW cycling deck could be running an uncastable Memory Leak and still be stoked about it, because you don't ever have to cast the card, you just need to cycle it to trigger all the payoffs. Also for some reason many of the cycling payoffs have cycling themselves, so it's a no brainer to include them in your deck (sometimes you have to balance the amount of payoffs and enablers, for example the Chalk Outline/Insiduous Roots decks in MKM, but with cycling it's just easy mode). And yeah. Then there's Zenith Flare. Which is an uncommon. Which is easy to find in most games because cycling decks churn through their library fast. And they will dome you for 10 and you'll be left scratching your head. My personal rule to keep my sanity: assume the opposing cycling deck has only one Zenith Flare. If I die to a second Zenith Flare, I usually consider it a non-game, one of those you can't really do much about (like a deck with multiple bombs in OTJ).
Now, everything I said sounds dull and gloomy. And I'm sure that the designers would probably add a color requirement to the "Cycling 1" cards in hindsight, maybe make Zenith Flare a rare (or heck, a mythic). Nowadays they would probably make the triggered abilities trigger only once per turn. But… there's also good news! Personally, I think playing with and against cycling decks is FUN (especially if it's not a broken cycling deck, but a reasonable one). Cycling decks play like combo decks, where you try to set up during the first 3 turns of the game, and then watch the fireworks from turns 4+. Opponents can disrupt the key pieces, build their decks to counter the cycling plan (hello, lifegain!), and, most importantly, often cycling decks lose to themselves. Excusez-moi? Yes, you heard right. Because cycling decks skimp on lands (more on that in a sec), sometimes they will have an opener of 2 lands, 1 payoff and 4 cycling cards. That's a keep, but it's very beatable if the opponent answers the only payoff, and then the cycling deck cycles and cycles endlessly to find lands while falling behind on tempo on board. Cycling decks also mulligan badly, because one less card in hand means the cycling chain is more likely to brick. In a way, I feel like cycling decks are overall balanced in the format (!), as long as cycling is contested in the draft pods (as it should be!) and as long as non-cycling decks also pick cycling cards in their colors highly! You're in B? Please don't let that Memory Leak wheel! It's a good card in your deck too!
So why do cycling decks cut lands? I'm a big fan of Opt/Consider effects in Limited MTG. Increasing the consistency of your deck for a measly single mana draws you to your good cards more often and it also means less mana screw and flood. My general rule of thumb is that I cut one land every 2 Opts I have in my deck, as long as I don't go below 9 blue sources. Now, "cycling 1" cards don't scry like Opt, but they cantrip all the same. The general rule of thumb is to cut one land for every three "cycling 1" cards you have in your deck. And how low can you go? Some psychos have gone down to 12 lands, although I generally do like to have at least 13-14 lands. But if you run 17 lands in your dedicated cycling deck, you're gonna flood out A LOT. Enjoy cutting lands in your Limited decks for no reason? Try out IKO! 🙂

II. Companions

From controversial deck to controversial mechanic: Companions! Only 10 IKO cards had this mechanic, and they were all rares… how impactful could it have been? Well, so impactful that Constructed formats were broken in half and WotC had to errata the mechanic: to cast a Companion from the sideboard, you first had to pay 3 at sorcery speed to put it in hand. Drannith Magistrate, the Companion hate card, was left looking silly. Turns out that getting an extra card in your opener, a card you also had built around, was one way to break the game. While Companions were really bad for Constructed, they were AMAZING for Limited. Why? Because picking up one early and building around it made for very unique drafts! Many desirable cards would need to be foregone to meet the companion requirement, whereas other less desirable cards suddenly skyrocketed in your pick order. And who hasn't built around one sweet rare only to never draw it and your otherwise sketchy deck go 0-3, all your dreams crushed? Companions fixed that, since you built around them and you always had access to them. Some were more powerful (ahem Lurrus, Gyruda), others were usually not worth it to companion them (Yorion, Zirda…), but regardless they were all high picks because even in the maindeck they were great (and balancing the tension whether to companion them or maindeck them was really skill testing). Companions came back in the bonus sheet in MOM and they were as fun as they had been in IKO, leaving many of us wishing that they would come back more often, because they really improve the draft format they are in. I personally would also love for WotC to print new companions, but of course seeing how they broke Constructed in half, they probably would need to be super careful about them. 🙁 WotC, if you're reading this: bring more Companions!
Ethan Saks (aka Lord Tupperware) is quite well-known for his love of Companions, so if you want a deeper dive on them and what makes each of them tick, here's a video you can watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmmOWYVAzbw&ab_channel=LordsofLimited (DISCLAIMER: this video is for the Companions in MOM, not IKO, but most of the stuff still applies)

III. Mutate (and the UG Mutate deck)

Mutate was the new flashy mechanic for IKO and supposed to charm the Timmy players out there by voltroning a creature and creating an unfathomable monster. Mutate creatures can be found in every color, but are most prevalent in U and G, where there's also payoffs for mutating. In essence, a creature with Mutate could behave like an Aura on an existing creature (keeping the stats of one of the two creatures plus all the abilities of both creatures) or a creature by itself. While you can't blow out a creature mutating onto another on the stack (killing the creature on the battlefield means the creature on the stack still resolves as a standalone creature), putting two creatures together does mean a big tempo swing if the opponent removes the mutated stack. For example, playing a Thieving Otter on T3, then mutating a Dreamtail Heron on top of it on T4 and getting in, drawing 2 cards… All of that sounded mouthwatering great in spoiler season (a flying Scroll Thief? Who doesn't like that?). But, when you assembled that in a game, and the opponent then removed the mutated creature, that meant that with one single spell they had removed both your T3 and T4 plays, so even though you had accrued card advantage, you could be very behind on board.
Was Mutate as bad as Prototype in BRO? Thankfully not! If open, a good UG Mutate could be a great deck, and stacking mutates on top of each other, each of them accruing incremental value, was a lot of fun when it worked. In essence, Mutate decks were A + B decks, with a good balance of A and B (A = 1-2 mana creatures you were happy to Mutate on, e.g. Essence Symbiote, Pollywog Symbiote; B = mutate creatures, preferably strong ones like Archipelagore or Auspicious Starrix). Playing a mutate payoff on T2 followed by a mutated Migratory Rendhorn on T3 was key to ramping, fixing and getting on good footing in the game (since you would also splash some powerful Mutate rares in other colors usually). Since A + B was so tight and you'd rather not include stuff that wasn't one or the other in your deck (to improve consistency), ideally your interaction would come in the form of Pouncing Shoresharks. But you'd still usually squeeze some space for some removal.
Mutate cards are also not unplayable outside of UG, but be mindful of how many non-human creatures you have in your deck and what creatures you are happy mutating on top of. Forbidden Friendship was great at providing some Mutate fodder in non-UG decks, for example, and you would be happy mutating a Cloudpiercer on top of it on T4 (you got a mana discount and a hasty 5/4 rummager, sweet!). BTW, do not confuse Forbidden Friendship with Cathartic Reunion, the arts on those cards are too similar!

IV. Keyword Counters

IKO was the first time that we got keyword counters. Apart from mutating, you could still build monsters by giving your creatures extra keywords. Some IKO tricks look like traditional tricks we see in Limited, but the counter hanging around can be quite important! For example, Unexpected Fangs creating a big lifelinker could be game-swinging. Be mindful of these tricks when having a Heartless Act in your deck, since you can get blown out very easily if they respond by giving a counter to their creature, and your removal will fizzle. Also, always roll Hexproof counter on a T3 Crystalline Giant - if you don't, you need to get better at MTG! (thank goodness Covid was around when IKO came out, imagine Giant in a paper MTG game)

FORMAT OVERVIEW

There's tons of draft guides out there, so I'll try to keep this brief. We already mentioned that a nuts RW cycling deck can be considered Tier 0. A reasonable RW cycling deck is still Tier 1-2, so it's definitely worth getting into if you get enough of the good cycling payoffs. UG Mutate is like Tier 2-3, so what other decks are out there?

I. Tier 1: Black, Humans and the Mardu Wedge

When cycling is not absurdly open, I have a strong bias to end up in a Mardu-esque deck (any of the color pairs, with or without splash). I love B in this set, even though it's not a cycling color. IKO has my favorite common ever printed: Bushmeat Poacher! The card doesn't look super strong at first glance, and 4 mana for a 2/4 is quite bad these days but… it resists a Fire Prophecy, for starters. And once you see the card in action on the opposite side of the battlefield, you're going to understand how ANNOYING it is. You'd be surprised how often the engine of Durable Coilbug + Bushmeat Poacher can grind out games in this format. Block, sac, gain life, draw cards, rinse, repeat. Honestly, it's as annoying as Cauldron Familiar in Constructed or Lampad of Death's Vigil in THB. And let me remind you that you gain life equal to the creature's toughness. Wanna remove my Honey Mammoth? Well, that will cost you your removal spell, and I gain 6 life and a card, thank you very much! One of the things I enjoy most in Limited is making opponent's removal look bad, and boy, oh boy, does Bushmeat Poacher do that!
So yeah Poacher might be my favorite common, but B has even better stuff to offer with Blood Curdle (that menace counter is super relevant) and Whisper Squad (which also combos nicely with Poacher). And Memory Leak should be taken as a great B common, I've mentioned this already.
Mardu decks can be built in a myriad of ways and synergies. There's the straight forward Human go-wide and pump your team theme out there. There's sac synergies. There's go-wide Mutate synergies: Forbidden Friendship is a premium R common in most R decks except for dedicated RW cycling decks ("Rally at the Hornburg"-lite is still very good!), and then you have stuff like Regal Leosaur. There's menace + removal synergies… And you have some sweet buildarounds like Weaponize the Monsters, Bastion of Remembrance and Offspring's Revenge. All in all, I love getting into Mardu decks in this format, and the aristocrats gameplay speaks to my heart.

II Tier 2: BG Reanimate, UR spell matters, Ultimatum decks

BG Reanimate is probably my favorite deck of the format. If I start B, and then see Mardu being contested (as it should), but G dummies coming to me, I'm very happy to jump into BG. We've seen that Back For More is still great in OTJ, but whereas in that set you only have Spinewoods Armadillo to easily combo with it, this set has several big dumb uncommons that cycle. Back For More is even better here in IKO! Getting back a Tytanoth Rex with it can usually net you a 3-for-1 (fight something and ambush something in combat, Rex still surviving). It is also the perfect home for Honey Mammoth (that card was a surprising overperformer back in the day, since then we know how good this style of cards can be for G decks looking to stabilize and turn the corner). Also, Bushmeat Poacher gaining you tons of life when opponents try to remove your big dummy creatures is very satisfying.
UR spells can also be powerful when open. Sprite Dragon can get out of hand quickly, and T3 sequencing Forbidden Friendship into Of One Mind feels super good. A key roleplayer for the deck is Spelleater Wolverine, and PSA: you can meet the condition by cycling instants and sorceries to the GY too, no need to actually cast them! Wolverine can fit other decks too if you get a good amount of instants and sorceries (e.g. in Rakdos with cycling and removal spells). I'm not super high on U in the format and thus don't get into UR spells often, but if you start R and U flows, it's a possible path to get into. There are also UJeskai cycling decks with Ominous Seas as the payoff.
Finally, a word on the Ultimatums: they are more powerful than they look! With the exception of Emergent Ultimatum (which has an important failcase: drawing your single-color big spells before it), resolving any of them in the late game will often put you in a winning position. Think of them a bit like Cruel Ultimatum in OTJ: fun cards to draft early and build towards the late game, prioritizing the dual lands in order to cast them.

III Tier 3: Allied color pairs/Keyword decks

With the exception of RB, which is a good deck, all other allied color pairs feel weaker. UB Flash and UW flyers can be a thing if you draft the rares that support them, but don't expect them to be super powerful. I do want to mention the WG Vigilance deck, because it is one of the counters to the cycling deck. Get a couple Alert Heedbonders, put some big butts on the board and laugh at your opponent trying to Zenith Flare your face when you're at 40 life! 2/4 also survives Fire Prophecy, so cycling decks often have to point a Flare to one of the Heedbonders, which is sweet! RG Trample is not really a deck, if you see the RG rare, it's a good card, but you can just splash it in any G deck. Beware also of the Wedge buildaround enchantments at rare, except for Offspring's Revenge, they are all generally quite bad!

SAMPLE DRAFTS AND TROPHIES

It has not been easy to get "clean" 17L trophy logs: 17L was in infant stage when IKO was the main format, so no game replays back then, and during the IKO flashbacks Arena pushed some log updates that made 17L struggle to log everything correctly. Still, thanks to some friends, I have gathered a few:
TROPHY 1 (courtesy of Sheesh): https://www.17lands.com/draft/263832207ed749b7947e7a40149f7380 - a typical RW cycling trophy
TROPHY 2: https://www.17lands.com/deck/ac08eb9f76874eafb67c4e201a5bb21e/1 - Lurrus Companion (this quick draft trophy got me into Mythic for the first time back in the day!)
TROPHY 3 (courtesy of TripleB): https://www.17lands.com/deck/c7fb935d7ac443b4bb895f43622accc7 - BW Humans, some games missing
TROPHY 4: https://www.17lands.com/draft/19b4a66cbec5484d8d3b0acd54f61787 - Golgari Reanimate/grind, sadly only shows the first two games
TROPHY 5 (courtesy of TripleB): https://www.17lands.com/deck/d0d77324997f45478a7b853067a0f438 - UR spells/mutate, no game replays available since it was a Traditional Draft from when IKO was the main format
TROPHY 6: https://www.17lands.com/deck/96ffb9ab71144753bb87496e33e32545/1 - UB Flash/Mutate, also a Trad Draft

CLOSING THOUGHTS

While I think I covered most of the format, I feel that there's a lot of things I didn't have space to cover. I truly believe that this format plays and feels amazingly well, just as long as the RW cycling deck is contested enough. Sweet buildarounds, companions, all-in synergies, Mutate, and a load of other nonsense. This is a Dave Humphreys set you really don't want to miss! I am stoked to spam it and (hopefully) see it hold up after all these years!

Hello Polin family!! This sub has kept me sane while awaiting this much-anticipated season. I feel I'm finally recovering from my Part 1 watch (and rewatch).
Overall, I really enjoyed the first 4 episodes. Pen and Colin both looked so INCREDIBLE and had phenomenal chemistry!! I feel I got a lot of what I was hoping for in terms of their interactions. I actually quite liked how its clear they're both still figuring out who they are -- Colin coming in as this suave, sexy, rakish man who flirts with debutantes without a care and goes to brothels because that's what he thinks he's supposed to do (that THAT'S his purpose) and Pen making changes to her appearance and demeanor so that she can get married for the sake of getting married (because its "time" and there's "nothing" for her to wait for). I feel like there was a nice mix of overt flirting, sweetness, and awkwardness that I think characterizes their relationship. And my oh my, for me, the intimate scenes were PERFECT. The first kiss was sweet and tender and Pen's quiet "thank you" juxtaposed with Colin's realization that there's something here was so so so well done. The dream sequence was lovely. And the carriage scene...don't get me started. I think Colin's declaration, Pen's admission that she would "very much like to be more than friends" and everything that followed was so hot. You could feel the desire through the screen. All of this has been extensively discussed elsewhere so I will move on to something about the season that has been bothering me.
Even though I enjoyed a lot of the Polin scenes that we got, I feel there were a few scenes "missing" that made their getting together feel a little "rushed" (as some others have pointed out). I'm glad they didn't waste time setting up their relationship -- they've already done this Seasons 1 and 2. So getting straight into Pen being mad at Colin for his words last season was great. But even after that, if you think about it, there was so much for them to cover. They had to get Colin to apologize (check), then the lessons (check), then scenes of Pen applying the lessons and failing first before gradually succeeding (check), then Colin realizing his feelings, then Pebling, then Colin being jealous, then Colin working up the courage to talk to her, and then them getting together. I feel we deserved another 4-5 scenes across the latter half of this list -- I would have loved to see a scene or two of Colin trying to approach Pen but Pen "picking" Debling over him (e.g. asking her to dance but Debling already had) or a scene where he's talking to his brothers/Violet/Danbury and something they say makes him realize he'll lose her forever if he doesn't act soon ("Colin, wake up. After marriage, you will be Mr. Bridgerton to her and she will be Lady Debling to you.").
All this leads to my major annoyance with the season thus far. Although I don't mind the sub-plots, I think there are too many of them. The Featherington sisters trying to get pregnant (this was hilarious and totally worth keeping), El and Cressida's new friendship, Cressida's redemption arc, Ben and Lady Tilley, Violet and Marcus Anderson, and most notably, Francesca's debut.
Although I liked her character, I think they spent WAY too much time on Francesca. This is NOT her season. She will have HER season. I don't get why we needed to have so many details about her personality and her desires and her suitors, etc. I think we should have gotten a scene or two showing her reserved nature and her debut, and then 1-2 scenes showing her connecting with John. We really didn't need to see ALL her suitors and we didn't need to see HER trying to juggle two suitors (like what was the point of Samadani). I feel like because she had SO many scenes, Violet and Danbury were both preoccupied with her. This REALLLLLLYYY bugged me because in Seasons 1 and 2, Violet and Danbury were SOOOO invested in the season's main ship. But this season, they both seemed to be totally unaware of Pen or what Colin was feeling. I was REALLLLLY hoping to watch Danbury take notice of Pen and see what lies underneath before anyone else does and maybe a scene of her hitting Colin with her cane to remind him she thinks he's an idiot for not seeing what's right in front of him. The 2 scenes Colin had with Violet about Pen were SOOOO lovely that I really wish there were 1-2 more. Same with the Queen -- She was soo into Daphne/Simon and Kate/Anthony/Edwina but this season, it was like she wasn't paying any attention at all...Colin literally looked like he was gonna kiss Pen in the middle of the dance floor and he flat out interrupted Debling's dance with her (big no-no) and there was no reaction from Violet/Danbury/Queen. I found it so bizarre. I thought when Danbury said "this season, the Queen is looking for someone who sparkles and it doesn't have to be a new debutante," I really thought they were setting up to name Pen this season's Emerald. But then she became obsessed with Francesca and started her matchmaking and it really felt like there were two Bridgerton sibling's stories running at once.
LOL clearly I'm very salty about this haha. I liked Fran, truly. I just think all we needed to see was that she loved and married John, since her story is going to be with Michael anyways. We didn't need so much spotlight on her IMHO. But maybe I'm wrong. It's been bugging me and I'd love to hear what others feel (I think it might have been mentioned in other posts scattered around the sub, but figured I'd make a post specific for this here).
I'm SO excited for Part 2. I'm sure we'll get some more incredible love scenes, but I hope the focus stays on Polin.

So we are in a town in the Bay Area and have a wine festival (there’s beer too but know mostly as a wine festival). Previously the town would let you walk around with your drink visiting all the different vendors. This year we were limited to designated areas but they didn’t make those areas 21+ exclusive (they had an exclusive children’s area with rides, games, face painting etc) but didn’t do the same for adults and the 2 adults areas were both on grass areas (children’s was in a dirt parking lot area). Well it’s a nice day and because parents want to drink too they decide to invade the grassy 21+ area and their their little precious’s run around like little crack addict fiends. I saw a minimum of 4 adults almost get nailed by a frisbee a group of kids were just slinging around without any kind of precision or care. Then this group of Instagram mombies started up a fucking bubble machine that was blowing a mega ton of bubbles into the air and directly into our group. We were all waving them away and looking annoyed but they were just taking pictures and oohing and awwing over how cute their kids were.

I was once your best friend. Some of my fondest memories are of when we were young, carefree and having a blast. Talking for hours on end, the conversation would never falter. You were my soul friend, someone I thought would be in my life forever, that we’d be those old ladies in a retirement home causing mischief and having a laugh.
But we grew up and grew apart. Our lives took different paths, and I’m sorry I had to end our friendship so I could get fully sober, as really we were never actually sober together and that is what probably bound us together. The high life. And I can’t live that life anymore.
I realised that you never thought of me the same as I thought of you. All those comments about people saying bad things about me to you, it was almost never ending, and why would they do that if you weren’t saying the same things. I always defended you to others. The few times someone said something bad to me about you, I’d stand up for you and after a short time it stopped, probably because people knew I wouldn’t agree with their version of you. I’d say the person I know isn’t like that, that the mask you wear was in front of them not me, but was it.
The drama, there was always a drama. You couldn’t ever be at peace with being happy. If there wasn’t drama there, you’d find it. At first I thought you had it hard, but then I realised you liked to make it hard.
You’d always picked drugs over everything else. You got in deeper than me. Your addiction was to harder stuff. But you never took the help offered. You’d send messages late crying your eyes out that something had happened and that you were going out to buy some. I’d offer you a safe space to come, but you always picked the hard road and left yourself in worse situations. You’d pick getting off your face on your own than somewhere where someone genuinely cared about you and wanted to help. You’d leave distraught messages and go off the radar for hours. Never answering a phone call. Asking for help but never taking it. I even sat outside your house a few times because you’d send me a voice message in a mess saying something had happened and you needed help. But you never answered when I called or knocked, then hours later say you were fine now but ignore that I’d tried to get to you when you said you needed me. I offered you help in other ways, NA meetings, rehab, anything I could think of to help. And you’d lie about getting help for sometime until the lie unraveled and the cycle would continue.
You’d surround yourself with the same sort of people, the heavy users who’d do nothing else. You’d tell me how terrible they were, bad mouthing them, but then some of them also considered you a “best friend”. Again being two faced. You never really doing anything to get yourself out of that life. You’d still speak people who left you in terrible situations. I even stopped speaking to people because of what you said they did to you, and you still would. You never had that same respect for yourself.
I’d try make plans with you to do other things, normal things. But every time I’d get a late night/early morning text saying you couldn’t sleep or something had happened so you couldn’t do our plans or had to push them back for hours, until a time they weren’t worth doing. Yet you could always get up early and do things with others. But I guess they were more important to you.
I know you’re an addict, and sometimes can’t help your actions because of that. But so am I, and that why I can’t be around you anymore. I can’t handle the stress, worry and lies, and you’d make me doubt myself in ways I’d never without the things you said. And I need to put myself first.
Our friendship wasn’t all bad. We had some amazing times together, especially in the first few years, but now I’m sober, now I’ve finally given up the last thing clouding my mind 10 years after giving up everything else, I realise that nothing I could ever say or do would help you. And you never thought of me as highly as I thought of you.
And I’m sorry I had to cut the final tie when I know you did need me. I only came back to you because you said you needed me after already cutting ties, but the cycle started again and I knew I couldn’t achieve what I needed to while still going through that same pattern. And I know I wasn’t a perfect friend all the time. And I’m sorry for that too.
You do have a beautiful soul. Despite what I’ve said here there are times you’ve gone out of your way to be there when I needed you. You can do selfless things for others and be very kind and caring. You’re a great artist and creative writer. You can be strong willed and determined and when you put your mind to things you can achieve greatness. I’ve seen you do it. Your laugh and energy can light up a room. You’re a beautiful person, but you don’t let your inside be as beautiful as your outside. when it can be if you let it.
I do hope you find peace and true happiness in life so you don’t need to keep hiding in the darkness you’ve created. Learn to love and respect yourself and give yourself the chance to be the best version of yourself, as shes there somewhere. I’ve seen her.
I’ll always care about you and I’ll miss the friendship we did once have. But I’m sorry, I had to end this cycle.

Gaz had crawled high into the apple tree and was pulling fruit down, lobbing it into the net his sister Tibble was holding out with her four hands. He hooted as he saw Jonathan walking through the rows.
Tibble turned, her blue fluff ruffling. "Human Jonathan! We have gathered many of the apples!"
Jonathan smiled as he approached, noting the large pile stacked on the ground. "Tibble, you have to put them in the baskets. Contact with the dirt will cause them to rot." He laughed. "I've told you this."
She shook her head. "Pyramid shape best. I like this." She pointed at the pile. "This is best way. You said you would make more cider. We like the cider. You will make it for me."
He knelt down and picked up an apple, taking a bite. Juice oozed out around his lips as his teeth pierced the skin of the fruit. He chewed for a moment while looking up at Gaz. "Yes. I said I would. Get these in the baskets and I'll carry them back."
She growled at him. "Piles are best." Tibble then began moving the top of the pile into the basket.
Jonathan sat under the tree as she filled the first basket, finishing off his third apple. She stacked it as high as she could before they started rolling off the top, and he got up. He lifted the basket and started carrying it toward the shed. "I'll be back for the next basket shortly."
He walked the half mile through the ruins of the city and stopped outside the door to the shed. He placed the basket down next to the apple masher and pulled the first apple up. He felt something ping on the back of his neck. Instinctively he scratched it, not remembering the sensation. He scratched a second time before he remembered what that particular vibration meant.
"Ares. Answer transmission."
The silicon based assistant accessed the relay and transmitted it to his subneurals.
An image of a man appeared in his ocular display. "Activation code Xeres Zulu three Kappa Alpha seven." The man said.
Jonathan tensed up and took a long breath before sighing. "Go ahead, admiral I'm guessing?"
"Admiral Alexander Oline, and you are Remnant Jonathan Kurzov?"
"I am."
"You are being activated."
Jonathan shook his head. "I'm retired."
"Retired?" The admiral asked. "You're done being human? I didn't know that was a thing."
"I'm retired from whatever you're wanting to ask me to do. Unless it's gardening, I don't give a shit about whatever you're doing."
Admiral Oline looked away for a moment and then back at Jonathan. "I have a report here describing in depth contact and conflict with an alien species, conducted by you. We received this information along with an application for a species of blue fuzzy creatures to be put under our species protection from a communications relay you and your assistant built. Am I wrong in this?"
Jonathan groaned. "No, you're right. I did a good deed."
Alexander nodded to himself as he looked over the report. "Yes, and now for your punishment." He smiled. "Prior to this, we thought all expansionist missions into your galaxy were extinct. The only traces we have left, before you, are the four sentience probes that were sent with your colonists. Do you still have access to those probes?"
Jonathan shook his head. "Haven't seen them in a few centuries. They left this system to continue scanning."
The admiral nodded. "Well, they have been continuing as programmed. They've been transmitting the entire time, and their data as mothballed during the last era, but now." He paused for a moment, his face growing stern. "A lot has changed since you left the Way. We, humanity, are on a similar path as yourself it seems."
"How so?" Jonathan asked.
"Humanity is making peace with our existence. We have gone back to our roots, trying to find peace in this darkness. Gardening, zen, familial ties, these are major values we have fostered, same as you and your adopted blue friends."
"Well, good for humans. Woo." Jonathan said. "Get to the point Oline. What do you want."
"Okay, I'll cut the curtsies. Those four probes from your expedition, their transmissions got bought up by a young entrepreneur. He went through them, refocused the probes to blue planet and found something. There's a species there, Isopodal, smart, but technologically savage. They're never going to reach beyond their atmosphere. They're planet locked, hell, probably never going to see electricity."
"Okay, so savages are causing a problem how?"
Oline sighed, shutting his eyes for a moment. "He watched them, then shared the feed with his friends, who shared the feed with their friends, and it became a phenomenon. These big bug, they're nice with extended families. They build their homes out of their shed carapaces. The longer they stay in a place, the bigger their homes get. Some are a hundred generations old, children walking through their halls touching the shells of ancestors long long gone. They scavenge, filter feed. The build tunnels to channel wastes from their small towns to the forests nearby, perfect balance with their ecosystem. They don't wage war, plan long term settlements with population quotas, living exactly as how the new human government envisions we should."
Jonathan nodded. "Sounds nice."
Oline sighed again. "It's a whole thing. We have a moon dedicated to making plushies of these things. People love them. The probes have been following specific towns for four decades now. Generations of people are involved in this ideology."
"And where do I fit in?"
"Your conflict with the Brin. Our Isopods biologically cleanse their environments of heavy metals. Their towns are built out of high demand, refined, high value materials. The Brin have since shifted their focus away from your blue fuzzy's and now are predating upon the Isopods."
"Fuck. Alright, I'll put a stop to them. You got coordinates for their homeworld?"
The admiral shook his head. "No, we're not into genocide anymore. We have to consider voters now. Your galaxy is being watched in detail now, with your little communication relay set up. We have to do this hands off, plausible deniability."
"For fuck's sake. Okay. How you wanna do this then?"
"Open source a Hadronic engine, give it to them. Basic freedom fighter protocols."
Jonathan nodded. "Understood."
Admiral Oline looked down at his templates and transmitted them. "Remnant Jonathan Kurzov, you are authorized to commence Project Pandora, classification Ultra Secret."
---===*===---
The father and eldest daughter and melted in the house of her forebears. She screeched through the walls, begging them to get out while she focused on the twins. She grabbed the two balls and tucked them into her filter pouches before running out the front door. She made it out to the beach as the heat intensified and the floating disk began sucking up their home. She stood in the water, her visual plate peaking out from the waves watching as she shivered with sadness. Her feeler appendages stroked the twins in her pouches as they fed from her filters, safe under the water. The beams finished melting down her home, pulling the slag up into the belly of the floating circle. She watched it float slowly away, disappearing down the beach.
She stood in the water, watching the smoldering hole that was her home far into the night. The stars were bright, and a dim glow came from beyond the horizons. She didn't dare leave her home, her ancestors. She kept shivering in grief, then she saw it.
A shadow contorted and a figure moved. Her vision, being as highly sensitive as it was, could barely make it out. She watched as it stood next to her ruins, her family home. A flash came from the thing.
"Fear not." It said as clearly as if it were her own blood.
She tiptoed out of the water, her weight coming back to her as she walked onto the beach. She shimmered back at the creature. "Spare us. Please."
It turned toward her, its face horrible and full of holes. Two orbs peered down at her, sending waves of fear through her shell. "A mother stands before me." It said, reflections appearing in front of it, cascading infrared to her. "I will do more than spare you."
Terror welled up in her and she fell down to the ground, but she resisted the urge to coil up and maintained her gaze upon the creature. "You are not them. You, you are different."
It walked closer to her, moving upon a mere two appendages. It lowered down next to her, extending a manipulator arm toward her. "Chance has sent a plague upon your peoples, one that you will not survive." It stared deep into her visor plate. "My people weep at that thought and offer you, Mother of three now two, a gift."
She could not help herself, and as if commanded without words, she extended two of her manipulator appendages up toward it. It opened up the ball at the end of its arm, five digits unfurling to reveal a black cube. It gently pushed the cube into her two pointed appendages.
"What is it?" She asked, shimmering.
The creature shimmered the air around it, speaking in ways she couldn't. "It is the gift we wish we did not have to give. It is horror, pain, and destruction. You know it in your organs, you feel it thinking about your mate, your daughter. Those that brought this feeling to you, will not stop until you give them this feeling back. This, this will allow you to do so, and I am sorry to have to give it to you."
She looked down at the cube in her points, feeling it as it vibrated across her limbs, reaching into her. Lines traced across her shell as she watched it grow on her. She looked back up toward the being as it crawled across her body but the shadow creature was gone.
A voice spoke to her, vibrations in her very core. "Hephaestus online. Greetings Mother."
She stood, her numerous feet appendages poking into the wet sand. "Where are you, being?" She shimmered with her shell.
"I am in you Mother, and am at your service." It replied within her minds.
"What has happened?" She asked, shivering with fear.
"You have been called upon to save your people."
She looked around before touching her own carapace. "How do I, how do we do that?"
"Where are the survivors?" It asked.
She thought for a moment, visions of the deep, visions of safety in the dark filled her minds.
"Go there. Help them."
She shivered again, defeat in the squish of body, her filters feeling the twins feeding at her sides.
"They will not stop, and more will suffer and die."
She turned her gaze back toward the horizon, seeing the glow of other homes melting in the far distance. "We can stop this?" She asked, now solely using her thoughts.
"I am but your tool. You can stop this." It replied.
---===*===---
She had not been to the vents since she picked her mate. They had fed there, filtering, hardening their shells together while discussing their future family. She could see the flickers of bioluminescence in the dark as she approached, her filters tasting the dense biofilm from the sea. She was close, and the flickers were from many peoples, many different families. She watched them talk, brothers, sisters, mothers, daughters, fathers, grandparents, all missing loved ones. Pain was the primary color, loss and heartache shared through the broken peoples.
She stepped into the outer ring, the heat of the vents warming her and her twins at her sides. Shimmers rose up to her asking who she had lost. She replied. "Mate and eldest daughter." But her reply wasn't heartache, but rather tinged with a new feeling and color. She replied with deep reds, a red tied to a thought from a people people beyond the stars, a red of blood and fire, things she knew nothing about.
The people's around her shifted in confusion at the colors. An elder great mother rose up to her. "You speak confusing daughter. What are you saying? Are you injured?"
She looked around, her visor meeting with dozens of others as they raised up to look at her. "The darkness came to me, spoke with me." She looked at the great mother. "The darkness touched me and has told me what we must do."
The elder mother walked over and touched manipulators with her. "Sit with us daughter, you need to rest. You have come far and need to heal."
"Our mates burn." The Mother of three now two said. "Our children, our families, our fathers burn. Things of light and pain come here and kill us. I will not heal these wounds. I bleed in my organs, pain beyond pain. I will not rest until they cease, until they feel my pain. They will feel this in their organs!" She flashed brighter than those around her thought possible. "I will stop them!"
A father stood up, pain shown in his colors. "They burn us. They are in the sky! How do we stop them? Do you know how? If you know anyway I will lend my spikes to yours. Please, tell us how! Anyone, tell us how." He shouted as bright as he could, lament touching his words.
The Mother of three now two walked over to him, placing her appendages upon his. Dots of blue light shifted from her carapace onto his. She looked into his visor plate and spoke with tinges of red. "The darkness has come and has promised us vengeance."
He flexed his carapace, breathing deep as he sucked in the sea. "What is this?" He asked, his own colors shifting toward the red.
"Our pain made flesh." She replied.
---===*==---
Brin operator Noloc was marking the next metal deposit while the syphons were busy pulling up the slag. It radioed over to buddy Lana. "You nearing full?"
Lana replied back. "Yeah. You want to get food while we empty?"
"Yeah, obviously." It replied. "Care to stimulate bodies while we eat?"
"Yeah obviously." Lana said. "Hey, are you getting any weird readings?"
"Like what?" Noloc asked.
Lana sent over telemetry. "Heat spikes in the water. What are those?"
Noloc looked them over and then scanned the water nearby. "Yeah, I got a dozen near me too. What are those?"
Noloc turned to look out the window just in time to see something leap onto the outer hull of its ship. "Um, one of the native creatures is on my miner."
Lana screamed through the radio.
Noloc shook at the noise and looked back out at the native. The creature was larger than normal, its color darker as well. Noloc watched as the thing curled, hunkering down on the hull. Deep scratching sounds echoed through the ship. "I am in need of assistance." It radioed up toward the mothership. "Assistance needed, native attack."
Telemetry came down. "Wait time for assistance five minutes. Ten minutes. Three hours." It read out, the time continuously increasing.
Noloc looked around. "What is happening! I need assistance!" Another thud on the hull and Noloc looked out to see another native boring into the ship. "Help!"
---===*===---
The Mother walked over to the downed ship and watched as the warriors cut apart the pilot. Hephaestus highlighted the mining beam as she walked across the machinery. She pointed with one of her manipulators. "There Father. We need that piece." She shimmered.
One of the fathers walked over and cut it free with his new sharps. "What is it Mother?"
"It is a tool of light and fire."
He shook, remembering his family burning.
"Remember that pain Father. They will feel it as they burn."
He paused and looked at her. "We will be as they are then. Burners, bringers of pain. That is not who we are."
She felt at the empty filters at her side. "My twins are in the deep with the mothers. That is not who they are, but that is who we must be so they can stay that way."
The Father shimmered back in tones of red. "They will be as we were before."
She flashed understanding. "We will suffer, become the monsters so they won't have to."
He replied understanding.
--===*===---
Three galaxies away, sitting in their living rooms across numerous worlds, humanity watched on. The four probes, hidden in their cloak fields, displayed in completed holographic representations, the forgotten horrors of war. Beams of fire and light rose up from the depths of the seas, melting Brin ships out of the sky. Day after day, the Isopods did what they did, scavenged. More fallen tech fed them, and within three months they had risen out of their gravity well, taking the fight into orbit.
A year later and several scavenged stations and the Isopods had opened up communications, seeking the others hiding in the shadows.
A world of blue fuzzy creatures were quick to respond, welcoming the filter feeders to the galactic community.
The Mother of Three now two was aboard the ship crossing the darkness as the first gathering commenced.

I’m still on the search for long term friendship, and I’ve got THE offer for you. My friendship of course!
So just like my title said, I make art and I love movies. Filmmaking is my passion, how about yours?
I am located in the US desert, I’m sure you know where but I’ll tell you if you don’t:)
I also make YouTube videos for fun, it’s just a little side hobby until my career really takes off.
I want you to tell me about yourself, I’d like to get to know you. I’ve been posting and chatting up some folks around here with moderate success. It feels like gambling but you win friends 😂
Just joking just joking, but I am Vegas after all 😉
Hopefully I was witty enough to catch your attention and you catch my vibe. I look forward to talking to you!
Bonus round: If you read this post, tell me what your passion is below or send me a chat and tell me!

I’m still on the search for long term friendship, and I’ve got THE offer for you. My friendship of course!
So just like my title said, I make art and I love movies. Filmmaking is my passion, how about yours?
I am located in the US desert, I’m sure you know where but I’ll tell you if you don’t:)
I also make YouTube videos for fun, it’s just a little side hobby until my career really takes off.
I want you to tell me about yourself, I’d like to get to know you. I’ve been posting and chatting up some folks around here with moderate success. It feels like gambling but you win friends 😂
Just joking just joking, but I am Vegas after all 😉
Hopefully I was witty enough to catch your attention and you catch my vibe. I look forward to talking to you!
Bonus round: If you read this post, tell me what your passion is below or send me a chat and tell me!

(enligh is not my first language, sorry for any mistakes)
I (25F) have been with my boyfriend (25M) for about 8years now. We are going to get married soon and have bought a house a few months ago to start our life together.
He has some friends that are my friends too (they said they consider me their friend, not their friend's girlfriend, but I don't feel like it's totaly true) and sometimes, when we invite 1 friend to our house (It doesn't matter which one), he makes some cruel jokes about me, but not always, the problem is when we invite two or more friend together, as they seem to make me always the butt of the joke and sometimes with very personal, hurtful stuff. They always do It in front of my boyfriend and he never sais anything to them, because even if he tries he is so shy that you could barely hear him or is so nervous that he laughs unintentionally and they think he is having fun.
Examples: they have said that I dress like a cheap whore (I use dresses that are tight, but they are appropiate, they don't even show anything), that I have below average inteligence (even if I have graduated with honors in my university, and with a 9.5/10 average in my master's degree, which I used to feel proud of), that I don't shut up (I'm very talkative and when there's a silence I feel the responsability to fill it Up; they don't talk much and they have told me that sometimes they come to listen to me bc it's entretaining), that the house is not even mine (I earn much less that my boyfriend now because I'm working part time to continue srudying, but I still pay a part of the mortgage), that my job is not a real one. All of this was in one night.
All of this was unprovoked, since I never say mean thing to them. I have anxiety and I feel intimidated being surrounded by men so in the moment usually I don't know how to defend myself and I just tell them that that's mean and that I haven't done anything bad to deserve it but they ignore It. Also, they treat me like that together but then, when they have a problem and need emotional support they don't talk to eachother, they tell me and when I give them support they never thank me bc they see It as giving me "gossip", so it's like they are doing a good thing for me and not the other way around.
I don't understand why they are like this to me. When one of them is feeling down I support them, I tell them to come and I but snacks they like to brighten their day a little or I compliment them to make them feel more confindent. And whenever they come and they go home I'm left feeling like shit and I cry because they just to my house, they treat my like shit in front of my boyfriend and they go feeling cheerfull.
My boyfriend has social anxiety and I have helped him to make and maintain friendships, I'm the one who encourages him to meet up with his Friends and all. After all of this happens he always tells me either that he didn't hear the mean coment or that he did but because of the anxiety he is like frozen or in a flight responde and is unable to react un time. He is working on It and I'm very thankful because he takes care of my feelings afterwards, but It's so hurtful anyways... Sometimes I get mad ar him and I feel bad for that but I feel despertate.
Also, one of his friends usually makes sexual jokes and until now there weren't weird but now they are. He used to joke with the other men of the grup in a "bromance" way, but they other day he said something really out of pocket to me. We were watching a series and I said that one character was really atractive because of a personality trait he has and our friend said "Then I must make your p**sy sooo wet" and we were so surprised that we didn't react. Later, two more friends joined and I was talking and having fun with another friend and the one who made the weird joke seemed irritated that I was having fun with someone else and he told my boyfriend "They like eachother" (refering to me and my other friend).
What do you think of the situation? Why do this people act like this? What would you do?

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Erik listened as Morna’s footsteps gave a backing beat to the rhythmic busywork of the ship. She was pacing, her shoulders hunched, pointedly not looking over Shieldbreaker’s side, averting her eyes from the retreating silhouettes of Lady Alannys and Unwelcome Guest, and the Lute and Harp flotillas in their wake.
No matter what task they busied themselves with, the ship’s crew parted to allow Morna her passage back and forth. She stopped just in front of Erik at the stern, turned on one heel and marched back to Kiera at the bow. She probably felt cramped on the ship. Erik remembered how she had walked the walls of Lordsport on the day Sigorn was injured, her relentless pace only hitching momentarily in front of the maester’s door on each cycle.
Soon she returned to him again, both eyes on the deck, though only one saw it.
“Do you want to sit down?” he asked her as she swivelled, not particularly expecting a response.
“No,” she said, and stopped. It seemed to take some effort to look back at him. “I want to hit something,” she explained. Now that she was still, hands clenched into fists, she stood out amidst the rolling motion of the oarsmen to either side.
“Once we get cruising, we can spar, if that would help?”
Morna hesitated. “I want to break something,” she clarified.
“I don’t think I can help there.”
Morna waved a hand in a way that meant she’d get over it. When she resumed her pacing, Erik followed her to the midpoint of the ship, retrieving his fiddle from the hold. He met both his wives at the bow, and brought the instrument to his chin.
Drawing the bow across the strings, he pushed a few bars of an old and nameless tune, rising notes wishing good fortune across the waves.
Morna relaxed as the answering verses whispered back to them, leaning her scarred forehead against Kiera’s shoulder. After a few moments, she straightened, pushing her hair back from her eyes.
“I’m alright,” she insisted, flexing her hands, “I just hate when I can’t do anything.”
Neither Erik nor Kiera responded. There was no need. They understood.
Three days after the fleets separated, the winds turned on them. The tips of dark clouds on the horizon spoke of a storm that Shieldbreaker and the Fiddle flotilla were only feeling the echoes of, but it was a complete headwind all the same. Everyone aboard knew what it meant, but they groaned all the same when the nausea, the strain, the third thing began.
Erik kept his focus on the fervent activity on the deck, oarsmen keeping balance, two-men teams on the spar lines, Erik’s own hands on the rudder. Hours into the nauseating back-and forth, he found his focus drifting. He called Osfryd over to take the rudder for the upcoming portside turn.
Kiera had abandoned her perch on the bow that morning, and spent the whole day with her back against the mast, rubbing her forehead, eyes closing every time the creaking sail beam swivelled over her head.
He went to the canopy at the mast, and gently pressed a kiss to Kiera’s forehead. She looked up at him, smiling apologetically.
“The creaking makes my head ache,” she said, by way of an explanation. Erik just leaned on the mast beside her, and held her hand down by his side. They watched their other wife for a time. Morna was at the windward side of the ship as it turned, helping some of the crew scrape clinging seaweed from the hull, exposed from the waterline by Shieldbreaker’s dramatic tilt.
“She’s going to heave if she keeps going like that,” Kiera commented. Erik murmured an agreement, watching the seasick stagger that was starting to come into Morna’s movements.
“You know what she’s like,” Erik said. “You and Asha grew up sailing, she thinks she has to prove herself.”
Kiera scoffed, though there was a smile hidden in her offended scowl. “Asha barely sailed.”
Erik conceded that with a shrug. “She’s Ironborn, though.”
Kiera nodded, then squeezed her eyes shut as the ship began tilting to port, the spar over their head groaning as it scraped against the mast. She had always been Erik’s softest wife. Even as the shipborne bastard of a Tyroshi merchant, her youth had been filled with more comforts than a wildling huntress or daughter of a tiny Ironborn house were ever afforded.
The deck shifted beneath them, and the hull-scrapers abandoned their posts to move to the other side. Morna passed through the cabin, teeth bared even more than her scars usually made them as she tried to breathe through the nausea.
“Fuck this,” she said conversationally, and accepted Kiera’s kiss to her scarred cheek.
“You don’t need to work yourself to the point of illness, darling,” Erik said, but she shrugged the comment off like he knew she would.
“You can help any time,” she pointed out, not unfairly.
“I’ll be over in a moment.”
Kiera shook her head. “Iemnȳ ēdrulio glaesas, dōnītsosi. I read charts and look pretty. You strong people can do the actual work.”
The storm’s wake had passed by the next day, and Erik allowed his exhausted crew a morning’s rest. The bed of sand and the cookfire were back out on the stern, Theomore frying fillets he had cut from the fish other men had pulled from the sea in the days before.
As lord and captain, Erik had the benefit of first serving, sitting with his wives under the canopy at the ship’s centre, a well-done piece of cod speared on the knife that had avenged his father.
“You’re still a kneeler, as much as the rest of them,” Morna was saying, waving a fishbone insistently. Kiera’s lips twitched into a smile at the familiar argument.
“Look, the Archon is chosen-”
“By the people with gold,” Morna interrupted.
“Yes, but you told me the Kings-Beyond-The-Wall were chosen by clan chiefs-”
“That’s not the same.”
“I’m still not sure I’m a kneeler,” Erik interjected, smiling at how Morna's face twisted into mock outrage.
“Lord Botley, I do love you, but you’re the most kneelerish person I can put up with. We’d be up raiding Bear Island, or whatsitcalled, the lion city, Lannister-port or something, if you weren’t a kneeler.”
“Those people never did anything to us,” Erik tried.
Morna pointed, catching the error. “And what did this Volantis do to us?”
“Enslaved my mother,” Kiera pointed out. Morna eyed her, making sure her wife was still in the mood for play, before she pressed on.
“Fine, what did we do, then? Why raid the Frozen Shore?”
“Well you did-” Erik caught himself before he said “raid the North.” Morna eyed him, teasing curiosity raising her mismatched eyebrows.
“You got me,” he smiled, taking another bite of cod. “I only go raiding where I can find beautiful women.”
Morna grinned at the flattery and opened her mouth to respond, but was cut off by Kiera tutting in mock-outrage.
“I’m sorry, dōnītsos, but why are we stopping peacefully in Tyrosh, in that case?”
“I’ve met your father,” Erik reasoned. “Your looks come from your mother’s homeland.”
That broke the momentum of the debate as Morna barked a laugh and Kiera tried to hold one in, pinching the bridge of her nose. Erik chuckled, and managed not to flinch when the sailor called for him.
“Milord!”
Erik turned. Osfryd, leaning against the prow, hair flickering in the wind, pointed over his shoulder to the horizon before them all.
“Ship rising!” he called, by way of explanation.
Kiera was on her feet first, stepping lightly between the myriad of chatting crewmembers that Erik was surprised to see surrounding him and his wives. She reached the bow and climbed it deftly, hooking a foot in the lantern-ring as she often did. Erik and Morna followed more slowly.
“Merchant, by the shape,” Kiera said as they approached. Erik followed her gaze to the tall, barrel-hulled carrack coming over the horizon, half-silhouetted by the low morning sun. He could just make out a pennant fluttering at the tip of the tallest mast.
“Can you make out the flag?” Erik asked.
Kiera took a moment before answering, “Myrish, I think. They’re keeping dead on. You’d think they’d try to get around us, no?”
“Quicker to go through, I suppose,” Erik suggested. “Plus, they’re likely unsure how wide a fleet we have, or if we even want to attack.”
“Do we want to attack?” Morna asked.
The question drew the attention of several crewmembers, who quickly turned to listen to Erik’s answer.
Playing for time, Erik looked out at the ship again. The thought of battle made his blood tingle, but he was wary. Shallow-drafted longships like theirs were ideal for a shoreline assault, but much less suited for warfare at sea. There was a reason that the Royal Fleet consisted of dromonds and other tall ships. Attack even one Myrish trader and dozens would sink to the Drowned God’s halls. Pointless, unless there was some real reason to take that risk.
“Slavers?” Erik asked.
Kiera shook her head. “They’re heading to Dorne or the Stormlands, they know they can’t sell them there.”
“Then no.” Some men around him looked disappointed, others relieved. Erik reckoned he could guess how long each man had been sailing by that reaction.
“We’ll save our strength for a greater bounty, further East,” Erik said, his voice shifting to a commanding baritone. “To oars, men! Give them space to pass! I’ll not have them loose arrows on us for some misunderstanding.”
The knot of listeners loosened and fell away, dipping oars to water and pushing Shieldbreaker further out of the Myrish vessel’s path. The ship loomed as it came closer, and Erik saw men with crossbows take positions on the upper gunwale. A blue-haired, green-bearded man, the captain by his stance, stood at the prow and looked out at the passing fleet with suspicious eyes.
Kiera cupped her hands around her mouth and called, her voice clear and carrying as a flute, “Jemī ōdrikagon indī daor!”
We mean you no harm. It was one of the few phrases Kiera had insisted Erik learn. It got the captain’s attention, his eyes flicking across the ship until he found the speaker.
“Jaehor ojehiknon irughas!” he responded, his stance softening. The crossbowmen followed his lead. Not all of them lowered their weapons, but enough did that Erik relaxed. The captain followed with a sentence that included skoriot – where? Asking where they were from.
Erik saw Kiera give her best smile, and she gestured to the fish-covered green pennant on Shieldbreaker’s mast. “Āegenka Āja. Mȳro iksāt, kessa?”
The captain seemed to hesitate a little at her response, though Erik would have assumed that their hailing from the Iron Islands – for he recognised Āegenka Āja – was obvious from their ships. Their vessels were almost level now, and Erik could now read the curiosity in the man’s smile. He finally called, “Hen mirto Āegenka Ājor, Valyrīhos sȳrī ȳdrā!”
Kiera’s smile faltered at that, but seemed to renew with some quiet pride. “Īlōnda quptyri issa daor!”
The captain barked a laugh, and the reaction was echoed by a few chuckles among the crossbowmen. Erik couldn’t understand the joke, but laughed along anyway. Kiera leaned over to her husband.
“They are from Myr,” she confirmed. “I don’t think they’re interested in a fight.”
“Good,” Erik said. “Ask where they’re going.”
Kiera returned her attention to the passing ship. “Skoriot īlāt?” she called.
The captain pointed westward, presumably indicating his destination.
“Jelmāzmari Mōrio!”
Erik recognized the name of Storm’s End, but the rest of the man’s sentence was lost in a flurry of unfamiliar syllables. The captain rubbed thumb and forefinger together, so he gathered that he was speaking of trade with the Stormlanders.
The ship was passing them now, Shieldbreaker swaying as it was buffeted in its wake.
“Biarver aōt!” Kiera called. The man’s response was lost in the wind, but his smile told Erik that it had been some kind farewell. He watched the retreating galley with contentment. It was always good to meet a kindred spirit on the high seas.
The cawing of seagulls was the first sign they were approaching land. Always a light sleeper, Erik’s eyes shot open at the sound. Morna’s arm was still draped over his chest, her eyes closed and shallow breaths peaceful with sleep. Erik was careful as he wriggled out from beneath her, stood and stepped over her and Kiera, who had her face pressed into the nape of Morna’s neck.
Most of the rest of the crew were asleep as well, wrapped in thin blankets between the rowing benches. Three men were talking quietly to one another in the shadows to starboard, while six others played cards in the light of the new bow lantern. Back at the stern, Erik found Mathos posted at the rudder.
“Milord,” Mathos said, by way of greeting. He kept his voice low, and Erik followed suit.
“Mathos. No trouble in the night?”
“None, milord. Wind was steady, we’re dead on for the Bloodstone strait. Mind you, those smoke trails have me wondering, milord.”
Erik’s eyebrows asked his question for him, and Mathos just pointed past him, out towards the bow and the sea and the deep, dark shape of the island on the horizon, blocking the spill of starlight beyond it. Then, as his eyes adjusted to the sight, he saw them – thin, curling lines of smoke rising over the island. Five of them, tightly packed together, shining silver in the light.
Erik shrugged. They disquieted him, as well, but he voiced the most obvious objection to his worry all the same. “Bloodstone isn’t entirely uninhabited. It’s probably just a fishing village.”
Mathos gave a sort of half shrug. He obviously didn’t want to contradict his captain, but he pressed on anyway.
“Perhaps, milord, but who’s staying up to tend the fires this late? Sunrise is barely an hour away, by my reckoning. I can’t think of many reasons folk’d’ve fires kept so late.”
“Watchtowers?”
“It’s just a guess milord, but aye. What’re they keeping watch for, I wonder?”
Erik kept his eyes on the smoke, though his attention was focused inward. There was some fear there, and a hesitant surprise. Excitement boiled in his chest, but it had a core that Erik took a moment to identify. Satisfaction. Here was proof that he would not return to Lordsport unsated, that he would find more of what he sought most, as he had found first in Starfall.
The unexpected.

Hello. Throwaway since I know she browses reddit.
I [M26] been living with my roommate and former GF [F24] for about 5 years. We met by chance and got together rather fast and after not even a month she basically moved into my place. The relationship was mostly a good one but it went downhill after she told me she wanted to fuck another dude. Communication was always a big problem which led to us breaking up. After the break up we decided to stay friends and keep living together because it was extremely cheap compared to having a place on our own and the friendship worked most oft the time. Fast forward a few months after the break up and she moved on already while I was still struggling with the breakup and with my feelings for her. She never gave me the time nor the room to let go or come to terms with the whole breakup and started seeing another dude. Which I didn't mind till she started lying for little stuff that is not worth lying for. Back then I already told her after she cut contact with the guy that she acts like I am only good enough to be her friend or more when there is no other guy in the picture.
Around February this year she told me about a dude she met through a friend of a colleague of hers and that was fine for me. Turns out she lied about it and he basically hit on her. This was the point where everything went downhill. She started lying about every single little thing and even after many and long talks completely ignored how I felt or my pleas to understand my point of view.
Fast forward to last week. She started fucking him and we talked about the whole situation again since she told me that she didnt want to give up our friendship but when I told her that I dont want to be the only one putting effort in she got defensive again because she doesnt want to cut back on anything she wants to do. The straw that broke the camels back was today. We made plans. The plan was that she was building her lego stuff while I was building a gundam and she. She called me friday if it were okay for me if she basicly ditched me to get with the guy. I told her she has to come up with ideas to make it up to me. Her idea was that tuesday and wednesday we would spend the days together,I get a pallette of energy and she would take me out to dinner. Today she walks up to me that she made a mistake with her shiftplan and that she has to work on the days. Ergo she got no time.
I am at the point where I am this close to just cutting ties with her completely since she never made an effort to show me that she is sorry or to make it up to me.
So am I the asshole for telling her that she has to make it up to me?

My(23 F) former Irish partner (29 M) broke up with me after being in a long-distance relationship for 1.5 years. His reason was that it was not working for him anymore and could not see a way for me to be there with him ASAP because of how complicated our situation was. He also told me about how miserable he was and the only remedy that he could think of was to find someone nearer that would make him happy. After hearing that, it felt like my heart had been stabbed multiple times. It was too painful.
He opened the idea of staying as friends and mentioned his desire to date his coworker. He said she has a nice personality and they're a lot more closer in age. Well, I had mixed emotions about what he said. And for sure, it's all negative. I felt extremely insecure, jealous, and upset. We had a fight about it when I just wanted to clarify certain things . But he went on saying that I could not even respect his decision and called me names like "insecure idiot", "spineless coward", "pathetic loser", etc. He also yelled at me on the phone. So, I refused the friendship offer and removed his access to me.
In our past arguments, this person would refuse to talk to me for about 2 days min -1 week max, as his own way of taking "space".
I am aware of the differences in conflict resolution styles for individualistic vs collectivistic cultures so I just want to ask if it's a thing here? Or maybe there is a bigger factor here like being an emotionally abusive person?