Throwing up than fever

Hi everyone,
I know there may be posts that sound exactly like mine but I just wanted to vent some things out.
Around less than a week ago I noticed that I had some stomach pains that felt similar to food poisoning, but I wasn't throwing up, going to the bathroom, or having a fever. I wasn't sure what was wrong so I just brushed it off. In the next few days I remember taking a painkiller for a leg cramp and immediately my chest and throat started burning and I have never had this issue or felt like this. And now currently, I feel symptoms of a tight chest and bloating, as well as throwing up. I don't really feel nausea but I had just thrown up all of the sudden. My chest still feels tight and I can't really sleep.
I'm 23 years old and I have had no changes in my diet and I don't feel like I'm really considered overweight. I have no idea of what could have possibly triggered these symptoms. I've been reading up on GERD for the past hour or so and I can't even lie I'm pretty terrified of what this might mean. I'm hoping this is something temporary but I'm not sure if these symptoms could indicate something temporary at all.
If anyone has any reccomendations on how to deal with these symptoms (ones you feel that actually worked) or help me understand GERD a little better please let me know, thank you :(

Hi there everyone, I kind of curious, I have been writing a crossover fanfic in the style of Super Robot Wars storylines. One of the Franchises I want to add is RWBY, however, I never really got into the series until playing Blazblue Cross Tag Battle and during his time I started read up on the series on various wiki pages.
So, if I'm wrong on any details or something does seem to match the character's personalities, please tell me!
In this point of the fanfic, it took place after my idea of an ending to the series, so here goes nothing!
The white haired huntress explained why she feels this is the case, telling them the story of her younger brother and his road for redemption.
For the longest of times, Whitley had nothing but hatred for his older sisters and saw the hunters and huntresses as below him, mocking Weiss every moment he had while she was under house arrest. Escaping from this sham of a home, she swore the boy and their father were nothing but monsters and for their actions were things that she never could forgive. That is until it was after the arrest of their father and their manor being invaded by Grimms that cracks were showing in his facade of pettiness.
"During that fight, Whitley wanted nothing but to run off, until he saw our mother fighting against the Grimm before falling from the underuse of her Semblance when he knew he needed to help."
After saving Willow and learning from their mother that Whitley was as much of a victim as anyone else that the middle child chose to mend their damaged relationship. During the fall of their home Kingdom of Atlas, he continued to help by having all the SDC Saircrafts to save anyone and everyone to relocate the people to Vacuo. When the Team RWBY and Jaune return from Ever After, he became part of the attacking forces as a commander to help defeat Salem's forces.
In the final battle, He was present to witness Ruby Rose and Kairi sparing the now depowered and mortal Salem, who was told to simply live with reminders of her sins haunting her until the day she died, as this was her last life. "While we watch Salem leaving to parts unknown, I thought Whitley was going to say something foolish, but to my surprise, he only watched.
In the four weeks after Salem's defeat, Whitley began his new life but it was something to adjusted to as he worked a part time job and began to start classes in that first week The heir of whatever remained of the SDC let his hair grow out slightly, he may have been inspired by a picture of Jaune's appearance during his time in Mistral but still kept a very clean appearance.
It wasn't until a week ago that there were some Jacques' old associates from Vacuo wanted to give Whitley the position of CEO of a new company, one named Phoenix Ash.
"At first, I thought he just wanted to go back to his old ways of life when he agreed to the deal, Asked from me was to trust him about this..."
Out of the blue, The new CEO of the Phoenix Ash Group called for a Public Announcement. Weiss and Winter were watching on a monitor in an aircraft outside of the city. Fearing for the worst, that he would be making empty promises to make a postive public image, the boy spoke of ending the practices of abusing Fanuas workers. This was a lie that their father made to the press when he was alive, before the young CEO spoke of his new idea.
When questioned by the Press, Whitley told the world that he his idea was to start finding better sources than just Dust to rely on, so he would put his own Lien that he held on since childhood to fund this research. If this research was successful, then he would personally see to the closure of all Dust Mines under the Pheonix Ash banter but threaten that if any of the Fanuas workers were harmed during his time as CEO, that under his leadership that he personally see it that the abusers' paychecks would go to their victims and repeated offenders would be fired as quickly as possible. The two sisters begin to noticed that four of The Board Members who hired him were in shaking in their boots.
"Young Sir, please think of the words you speak..." one of Jacques' remaining associates on the board begged to hopefully conviced the boy to reconsider these ideas
"I am fully aware of the words coming from my mouth as much as you were aware of letting my father's actions slide so you can make more Lien. So, to be quite blunt, SHUT IT OR FIND NEW JOBS!" This wasn't like the boy they once knew while Jacques was thriving, he was a new Whitley Schnee that wouldn't be swayed by the idea of making Lien in dishonest ways and wouldn't allow anyone under his leadership to harm the Faunus workers.
"DAMNED BLEEDING HEART BRAT, YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE JACQUES, THE REAL HEIR OF THE NAME OF SCHNEE!"
The oldest board member, a muscular bald man of over fourty who was still extremely loyal to the deceased CEO of SDC, charged at the youth with a knife! The youngest of the Schnee clan knew there would be risks, but didn't have any fighting experience to counter this attack.
"WHITLEY!" Weiss cried out as she knew she wouldn't be able to stop the would be killer's attempt of assassination, however, a certain green eyed Faunus, who's loyalites to Robyn Hill last to this day, arrived in enough time to stopped the youth's would be killer.
"You really think that Fiona Thyme would let you kill your new boss? As IF!"
Within a mere set of seconds, the man of three hundred and something pounds was on the ground, each insult that was aimed at the girl was countered with his former boss nodding for the girl to wack the creep across his bald head. This last for a couple of minutes until the police to take his sorry ass to jail as well as charging the Faunus with a minor crime. The girl knew that there would no way to escape but chose not to surrender as she put her hands behind her head much to the cheers of some in the crowd.
However, In those five seconds before the cuffs closed on her hands, The CEO jumped off of the platform and stood in between the messy haired Faunus girl and the arresting officer, slapping the cuff out of the man's hands to the shock of the world. When asked to step aside, the boy's answer to this was something everyone in Remnant, who were either in the crowd or watched from afar from their scrolls, never expected.
"You're really asking me to step aside, so you could take away a war hero's future? I choose to refuse for we all know these charges against her are nothing but baseless. She fought on the side of various heroes! Heroes ] from the Battle of Beacon, like the Teams: RWBY, JNPR, SSSN, FNKI, ABRN and CFVY, the heroes without teams like Lady Kairi, Qrow Branwen, and Taiyang Xiao Long, Heroes like Ilia Amitola and the Belladonna clan who were once White Fang members but left before the assassination of Sienna Khan and return to fight to stop the once peaceful group when they saw what it became under the command of Adam Taurus, heroes like the remaining members of the Ace Operatives, who fought their own feelings of sadness when they lost Clover Ebi and came together after they realized James Ironwood was in the wrong, after the man fell into despair because of how the upper class saw the innocent victims in Remnant and used Atlas as a ram to prevent the Grimm from gaining another advantage point. These groups of heroic and wonderful people came together to save the world from the forces of Salem, so why can't we, the civilains they protected, do the same?!"
There were some mutters from the civilians that watch on the ground level before one of the rich members of the crowd, a man named Harry Marigold, brought up that Weiss may have saved the world but of her crime of summoning the Grimm at the charity event at Schnee Manor should be held accountable before the youth counter with.
"The crime that night was one in justified anger when you, Harry Marigold, who ignored her sadness and only wanted my sister's attention for bragging rights, that damnable trophy wife, her weak minded shell of a husband, the former CEO of the SDC, myself and many others of the Upper Class chose to cruely mocked the recently deceased of Vale and proudly laughing about the deaths of the many innocents of the fallen Kingdom who had nothing to do with the fighting. fates we claimed that civilains deserved!? If anything, she didn't summoned the Grimm to harm anyone but wanted us demons to understand that life is not to be taken as a joke or anything to not to be take lightly. The real crime that night was that the Grimm didn't caused more damages to Schnee manor and not having the monster hurt any of us because of our cruelity to the dead! But because the CEO of SDC cared for nothing but his public image, when she confronted that scumbag for our actions and for using her as a prize toy for everyone to see, his only reaction was to slapped my sister across her face and denied her Birthright!
This made the rich members of the crowd uneasy, as they knew that they were being put in their places. They wanted the youth to be silenced but he continued, angry and filled with something that he should've had a long time ago, a frightful sense of Justice.
"For too damn long, I was blinded by my family's name, not knowing it was nothing but an evil curse and if it wasn't for my sister's actions that night and the night her team and the remaining members of team JNPR saved the lives of my poor mother and the sorry shell of a person. I, too, would've remained under the very same spell of ignorance that the old fool relished in to keep us in line. So, for you to order me around, to use my sister justified attempt on the upper class to see her honorable view on life so who could silence my words, and to force this maiden, who has fought harder than anyone here because fearful paranoia bigots using unjust hatred of every Faunus to make her life a living torture device, for her to rot in a prison cell without a fair trial, just for saving my life? That command is UNFORGIVABLE!" The boy screamed loudly and in pure rage so everyone could hear his plea.
Fiona was in shock, she heard from various communities of the Faunus that the SDC and clan of Schnee were nothing but monsters, worse than any of Salem's Grimms. Even after meeting the huntresses of Team RWBY, she believed Weiss was the only one of the family who wanted to set things right in the world.
Even through she hated the idea to keep an eye on the Schnee heir, even if it was a jobn from her trusted leader. His father and the fellow members of the Board in the SDC saw the Faunus and wanted nothing but for them to be trapped in cages without futures, But to see with her eyes, the very son made to follow in these footsteps of selfish desires, meaning every single word that left his mouth, these words that were filled with a justified desire to save the young girl from an unfair fate, was so unreal.
"If anything, it was the wicked ideas of greed that the deceased CEO held dear tt were one of the many factors that broke our world, Jacques Sc..." The boy stopped for less than a second before continuing in anger.
"....Actually no, I refuse to allow that bastard to my family's name any longer, even in death! Jacques Gélé was never a father, he was nothing but an unredeemable thief without a sense honor, who used dirty lies to trick my dying grandfather into his once humble life, the honorable man that should've had the right to lived long enough to prevent the future Gélé wanted, Nicholas Schnee!"
"Who used my recently deceased mother's, Willow Schnee, love and trust to steal a company he was never worthy to rule over from underneath her. When she learned of his deception and his lies in their sham of a relationship, the once loving and carring mother only means to escape from his wicked virus was to drink her sorrows away and seclude herself from the world!
"His sickness was something that their three children were not immuned to as he saw nothing from us but to be used as pawns so he could gain more power! It wasn't until we learned better ways to live by others, others who actually cared, that we actually became good people!"
"The first of us was to learn this lesson was The Soldier who proven herself time and time again, who enlisted in the Atlas military to get away from the sickness that Gélé took pleasure in, who leaders knocked the views of hatred for the Faunus and the usage of cheap tricks out of her, my oldest sister, Commander Winter Schnee!
"My second oldest sister, Huntress Weiss Schnee, who learn of the shame that her family name carried at her time in Beacon, who was forced to leave after the battle by Gélé for supposed safety only to be paraded around as a prize trophy daughter for his friends in the upper class, who felt the sting of venom when that man refused to accept her heroic heart, forcing her to escape his maddess so she could continued helping those who were suffering!"
"And then there's myself, Whitley Schnee, the boy who was so scared with the various changes to his home life that he chose to follow in that thief's footsteps, who once mocked the dead of Beacon along with the others in the Upper Class, who has never fought for anything and even in that last battle, was so powerless to prevent more tragedies for befall those he commanded to fight on his behalf! The boy who's heart is filled with so much regret because of his idiotic choices in life but is now filled a newly found sense of Justice, who only goal now is to find a cure for the poison, so he could, no! will make our world a better place than it was in the past!"
The crowd was stunned thar they couldn't help but to stay silent.
"Gélé has cause so much suffering to the Faunus and to many other communities. That suffering spread in the Kingdoms like wildfire. When my grandfather died, so did the fairness and honor that the Schnee name held on to....but not anymore! MY DREAM is to stop the suffering that Gélé relished in so he could live like a damn lazy king!
Whitley then put his hands behind his head and told the world.
"So if this girl goes to prison, so will I! All I asked of those listening is not to cheer no matter what the outcome is, not to cry for this foolish boy who has fought for nothing, but to simply think about his words and the weight they pull!" Whitley's blood was boiling as The puppet CEO's bight blue eyes widden to show everyone that his dream was one that the boy will work for through his pain.
After this decree was finished, everything was slient before the officer asked. "Would you die for that dream..?"
Whitley, answered with all seriousness. "If I die, then I would gladly die with a hundred stabs to my heart and soul to make damn sure that my dream becomes reality." The officer waved to another cop to bring in a second set of handcuffs, much to both cops dismay.
"Alright, I'm sorry. Whitley Schnee for disobeying a officer of the law, you have to come with us."
Whitley said not a word as the cuffs latched onto his hands. As if to respect the boy's wishes, There were no one in the crowd, maybe even in Remnant, cheering about the arrest of these two, even though the boy said he had nothing but hatred of those that surround Gélé mocking those that died in Beacon, none of the them wanted nor could cheer, for to celebrate this would be nothing but hallowed.
On route to the department to put the two in the holding cells until they could make bond, the two talked, mostly it was Whitley asking the girl a thousands questions of the culture of the Faunus, the life she lived before becoming a war hero and so on. The poor girl was shaking with overwhelmingness but snapped out of it when Whitley explained something to her.
"This is the second time you saved me from the door of death, thank you, Lady Thyme."
Fiona was slightly confused before slowly piecing together that in the final battle she rushed to the location of downed aircraft, where a gravely injured woman layed under some debris being protected by her white haired son with a mere wooded stick he found on the ground screaming. "GET AWAY! YOU GRIMMS!" before being knocked backwards and then being held by his throat.
"HEY FANG FACES, I'M MORE OF A CHALLENGE THAN THOSE TWO!" The Fanaus screamed while the Grimm let the boy go to blocked her attack.
"KID! TAKE YOUR MOM AND GET OUTTA HERE, I CAN'T HOLD THIS GUY OFF FOREVER!"The boy nodded as he grabbed his mother and ran off, not knowing that he would plan to thank the maiden the next time they meet.
"No freaking way, you're that boy?"
"Yeah...but I'm not proud to admit that I'm not one for fighting." Whitley smiled as this surprised the girl.
To think, the meek boy she saved that one time and the guy who wanted to help others despite his family's reputation were the same person? How would this day become more of a weird fever dream?
"Hey you two, I hate to burst this bubble but ready for a fight, there was another vehicle besides ours that was on their way to the department." A male's voice explained when they noticed a man in a grey cloak sitting in the darkest corner of the vehicle.
"Before you asked, I've been here for the entire trip."
"Why is that important?" The only woman of the three thought while the Schnee youth figured it out.
"That ghoul of a Board Member?"
"'Faid so, he was taken in sometime before your speech and there are only two holding cells in the department, one for men and the other for women." The man explained.
"I could use my semblance to hold him in a..." Fiona was stopped when the mystery man continued.
"...And to prevent any escapes, the cells and those cuffs on your hands are laced with anti-semblance tech."
Fiona screamed. "OH CRAP!"
Whitley was shaken but kept cool as he thought. "I guess as this is a smaller scale city, I should've figured as much."
"Are you actually prepared to die for your ideas?" The man asked the boy, but his answer was simple.
"I'm not planning to back down now, to betray those words I spoke earlier, would be a wicked sin."
Meanwhile in an aircraft a little ways off. Both Weiss and Winter were dumbfounded by their brother's speech and actions. "He has changed so much since weeks ago." The middle child thought before Winter demanded the pilot to land that at the port nearest to the city.
Yang, Kairi, Jaune, Ruby, and Blake were on the aircraft but was confused by the sudden change of directions, before the commander explained. "The Board member that tried to killed our brother was sent to the holding cell in the department before Whitley's speech."
"OH CRAP!" Ruby and Weiss screamed as they thought in dismay that the boy was going to be in an one sided fight against a heavier opponent.
"Please hold on for a bit longer, Younger Brother..." Winter quietly whispered as the Aircraft was going as fast as possible to their destination.
Upon arriving and being settle in the two holding cells, it was when the guards left the redeemer was being used as a punching bag for the man's humiliation.
"DAMN BRATTY ASSED PUNK!"
"UGHHH!" Whitley groaned, being punched for a hour, his clothing became ragged and bloody.
"LEAVE WHITLEY ALONE!" Fiona cried out at the tallest in the men's holding cell, she was in the womens' holding cell that was across the room, luckly for her, she was alone in the women's side but not for Whitley, making things worse is that the guards were sent out on an emergency call, as their thinning numbers were sent out because of a few bomb threats elsewhere in the city.
"SHUT IT, SHEEPIE! I GOING KEEP BEATING THIS BRAT UNTIL HE UNDERSTANDS HIS PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE!"
"..." The man in the hood remained quiet as he watched this uneven fight. "You should stay down..."
"...As if I would..." The Schnee boy rose back to his feet through he knew nothing of throwing punches he refused to surrender just to spite the former Board Member of Phoenix Ash.
"HEH, for a skinny brat, you're stubborn, be a good little boy and admit that you're nothing but a puppet then I'll quit your rightly deserved beatings!"
Whitley regained his balance before flipping a bird claiming. "You...really...think this..puppet would let some smug ass with no respect for anyone but those in the Upper Class to order me around? SCREW....YOU!" The boy yelled spiting blood onto the man's ghoulish face to annoy the monster in human flesh.
"...WHY YOU LITTLE MAGGOT!" The man was even more enraged now, as he punched the stomach of the younger male causing the boy fall onto the cold floor.
Fiona was horrified as she witness the former spoiled prince rose back to his feet.
"Still standing boy?"
The youth was still standing to a point, until the man pulled a dirty shiv he found in the holding cell while waiting for this very moment. The two youths' eyes widden when they saw the makeshift weapon of sharpen hard plastic.
"...A weapon!?" Fiona cried out in dismay.
"Some poor sap must have made this sometime ago, makes me wonder where he could be now, anywho while I am slicing into your flesh, Whitley, I'm going tell what I thought of those pretty little ideas of yours."
The Faunus was in a state of fear for the young puppet CEO as the shiv user quickly sliced into the white haired youth's shoulder, with this the first time being cut, Whitley scream in pain.
"AHHHHGNN!"
"FIRST, YOU WANT TO FREE THE ANIMALS FROM OUR CAGES, THEY HAVE NO RIGHTS TO A FUTURE IN OUR SOCIETY!
The next was a stab on his left upper leg, luckly not hitting anything vitals as makeshift blade of sharp hard plastic was pulled out and blood dripped onto the flooring The boy's screams of pain echoing through the empty department.
"NEXT, WE CAN'T MAKE ANY LIEN IF BLEEDING HEARTS, LIKE WHAT YOU'VE BECOME, ARE IN CHARGE OF THINGS!"
The attacker then sliced the right side of Whitley's face leaving a scar under his eye.
"THE FACE OF THE BOY WITH A NAME THAT NOWS MEANS NOTHING TOTHE WORLD, USING TRUTHS TO PISS ON THE LEGACY THAT JACQUES BUILT, JUST SO HIS SON COULD REBUILD THE HONOR THAT IT HELD WHEN THAT WINDBAG WAS STILL KICKING! WHAT FREAKIN DRIVEL!"
then a slash across his chest.
"THAT BLEEDING HEART OF YOURS WANTING REDEMPTION SO HE COULD HAVE SOME ATTENTION BUT GUESS WHAT THERE'S NO SUCH THING IN THE BUSINESS WORLD OR IN THE REMAINING KINGDOMS OF REMNANT AS REDEMPTION!"
Then the right hand of the boy, the one Whitley pull in front of his body in an poor attempt to grabbed the makeshift Shiv.
"THESE HANDS OF A SOFT SPOILED LITTLE BOY WHO, EVEN IN THE LAST BATTLE AGAINST THE GRIMM FORCES, NEVER THREW A PUNCH OR SLAP ANYONE, ARE SUPPOSED TO CHANGE THE WORLD, ALL YOU HAVE DONE IN THAT BATTLE WERE ORDERING SOLDIERS TO FIGHT FOR YOU, SOLDIERS WHO SHOULD HAVE SEEN WHAT YOU'VE BECOME!"
Finishing this rant with a punch to the gut, and mocking his braverly. "TELL ME THIS, BOY? WHEN THIS SPINE OF YOURS GREW, DID YOUR STUPIDITY DOUBLED, BECAUSE COMPARED TO YOUR DAD, YOU'RE SUCH AN DOLT TO BELIEVE YOUR OWN CRAP!"
"WHITLEY! STOP, YOU'RE KILLING HIM!" Fiona screamed as the man got on top of the boy's body and punch the white haired youth's face twice before the monster yelled at the girl.
"I SAID SHUT IT SHEEP! YOU MAYBE A WAR HERO THAT I CAN'T PUT MY HANDS ON BUT YOU'RE GOING TO WATCH AS THE HOPES OF THIS BOY DIES ALONG WITH HIS BODY!"
Getting off of the beaten body of the Schnee, the man let Whitley try to get up before the boy fell on his stomach and the man grabbed the white hairs of his his head and pulled his face up, so the redeemer would look into Fiona's green eyes for a last time, one filled with tears.
"ACTUALLY, IT'S FUNNY, BECAUSE OF HER STATUS AS A WAR HERO, THE SHEEP WILL GET OUT IN THE END OF THE DAY AND BE ON HER WAY HOME, BUT YOU JUST HAD TO PLAY HERO AND FOR WHAT, WHITLEY SCHNEE?! FOR YOUR REMAINS TO BE MY PUNCHING BAG UNTIL I TRANSFER TO PRISON?....IT'S SO FREAKING SAD THAT I'M LAUGHING MY ASS OFF!"
The redeemer, who's face full of buises, forgotten that this is the case for minor first time offenders but didn't care at all. Ever since Fiona saved his and his mother's lives that day, he would've happily be arrested and be beaten, time after time, so he could thank her. He wanted to smile, to show his savior that he was happy with this outcome, even this meant that his life ended today, but could barely move his face but the only could wheezingly chuckled as tears as swell from his eyes
Before the man could finished Whitley off, a small blackout happened as the doors of the cells opened, Fiona ran to the boy who risked his life just so he could to talk to her. "WHY?!" Fiona cried she held the youth in her arms. "WHY CAN'T MONSTERS LIKE YOU SEE THAT THIS A NEW WORLD, THAT WE CAN BECOME BETTER THAN WE ONCE WERE." The green eyed girl demanded anwers but the man just mocked to anwered the Fuanus.
"Do you think animals like you could understand that only the strong and the Upper Cass are the only ones who have the right to control Remnant. He could have been one of those in control and still have enough Lien to be someone important but he chose to ally with the lower class, and for little lamb he paying for it, dearly."
Putting the boy's head gently on the floor wiping the tears on her sleeve, to hopefully keep friend she made safe for a bit longer, she attempted to use Pocket Demisions to rid the world of this demon, only to realize in the middle of her attack, the power returned and because she ran to help the youth, that she was in the men's holding cell with the real beast.
"....No!" She wimpered.
"Looks like there's some of my fellow board members of Phoenix Ash are still on my side." He smiled wickening as he began to explain their plans. "You see, little Sheep, we figured the boy has a bleeding heart, so to get rid of those childish wishes to loosen our hold, we decided yesterday to make up a plan, the one that you had to prevent. So during that little speech of his, we made a second one on the fly." He continued as he put his hand on an earpiece. "...That one being the threats to distract the guards and that little blackout. Plus thanks to this little device, my semblance to increase my strength with every attack I give, still remains."
"This can't be...." She was scared, as this man that she could taken down a few mere hours ago, was telling the truth when every step he made while approaching Fiona made small cracks in the flooring.
"Damn it, We going need to cause another..." A voice explained though the earpiece before he turned off the equipment's sound option.
"Now, since you annoyed me so much, you're going be my replacement, lamb chops!" The upsuper yelled in bliss as he pulled his fist to punch her small body. She dodged the attack but his second punch connected and sent her flying into the force field door.
"AUHHGGG!" She cried out, recoiling in the pain from her back before noticing the man was coming for her, managing to get up but unable to dodge it completely in this cramped arena. She felt the punch connected with her left arm, braking the bones in the limb, Then a kick to her gut. Knocking her a few inches near Whitley's body.
"....No...."
The youngest of the Schnee clan could only watch in despair through one eye, the two were being broken by a scummy excuse of a human, and the young redeemer of his name could do nothing but watched as his attempt to prove to the world his words were real go down in flames.
"...Leave...her...alone..." These words spit out ignoring the pain as much as he could while rising back to his feet and limping to get in between the Faunus woman and her attacker.
"So, the boy still has some fighting spirit...The boy that has never fought for anything in his life, I am certain that you're doing this for everyone's attention."
The man was right on a few things, Whitley was never a fighter or some ground troop, and it may have been that he wanted attention when he first started to go down this road but Winter quickly knocked that idea out of his head, but the man is wrong on others, for Whitley realize that all he wanted to do in life is to help in anyway, even he'll be happy as a sideliner act to the main heroes.
But one can't always stay in that role and hoped to change the world, for a long time he stood by as a witness to to his father's crimes, for longer his thoughts of heroism being dismissed by that bogus excuse of a father and as far as he remembered, Whitley had others fight for him. But no more!
"In this world, money and power pull the strings, and yet you choose death for a flithy animal? How more times are you going to PISS M-!" The man was interrupted while talking by, to the surprise of all, the white haired boy headbutting his taller foe, knocking the man onto his ass!
"...WHAT!?" The man screamed in horror as he started to bleed from his now broken nose, this was the first time the business man has ever seen his own blood.
"...I've...told...the world...I...would die for my dream....even if I die today....I'll be happy to die...hundred times over again..." The boy's body was mostly broken, each word he spoke caused more pain than his body could stand but the young man still had one part of his body to fight with, his hard head!
The next thing they all knew, Whitley continued headbutting his enemy, causing the man to gain a reality check, his ability were increasing his attacks but at a certain cost, The sole major weak point on his body, the one that held the brain to think of ways to screwed others over, the one with the eyes that saw everyone else as beneath him and the one with the mouth with a booming voice he used to make threats and promises to ruin his foes, his face weaken over time with every punch or kick he gave to the two.
"NONONONONO!" The man screamed with a bloodied and bruised face, before feeling the same despair he installed into his two victims just mere minutes ago. In a desperate attempt to stop these attacks, he grabbed the man in the cloak as a hostage, with the shiv he used on the boy still in his possession.
"You-ou wouldn't w-wan...me to stab some r-random person that had nuthing to do with this, uh?!" These ragged words were like the man himself, desperate and scummy, but was enough to stop the boy from getting closer.
The foe laughed thinking he has the upper hand. "I admired your old man's talent in making a profit, but he was just like you to a certain point, he was no killer, so now I advise we wait until they let us out or I'll be plunging..."
"Tsk...This old fart really been pissing me off since we got here!"
The cloaked man yelled as he stepped on the foot of his captor along with a gunshot ringing though the air. "W-WHAT!?" The man screamed in pain as he released his hold to grabbed his now bleeding foot. "DAMMIT, DAMMIT, DAMMIT!" The larger man screamed before realizing why his leg strength wasn't up to snuff. While being headbutted by his Whitley, the earpiece fell out and was behind his two victims!
"No way this is happening...." He groaned in pain before the cloaked male took off his hood, just to make things worse for the would be assassin.
"...and here I thought I would have a peaceful life in prison..." The man sighed as he revealed himself to be a fomer ally of Salem, one who wanted nothing more but to rot in prisons for the remaining of his life.
"M-Mercury B-B-Black, why is a war criminal here?!" The man screamed, fearing for his life even more than before.
"I was supposed to transfer into the next city, mostly for some good behavior BS..." Mercury turned his attention to the white haired boy.
"Hey kid, you're the brother to that girl Weiss, right?"
"....." Whitley wanted to say something but really couldn't, with those last few headbutts, if he tried to speak now, he will surely faint.
"Man, the geezer really did a number on you, huh?" Mercury asked before = one of the guards and Whitley's sisters ran in.
"Holy...CRAP! WHITLEY!!"
"Why is our brother and Miss Thyme in the same cell as these two?!" Winter demanded answers before Mercury explained for panicing guard while pulling the earpiece from the ground.
"Whitley was being used by lord lard ass as a punching bag until few people from Pheonix Ash caused a short blackout, the girl ran in to stopped the beatings but was attacked as well until your little bro figuring out the buzzard's weakness by headbutting the man in his freakin' face. After that, The creep tried to use me as levelage but yeah, you can see how that worked out."
"DAMNED BRATS...." The man groaned as the two Schnee women got Whitley and Fiona out of this cell but froze in fear when he saw Winter staring down at the man.
"I figured that your group would pulled something like this when Whitley told me of the CEO position, so I looked into yours and the rest of the board's backgrounds...It was just as Black said, You and your three friends in the board of eight have more than just attempted assassination to worry about now."
This decree was worrying enough before Mercury Black turned his attention back to the older man."I guess I'm going to have a kicking dummy for a roommate now!"
"Please have mercy!" The man turned deathly pale before Fiona yelled.
"Like the mercy you shown to me and Whitley because he called out your sorry butt, I would think not!"
Weiss was next to insult the man for his behavior. "...If anything you deserve nothing but a fate in a cage, like the various futures you took away!"
"Looks like you're going to rot in a cell for the rest of your sad existence." Winter finished before the guards were told by the military commander to take her younger brother out of the room and to take his would be assassin to the other cell.
Before leaving, Winter asked the former ally of Salem.
"Mercury Black...Your sentence for your war crimes have been over with for a couple of months now, yet, you still choose to remain in prison, may I ask why?"
"Since Cinder died in the fight against our former partner and Salem's redemption attempt, I really don't have much else left. Besides it's like I've said during that battle with the hammerhead and her pretty boy lover, I have been forced to fight since I was born by a drunk abusive excuse of a dad, so even if I could be let back into society, I don't think I could be happy."
"You could've joined the military..." The eldest member of the Schnee replied before the younger male countered
"Yeah, but I hate following and giving orders, besides you've seen what this old bastard done to your brother, creeps like him and worse are everywhere in prison. So as long as I can beat them senseless, I'm freaking happy to serve more time for each brawl I get my ass into."
This silenced Winter for a couple of seconds before asking for two simple demands. "Just tell Em that I'm okay with how things ended between us, and tell her just to be happy with her new life, if she can do that, then that would give me some sort of peace."
A couple of hours later at the medical bay on the airship.
Kairi used the healing spell Curaga on both the boy and Fiona. "Thank you, Lady Kairi." Fiona bowed while still having her arm in a cast after Whitley opened his eyes, being healed.
"Hey, it's not a problem, but please, just call me Kairi for now on, okay, Fiona?"
"Ughh, what...Fiona..are you alright?" The redeemer asked his friend.
"Yes, but you took the blunt of the beating, please relax, Whitley." The Fanuas explained before the boy asked.
"Who payed for our bails? I doubt it was my sisters, our situation isn't as it once was."
At that moment, Weiss and Blake came in, the disowned heiress of the destroyed SDC was proud at the fact that her former enemy of a brother fought for what's right, explaining. "It those three you poined out from that charity that payed for your and Fiona's bonds."
"Huh?!" Fiona was taken back in surprise by this before the middle child of the Schnee family theorized
"My guess is, either your speech or being outed as horrible people that made those three pay with their own Lien to post bond. I only wished we got there quicker but the airport was on the other side of the city."
"That's good but I can only hope that the others in the crowd took my words to heart and none of the people recording that day alter the video."
...We can check for video or audio interferances later on today but something tells me those who heard your speech that they're going be thinking about it for a long time." Blake's words made the youngest member of the Schnee children a little more eased.
"If only mother lived to see her son became someone to be proud of." Weiss thought to herself that day before their last mission in Remnant before her universe was wiped from existence.
In the Hangar of the doomed Wunder, Weiss had a thought of what could've been the futures of the new CEO of Pheonix Ash and his loyal bodyguard could have been if their universe just lasted a little bit longer.
"Hey, Bozos I'm about to take the Eva-unit 02 F off of the ship, before figuring out a plan to stop Misato."
"Alright.." Aqua answered as the red-head walked towards the console before seeing something strange.
"You guys were here for the last hour right?"
"Yeah?" Duo answered before Asuka added.
"And no one else came in or tried anything funny right?"
"We've been here the entire time, what's with the questions, Langley?" Viral countered.
"...There's two signals of heat in the cockpit...."
"Umm what?" Jaune exclaimed as the console showing the statistics of the bulky armored version of Unit 02, showing two bodies of heat in the entry plug.
Before anything else was said in the group. A young male's voice came through the console. "Umm Hello? Can someone get us out of this thing?"
No one but the Schnee huntress recognize the youth's voice. "Whitley!?"
"Sis, can you hear me?"
Asuka spoke next, "How long were you two in the Evangelion for?"
"I think for three hours, oh right, Fi wanted to asked if there's any males in the area."
"Fiona's in there too?!" Wiess inner thoughts were of panic that were made worse after Jaune's answer.
"Yeah, there's four guys here, why?" Jaunne asked before Fiona screamed in embrassament.
"PLEASE GO TO THE OTHER ROOM OR SOMETHING, I CAN'T GO OUT LIKE THIS!"
"Fi, please relax..."
"RELAX!? YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE IN THIS THING WITH CLOTHES ON!" The girl whined while crying from embarrassment.
"Umm, could anyone bring clothing for Miss Thyme."
Duo began to smirked before being dragged by Viral into the next room. "Keep your dirty thoughts to yourself, Duo Maxwell..."
"Killjoy!" Duo screamed as Jonathan conviced Jaune to followed.
"Sir Arc, we should leave as well, as it is knights' honor to..."
"Already way ahead of you, Mr. Joestar. We'll see you all later when we come up with that plan!"
As this was all happening, an snore echoed out from behind the crates. "Is someone sleeping over there?" Aqua asked while checking to see who it might be.
There, Chibodee Crocket, of all people was in deep slumber, much to everyone's surprise.
"...We should wake him up..." Asuka sighed while Weiss went looking for any of the female members of the crew for some clothing.
But to the surprise of the two, he just walked into the next room while sleeping the entire time. "That...worked out way to well..."

Hello!
I thought I would explain why people say Anna and Elsa are different in Frozen 2, compared to everything that came before it, and why it is bad.
The difference between the characters in the films
First, I am going to focus mainly on Elsa as she is simply easier to discuss. Do not get me wrong. Anna is a completely different character in Frozen 2. Her two most defining traits of optimism and her abundance of energy are nonexistent in the sequel, replaced by her freaking out all the time and being sad. I think the reason many people do not feel like Anna is all that different, is because she is the only character whose actions make sense. Kristoff makes no sense on why he is constantly trying to propose especially when their lives are in danger. I will get to Elsa. Anna might be a different character, but I can see the logic in these changes.
And now on to Elsa. First, Elsa’s characterizations in Frozen. Elsa is beyond complicated. She is the perfect girl who is confident in her abilities as queen and naturally takes to the role. She is mature, elegant, loyal, but also playful and mischievous. Her greatest flaw, however, is her secret powers. Her fear overwrote most of her true personality, and she ends up coming off as cold and distant because of it. Elsa grew up believing she had to hide her true self and that she had to do everything on her own. But her real personality still shown through despite everything. During her coronation when Anna and she are finally reunited after so long, Elsa true personality finally gets to shine. Loving and caring towards her sister and is clearly the more mature one while Anna stumbles on her words. She loves the royal lifestyle as she comments about the ball and looks happy looking over her people and everyone having a good time. Then her playful side as she and Anna joke about smelling chocolate. And finally, we get to see her mischievous side as she tricks Anna into dancing with the Duke. This personality is shown when she is a child, and at the end of the movie. It is also further shown in the shorts, with Frozen Fever showing her playful side and love for her sister, and Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, brings back her more mature and elegant side as well as show how she is growing from her troubled past.
Elsa in Frozen 2, is very shy and meek. The one and only thing she is interested in is magic and where her powers come from. She is still elegant, but not like she was before. In Frozen FF and OFA, Elsa was a very confident queen, but in Frozen 2, she is very shy or humble queen. Her maturity is gone, replaced with wonder filled eyes. Speaking of Elsa’s eyes, did you ever notice how narrow Elsa’s eyes are in Frozen 1 and the shorts. A lot of time she had a half-lidded eye so you can really see her eyeshadow. But in Frozen 2, Elsa’s eyes are always bugging out, making her look very cutesy. Elsa is also once again trying to do everything herself as well, making it seem like she learned nothing from Frozen 1.
It is really tricky because there is parts of Elsa that stayed the same, so there is the illusion that she is the same character, but to much is different and key character traits are completely forgotten.
Wants and Motives
The key difference is in Elsa’s Wants and Motivations. Elsa in Frozen 1, wants to be accepted, to be a part of Arendelle and not viewed as a monster. But more importantly, she wants to be with her sister Anna. Everything Elsa does is to protect Anna, and Arendelle. The only way she knew how to do this was to run away and isolate herself, which never worked, but that was her character flaw she needed to overcome. At the end of the day, Anna and Arendelle is what is most important to Elsa, and where she is most happy. Not up in the North Mountain singing Let It Go, or anywhere else. No, with her little sister and the people who love, respect, and accepted her.
Frozen 2 completely changed this. Elsa no longer views Arendelle as her home that she had fought so hard to be accepted by and a part off. She no longer really cares about Anna either, still loving her because they are sisters, but she never really considers Anna in anything. She does not think to tell Anna about the voice before she released the Spirits, then she often forgot about Anna in the forest, then tricked her and pushed her away. And she certainly did not consider what Anna might want at the end of the movie by making her queen. Frozen 2 made Elsa focus on magic only. Trusting the voice because it might explain why she has powers. Trusting the Spirits because they also have something to do with her powers. Only talking with Honeymaren about the Fifth Spirit and how it could be the one calling her.
Hyper Focus on only one goal
This actually leads me into my next point, which is a huge flaw in all the characters. Every character, Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, and Olaf, all have one track minds and goals. Kristoff wants to propose, Elsa wants to find the voice, Anna wants to protect Elsa, and Olaf wants to know what growing up is. These are all fine goals, but for most of the movie, that is all their characters are. There is not moments where the characters take a step back and focus on other things. Anna is the only one who really gets to do other things, but that is only because she is involved in everyone’s stories. Trying to help Elsa with her confidence, and teach Olaf about growing up, and she even takes time to talk with Mattias about who he is. Elsa never felt like she ever stepped out of her quest to help others with theirs, if she did, it was very minuscule, same with Kristoff and getting to know Ryder before going back to focus on proposing.
Compare this to Anna in Frozen 1. Anna’s main goal and what she is aiming for throughout the film is to reunite with her sister and save Arendelle. However, she still takes time for other things. She fell in love with Hans, and she takes the time to worry about Olaf melting or Kristoff’s ice business going down. She enjoys her time with the trolls and learns some lessons about love. And she even marvels at Elsa’s ice palace before asking her to return. This all also helps that Anna’s goals have to change near the end of the movie when Elsa throws her out. I think another difference is, is that in Frozen 2, all the characters have goals, and when they reach it, that is the end of their stories. Elsa wants to find the voice, she does and that is it for her. Kristoff wants to propose, he does and that is it for him. Anna at the beginning of her journey, thinks her goal should be to find true love, but that does not work out. Then she thinks all she has to do is find Elsa and the two can be sisters again and Elsa will lift the curse, but we all know how that ends up. Then Anna’s goal turns to simply trying to save herself, but then Hans betrays her. And finally, Anna’s final goal is to save Elsa, which she succeeds in. This is when Anna’s original goal of reuniting with her sister and saving Arendelle is finally fulfilled.
Do you see what I mean by Frozen 2 characters feeling like they only have one goal, and how there is little deviations for them with those goals? Elsa’s only roadblocks are with the Spirits, but she defeats them in under a minute each, so there is no detours Elsa has to take in order to reach Ahtohallan. Anna is the only character whose goals were changed because she failed her initial goal of protecting Elsa. I will also add that even though Elsa does have the goal of saving the forest and Arendelle, she never really focuses on them, and instead the movie constantly has her thinking about her powers and where they come from first, and the well being of everyone she has ever loved as second, maybe even third with the Spirits and the magic of the forest taking second place.
In short, Elsa, and the rest of the cast, do have some traits that are still the same, so a part of them feels right, but because a lot of key characterizations are missing and are replaced by new ones, and because of the complete change in Wants and Values, as well as the poor writing in having everyone laser focused on one goal, the characters are just not the same. They are completely different characters.
Why this is Bad
And now to explain why these new characterizations are bad.
First, a lot of people use the excuse that it has been 3 years and people change.
I have a couple of counter points to this. First, is that the beginning of Frozen 2, where Anna and Elsa are children, have them with their new personalities. Elsa is magic focused and a very quiet girl. While Anna is strangely into the politics of the Northuldra and Arendelle, as well as having a disturbingly deep obsession with romance, despite only being five and having an older sister that finds it discussing. It makes more sense that Anna’s obsession with romance happened after Elsa ignored her for 13 years, and she was completely alone for 3 after her parents died. I could go into more detail, but to sum it up, Frozen 1 Elsa is shown to be the older sister with a mischievous and playful side, while Anna is shown her youthfulness and love for her sister, all of this is character traits they have for the rest of the movie and for the shorts. Frozen 2, shows Elsa’s quite shyness and obsession with magic, while Anna is more focused on romance and politics.
In short, the beginning of Frozen 2 act like these character traits were always a part of Anna and Elsa, even though it was never shown in Frozen 1, FF, or OFA. So, the excuses of 3 years having passed does not work here.
And even if the 3 years are the cause of the change, it would be very bad writing. Good writing shows us how and why a character changes. Example, Frozen 1 Elsa. Like I said, when she was a child, we saw her personality of being a mischievous and playful girl, but then the accident happened, and because of that, Elsa is traumatized and becomes the fearful and reserved queen that we know her as. “Do You Want to Build a Snowman”, also helps show us Elsa’s growing fear and anxiety as well. Nothing before Frozen 2, or eve during it gives and explanation for Anna and Elsa’s knew personalities. The Voice and “Into the Unknown”, tries to give a reason for why Elsa wants to find the source of her magic, but not enough that it makes sense that she values finding her source over the life she has made in Arendelle.
Frozen is a work of fiction, and there for it needs to make sense. Ever heard the phrase, “Real life is stranger than fiction”, this is because real life does not need to make sense. People in real life are not expected to be consistent, but characters in a story are.
There are also many great examples of unplanned sequels that stayed true to the characters personalities. Shrek, Puss n Boots, The Rescuers. Hiccup from “How to Train Your Dragon” is a good example, as he clearly grows up between films, but even though he is more mature and confident, it is clearly still him. He is still a strategist over a warrior, along with his awkwardness and snark, along with his deep relationship with Toothless. The first movie helped him find himself and give him confidence, and the sequel showed that growth, but still kept his personality the same.
The one thing that is consistent with Elsa, is her reserved nature and trying to solve the problem herself, as well as her tendency to push Anna away. This also has problems because not only does Elsa have a new personality in the sequel, but her character ark is also reset as well. Elsa already learned that she cannot do everything on her own and that she needs to trust and rely on Anna more. OFA also showed Elsa slowly getting better as well. But Frozen 2 has her reset to zero, and the end result is completely different. Frozen 2 is more focused on having Anna learn the lesson that she needs to let Elsa go, rather than have Elsa learn that being with Anna is the key to happiness and success. It makes it seem like Elsa learned absolutely nothing in Frozen 1, and that Anna had wasted her time trying so hard to reunite with her sister.
And finally, people are going to say that it is okay for Anna and Elsa to have new goals after their original goals had been met in the first film. And yes, you are right, and many sequels do this well. I don’t really remember the first Puss N Boots film, but I don’t believe he had to learn the lesson of not running away from death and live his life to the fullest in it. However, this cannot be done with Frozen and Frozen 2.
The directors and creators of the Frozen franchise say that the two films go together and that they tell one complete story. So why does one movie say one thing, and then the next says a completely different thing? Frozen 1, Elsa belongs in Arendelle despite being different and needs to stop pushing her sister away, let her in her life and they can live happily ever after together. Frozen 2, Elsa belongs in a magical place because she has magic, and Anna needs to let her go as they will live happily ever after separated. Frozen 2 contradicts Frozen 1 and undoes everything the film and characters had worked so hard for. The two films to go together at all.
End notes.
I thought I would end this post by saying that Anna and Elsa’s new personalities are not bad. They are pretty good personalities, and my only complaint is that the movie needed a little more time with the story, especially giving Elsa more to do then just follow the voice and fight the Spirits, and of course the rushed ending. But at the end of the day, these are not the Anna and Elsa from Frozen 1 that people came to Frozen 2 to see. I have seen so many people say that they felt like they didn’t see the characters they loved at all in Frozen 2, or if they did, it is watered down versions of the characters. This is also why you will see people say Frozen 2 should have been its own original movie that had nothing to do with the Frozen franchise. I honestly believe that Anna and Elsa’s characters were changed to fit the narrative of Frozen 2’s story, rather than let Anna and Elsa’s personality help shape Frozen 2’s story. At the end of the day, to much of Anna and Elsa had been changed, from their personality to their goals, so they just are not the same characters and this is not only bad writing, it is very infuriating and sad for fans of Frozen 1, especially now a days where Disney only ever promotes Frozen 2 everywhere.
Well, that is all for now.

Hello!
I thought I would explain why people say Anna and Elsa are different in Frozen 2, compared to everything that came before it, and why it is bad.
The difference between the characters in the films
First, I am going to focus mainly on Elsa as she is simply easier to discuss. Do not get me wrong. Anna is a completely different character in Frozen 2. Her two most defining traits of optimism and her abundance of energy are nonexistent in the sequel, replaced by her freaking out all the time and being sad. I think the reason many people do not feel like Anna is all that different, is because she is the only character whose actions make sense. Kristoff makes no sense on why he is constantly trying to propose especially when their lives are in danger. I will get to Elsa. Anna might be a different character, but I can see the logic in these changes.
And now on to Elsa. First, Elsa’s characterizations in Frozen. Elsa is beyond complicated. She is the perfect girl who is confident in her abilities as queen and naturally takes to the role. She is mature, elegant, loyal, but also playful and mischievous. Her greatest flaw, however, is her secret powers. Her fear overwrote most of her true personality, and she ends up coming off as cold and distant because of it. Elsa grew up believing she had to hide her true self and that she had to do everything on her own. But her real personality still shown through despite everything. During her coronation when Anna and she are finally reunited after so long, Elsa true personality finally gets to shine. Loving and caring towards her sister and is clearly the more mature one while Anna stumbles on her words. She loves the royal lifestyle as she comments about the ball and looks happy looking over her people and everyone having a good time. Then her playful side as she and Anna joke about smelling chocolate. And finally, we get to see her mischievous side as she tricks Anna into dancing with the Duke. This personality is shown when she is a child, and at the end of the movie. It is also further shown in the shorts, with Frozen Fever showing her playful side and love for her sister, and Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, brings back her more mature and elegant side as well as show how she is growing from her troubled past.
Elsa in Frozen 2, is very shy and meek. The one and only thing she is interested in is magic and where her powers come from. She is still elegant, but not like she was before. In Frozen FF and OFA, Elsa was a very confident queen, but in Frozen 2, she is very shy or humble queen. Her maturity is gone, replaced with wonder filled eyes. Speaking of Elsa’s eyes, did you ever notice how narrow Elsa’s eyes are in Frozen 1 and the shorts. A lot of time she had a half-lidded eye so you can really see her eyeshadow. But in Frozen 2, Elsa’s eyes are always bugging out, making her look very cutesy. Elsa is also once again trying to do everything herself as well, making it seem like she learned nothing from Frozen 1.
It is really tricky because there is parts of Elsa that stayed the same, so there is the illusion that she is the same character, but to much is different and key character traits are completely forgotten.
Wants and Motives
The key difference is in Elsa’s Wants and Motivations. Elsa in Frozen 1, wants to be accepted, to be a part of Arendelle and not viewed as a monster. But more importantly, she wants to be with her sister Anna. Everything Elsa does is to protect Anna, and Arendelle. The only way she knew how to do this was to run away and isolate herself, which never worked, but that was her character flaw she needed to overcome. At the end of the day, Anna and Arendelle is what is most important to Elsa, and where she is most happy. Not up in the North Mountain singing Let It Go, or anywhere else. No, with her little sister and the people who love, respect, and accepted her.
Frozen 2 completely changed this. Elsa no longer views Arendelle as her home that she had fought so hard to be accepted by and a part off. She no longer really cares about Anna either, still loving her because they are sisters, but she never really considers Anna in anything. She does not think to tell Anna about the voice before she released the Spirits, then she often forgot about Anna in the forest, then tricked her and pushed her away. And she certainly did not consider what Anna might want at the end of the movie by making her queen. Frozen 2 made Elsa focus on magic only. Trusting the voice because it might explain why she has powers. Trusting the Spirits because they also have something to do with her powers. Only talking with Honeymaren about the Fifth Spirit and how it could be the one calling her.
Hyper Focus on only one goal
This actually leads me into my next point, which is a huge flaw in all the characters. Every character, Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, and Olaf, all have one track minds and goals. Kristoff wants to propose, Elsa wants to find the voice, Anna wants to protect Elsa, and Olaf wants to know what growing up is. These are all fine goals, but for most of the movie, that is all their characters are. There is not moments where the characters take a step back and focus on other things. Anna is the only one who really gets to do other things, but that is only because she is involved in everyone’s stories. Trying to help Elsa with her confidence, and teach Olaf about growing up, and she even takes time to talk with Mattias about who he is. Elsa never felt like she ever stepped out of her quest to help others with theirs, if she did, it was very minuscule, same with Kristoff and getting to know Ryder before going back to focus on proposing.
Compare this to Anna in Frozen 1. Anna’s main goal and what she is aiming for throughout the film is to reunite with her sister and save Arendelle. However, she still takes time for other things. She fell in love with Hans, and she takes the time to worry about Olaf melting or Kristoff’s ice business going down. She enjoys her time with the trolls and learns some lessons about love. And she even marvels at Elsa’s ice palace before asking her to return. This all also helps that Anna’s goals have to change near the end of the movie when Elsa throws her out. I think another difference is, is that in Frozen 2, all the characters have goals, and when they reach it, that is the end of their stories. Elsa wants to find the voice, she does and that is it for her. Kristoff wants to propose, he does and that is it for him. Anna at the beginning of her journey, thinks her goal should be to find true love, but that does not work out. Then she thinks all she has to do is find Elsa and the two can be sisters again and Elsa will lift the curse, but we all know how that ends up. Then Anna’s goal turns to simply trying to save herself, but then Hans betrays her. And finally, Anna’s final goal is to save Elsa, which she succeeds in. This is when Anna’s original goal of reuniting with her sister and saving Arendelle is finally fulfilled.
Do you see what I mean by Frozen 2 characters feeling like they only have one goal, and how there is little deviations for them with those goals? Elsa’s only roadblocks are with the Spirits, but she defeats them in under a minute each, so there is no detours Elsa has to take in order to reach Ahtohallan. Anna is the only character whose goals were changed because she failed her initial goal of protecting Elsa. I will also add that even though Elsa does have the goal of saving the forest and Arendelle, she never really focuses on them, and instead the movie constantly has her thinking about her powers and where they come from first, and the well being of everyone she has ever loved as second, maybe even third with the Spirits and the magic of the forest taking second place.
In short, Elsa, and the rest of the cast, do have some traits that are still the same, so a part of them feels right, but because a lot of key characterizations are missing and are replaced by new ones, and because of the complete change in Wants and Values, as well as the poor writing in having everyone laser focused on one goal, the characters are just not the same. They are completely different characters.
Why this is Bad
And now to explain why these new characterizations are bad.
First, a lot of people use the excuse that it has been 3 years and people change.
I have a couple of counter points to this. First, is that the beginning of Frozen 2, where Anna and Elsa are children, have them with their new personalities. Elsa is magic focused and a very quiet girl. While Anna is strangely into the politics of the Northuldra and Arendelle, as well as having a disturbingly deep obsession with romance, despite only being five and having an older sister that finds it discussing. It makes more sense that Anna’s obsession with romance happened after Elsa ignored her for 13 years, and she was completely alone for 3 after her parents died. I could go into more detail, but to sum it up, Frozen 1 Elsa is shown to be the older sister with a mischievous and playful side, while Anna is shown her youthfulness and love for her sister, all of this is character traits they have for the rest of the movie and for the shorts. Frozen 2, shows Elsa’s quite shyness and obsession with magic, while Anna is more focused on romance and politics.
In short, the beginning of Frozen 2 act like these character traits were always a part of Anna and Elsa, even though it was never shown in Frozen 1, FF, or OFA. So, the excuses of 3 years having passed does not work here.
And even if the 3 years are the cause of the change, it would be very bad writing. Good writing shows us how and why a character changes. Example, Frozen 1 Elsa. Like I said, when she was a child, we saw her personality of being a mischievous and playful girl, but then the accident happened, and because of that, Elsa is traumatized and becomes the fearful and reserved queen that we know her as. “Do You Want to Build a Snowman”, also helps show us Elsa’s growing fear and anxiety as well. Nothing before Frozen 2, or eve during it gives and explanation for Anna and Elsa’s knew personalities. The Voice and “Into the Unknown”, tries to give a reason for why Elsa wants to find the source of her magic, but not enough that it makes sense that she values finding her source over the life she has made in Arendelle.
Frozen is a work of fiction, and there for it needs to make sense. Ever heard the phrase, “Real life is stranger than fiction”, this is because real life does not need to make sense. People in real life are not expected to be consistent, but characters in a story are.
There are also many great examples of unplanned sequels that stayed true to the characters personalities. Shrek, Puss n Boots, The Rescuers. Hiccup from “How to Train Your Dragon” is a good example, as he clearly grows up between films, but even though he is more mature and confident, it is clearly still him. He is still a strategist over a warrior, along with his awkwardness and snark, along with his deep relationship with Toothless. The first movie helped him find himself and give him confidence, and the sequel showed that growth, but still kept his personality the same.
The one thing that is consistent with Elsa, is her reserved nature and trying to solve the problem herself, as well as her tendency to push Anna away. This also has problems because not only does Elsa have a new personality in the sequel, but her character ark is also reset as well. Elsa already learned that she cannot do everything on her own and that she needs to trust and rely on Anna more. OFA also showed Elsa slowly getting better as well. But Frozen 2 has her reset to zero, and the end result is completely different. Frozen 2 is more focused on having Anna learn the lesson that she needs to let Elsa go, rather than have Elsa learn that being with Anna is the key to happiness and success. It makes it seem like Elsa learned absolutely nothing in Frozen 1, and that Anna had wasted her time trying so hard to reunite with her sister.
And finally, people are going to say that it is okay for Anna and Elsa to have new goals after their original goals had been met in the first film. And yes, you are right, and many sequels do this well. I don’t really remember the first Puss N Boots film, but I don’t believe he had to learn the lesson of not running away from death and live his life to the fullest in it. However, this cannot be done with Frozen and Frozen 2.
The directors and creators of the Frozen franchise say that the two films go together and that they tell one complete story. So why does one movie say one thing, and then the next says a completely different thing? Frozen 1, Elsa belongs in Arendelle despite being different and needs to stop pushing her sister away, let her in her life and they can live happily ever after together. Frozen 2, Elsa belongs in a magical place because she has magic, and Anna needs to let her go as they will live happily ever after separated. Frozen 2 contradicts Frozen 1 and undoes everything the film and characters had worked so hard for. The two films do not go together at all.
End notes.
I thought I would end this post by saying that Anna and Elsa’s new personalities are not bad. They are pretty good personalities, and my only complaint is that the movie needed a little more time with the story, especially giving Elsa more to do then just follow the voice and fight the Spirits, and of course the rushed ending. But at the end of the day, these are not the Anna and Elsa from Frozen 1 that people came to Frozen 2 to see. I have seen so many people say that they felt like they didn’t see the characters they loved at all in Frozen 2, or if they did, it is watered down versions of the characters. This is also why you will see people say Frozen 2 should have been its own original movie that had nothing to do with the Frozen franchise. I honestly believe that Anna and Elsa’s characters were changed to fit the narrative of Frozen 2’s story, rather than let Anna and Elsa’s personality help shape Frozen 2’s story. At the end of the day, to much of Anna and Elsa had been changed, from their personality to their goals, so they just are not the same characters and this is not only bad writing, it is very infuriating and sad for fans of Frozen 1, especially now a days where Disney only ever promotes Frozen 2 everywhere.
Well, that is all for now.

I know that ‘immoral’ doesn’t quite cover it.
It isn’t as though I awoke one morning and decided that was the Thursday I was going to roll out of bed and become a piece of shit. I didn’t pull on last year’s trainers and make a pact with myself that my bank balance would triple because I was going to become a ghost-hunting scam artist, greasing my endless lies with snake oil. But it doesn’t matter, not really. Karma came for me in a big way, and it was deserved.
We gained a bit of a niche following online, nothing to write home about but we made our money from donations and of course, the cold hard cash from the people we sucked the life out of. I won’t bore with fine details, but we ghostbusted nineteen homes before we reached the Whistlebys. With each home, we bought more equipment to really add credence to the whole wraith-wrangler thing. We turned creaky floorboards into demons, water tank leaks into internet views. It was fun, until it wasn’t.
I’d never met a family quite like them.
The others, they were young couples afraid of whistling wind, old singles desperate for validation that their home wasn’t heavy with the weight of vengeful spirits. It was easy, muscle memory. But the Whistlebys - god, they were terrified. Young parents and two children with their family dog, cowering in the corner when we set up for our bullshit interview. The daughter was so pale she seemed to sink into the walls behind her, face gaunt and eyes haunted. It was her we latched onto as we probed, stifling excited smirks with our palms.
“He never leaves,” she whispered, staring through us as if we weren’t really there. If her eyes glimmered once, they certainly didn’t now; lost and soulless as she gazed into the abyss. It was Adam who managed to coax the words from her lips, voice soft as he gently probed.
“Who is he? We have plenty of equipment here to find him in whatever corner he’s hiding, we just need to know as much as you can tell us.”
A wry smile made its way onto her lips as she finally looked at Adam, voice low and deliberate. “You don’t need to find him. You’ll know where he is, I promise. He walks on the ceiling and crawls down the walls. He’ll find you.”
The young girl’s mum spoke suddenly, eyes full of tears. “She didn’t used to speak this way,” she breathed, gaze darting around the room, “She’s so tired. So tired. She doesn’t sleep anymore, it doesn’t let her.”
Jonah stood up then, grinning as he clutched his camera for dear life. “Ma’am, don’t you worry for a second, you’re in the right hands. We’ll find out what your visitor wants, and we’ll cast him right outta here. You have my word.”
His word meant nothing, but they didn’t need to know that. The fear in their aura was palpable, it was as if they had their own pulsing circle of gravity sucking the life from the room. Their dread did something foreign to me: it made me nervous. In all the nighttime giggling and masquerading in people’s homes, I’d never been scared. To do this job was to know that ghosts were as real as fairies in whimsical tales, it was to laugh at the notion. But during that interview, I wasn’t laughing. The girl’s eyes were black holes, and they looked like they’d sucked her soul out long ago. So, with the image of those eyes burned into my retinas, we did what we did best. 11 pm rolled around and with the family booked into a hotel, it was showtime.
“Show yourself, demon!” Jonah lunged through the front door as nighttime blanketed the house in darkness, hauling our masses of equipment through. We didn’t need any of it, obviously, but it made people feel as though we were legitimately expelling ghosts from their homes with the flick of a battered crucifix.
Adam rolled his eyes, glancing down at the EMF reader in his hand. “Bro, come on. Did you see how scared that girl was? I feel a little bad.”
“Shit, she was creepy,” Jonah chomped on his gum, leaving muddy boot stains as he clambered up on the sofa to stick his camera to the wall, “He walks on the ceiling. Dude must have the mother of all headaches.”
I stayed quiet, chewing my lip as I set up our audio equipment and eyed the tired-looking lump of plastic. The older it looks, the more authentic it appears Jonah had assured me, and sure, I supposed it did look like it belonged in a 1998 horror game, but it was pretty shit. Not that we’d ever picked up anything on it before - there was the great scare of house 12 when the fridge appeared to hum a lilting tune, but it was just super broken.
“Right,” Jonah jumped downwards, nearly knocking over the coffee table, “Plan is Megan Donovan is leaving the house party you guys didn’t wanna go to at like 2 am. I say we wrap up here by 1 am, swing by the party and I’ll be her shoulder to cry on because her douchebag boyfriend was a dick again all night.”
Adam scowled as Jonah cackled but I stayed mute, casting my eyes around the room. I couldn’t deny this place felt different, somehow. Even with all the lights dancing across the house, there sat an empty, tepid coldness that seemed to seep through the walls. There was no warmth here, no safety. Loving family photos littered the room, but somehow it felt barren. Wrong.
“I’m down to do this quickly, at least,” Adam muttered, eyes darting around nervously, “You guys feel that? Place feels…”
“Haunted?” I finished for him, rolling my eyes at Jonah’s guffaws.
“Alright, if you’re both gonna be pussies, I’ll get started,” he stared ominously into our main camera placed across the room, red light blinking towards the sofa we were sitting on, “It’s time, everyone. As always, first, we’ll try to contact the ghost, and see if we pick up anything on the microphone or the EMF.”
Clearing his throat, Adam stole a glance at me. “Uh, okay. We’re here in your domain, ghost,” he tried to project but I heard the slight crack in his voice, “We’re here to find out what you want, why you haunt this family. We’re here to set you free.”
I counted down from six, bulging my eyes as I shrieked, throwing myself backwards. “No way,” I bellowed, pointing off camera, “There’s no way!”
And we did the usual scramble, all of us claiming we saw a photo frame go flying, switching to shaky hand cam footage as Jonah retrieved it from the floor we laid it on earlier. It was rehearsed, but something just felt different. It’s hard to describe, but I couldn’t shake the feeling a pair of eyes were locked onto me, a horrid gaze burning into my back. The feeling amplified as we pulled out the trusty Ouija board only moments later, laying it on the table and pushing it into frame. I scratched at my arms nervously, trying not to stare at the shadows that seemed to be consuming the room.
“Alright,” Jonah muttered, placing his finger on the planchette, “I ask its name, we give it something creepy like Maurice. I’ll move it, you guys just stay still.”
“Feel free to run the show on this one,” I offered, goosebumps erupting over my skin. Had it gotten colder in here? Adam certainly thought so as he hugged his hoodie tighter, shaking something off as he placed his finger on the planchette with us. The dread was otherworldly, beginning to creep across my skin and begging me to stop.
“Spirit,” Jonah demanded, dramatically eyeing each corner of the room, “Make yourself known to us. Show us. Communicate with us! I want to ask what name gives you your power. What is your name, ghost?”
He waited a fairly believable amount of time before the planchette slowly began to move towards M, but I knew my heart wasn’t in my lacklustre reaction. Jonah would yell at me later, claiming I ruined the entire Ouija shot, but I swore I could see something in my peripheral. Just out of view, staring at me. I didn’t turn my head, didn’t dare. Instead, I gritted my teeth and focused on the board, letting my jaw drop dramatically.
M-A-U-R-I
And just like that, the planchette halted. Painfully, almost. Jonah scowled, head snapping to us. “Really?! Dude, I was nearly finished-”
“You stopped,” I argued, wondering if it was a blanket on the bookshelf or a crumpled-up man staring dead-eyed at me, as I was beginning to suspect it was.
“Just do it again,” Adam grumbled, and it wasn’t usually like this. We didn’t fight, we didn’t bite. The house felt as though it was draining the life from us, the joy. I felt physically tired, as though even being here was soul-sucking. But, as I told myself, ghosts were not real. We were not real. We were opportunistic bastards and we were leaving at 1 am.
The planchette moved to M with ease again and we forced our shock, but with less enthusiasm this time. It seemed even Jonah was struggling now, eyebrows knitted together tensely.
M-A-U-R-I-C
​
And it stopped again, but this time it jerked to the left, causing a gasp to leave Adam’s lips. “Jonah, for fuck-”
“What is your problem?” Jonah cried, looking between us as though we were crazy, “Ever since we got in here, you’ve been acting like a couple of little girls. I swear to god, if Megan-”
But his words died on his lips, because - as we all scowled at one another - the planchette yanked our waiting fingers in the opposite direction, landing on a letter.
B
“Adam, for Christ-”
​
E
​
The planchette scraped horribly against the Ouija board and I couldn’t tear my eyes away, sitting between the chaos of my friends arguing as each blamed the other, neither paying enough attention to the board. I swallowed, trying to watch for a twitch of the muscles in their fingers, some indication of which one was fucking with us.
E
But there was none. Their fingers were light, barely grazing the object jerking clumsily around the board. Adam met my eyes, trepidation lining his features. “Listen, I just want to get this shit done and get out of here. If this is you-”
L
“It isn’t,” I returned, voice lost in the sound of Jonah growling and wrenching up the planchette, launching it across the room till it hit the wall with a sickening crack. I could only stare in shock at my furious, panting friend but Adam leapt upwards, throwing his arms out in question.
“You can’t be serious! Jonah, for fuck sake, what is wrong with you?”
And they argued. Yelled, threw their arms around, ignored the room. But I couldn’t ignore the room. I hadn’t been able to ignore it from the second we’d stepped in here, the atmosphere wrapping around my throat from the very first second we’d dared. And they weren’t seeing it, but I was. The blanket in the corner of the room, hanging limply from the figure underneath it. Tall, impossibly tall, shrouded in shadow and with the fabric sagging off it horribly.
“Shut up,” I whispered to the boys next to me, but they didn’t stop. They didn’t stop as the blanket began to drag closer towards us, the sound of toenails scraping on the floor echoing louder than even my friends. I could see the silhouette underneath it, the darkness that followed. The cold. But they didn’t notice, not until a screech sounded, sending our eyes all in the direction of the bleeping monstrosity.
“Fuck,” Adam cried, shaking his head at the EMF detector which was flashing a bloody red colour and wailing to attention. I was only distracted momentarily from the carnage, turning around in time to feel a horrid whoosh of air as the blanket fell into a crumpled heap a mere inch from my nose, dropping to my feet. The air was sucked from my lungs as I tumbled backwards, collapsing on the sofa and gasping instead of forming words. Adam looked upon me with concern, but Jonah was done.
“Nah,” he growled, wincing at the wail of the EMF machine, “Listen, I’m not doing this all over again. Come here, let’s do something with this godforsaken thing. Grab it, wave it around, just fucking get up.”
My eyes were still darting around the room and only pulled from their trance as a buzzing fly landed on my hand, narrowly avoiding death with the flick of my shaking finger. It woke me up, my voice sounding more strained than I would’ve liked. “Are you hearing that? It’s detecting something, Jonah, I swear to god I saw-”
“Faulty microwave, shitty electrics, I don’t know,” his voice raised threateningly, “Seriously, stop. Let’s leave the room and run in, we’ll act shocked about the EMF, we’ll walk around a bit, and then we’re going. I’m sick of you both.”
I should’ve argued. Obviously, I should’ve argued. But I can’t describe the way I felt in that moment - it was as though my fear gave way to denial so quickly that I was already calling myself crazy, reaching desperately for the idea that no, I was seeing things. Feeling things. As though I needed to prove to myself that I was crazy, and the horrors my mind was conjuring simply couldn’t exist.
So I stayed.
I stayed as the three of us trudged out of the living room, as we all pulled our clothes tighter and ignored the ice seeping into our skin. I ignored Adam squeezing my shoulder, a sentiment he’d never bothered with before. I ignored my thudding heart as we clutched our cameras, bursting into the living room in our most epic movie yet, ready to contort our faces in horror.
But we didn’t have to fake it.
In the corner was our screaming EMF reader, blinking red as it had been for the last 5 minutes. But the problem was the endless claws wrapped around it, attached to a figure so tall its head brushed the ceiling and black eyes glared upon us. It swayed in the shadows but I could see its arms, gaunt and as long as its legs, neck cracking awfully as it turned to look at us in an instant. A sick dripping sounded just loud enough for us to hear, and to this day, I imagine it as thick, crimson blood falling from its fingers onto its dead, curled toes.
“Holy shit,” Adam whispered, so I knew in fact, I hadn’t lost my mind. We ran, of course. Scared idiots launching themselves backwards and tripping over everything, legs jelly as we bolted for the front door. I cursed myself for not leaving more quickly, begged for a time machine to have me believe my eyes the first time. We didn’t make it. There in the hallway was our 1998 horror movie audio device, except now it was crackling and a rasp sounded from it, too deep and gravelly to be human. Layers of voices sounded at once, so distorted I could barely make them out.
“I smell your blood,” it rasped, the voice touching me so closely I could practically feel it inside of me, “I’ll suck it out of your veins and wear your skin.”
And then, before there was time to react, every lightbulb in the house smashed at once. I know, because I heard the shards hit the floor in every room. Cried out as pure darkness filled the space, leaving me with no idea where my friends were and if they even existed anymore.
“The door won’t fucking open!” Adam screeched from my right, audibly jamming the handle, “It won’t open!”
“Where’s the crucifix?” Jonah begged, and I could hear the tears in his voice, “Adam, where?!”
But now it was only footsteps we heard. Not slow ones. Thudding, loud footsteps, gaining pace and getting louder and louder, till it sounded like something was running at us. But the sound didn’t come from the floor. With the most gut-wrenching feeling of horror, I realised it was coming from the ceiling.
“Oh my god,” Adam’s voice was below me somewhere, because he’d fallen down into a heap of fear, “What the fuck is that? What is that?!”
It was deafening, all of it. The wailing EMF detector, the rasp of crackling audio threatening to break all our bones at once, the footsteps slamming to a stop directly above my head. All leading to the moment I looked up, a silent tear disappearing in a slow trickle down my cheek.
Its body was contorted horribly as it glowered down from the ceiling, neck cracked at an unnatural angle with bones jutting out everywhere. Dead, black holes for eyes bored into mine, hell radiating from them in such a way that I was knocked to the floor by the sheer force of it. Rows of razor teeth were pulled back into a horrific grin, stretching much in the way its wings did as they grazed the ceiling, reams of liquid trickling from them onto our heads.
Hell. Staring from above me.
My memory is hazy, and part of me thinks my brain tried to erase the trauma to give myself half a chance to go on with my life. I remember Jonah being lifted into the air with such a guttural wail that I’ve never heard a sound like it since. Remember the sound of his bones crackling as we ran, making straight for the living room. We threw furniture at the window, and ignored the thud of Jonah’s lifeless body being hurled at us, hitting the wall with a sick crack.
I know we got out. I felt its eyes burning from behind me as our skin snagged on glass, as we sprinted into the hammering rain, screaming for any help we could find. When the paramedics came, most of Jonah’s leg had already been eaten, the remains nowhere to be found. He woke up six days later, screaming bloody murder. Screams he kept up till he was sedated, only reducing to a whimpering wail the third time they woke him up.
The bottom floor of the house was destroyed, along with everything in it. Our equipment crushed; all evidence of our horrors erased other than the haunted look in Adams’s eyes and the nightmares that still wake me at 3 am. Wild animals tore the leg from an unconscious Jonah, the local police said. We were just idiots holding a seance in a house, leaving the backdoor open to all manner of wild animals as we partied ourselves silly. At first, they thought we trashed the house, but the Whistlebys assured the police that no, it simply wasn’t the case. This had happened before, they told them, we were just caught in the crossfire. They gave their statement that night, protested our innocence, then packed their bags.
They never left.
Their little girl went missing that night, right before they could flee. Her suitcase sat in her room, untouched, and that house became a sad legend on those streets, spoken about in hushed tones. I left town but something inside it never left me. We don’t speak of it, the three of us. We left, and when we meet, that night exists as the elephant in the room, Jonah’s scarred stump reminding us that we didn’t imagine the entire thing as a collective fever dream.
So I left, lived my life. Started going to church, took up cricket. And when I hear the sound of thudding footsteps hammering along the ceiling of my hallway in the dead of night, I pull the covers over my head and pray to every god that may or may not exist that I’ll live another day. It takes such a long time to pick up all 104 crucifixes off the floor the next morning, but for the life of me, I’ll never stop doing it.

hi, my name is calypso and i use he/it pronouns. i'd like to be known that way and i don't wanna hear any homophobic shit, thank you. im 17 years old and my life has always been a living hell and when i say that, i mean it. i don't think anyone will read all of this and thats fine, i just wanna leave my story here, in case of dying. i was born into a completely rotten, dissfuncional family, with mother, older sister and my father. (my sister had a different father) since i was little, my older sister was extremely jealous of me, since my mother paid me attention, yet my mother used to beat my sister up terribly. often my sister ended up bloody in the corner of our living room. i was getting quite spoiled until i was around the age of 5 - thats when it all started. my father always said im mental, sick, retarted and my parents always got into heated arguments. around that age, i started to get verbally abused by my father. my father abused heavy drugs, cigs and alcohol, ever since i can remember. one day, my mother got really sick and had to stay in hospital for couple months, (she had some issue with her kidneys) so i ended up alone with my sister and father. they kidnapped me into germany, cut off contact with my mother, kept me locked in an apartment - i havent seen my mother for 7 months. in that appartment, terrible things happened - my father killed a guy infront of me, brought in people and beat them up, forced me to watch everything and even fucked with my underaged sister, right infront of me. thats also where first psychical abuse from my father and sister started (i was 6) - i was forced to kneel on shattered glass for hours, eat straight up salt, i was getting waterboarded, beaten up until i passed out, food and water restricted, burned, cut, etc. it went like this for nearly 2 years every single day, even after we returned home. when we came back from germany, my mother was completely changed - from a carring, sweet mother (at least towards me) she went to a cold, emotionless woman, who neglected me. my sister and father beat me up and my mother just stood there, watching it happen. my father got my sister pregnant at a very young age - thankfully, she got abortion but just the thought of it makes me sick. the day my mother and my sister left to the abortion clinic, my father raped me. i was 8, home alone with him and he was very pissed that my mother forced my sister to abort his baby - so he used me. it was absolutely terrible and i remember that i didnt understand what was happening. i was neglected, never taught about sex, consent or sexual assault - hell, i was too young to be supposed to know that. since i grew up watching my father doing this to people around me, i thought its normal, so i just let him do it to me. i never told anyone from our family. novody knows that it happened that day. thankfully, my mother got fed up with his shit and asked for divorce. my father kicked us out of our house, with nothing, my sister staying with him - my father and my sister started dating eachother. me and my mother ended up on the streets, with absolutely nothing and no one. thankfully, we found shelter home and thats where we lived for next 2 years. shelter home was fun, i made friends, there was this club for kids to play in - i liked it in here. i never got along with anyone in school - i was always too loud, too weird, too sensitive. i was getting bullied whole elementary school, whole 9 years - it was terrible. i was nearly 9, when one day i had to wash my hair but there was no warm water left, since there was restricted water for every room in the shelter home. so, my mother got an idea - she will heat up water on the stove and wash me in it. she sat me into the bathtub, left me there and went to heat up water until it was boiling hot. she took it fight of the stove, boiling hot and without cooling it down, she dumped it on me. i still remember the pure agony i felt, the pain, the smell, my scream. i never felt this much pain before. my mother just stood there for good 5 minutes, watching me scream and cry in pure pain - thankfully, other people from the home came running in and started helping me. it was too late tho, the skin on my scalp bassicaly cooked off and blisters covered my upper body. at first, my mother refused to take me to the hospital - she was scared that she will go to jail. so, she took me to hospital 3 days later, when i was already running fever and infection. the hospital stuff failed - they only checked my body but never my scalp. my mother lied to the doctors and said that i did it myself, that i dumped boiling soup onto myself by accident. she threatend to kill me if i ever speak up about the thruth and i believed her for years. thankfully, i went to the hospital again for new dressing and thats when they finally noticed my rotting burned scalp - surgery right away. they bassically had to peel the skin off my scalp, along with my hair of course - it was terrible. i underwent 3 surgeries like this and spend 3 months in hospital. i was bald for 2 years, since my hair roots got completely damaged - i was getting bullied terribly. at that time, my 2 years long anorexia started. my mother never brought it up again, she disscarded every single hospital paper and evidence and refused to apologise or talk about it. i was 10 when i found out i have a grandma from my father's side. my whole life, i only knew grandma from my mother's side and she is a terrible lady - always drunk and abusive. turned out that i was getting restricted from seeing my granny, cause my mother hated her. my mother only reached out to her when we hit rock bottom and had nowhere to go, since they kicked my mother out of the foster house, after the thing she did to me. we lived with my granny for few months and its been the best months of my life. my granny is completely different than her son (my father) - she's so loving, gentle and motherly. she bassicaly raised me and healed a tiny part of me. soon, me and my mother found a little flat and moved in alone - it was very small, just one room with everything in it. we lived like this for over a year. i never grew up rich, quite the opposite but these years with my mother were terrible when it came to money. she was working as a cleaning woman in some school and it didnt make good money. we moved houses 3 times, until we started living in the same house as my uncle (my father's brother) thats when the shit storm started again - he forced me into the contact with my father. after 4 years, i met him again and my daddy issues acted. he promised he changed and he even looked and acted like him and i believed him. soon, i became daddy's girl and our relationship was amazing. we traveled together, he bought me so many stuff, its been fun. my mother simply didnt give a fuck about what im doing. yes, i met my sister too and she looked like she changed too. for the first time in ny life, they both seemed to love me and we had so much fun. (at that time, they stopped dating) i was young and naive, mentally ill, slowly healing from anorexia - i needed my dad more than ever. our relationship started to get bad real quick tho and we just silently let it go. surprisingly, he never yelled or hit me, it just wasnt working. (how surprising) at the age 12 i also got sexually assaulted again. i was back at the shelter house, there was this little reunion of the kids that grew up there and there was this boy i never met before. he was 14, i was 12. we talked a little, he dragged me into this closed of area and assaulted me in there. i don't remember his face, his name or what exactly he did to my body - i just know i ended up naked on the floor of the playing area for kids. again - i never told anyone. when i realised what happened, it was already too late, so i stayed silent. around that time, my mother got a new job as a baker, that gave us better money. i think i was 13 when she first met her new boyfriend at her job. our money situation got a bit better thanks to him and he really helped me. at the start, it was bitter - older man in my house, living with him right away.. it took me nearly 2 years to get used to him fully. around 12-13, my mental health slowly started to get bad. i had this friend that meant terribly much to me - we were absolutely same, spend every day together, her family loved me and i loved them. she was my best friend forever and i gave her everything i had, to the point where i was living just for her. she was a manipulative whore, changing boyfriends every week, manipulating me, bullying me and you can say abusing me. she tied me to her bed and made fun of me for hours, she verbally abused me, hit me, forced me to cut of everyone in my life - she was a monster. when i was close to the age of 13, i tried to kill myself and nearly suceeded - i tried to kill myself because of that friend and everything that happened to me in last few months. i ended up in hospital, alive and got sent into the mental hospital for 3 months. it was a torture - i got restrained to the bed daily, given hard medication, verbally abused and everything got even worse in there. that hospital made everything drop for me. in those 3 moths, nobody came visit properly. my mother was there once and my friend too. when i got out, i started struggling heavily with self harm and silent suicide attempts. then, around the age of 14, i came out as trans to that friend and she dumped my ass. i remember that it absolutely broke me, completely made me fall apart and die inside. that day, i got drunk for the first time and fell asleep on train tracks - if there wasnt my guy friend, i wouldnt be here anymore. he brought me to my granny and she let me stay few nights - my mother never found out, thank god, she didnt care at all. i got help, diagnosis, medication and i've been trying ever since. i got into 3 relationships - two were abusive, toxic and cheating and one just simply didnt click. i had 6 different therapist and nobody was able to help me. i tried 10+ different types of medication and nothing helped. i tried everything - working out, journaling, meditation, every trick in the book - nothing. i was 15, ending in my elementary school and going to highschool. i never got to go to my dream highschool, since around the date of doing entrance exams, i was send into the mental hospital again, for few weeks, cause doctors didnt know what to do with me. i ended up in a school that i hated and thaz school hated me back - from teachers to students, everyone. i was getting bullied for being different and not fitting in. i remember throwing up from anxiety every morning, crying and fainting in school. it got so bad, my doctor had to write me a paper that i cannot attend school anymore. one day, i got such a bad panic attack and fainted on the street. ambulance brought me into the hospital and thankfully they let me go home - unfortunately, this caused my agoraphobia. it got so severe i havent left my house in months and on some days, i didnt even leave my room. i couldnt go to school, see my friends, attend therapy, get help - i was trapped. my mother and her now husband (they got married) planned to move out of my childhood city into a completely new one. they never asked me for opinion, they just said so. for 8 months, i was left alone in our house in my childhood city, since my mother was already in the new city. when i was lucky, she came home for one day every week, just to buy me some food and leave again. if it wasnt for my granny stopping by, i woukd surely go fuckin insane. came the big day and i had to be moved from the city to the new city - with severe fuckin agoraphobia. it was absolutely terrible but somehow i made it and ended up here. i found a new therapist and oh, she seemed so sweet, so perfect, so amazing. i had so much hope, she promised me so much things and completely made me believe everything she had to say. she stopped showing for therapies tho, started charging much more, even for the things she never did and she started talking very badly about me and my family behind our backs. turned out she was a fake therapist, scamming severely sick naive people like me. she robbed us of thousands and made me feel absolutely fuckin terrible. i never recovered from it and i don't think i ever will. i already had severe medical trauma and she only made it worse. i got new therapists thaz is till have to that day and they are quite nice, i like them. and here im - 17 years old, 10+ diagnosis, nothing is helping, hopeless. i still have agoraphobia, i can leave the house for a bit but i can't go anywhere far. i can't get a proper help, since you have to be personaly everywhere and thats something i can't do, due to my agoraphobia. i can't go to school, make new friends, anything - im so lonely. i have an online friend, they are my everything and thats all i have. i have bpd, autism, clinical depression, agoraphobia, panic dissorder, severe anxiety, severe c-ptsd, chronic illnesses, dissabilities and yet to get my ocd and schizophrenia diagnosis, since i have severe symptoms. i have no one but my online friend and two therapists. my family is not working. my mother's husband is just weird - he's a good guy and he's trying but he's rasist and just very pushy and touchy. my mother is a cold monster - she made her first boyfriend (my sister's father) kill himself, her second husband (my father) hate her child and her current husband cry many times. they always argue, cause my mother is a sick person, that wont admit that she needs help, that she's fucked in the head. she's restricting me from food, ignores my special needs, problems and severity of my problems. she's neglectfull and we argue a lot. she was also cheating on my father with my uncle (his brother) and she would open her legs for anyone. just recently i found out that my father is really not my father - my mother cheated on him and got me with some random man. maybe thats why he hated me so fuckin much. so, i don't know my real father and my only father figure let me down terribly. sometimes he sends me emails and letters about how i ruined his life and how he tried to ens himself thanks to me. im not getting any better and since the year started, everything has been much much worse. im spiraling, im lost. everyone let me down - my family, doctors, my friends, everoyne. i never got proper help, treatment, care, love. i was never heard or seen and even through all that, i stayed nice and im helping people every single day. im givng everyone everything, so much love and positivity but i never get anything in return. i was never loved, i was never meant to be alive. nobody that did me dirty ever got a punishment, i got zero justice or anything like that. suicided seems like the only answer now and i think i'll do it. i don't know. leaving this here, as it might change something for someone. it might give you hope or something. it might open eyes to people and make them care more for others. i want to be remembered for my story, in case i die. you don't have to believe me, nobody ever will but is wear im not lying. i don't have the heart to make terrible shit like this up. love you, friends, you all stay safe, i will at least try.

I am NOT the Original Poster. That is u/Uncle-Barnacle. She posted in EntitledPeople.
Thanks to u/No-Mechanic-3048 for the rec!
Trigger Warnings: animal abuse; sexual harassment;
Mood Spoiler: Good ending for OOP
Original Post: January 27, 2024
As the title says, last week I kicked what I thought was a good friend out of my house because I can no longer handle her antics. Just wanna write it here just to destress and deal with the grief of losing a friend.
Kendall (25F) and I met in university in 2016, we studied different majors but were from the same department so we share many classes together and bonded over our passion for gaming and memes.
Upon graduation, Kendall moved back to her hometown due to covid and found a job there, we kept in touch online through Instagram.
About 3 years later, Kendall told me she found a better paying job in the city I so she's planning to move out from her parents place. When I asked her about her plans on her accomodations she replied with "That's the thing, I was going to ask if you have an extra bedroom that I could move into"
For context, I have inherited an apartment from my late grandfather which is a nice 3 bedroom 2 bath near the city center last year January and I currently live alone there since it is closer to my workplace and it has all the convenience of public transport.
After some thinking I thought that there's no harm in living with Kendall since I considered us as close friends. We discussed the terms and ofc the rent. A week later Kendall moved into my apartment. It was great at first, my home felt more lively than usual and the thought of going home to a close friend warmed my heart and gave me a sense of security. Things were okay for awhile and then sh*t goes downhill super quick.
Kendall started complaining about many things at home, about her work, her savings and how she feels homesick. At first I was very accommodating, thinking maybe she just needs time to get used to the city life. I offered as much help as I can, even to the point of if she's low on money I don't mind voiding a month's rent if it meant I could help her to achieve financial stability.
I taught her how I save money, how I live off with my then low salary with several commitments like my car, my dog and a student loan. I grew up where my parents expect me to be independent so I told her things I'd do when I'm low on cash, how to get freelance jobs etc but she always seem to have excuses for every suggestion I have. Finding a freelance job is too hard, or how she couldn't let go of her premium junk food, that she isn't willing to cook or meal prep, and I eventually decided to leave it as it is.
And after two months of living together, I realised Kendall started treating me as some kind of competition. She would constantly ask me things like how much money I make a month, how many job hoppings did that take. Anything that she thinks she's better than me, she'll definitely pop that question. She boasts about how she is loyal to her "sh#tty paying company" and how I would never be able to move up the corporate ladder as she called me "an industry frog" 🐸.
She once snooped my savings balance and asked how tf did I have so much saved up with commitments etc (mind you she didn't have a lot of commitments since her parents paid off her student loans and fully paid off a brand new car for her) and maybe I should stop collecting rent from her. I got mad, and told her if she isn't happy living with me maybe she should move out. Queue crocodile tears as she said it was a joke I didn't have to take her seriously she begged for forgiveness and promised to never snoop my personal items and details again. I let it go once, but she kept bringing things up like, "well you have the cash and a credit card" everytime I told her I rather stay home because I no longer have the budget to go out and "have fun". Comments like these became more frequent when I got a new job 6 months ago.
On top of that, she doesn't clean up after herself, tried to flirt with my boyfriend and at times parked in my parking space when our initial agreement was that she has to find her own parking space if she's moving in with her own car because my apartment only has one parking lot per unit.
The straw that broke the camel's back was when I caught her kicking my dog in his abdomen when I got home from work. I yelled at her and rushed to check my dog, luckily he was fine but I still rushed him to the vet for safety measures. I got home and she sneered that it was just a dog and as a friend I shouldn't treat her like that. I asked why she'd kicked my dog and she didn't answer me, she shrugged and tried to escape into her room.
At this point it was already about a year since Kendall moved in with me. I lost my cool and told her off, bringing up her problems and how I tried to be nice and accommodating. Then I told her I'm giving her a week to move out and that from then on I rather we keep our relationship casual or we don't ever talk at all. Kendall cried and begged me to not kick her out but soon it turned into her screaming back at me, calling me a bad friend because apparently in her words, I "didn't tell her off on how badly she was behaving" (like wtf?!). There was a lot of back and forth which I don't remember what I said, but I remember eventually calling her an entitled brat. She cried again saying it was uncalled for and stormed off to her room.
The next day I was bombarded with texts from other uni friends, some calling me selfish and others sympathize with me. Apparently, Kendall posted our argument on Facebook and Instagram, painting me to be the bad guy. I was upset at first but I decided that after Kendall moved out we would no longer be friends as well as those who took her side of the story and condemned me.
Last week, Kendall left, and I have changed the locks on my apartment. I curled up in bed and cried myself out, probably from the sadness of losing a friend or maybe I am finally letting out all the frustrations.
I am definitely still griefing about this loss of a friend as I've had many good times with Kendall. For now I wanna focus on myself and hopefully I eventually get over this.
Edit: The whole "teasing" that I have more money than Kendall gotten worse when I told her I was given an offer by an MNC as a Senior Designer, and I disclosed her the offered salary (as we always did, like I know how much she earns too) which was about 50% more than hers. That was dumb on my part, I now understand why my parents told me to never disclose/discuss salaries the moment I started working
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: Kendall should eat a whole bag of dicks. You did well looking out for yourself, and your dog.

OOP: Yea but it took me a year to see how my "friend" didn't treat me like one ☹️

Commenter: Per your post, I would think that Kendall is a user rather than an actual friend. You will need time to heal. I recommend that you seek short-term psychological counseling to help - and maybe find out how to more effectively set and enforce personal boundaries.

OOP: Im planning to look into those as well, if I could afford them. But for the time being I'll try to find comfort in spending time with doggo, my bf and drowning in my hobbies :))

Commenter: If I were you, I'd be telling everyone she was hurting your dog - that would probably swing some opinions real quick

OOP: I did but some still called me an AH for kicking a poor girl who has travelled far from her hometown out in a big city 😒 I got off fine but why can't she?

Commenter: Also, time to step back for just a moment. Your so-called friend had No Student Loans and a Brand New Car. She has parents who can help her out. They created this puppy- kicking monster; they can deal with her. You gave her plenty of opps to play nice.
You don't owe her squat!!! Hold your head high! You're a wonderful person

OOP: Yet I don't understand where her money went, her wallets are always empty near the end of the month. She once showed me her savings balance, which was two digits, she was asking if I could lend her money. Luckily I didn't lend her any, but that's probably why she was angry at me for a week lmao

Commenter: This type hates being told no. They often seek revenge. If they put a fraction of that energy into working for what they wanted? They’d be in great shape. May you think of her no more & enjoy your life!

OOP: Exactly what I thought, there were so many other things and ways she could have work around to be stable financially, it's true I probably didn't have to collect rent from her but I was glad I did, even if it wasn't a year's worth. I spent so much for that thorough checkup of my boii after she kicked him :((

Commenter: I would have thrown her out on her ass the second I saw her kick my dog. That is completely unacceptable. She's lucky you gave her a week.

OOP: It ain't easy out in the city where I'm from, but she moved out in a couple of days after asked her to move out, last I heard one of our uni friends who called me an AH allowed her to crash at their place while she finds her own place to rent. I wish them good luck for sure they gonna end up like me

Commenter: Change your accounts so all paper work is clear so she cannot pretend to be you. Social security office visit to be sure no new accounts have been opened in your name is mandatory to cleanse sociopath vibe from your life.

OOP: Oh no worries about that, where I'm from to make most accounts would need my fingerprints and my physical id which neither have been missing, but thanks for the heads up on that! I've never considered from this angle

OOP originally paid the dog tax but has since deleted the picture.
Commenter: Anyone who could harm such a sweet boi would instantly be dead to me. For this alone, you are absolutely in the right!

OOP: I was really worried, but luckily the vet said he's as fit as a fiddle and as sturdy as ever
(to a different comment) From the checkups and with my vet's assurance, it seems like I caught her hurting my dog for the first time. He has never shown any sign of nervousness or anxiety near Kendall up till the day she kicked him, then again I didn't have cameras installed at home so I'm not sure if she has every attempted anything prior to this.
The most important thing is my ol'boy is still healthy and happy, with a tiny bruise which dissipated after a few days

Update Post 1: February 14, 2024 (3 weeks later)
Hello everyone, I'm here with some updates about me and my doggo as well as my now ex-friend, Kendall.
Let's start off with the update about myself. I've been doing well and surprisingly as some of you mentioned previously, I had gotten over the lost of this friendship rather quickly. My boyfriend planned a trip to a pet friendly beachfront hotel and I spent a few days with just my boyfriend and doggo. We played in the sea water and I watched my dog played in the sand. Overall had a great time and we even had grilled fish together while watching the sun set. (Doggo had a deboned fish fillet)
I am also grateful for my friends who stood by my side regarding this issue, they check in on me from time to time and sent me funny content to watch during my free time. Some of them even told me their stories about Kendall and their discontentment with her behavior, which I will list some below.
Friend A: Kendall ridiculed Friend A several times because Friend A earned less than Kendall despite he has worked a year longer than Kendall.
Friend B: Kendall trash talked Friend B's company via instagram just because Kendall flunked her interview with said company with flying colors.
Friend C: Kendall always demands Friend C to be her personal driver during our college days. If Friend C refuses, Kendall will guilt trip her.
Friend D: Ruined Friend D's assignment by 'pranking' him. She actually formatted his laptop when the project was due in two weeks. When confronted, all Kendall said was 'oopsies'.
There are many more but these are the more icky ones I've heard from my friends.
And now with that out of the way, here is today's main course:-- after I kicked Kendall out of my house, one of my uni friends, let's call her Anne, stood by Kendall's version of events and has allowed Kendall to move in with her instead. Anne called me out of the blue this afternoon and her first question to me was: "How on earth did you managed to put up with Kendall for a year? She's driving me crazy!!" Long story short, whatever Kendall did when she's living with me, she now does it to Anne. Snooping Anne's personal items, leaving dirty laundry around...generally being a prick in the butt. Anne told me she's planning to force Kendall out of her house too. I didn't comment much since Anne were among those who called me a cruel person, but now it has came back to bite her.
But wait, that's not all, according to Anne, Kendall lost her job because she tried to ask for a 100% increment and assaulted her supervisor when the increment request was turned down two weeks ago. She was immediately escorted out of the office building by security. And she just texted me 20mins ago saying she needed a favour from me that she wants a job at my workplace.
I replied stating there isn't any vacancy. Tbh even if there is I wouldn't hire her lmaoo.
So yea, I hope this is the last time I will hear from Kendall and I'll only update if somehow , something interesting happened that involves Kendall 🤣
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: "Anne told me she's planning to force Kendall out of her house too." How in the ever loving world did you not reply, "Wouldn't that be cruel though?"

OOP: I went with a sarcastic tone of, "Oh wow really? What happened?" 🤣

Commenter: Bet Kendall applies to the company and uses OP as a reference anyway.

OOP: Regarding this I have no worries about it since hr has to wait for me to filter through candidates for my department before sending out an email invite for job interviews. I'll make sure to shred Kendall's if I see hers

Commenter: What about the other departments??

OOP: She only has skills for my dept, sadly. I'm working in an advertising agency it's either graphic designer or motion designer, Kendall can't for the love of God make good designs. She would only want my department. Even if she tried, I doubt she could get into my company since one of the requirements is to be able to converse in basic japanese and you are tested during the interview plus you would need to show the certification of JLPT.
Thanks for giving this advice guys, but no worries I doubt Kendall would be able to pass the first screening :D

Commenter: I can imagine her turning up on your door step wanting a place to stay do you have a camera doorbell. just in case she will be getting desperate for friends and a place to stay now people are realising how crazy she is.

OOP: I have set up a new doorbell cam, I live in an apartment and there's plenty of cameras in the lift and corridor. Plus, I wouldn't be that afraid of her appearing at my door step since the security would call me to verify if I have visitors. A simple "no" would render her plans useless.

Commenter: Please keep us posted if anything happens with Kendall going forward. This is too funny and she’s too crazy for this to be the end of it.

OOP: Man I can't believe I was crying over the loss of this friendship. Rn I'm laughing at everything she has done or tried to do to people.

Commenter: Shouldn't she have been arrested for the assault? [at work]

OOP: Maybe her employer didn't press charges? Idk

Commenter: How many days she stay with Anne?

OOP: I think it's about or almost a month? She moved in quite quickly with Anne after I told her she had a week to leave.

Update Post 2: May 5, 2024 (3+ months from OG post)
At this point I wonder if I should change the title to "The Kendall Chronicles" 🤣
Hello everyone, it's been about two months since I kicked my now ex friend, Kendall out of my home. For those who has read my story before, just wanna let you guys know doggo and I are well fed and happy.
If you guys remember last time, Anne, one of my friends who sided with Kendall, told me about all the horrible things that has happened while having Kendall as a roommate. Ho boy, Anne had to call the cops to evict Kendall.
I happen to meet Anne at a pet friendly cafe to enjoy a good book yesterday while my doggo gets to enjoy playing at the doggy daycare-ish kinda area. I did wonder if it was intentional on her side since all my friends know I love this cafe in particular. Anne greeted me and asked if she could sit and have a chat with me. We started out with some small talk but the moment she brought up about her evicting Kendall, I just sat there and listened.
I gave Anne a smile and prodded her lightly with a comment I borrowed from the previous comment on reddit, "Oh, so you're gonna really kick her out then? I remember someone last told me it was cruel to kick a friend out of their homes." Anne stuttered for awhile before saying how I should have made a post to counteclarify Kendall's social media claims about me. I simply told her neither have I the energy to do so nor I have the need to. Which in turn, landed us in some brief awkward silence before I asked what she needed from me. Anne told me she wanted someone to vent to about Kendall and didn't know who to turn to.
Anne told me she filed a police report against Kendall; for theft and destruction of property, and ultimately Anne needed the assistance of police officers to evict Kendall from her home. She is also in the midst of filing a restraining order as she mentioned Kendall looked completely psycho at that moment. Unlike me, Anne lives in landed property so I guess she'd be a lot more worried about Kendall coming back to find her.
Kendall apparently stole Anne's debit card and spent a whopping 2k$ in total. Anne only found out about the missing money when she found her debit card missing from her wallet. She checked the bank statements only to find that 2k$ went to clothes, expensive meals and clubbing activities. At this point, one might ask, how did Anne know it was Kendall that spent that money? Well, the answer presented itself when Kendall came home screaming at Anne for terminating her debit card. According to Anne, Kendall was shouting every insult in the book while flailing her arms around with Anne's debit card in hand which Kendall proceeded with slamming the card on the table before storming off into her room.
That was the first time Anne felt afraid of another person much less a friend. Since then, Kendall made Anne's life hell on earth. Kendall would leech off Anne's groceries, judges her choice of snacks, body shames Anne etc. Kendall also attempted to seduce Anne's boyfriend. She once kissed Anne's boyfriend, (let's call him Jason) on the cheek and giggled before running straight for her room during movie night. In another instance she groped Jason's manhood right in front of Anne but later claimed that she was drunk and thought what she touched was a couch pillow. The worst thing that Kendall did was throwing herself onto Jason and saying she has a fever and later guided Jason's hand to feel her breast in which Anne walked in at the same time Jason's hand was under Kendall's shirt. These incidents has since cause a strain between the three and Jason felt awkward to the point where he told Anne he would stop visiting her house unless Kendall moves out. Anne cried for a bit when she reached this part.
Anne then told Kendall to move out, and gave her a week to do so. Kendall then cried and ran out of the house only to come back later in the evening to lock herself in her room. Anne presumed that Kendall is packing her stuff and she decided to ignore Kendall for the time being. The next morning Anne woke up to the sound of some grunts and broken ceramics. She rushed out to her yard to see an unhinged Kendall swinging a rod against everything she could hit, a tree, flower pots, even the grass on the ground. This led Anne to immediately lock her doors and call the police fearing for her own safety. The police arrived and handled the situation swiftly and they took Kendall away. There were still a lot of screaming and shouting. Anne said she's not sure if Kendall is being locked up or has anyone who would've posted bail for her.
While I guess it was kinda nice sipping tea about Kendall but at how Anne described Kendall is behaving, I wonder if she'd actually needed professional help. I can't help but feel sad for her condition despite we have gone no contact for two months.
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: And why is this still your problem , Anne made her choice , why you still talk to her, she not a good friend , she is like Kendall, a two face snake.

OOP: I have went no contact since Anne's last call two months ago but I believed she went to my favourite cafe spot to try to bump into me and well I have a hard time turning others down so I decided to serve myself some Kendall tea I guess
After this I would probably not want to hear anything about Kendall, Anne or anybody that decided to take in Kendall

Commenter: What about Anne's bf ? He's not naive to the point of having his hand led under shirt iniit

OOP: Anne only told me about the things Kendall did to Jason, maybe she did mention his reaction but I just don't remember the entire thing she told me (I have bad memory)
The gist of it is that these "interactions" had affected their relationship. She didn't further elaborate I didn't probe.

Commenter: While these stories are interesting to read, I wonder how true they actually are. If her parents were so wealthy and paid for her education and car, then at what point has anyone called them and informed them to her behavior? I’m not buying it

OOP: I never had her parents' contact so it didn't really cross my mind to call her parents. While it is hard to believe, it is true, some of us had long severed ties with Kendall since her incident with me.
Kendall also didn't say much about her parents. For all I know was that she moved out of her parents' place because she wanted a better paying job.

Species: Dog Age: 7 Sex/Neuter status: Female and spayed Breed: Miniature Daschund Body weight: 13.7 lbs History: has to get anal glands expressed occasionally, takes simparica trio monthly Clinical signs: vet said low grade fever (1 degree above normal), not eating, threw up once, poop is abnormal, and was shaking slightly and stomach was shaking (that went away) Duration: 12 hours General location: GA
My dog woke up this morning warm feeling. She hasn’t eaten anything today other than 5 treats that she threw up (the color of the throw up was yellow), she pooped in the house twice. We expressed her anal glands and some stuff came out mostly normal looking but a yellow/white fluid came out. We took her to the emergency vet and they said if she doesn’t eat or throws up again to bring her back in. She’s eaten ten pieces of her kibble and is drinking water. What do I do? Her poop looks almost like a piece of orange chicken. It’s very loose, orange/reddish in color and mucus like.

Trigger warning: mention of suicide and abuse
I (20 M) am a part of a middle-class family of 6. This includes my parents, one younger sister and two older brothers. Without getting much into context, I'll get straight to the point. It's my dad. He's very abusive, even since my childhood. He's the type of dad to say that "men don't cry" and I should "man up" anytime I feel anything emotional. He has also been really controlling throughout my life to not just me, but also my siblings. He would want us to fit into what his vision of a "true man" is and he would also get really angry whenever we made a mistake, always saying "why did it happen?" as opposed to normalizing making genuine mistakes. I remember one time my sister burned herself while cooking and all he had to say for it was "How tf did she burn herself?" and when i tried reasoning with him, he would just shout and say "yea yea you know everything, I don't, you're right".
I've always been scared of him, he told me to not show emotions and anger is the only understandable outlet should I feel anything. He would always shout at me and my siblings whenever we even dared to utter a single word when he talked to us. He would threaten to hit and divorce my mom. Ever since childhood me and my siblings never liked him, I have even wished death on myself as a child because of his behavior. I still sometimes do but i know i cant do that. I remember one time I was late to get to the dinner table because i was in the bathroom and then washing my hands and when i came he said "where tf were you?" and i said "whats wrong now? i was washing hands" he then started shouting and threated to throw a glass at my face. I think i was 15 around that time. He would break stuff when he is angry. There was another time when my middle brother went to the bathroom and when he came out, he just hit him. My middle brother is not the best at social interactions. He's very shy and hates socializing, he prefers to stay inside and he is also very quiet and soft. My dad hit him and said "I don't want a soft kid". He is very egoistical. There was this aunt of mine that has two sons. One of those sons ended up passing away at the age of 23 due to a heart attack. The other son had bad-mouthed my dad and my aunt always opposed of her sons behavior yet my dad will always tell my mom "When she (my aunt) comes to our house, my blood boils just looking at her" even though my aunt came to find closure with my mom about the death of her young son.
I have always felt caged under him and it is clear that he is not even a stable man, let alone a good husband or father. Ever since 17 i have started building resentment against him. My oldest brother doesn't speak against him because he cares for the safety of our family. I wish i was as good as him at maintaining my temper as well but nowadays i speak and even shout at my dad but end up getting scared whenever he threatens to hit everyone. Even though i am 20 and taller than him, I know he can't do anything to me even if he tried now but for some reason i can't bring myself to stand up against him, am i weak for that? Because he has said so. He tries to control everything i do. He shouts at me if he sees me on my laptop for too long, he threatens to hit me if i speak against him, he tells me how and when to cut my hair, he tells me how to dress and what to do. I remember one time i got into an argument with him and for some reason, i ended up getting really emotional and teary-eyed when it dawned on me that this is the same person i used to look up to you and im speaking bad about my dad to his face but to him? It was a sign of weakness that i cried.
What prompted me to write this here is that today instead of just threatening he actually started poking my mothers head telling her to "go sit tf down" I was barely present at that moment and i was really sick. My older brothers were out of the house and i think since he thinks i am weak, he finds it easier to do this type of stuff around me. He then proceeded to punch and throw the water cooler down that hit my mothers already broken foot (she fell down the stairs one time). After that he broke a clay pot. All of this over what? Because my mom told him that my middle brother doesn't want to drink what he wants him to drink. My middle brother is also very picky when it comes to eating and is skinny. Theres this drink that my dad makes that i can drink but i can definitely see why my brother wont like it and since he is scared to talk to him face on, esp after he slapped him for doing so, my brother told my mom about it and my mom told my dad. My dad started losing it saying shit like "Why tf are you advocating for him? are you his lawyer, stop doing this shit" and while arguing over this he broke the things mentioned above. My sister was right there, crying, he didnt care. I felt weak even though i had a fever and couldn't get up to stand in their way. He then left saying "I'm a man who destroys everything. You all can die for all i care. I will destroy you, and these children of mine, fucking remember that". I feel like this family is just going to fall apart any second now in the worst way possible. I'm scared for everyones safety. Especially my mother and sister.
How can i make deal with things better? I feel lost, this house is his so if he kicks us out we wont be able to go anywhere. My oldest brother works but thats because he got lucky with the connections he had. The country where i belong to, its really hard to find any job, ive tried, a lot and still failed. Even getting a degree from the top university wont gurantee you a job, its really bad here. How can i earn? I really want to move out with my mother and siblings since all of us don't like him but we can't do anything right now since buying a house is out of the question unless we have stable incomes which we don't at the moment. Thats why i want to earn, i heard you can earn online, how can i do so thats stable? I know some stuff like drop-shipping, affiliate etc but i have no idea where to start or how it even works. I feel really lost and i would appreciate some advice or help in any manner, i don't care what i have to do, i just need to take actions to ensure the safety of my family.
I apologize for the paragraph being long, I just needed to get that off my chest as well. I know the paragraph can seem out of place because i typed it as thoughts came to my mind so please feel free to ask me any questions and i will answer them. Thank you for taking your time to read about it.

I have been sick with the flu. Fever chills cough vomiting you name it. I am the gm but I was told I couldn’t call out. It’s been like this forever. December I had pneumonia and I was almost fired for it. I’m so miserable and worked an open to close and am so tired of operations being more important than my well being. Tried to skip makeline at least so I wasn’t handling food and i was told I couldn’t “slack”. I sat in the bathroom for almost two hours throwing up anc somehow that’s better than me calling out. But if a team member is sick we have to cover ourselves even if we are sick. I’m so tired of this company and being nothing but a number.
Don’t ask me why I haven’t quit. I know. It’s just (oddly) comfortable and with all my bills and being in college it’s impossible to just step down to minimum wage again (because I would leave food).

INTRODUCTION Bartonella is a genus of bacteria that includes several different species. Bartonella henselae (the best known) is one of those specific species within the Bartonella genus. But it is not the only one, there are more, BARTONELLA KOEHLERAE that causes neurological problems such as muscle spasms, stomach cramps, stiffness in the hands, which I will talk about later in in documented cases.
BARTONELLA VINSONII BERKHOFFIII It has been suggested that this bacteria may be associated with peripheral neuropathy, meningitis, encephalitis and in rare cases Guillain-Barré syndrome.
BARTONELLA AND ITS VARIANTS.
BARTONELLA HENSELAO (BARTONELLOSIS):
BARTONELLA HENSELAO can be transmitted to humans through:
-Scratches or bites from infected cats.
-Contact with the saliva or secretions of infected cats.
-Infected flea bites.
-Blood transfusion.
Fleas can transmit other diseases such as bartonellosis, caused by the bacteria Bartonella henselae, which can cause symptoms similar to Lyme disease, such as fever, fatigue, and muscle aches. Bartonellosis, caused by the bacteria Bartonella henselae, is generally not associated with long-term neurological problems like Lyme disease. While Lyme disease can cause neurological complications, such as peripheral neuropathy, meningitis or encephalitis, bartonellosis tends to produce milder, more localized symptoms. However, in rare and severe cases of bartonellosis, especially in people with compromised immune systems, neurological complications such as encephalitis or inflammation of the brain have been reported. But in general, serious neurological complications are much more common in Lyme disease than in bartonellosis. We cannot completely rule out the possibility that bartonellosis is related to fasciculations or other neurological problems, as any bacterial infection has the potential to cause neurological symptoms in certain cases. If bartonellosis is not treated properly, serious complications can arise, especially in people with weakened immune systems or those who have a more severe infection. -Cardiac complications, such as endocarditis (infection of the inner lining of the heart) in severe cases. -Severe illness in people with compromised immune systems, such as those with HIV/AIDS or who are receiving immunosuppressive treatment. -Ocular complications, such as uveitis (inflammation of the uveal tract of the eye) or neuroretinitis (inflammation of the retina and optic nerve). -Central nervous system involvement in rare and severe cases, including encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) or meningitis (inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord). In rare cases where bartonellosis affects the nervous system, various neurological problems can occur in the short, medium and long term. Some of these problems may include: -Peripheral neuropathy: Damage to the peripheral nerves that can cause symptoms such as numbness, tingling, muscle weakness, and pain in the extremities. -Meningitis: Inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, which can cause symptoms such as severe headache, stiff neck, fever, and sensitivity to light. -Encephalitis: Inflammation of the brain that can cause serious symptoms, such as confusion, altered mental status, seizures, muscle weakness, and coordination problems. -Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS): In some rare cases, bartonellosis can trigger Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disease that affects peripheral nerves and can cause progressive muscle weakness, paralysis and even life-threatening breathing problems. It is important to note that these neurological problems are rare in cases of bartonellosis and that most people recover completely with appropriate antibiotic treatment. It is possible, although rare, that in rare cases flea-borne bartonellosis may cause neurological problems such as peripheral neuropathy. Peripheral neuropathy is damage to the peripheral nerves that can cause symptoms such as numbness, tingling, muscle weakness, and pain in the extremities. BARTONELLA KOEHLERAE:
Bartonella koehlerae can be transmitted to humans through:
-Infected flea bites.
-Scratches or bites from infected cats.
-Blood transfusion.
Now, in the studies that I have analyzed, I have found that the Bartonella genus has species or variants, such as Bartonella koehlerae or Bartonella vinsonii berkhoffii, that can cause neurological problems. The scientific article highlights that Bartonella is a vector-borne zoonotic disease with worldwide distribution that can infect humans and a wide variety of mammals, including small pets such as cats and dogs. https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/jcm.00833-11 It is mentioned that in recent years there has been an increase in studies on Bartonella infections in various parts of the world, although most publications have focused on the North American perspective. Additionally, information is provided on clinically relevant Bartonella species in cats and dogs, as well as their primary reservoirs, incidental hosts, and confirmed or suspected vectors. Several Bartonella species, such as B. clarridgeiae, B. elizabethae, B. henselae, B. koehlerae, B. quintana, B. rochalimae, and B. vinsonii berkhoffii, are reported to be associated with serious disease in cats and dogs, and all They have zoonotic potential. The diversity of Bartonella species is addressed and the clinical manifestations they can cause in cats, dogs and humans are discussed, including intermittent fever, granulomatous inflammation in different organs, endocarditis, bacillary angiomatosis, peliosis hepatis, uveitis and vasoproliferative tumors. The importance of research to confirm or rule out Bartonella infection as a cause of various diseases in cats and dogs is emphasized. It is mentioned that several species of Bartonella have the ability to infect humans, cats and dogs, and that transmission can occur through a variety of vectors, such as fleas, ticks and lice. Additionally, the role of cats as major reservoirs of B. henselae, the causal agent of cat scratch disease in humans, is discussed. It is noted that cats may also be reservoirs for other Bartonella species, such as B. clarridgeiae and B. koehlerae, although their role in the epidemiology of these species is not completely established. CASE: Hallucinations, Sensory Neuropathy, and Peripheral Visual Deficits in a Young Woman Infected with Bartonella koehlerae MUSCLE SPASMS, ANXIETY, STIFFNESS IN THE HANDS; BARTONELLA KOEHLERAE
“Abstract A young woman experiencing depression, anxiety, mood swings, severe headaches, muscle spasms, interphalangeal joint stiffness, decreased peripheral vision, diminished tactile sensation, and hallucinations was persistently Bartonella koehlerae seroreactive and bacteremic. Following antibiotic treatment, B. koehlerae antibodies and DNA were not detected and all symptoms resolved. An 18-year-old female was sequentially examined by a neurologist, psychiatrist, neuro-ophthalmologist, and infectious disease physician because of a 4-year history of slowly progressive neurological and neurocognitive abnormalities. Biopsy-proven celiac disease was diagnosed in December 2004, following complaints of frequent stomach cramps. Despite dietary control of gastrointestinal symptoms, she developed intermittent joint pain, primarily involving the ankles. During 2005, the patient reported reduced tactile sensation in her hands and by 2007 frequent severe headaches, back pain, generalized muscle spasms, and an inability to extend her fingers due to stiffness in her proximal and distal interphalangeal joints. “ American Society for Microbiology https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/jcm.00833-11 With this case we can definitively verify that Bartonella and its variants can cause neurological problems. In this case, B. koehlerae and This bacteria can be commonly found in fleas that infest cats, so transmission through the bites of infected fleas is a possible route. Also at the same time, the girl's case proves that not even neurologists, psychiatrists, neuro-ophthalmologists, and infectious disease physicians can't understand what is really happening, and they only throw it into the bucket of "anxiety."
“The patient's psychiatrist addressed her anxiety with cognitive behavioral therapy and prescribed oxcarbazepine (300 mg twice daily) and quetiapine fumarate (300 mg in the evening), which reduced hallucination frequency to less than once daily.” It is possible for humans to become infected with Bartonella koehlerae through the bites of infected cat fleas. Fleas are common vectors for transmitting bacteria of the Bartonella genus, including Bartonella koehlerae. Table 2 presents clinical-epidemiological studies on Bartonella spp. involving cats in Europe. For example, it is shown that in Italy, studies have been carried out in different regions, such as Tuscany, Sicily, Sardinia and the Aeolian Islands, with variations in the prevalence of Bartonella spp. among the cats studied. Furthermore, it is observed that in Spain, several studies have been carried out in different areas such as Barcelona, Madrid and Rioja, with a wide range of prevalences of Bartonella spp. in cats. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6280416/#CR24 Table 4 shows the global distribution of Bartonella spp. in cats and highlight the importance of understanding the epidemiology of these infections in different regions of the world. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6280416/#CR24 Bartonella exposure or infection in cats has been widely studied throughout the world, as seen in the tables provided. “The annual number of human cases of CSD in the USA is estimated to be 12,000 outpatients and 500 inpatients [101].” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5038427/ Currently, dogs appear to be incidental hosts rather than reservoir hosts for B. henselae, supported by the fact that this is the most frequently documented Bartonella species detected in sick dogs [128]. CASE TREATMENT. “With repeated PCR documentation of B. koehlerae bacteremia, the patient was treated with rifampin (300 mg twice daily) and azithromycin (250 mg/day) for an additional 4 months. Following this treatment regimen, her hallucinations stopped completely, and normal peripheral vision was confirmed by visual field perimetry in November 2010. The quetiapine fumarate dosage was gradually decreased, and hallucinations and dissociative episodes have not returned. B. koehlerae antibodies were not detected in August and September 2010 and January and March 2011 (Table 1). With the exception of a single 7-day BAPGM enrichment culture PCR result (January 2011), for which the amplicon could not be successfully sequenced, Bartonella sp. DNA was not amplified from blood, serum, or enrichment blood cultures (n = 31 independent PCRs) following the 4-month treatment regimen. During the 9-month posttreatment follow-up period, the patient has experienced no hallucinations, peripheral vision has remained normal, and tactile sensation has improved substantially. Family members reported that the patient was much improved and had returned to her preinfection baseline, both neurologically and psychiatrically.” https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/jcm.00833-11 BARTONELLA VINSONII BERKHOFFII
B. vinsonii subsp. berkhoffii has been associated with neurological problems in humans and animals. Like other Bartonella species, this bacteria can cause a variety of neurological symptoms in cases of infection. Some of these symptoms may include peripheral neuropathy, meningitis, encephalitis, and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Bartonella vinsonii berkhoffii can be transmitted to humans through:
-Bites or scratches from infected animals.
-Blood transfusion
-Infected tick bites.
-(It has been suggested that fleas could potentially act as transmission vectors for Bartonella vinsonii berkhoffii, fleas are known vectors for the transmission of bacteria of the Bartonella genus. However, as research into the transmission of Bartonella vinsonii berkhoffii is still ongoing, More study is needed to fully understand the role of fleas in transmitting this specific bacteria.)
CASE: Bartonella vinsonii subsp. berkhoffii and Bartonella henselae bacteremia in a father and daughter with neurological disease
Symptoms included progressive weight loss, muscle weakness, lack of coordination (the father) and headaches, muscle pain and insomnia (the daughter). "The father was a 50-year-old veterinarian whose symptoms began in 2006 with arthralgias and fatigue, which progressively worsened over the next 18 months. He described joint, muscle, and neck pain and stiffness that was most severe in the morning but improved throughout the day."
"The above patient's 7½-year-old daughter first sought medical attention for a similar constellation of symptoms in October 2007. Her illness began suddenly one morning with severe neck pain. Over the next month, the pain gradually improved, but it never completely subsided, and she also developed headaches, low-grade fevers, and general malaise. Her symptoms evolved to include intermittent weakness of her legs and paresthesias, which were so debilitating that she could no longer attend school."
Conclusions of the case:
B. vinsonii subsp. berkhoffii and B. henselae are zoonotic pathogens that can be isolated from the blood of immunocompetent relatives with arthralgia, fatigue, and neurological symptoms. The therapeutic elimination of Bartonella spp. can be challenging, and follow-up testing is recommended. An increasing number of arthropod vectors, such as biting flies, fleas, keds, lice, sandflies, and ticks, have been confirmed or suspected to be the primary mode of transmission of Bartonella species among animal populations and may also be a potential source of infection. risk to humans.
SUMMARY Bartonellosis, caused by the bacteria Bartonella henselae and transmitted by fleas, can cause symptoms similar to Lyme disease, such as fever, fatigue, and muscle aches. Although bartonellosis usually does not cause serious neurological problems, in rare and severe cases, especially in people with compromised immune systems, complications such as encephalitis or inflammation of the brain can arise. Additionally, Bartonella variants such as Bartonella koehlerae can cause neurological problems such as depression, anxiety, muscle spasms, and hand stiffness. These cases can be difficult to diagnose and are often misinterpreted as psychiatric disorders due to a lack of awareness about the relationship between Bartonella infection and neurological symptoms. Cats are primary hosts of Bartonella henselae and other Bartonella species, and fleas that infest cats can transmit these bacteria to humans through bites. Additionally, dogs can be accidental hosts of Bartonella, although less commonly than cats. Treatment of bartonellosis and its variants generally involves the use of specific antibiotics, such as rifampicin and azithromycin, and can lead to significant improvement in neurological symptoms when administered appropriately. It is crucial that doctors consider the possibility of Bartonella infection in patients with unexplained neurological symptoms, especially if they have had exposure to fleas or cats. MY COMMENT We can make it clear that anything that can touch the nervous system will cause permanent or temporary damage, even very long-lasting. We can also see that doctors, like the neurologist, acted without knowing what the patient had, always giving the diagnosis of anxiety.
https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1756-3305-3-29 https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/jcm.00833-11 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6280416/#CR24 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30368695/

Hi! I had been having fevers for 6 weeks. 4 weeks in, I also developed a cough that was driving me crazy (also had swollen glands and not much appetite). The fevers have gotten to just very low grade, but I still haven't felt good - been super tired and get winded easily (but I've barely done anything for 7 weeks). After 2 ER visits & 2 Dr visits, they had no clue why, so they sent me to Infectious Disease. It took a couple of weeks to get in, but I went today.
Last week, as I was waiting for this appt. to roll around, I started feeling an ache in the back of my upper calf. I've had DVT's in both legs (I do have Factor V Leiden) and they both swell every day as it damaged the valves. I didn't really have any extra heat back there or more swelling than usual, but I did mention it. He had me go to the ER for an ultrasound (because it was going to take them a month to get me in otherwise).
Turns out I have a DVT in my leg and a pulmonary embolism in my lung. I guess I just got lucky and it just either wasn't big enough or didn't land in a bad spot. They actually just sent me home with a prescription for xarelto. They said that the procedure has now changed and they have found that just doing anti- coagulation at home works just as well and bed rest is no longer needed as it was back in the day (in year 2000) when I had my DVT.
Has anyone else had this experience? Is it because the PE didn't kill me when it landed that they aren't worried and I don't need observation? I'm coughing my head off for an hour and a half here and there (like almost to the point of throwing up), but then it calms down after a bit. I'm more winded than usual (getting up the stairs is quite a bit harder), but I'm not struggling to breathe and I don't have chest pain. Is this maybe also why? This just seems a little weird and a bit scary to me, but I guess it's just because my last experience was so long ago and they kept me 7 days and I didn't even have a PE). Is this maybe just a "safe" one at this point? Sorry to be so long, it's just a lot to explain!

In my continuing adventures of finding quotes in every Bookworm volume for a new web forum, I'm finally over the hump and have started Volume 2... AKA the volume where it gets good.
On a side note, I read this on the new Clara BW, while it's a marginal improvement over the Clara 2e, there's a weird bug which prevented me from highlighting lines near the sides and top. This also impact the Clara Color, which is fun. Oh well.
---- Review ----
While Volume 2 is leagues better than Volume 1, it still took me a couple of days to get through it. Better than the multiple weeks that Vol 1 takes me, but not as gripping as future Volumes. I am looking forward to re-reading the swap day.
What's good about this volume is that Myne becomes likeable, as her attention moves away from Books to making paper... to make books. Look she's getting there, and she's evolving into a budding Chaos Gremlin. This is also the start of the Merchant chapters, and the beginning of the battles of whit. Which is just sooooo good.
The bad, is that the pacing is still about as slow and expositiony as the first volume. It's necessary for first time readers, and I remember lapping it up after watching the anime. But during re-reads it's easy to skim read, and potentially missing something I missed the first time.
But man that cliffhanger is a doozy, I do wonder what will happen next. /s
---- Quotes ----
Prologue

• ...and explained that in the first place she wasn't expecting much from Myne's efforts. Her expression said that she was dead confident that Myne would fail. [Ouch, Myne does deserve this from Effa, but you should have some faith]
  
• "...It feels like Myne isn't Myne lately. She still gets sick and passes out all the time, but she doesn't cry about this being unfair anymore." [Oh crap, they're onto you Myne! Quick run... I mean walk... umm, never mind, you OK kiddo?]
  
• "She'll become more capable over time, more understanding of her limits, and eventually she'll stop pushing herself too far." [... ummm no she won't and I have Lutz here with evidence to the contrary]
  

Chapter 1

• "How could I not be excited? I mean, we're making paper here! Paper! I can make books with paper. Ahahah yes!" [As you can see from the evidence she will never calm down, all you can do is prepare to weather this storm]
  
• "...Myne, alright, we're making paper. But how are we gonna do it? I've got no clue myself. Don't we need toold or something? Is this gonna work?" Lutz calm questions threw a bucket of cold water over my excitement. [Good on you kiddo, this is why you are the Myne manager]
  
• "Welcome back. Don't feel bad Myne. You'll Be useful to someone Someday." [Ouch that one hurt me, who let Tuuli play with fire]
  
• "Bwuh? Tuuli, what's going on?" [Number 1, our first Bwuh of the Volume]
  
• The problem with making tools? We didn't have the tools to make tools. [Wise words from someone who rarely thinks far enough ahead]
  
• If anyone wanted the shampoo, it would be a girl... A girl?! His wife?! If his beloved wife wants the shampoo, it all makes sense. [Otto your simping so hard even a 6 year old realized it.]
  
• "A merchant has a lot of things he heeds to keep secret so..." "...Can't I start practicing with something easier?" [Myne dear, Lutz is right, having Lutz hide things from Karla is like sending a lv.1 hero to fight the end boss]
  

Chapter 2

• And you can't decline this invitation anyways. If you do, your mom and older sister will probably get fired from their jobs." [Ouch, poor Effa, I am sure Corinna is doing this to good reasons]
  
• "Fear not, Captiain. I take full responsibility for your daughter and will ensure she remains safe." [Unless my wife's involved and I get scammed by a 6 year old. Then it's anyone's guess what happens]
  
• "Oh my, was it not boorish to observe a woman while she's prettying up?" "... I just said that because I didn't want him flirting with you while I was working." "Oh my! Aha, I do wonder how Otto behaves outside of the house, if a little girl such as yourself would fear that from him." [Corinna, you can I both know you don't need to "wonder" to get your answer]
  
• Despite claiming to be so busy, he handled all of the budget season work himself, negotiated with the merchants that came to sell equipment and commodities, exploited his position as city guard to obtain as much information as possible, and so on. [Is Otto what Ferdi would be if he was a Commoner?]
  
• "It's fine. Otto's giving me nails in return for all this." "...Nails? Truly? Is he not selling you short?" [Yes he is sweetie, and no she won't ever realize it]
  
• "Listen, Myne. Would you do me a favor and remember some important errands you have to do?" [Gunther getting an unexpected urge that he should beat up Otto when he gets back]
  
• "If you give me all of them I might be able to think of an excuse that will convince Dad." [And Otto this is why you lost her to Benno]
  
• "Oh? Lutz? What're you doing here?" "Myne?! That's my line! What are you here? Wha? Are you alone?!" [Imagine finding your Grandpa who's stuck in a wheel chair and needs nurses on them 24/7 just sitting in the middle of a kids park and you'll understand Lutz freakout]
  

Chapter 3

• His mom, Karla, was constantly on his back saying that he had given up on becoming a travelling merchant, so why couldn't he give up one more and become a carpenter? [... mother of the year. And the answer is because that sets a bed president and he'll give up on that too, probably out of spite]
  
• Otto lived on the third floor of Corinna's family home, and that has been arranged because her older brother was worried for his cute little sister. In other words. Corinna was Benno's little sister, which makes Otto his... "...You're his brother-in-law?" [Funnily enough 5 parts in and she is still this gullible]
  
• Benno was sitting at an administrator's desk behind which was a shelf crammed with wood boards and pieces of parchment. ...Wait, is that a bookshelf?! [Oh lord, the gremlin is loose! Who forgot the leash?!]
  
• "...Thinking's your job, ain't it? Whatever you want to do is fine with me, Myne." [Lutz you fool, what have you done]
  
• "...Um, did he just way contract magic? That's what it sounded like. Wha? Wait, has this been a fantasy world all along?" [Geeze this was what gave it away for you? Not the rainbow of hair colors, or the fantasy plants that bleed. Lord she's dense]
  

Chapter 4

• "Myne, do you know what tools and materials you need? " "Yes, don't worry." [This is when you want to worry]
  
• “Myne, you have pot written here, but how large of a pot do you want?” “Ummm... I was thinking a pot about as big as the second-biggest pot at my home.” Mark’s brows furrowed deeper [Why did you think this answer his question, you fool]
  
• I somehow managed to write supply orders for everything except the screen, which Mark gave up on. [Dear gods, she reach this man’s limit. I can’t imagine the headache he has to have right now]
  
• My excitement for a fantasy world full of magic shattered in an instant. Seriously...? A power only nobles have? [Careful what you wish for sweetie]
  
• “Bwuh?! It’s fine! The contract has our exact agreement written on it, there’s no problems at all.” [It took a while for Bwuh Number 2.]
  
• “Your turn” ...No thanks! This magic’s just scary! [Side eyeing P5V9]
  
• “Bwuuuh... Hyah!” Holding back tears, I put blood on my thumb and stamped my name. [Number 3]
  
• “You... You are Myne, right?” [My boy, there are questions you are better off not asking.]
  

Chapter 5

• “...Can you manage that?” “I’ll be fine.” I clenched my fist to show strength. [I can’t believe like myne I miss understood what Lutz asked here]
  
• “I’m afraid not. Those who deserve trouble shall receive it.” “Noooo...” [Corinna would make a good mom]
  
• “Bwuh?! I Couldn’t ask him to do that I’ll apologize to him and then go home on my own!” [Number 4, and sweet lord she needs Ferdi to call her a fool. Good new is Benno will call in the thunder]
  
• “WHAT IS! WRONG! WITH! YOU!” “Bwuh?!” “I said go home!” “Kyaaah!” [Benno used Thunder... it was super effective against Myne. Number 5]
  
• “You are no longer allowed in my store without the boy! If you’ve got a brain in that head, don’t forget” [Myne, meet leash, leash meet Myne, and never let go]
  
• “But y’know, now I get it. You collapse in no time. You’re smart but careless, you’re weak, you’re tiny, and thinking about it, there’s a ton of things you can’t do. Now you can’t even go into the store without me” “So mean, Lutz! I’m useful to people too, sometimes!” [Myne just take the L this time]
  
• “Bwuh?! I can carry stuff too! I’m a lot stronger than I used to be.” [Number 6, while yes you can carry things. He’ll need to carry you home if you did]
  
• “Myne, I know that look. You’re just pretending to agree, aren’t you? You’re not listening to us at all.” He... He saw through me?! [And has for a while now you fool]
  

Chapter 6

• That made me so happy I immediately pumped my fit and said “Let’s go!”, only to get hit on the head from behind by Lutz. [Oh my sweet boy is growing up so fast]
  
• “It seems that Myne wishes for me to carry her today as well.” “Bwuh?!” [Number 7, and Mark you are truly a gentlemen]
  

Chapter 7

• It’s a weird fantasy fruit! Apparently, the red fruit was brother to those weird ingredients I sometimes had to fight with to make supper. [In a far off land, there lies a former God, who felt a great disturbance in the force]
  
• “I was gonna ask why you didn’t go to the other side of the river, but... I’m guessing it was too much for you.” “...It was too much.” I was breathing a lot harder than Lutz [Honestly this is an amazing feat, she didn’t just pass out Lutz, you should praise her]
  
• Over time I had gotten better at managing fires so they didn’t get too bug, but I often would take my eyes off it just long enough for it to get out of control. [Oh gods, who’s bright idea was it to let the gremlin manage a fire, this is almost as dangerous as those red fruits]
  
• “This one’s no good. It’ll make your limbs tingly and you won’t be able to move for three days. This is no good either. It’ll make your stomach hurt for two days. This is worse, you’ll froth at the mouse and die if you eat it.” [Ferdi in the background taking notes]
  
• Incidentally, twenty percent of those mushrooms were poisonous. ...I just don’t get it. How does this keep happening... ? [I’ll take this as the will of the gods of chaos reminding you, that you have more important things to do, Benno still has his hair]
  

Chapter 8

• “Bwuh?! Ah, uummm, yeah. Pretty good right?” [Number 8, and girl, you need to keep your act together, he’s already suspicious and you’re just digging yourself into a deeper hole]
  
• “Yeah! You can trust me! I’ve done this before.” “...When, and Where said Lutz Sharply [In your eagerness to appear useful, you’ve made things worse, you only have yourself to blame here]
  
• “Ngh? U-ummm, th-that’s a girl’s secret! Don’t even think about prying!” [And Myne has thrown water onto that oil fire]
  
• ...Oof , that look hurts. He’s definitely figured me out. [You think! He figured you out a very long time ago]
  
• “Alright. Hey... Eh, scratch that. I’ll say it after the paper’s done,” [Hey babe, we need to talk levels are coming from Lutz]
  

Chapter 9

• “Are we going to talk out here? Do you want to go into the storage building” [Oh shit Myne’s gloves are off]
  
• Urano just followed her whims and read the books around her, which was nothing like who I had become. [I feel that has more to do with the lack of books than anything else]
  
• “Th-That was just... I wasn’t trying to make you own me or anything, I just... gaah, crap!” “Why did you say it, then?” “Don’t ask me that! Let it go! Forget about it!” [Awww, I wonder how red he is here, and only if our future romance novelist was here]
  
• “Myne won’t come back even if you leave, right? And if you’ve been her for a whole year, then the Myne I know is mostly just you,” [This is sooo sappy I love it. Now I wonder how a certain noble would write this out as]
  

Chapter 10

• “It’s really too bad we can’t just grow trombes ourselves.” “Don’t even think about it!” [Lutz what’s the worse that can happen?]
  
• “Bwuh?! They’re that dangerous? It didn’t look like that happened with the one we saw” [Number 9, & Myne just remember the geneva convention doesn’t exist here, so you’re good to go ahead]
  
• “If you really want to throw in something extra, how about... information on some kind of new product to sell, or something like that?” [If a future reflection Otto remember the exact moment he lost Myne to Benno forever]
  
• “...H-Holy crap. How’d you turn paper into this? I have no idea what you just did.” [I’m looking at the step by step guide here Lutz and I too don’t get it]
  
• Wait... How much is this origami crane worth, from a materials perspective? [I mean from your end not much, from a “how much I could’ve sold it for” more than what your dad makes in a month I recon]
  
• “If you want to sell hair stick, what about that other kind? The thing you made Tuuli for her baptism.” [this was the exact moment Myne went from working at the Castle Gate to working at Benno’s store]
  
• “Do we pass? Will you take on Lutz as your apprentice?” [Very nice wording Myne. I am surprised that Benno didn’t ask about your apprenticeship after this]
  

Chapter 11

• “You’re slow! This is a waste of time,” and picked me right up [I’m shocked that there was no Bwuh]
  
• “That’s right. It’s powerful and greedy. You gotta pay to register an apprentice, you gotta pay more if you want to start a new business, and basically anything you do there will have some kind of fee attached” [I can see Benno demanding less taxes]
  
• “Keep quiet and don’t say anything unnecessary” [Benno you are asking the impossible from Myne here]
  
• “The first floor here is used for parking carriages and carts” [You know, I don’t think we’ve ever seen this. Since it’s in the Ivory building I wonder what it looks like?]
  
• Immediately, the gate shone with a white light and then melted into thin air until it was gone. “Bwuh?! What was that?!” “It’s a magic tool. Lutz, don’t let go of my hand. It’ll knock you back” [Number 10, and oh oh, I know how this tool work... neat]
  
• “Wait, is that a bookshelf?!” [Oh lord she’s loose Benno call in Lutz to try and stop her!]
  
• “If you get too excited, you’ll pass out before getting to read anything.” No... Anything but that [Fhew, Crisis adverted]
  
• “This one, Ehrenfest. The family name of the area’s lord is used as the name of the city” [I wonder if Lord is no longer the correct term here, or that commoners just associate all nobles under the same banner]
  

Chapter 12

• The only time Tuuli had worn this hairpin was during her baptism. What had happened then? [Everyone saw the angle which Tuuli is, and wanted to imitate her image. Fredia just so happens to have the money to pay for it]
  
• ...Lutz, no fair! Why do you get to hide behind Benno?! [What not like you’d throw him to the wolves if you had the chance.
  
• The second I did, Benno clicked his tongue. ...Bwuh?! What’d I do wrong [Open your mouth... which appears to be a frequent occurrence, also Number 11]
  
• “Bwuh?! Blood?!” Was blood essential to make magic work? [Number 12, should we tell her?]
  
• ...Magic tools were convent, but scary. [The further in we go, the more this statement rings true]
  
• “Sh-She resembles her grandfather?” I tried imagining a little girl with the guidmaster’s face, but it just didn’t work.” [Lutz please smack this fool for me]
  

Chapter 13

• “Are you Myne, pray tell?” “Bwuh?! Ah, yes! That’s right. Are you Frieda?” [I believe it is customary amost chaos gremlins to give a customary greeting of Bwuh as we see here with this startled one. Number 13]
  
• “I see. I thought that maybe Grandfather has been surprisingly considerate, but in reality, you have him from himself.” [F, I don’t think he’ll survive burns that severe]
  
• “Oh, that’s no issue. I can just repay him for you.” “Bwuh? Ummm...” [I wonder if they are deliberately miss interpreting “repay”, or that’s not a phrase here. Number 14]
  
• The rumours were all true. Benno’s fears hadn’t been unfounded. .. She is just like the guildmaster! She’s saying the same things, just in a different tone. [Watch as she never says this to anyone else]
  
• ...Banno, I’ll stop whining about you ripping people off, so please save meeee! [After this, Myne still whines about Benno ripping people off.]
  

Chapter 14
“Also, uh... I thought she was a lot like Myne.” “Bwuuuh?! How?!” That’s just... unbelievable! I demanded an explanation for his shockingly bad opinion. [Number 15, and Lutz, you are a brave man for challenging Darth Myne.]

• “...I’m sorry. I feel a little regret now.” “You should be feeling a lot of it.” [Yeah she won’t change anything folks]
  
• “Welcome back, Myne. How was the girl you weere meeting today? Are you friends now?” [Awww Tuuli you are such an angel. Thinking that a fly caught in a spiders web can be friends with said spider]
  
• “You’re an angel, Tuuli. The healer of my hear. You’re the greatest older sister in the world” [Keep the praises to Tuuli coming]
  
• “...but I’m a weird little sister who acts way different from how she looks. Sorry, Tuuli.” “Haaah... You just now realized?” Tuuli sighed [Damn, Frida’s not the only one playing with fire today]
  
• After the much more lively than expected meal was over, I caught Mom and asked her to return the needles I used for thread.” “What for?” [The sewing gremlin is up against the chaos gremlin, the will be no winners only losers]
  
• “Please show me that thread, dear.” My mom, a dyer by trade and a skilled seamstress, didn’t even try to hide how interested in the thread she was. [Myne the difference between you and her is the fact she can control herself.]
  
• Dad who was drinking while keeping an eye on us, called out to Mom, who was eagerly watching my hands. “Hey, Effa. If you’re that interested in all this, want me to make another needle?” “Dada, I want one too! Can you me two?” Mom’s enthused hug and Tuuli’s cure request put Dad straight into a good mood. [When Gunther asking, you know you have a problem]
  

Chapter 15

• “Aaah, hold it. You two will be eaten alive if you go there alone. I’ll go with you.” Surely he was exaggerating? We were just going to make an appointment. [You fool did you forget what happened just the other day]
  
• “One moment please. The guildmaster said that if children by the name of Myne and Lutz were to come, let them in immediately” “Buwh?!” [Told, you see I told you. Number 16]
  
• Wow... Freida made her first friend, huh? I don’t know who it is but congratulations [Man she’s dense]
  
• “... You ended up friends with that geezer’s granddaughter?” “Bwuh?! Me?! Umm... I wonder about that” [Number 17, and lol]
  
• Ngh... Curse you, rich people. [You know, I’ve been hearing this a lot lately]
  
• “I’ve accepted the products and paid their price. Now we can become friends without any hesitations.” [And the triangle peg goes in the... you right the square hole.]
  
• Maybe this kind of thing was never discovered because nobles, those who bought most luxury goods, just compensated with magic. [This is certainly a chicken and egg scenario]
  

Chapter 16

• Um, Mom? Do you not trust your daughter at all? [Ummm, why do you think they pay Lutz to keep an eye on you]
  
• “At times like these, you never know when you’re fine” And at times like these, you’re so stubborn that you never give in. [Yeah, sweetie when he does you feint, or get to the verge of death so suck it up]
  
• Usually it’s less. You’re making a little more since we’re not dealing with the boss of any shops, but still. “Bwuuuh?! Not even a single middle copper?” [Number 18, and poor Myne all that hard work for nothin]
  
• Benno grimaced, rubbing his temples “...You again?” “Bwuh?” What does he mean, me again? [Benno don’t expect the natural disaster which will remake the market anew to know what they did. Number 19]
  
• “Lutz, don’t take your eyes off this idiot. I get the feeling she’ll try to read the card on her way home and end up in an accident.” [Wise words indeed, Truck-kun was almost the reason she was brought here in the first place]
  
• “Lutz, why all the thread?” Mom... why are you asking that to Lutz and not me, your daughter. [Is she a goldfish, how does she keep forgetting things, like how you are so untrustworthy that they need to play Lutz to keep an eye on you]
  
• Tuuli started to laugh, but then she froze in place and pointed behind me, blinking rapidly. I turned around to see Mom, who was standing still with her hand on her cheek. She was thinking really hard about something “Myne. Should I join you two after finishing your special dress?” ...Um, Lutz? Mum mom looks really pumped about starting this. We might need more pins. [Myne you have unleashed the sewing gremlin. While I would ask you to reflect, and how your own actions can impact other like this. But we know you’ll forget this by the morning.]
  

Chapter 17

• It was pig day. Unlike last year, my family trusted me just enough to leave me at home alone, so they left early in the morning without me. [And Gunther also increased his home insurance for some unknown reason]
  
• I pushed it down into me, visualizing a cover being put onto a pot, and let out another sign. [It’s a surprise tool that will help us later]
  
• “..how much would link cost?” “About 4 small silvers.” “Bwuh?!” [Number 20, and poor myne, you have your paper, but nothing to write on it with, taking bets on Myne destroying the ink market]
  

Chapter 18

• ...because he was both unable to think of a better name himself and used my original name for it, he settled on shortening it to “rinsham.” Um... Is that really good enough? [Hey it’s better than what they came up with in the Anime]
  
• “Myne, it sounds like you know a lot more than you’ve been letting on, huh?” I did, but I wasn’t about to dig my hole any deeper. [...0_0 did she learn from last time... no that can’t be right. The chaos gremlin can’t be taught... right?]
  
• The moment the foreman answered, Benno hefted me up and abducted me into the conference room. “Bwuhbwuhbwuh?!” [Number 21, and wow 3 whole bwuh’s in one word... sadly it only counts as 1]
  

Chapter 19

• He told me with slumped shoulders that it was easier to do all the work himself than run the risk of pointing out the mistakes of his superiors. [Yeah Otto is totally commoner Ferdi]
  
• “I am positively delighted to receive such lavish praise from one of your esteem.” [Suckup]
  
• “Huh?! What?! Butter?! Why butter?! What for?!” Waaait, did I not tell him about it? Whoops, whoops. [Proceeds to not explain herself. Classic Myne]
  

Chapter 20

• Mom pointed at the eighty-percent-finished hairpin and gave a troubled smile. That wouldn’t take long at all given how fast she worked. Tuuli and I tip-toed into the bedroom, making sure not to wake Dad. ...So why where there two finished hairpins on the table when I woke up? Did you stay up late Mom? Tuuli’s mad since she wanted to keep working too. [Yeah know, I get this a feeling Myne gets at least some of her impulses from Effa]
  
• Thiiis isn’t good. The power of money is simply too strong. I didn’t expect them to speed up this much. [Ahhh the power of Capitalism, with the addition of not one but two gremlin’s and it’s unstoppable]
  
• “Okay. Want me to cast a magic spell on your family too?” [And by magic she mean narcotics]
  
• Benno let out a sigh as he walked up to me, then immediately hefted me up and literally tossed me to mark’s direction “Bgyaaaah?!” [We need a “Handle with care” sticker for Myne]
  

Chapter 21

• “Actually I remember you calling the pins stuppghpph!” Zasha clamped his hands over Lut’s mouth and glared at him. “You didn’t tell us nothing about the pay.” [Ah boys will be boys, and by that I mean not listen until you see it in front of your face]
  
• “Get fired up! Do you wanna die!” [consider what this chapter is called, it’s a real possibility]
  
• “Sproutday, Fireday, Leafday, Winday, Fruitday, and Earthday alternate on a cycle, yeah?” [I keep forgetting this order.]
  

Echapter 1

• but her fever just kept going up, to the point where it felt like her body was about to melt. In fact something resembling yellowish vapor was rising off her body like steam. [Oh that’s how you know it’s about done. Just wait 10-15 more minutes of until she’s golden brown]
  
• “Listen, Lutz. This girl’s not as young as she looks. At the very least, she’s mature enough to smile and take care of others when she’s suffering herself. Don’t let her fool you. Don’t take advantage of her help.” [Damn Benno, not even her family recognized that]
  

Echapter 2

• The guildmaster was a petty man who proposed to my mother in the immediate wake of my father’s death, and upon being refused, began harassing us in small but infuriating ways. [So let propose to do this again, who know maybe 4th time lucky.]
  
• “If my brother cannot find a wife due to this, perhaps I shall have Myne take responsibility?” I suggested with a laughter of my own. [Oh lord no, don’t I can feel the Thunder coming down.]
  

Echatper 3

• “I’ll go hurry her up and start getting ready myself. The things I do for her...” [Man Tuuli, you got some sas]
  
• It seemed that Myne has pleasant dreams whenever she fell asleep with a fever, and she was never as happy as she was when talking about the wold of her dreams. [That’s heavy man]
  
• Inspired by the tales of knights in minstrel stories as he was, he mimicked a knight when courting me. He got on one knew before me and held up a magic stone he had obtained after slaying a feybeast. [I hope Effa can tell this story to Myne one day]
  

I get it, leave him. I’m trying. I work a couple hours a week and I’m at home the majority of it taking care of our daughter. All of my money goes to groceries and rent. I originally wasn’t supposed to pay anything but it changed like a lot of things did that he promised. But I’m building my plan I just need to vent and be heard.
I love my job. I’ve worked here for two years it keeps me fit, I like my coworkers, the pay is good and I’m good at it. But I’ve had to put my job on the line for my boyfriend. He has gone to school and worked full time the last two years and I’ve put my life on hold so he could finish without a worry. My whole schedule revolves around being sure he gets to do what he wants. Two years and I haven’t gotten the same back like he promised. The promise was that once he graduates and starts his new job I can start working more. He graduates this weekend but now there are excuses as to why I can’t get more hours. He’s asked me to call in or switch shift’s suddenly so he can go on guy trips with his friends this summer three in total for a week or two each. He did this last year and when I was pregnant and I begged him not to do it again because it was to much to be alone with our baby and not working the whole time or having any kind of break. It’s always that I’m starting an argument.. but I never get a break. I never get to go on trips for weeks multiple times a year. How is it we have no money and he needs more from me but he is planning these week long trips easily?
Today I had to call in so he could finish his last day at his job because he didn’t want to work the night. This gave me a point at my job and I’m a point over what is required to fire me. He is aware and texted me tasking to call off next weekend and I told him this is unfair at this point when he’s aware that I can lose my job at any moment now and he’s aware of that. Told him I was hurt and don’t know why he would ask he then said it was a joke and I needed to calm down. He’s called in all this week and been late everyday when the last six months he told me he couldn’t call in or be late EVER or he’s fired. Even if I was crying and begging him for a break from taking care of our daughter it didn’t matter how low I was mentally and physically. He just didn’t want to do what he expects of me. It feels like shit. I was sick all this week throwing up and had a fever and still he wouldn’t give me a break despite being home.
I have been putting my whole fucking life to the side for him and he has NEVER (I WISH I was exaggerating) been home alone with our daughter for more than 24 hours since she was born. I have not had a break longer than 5 hours besides work for TWO YEARS. I haven’t gone out with my friends more than 3 times in two years. I haven’t seen my family more than a handful of times because they are out of state. We haven’t been on family trips. I haven’t been able to start enrolling in school like he promised. I don’t know how much longer I can stick this out until I find my footing to leave. The longer I stay the more trapped I get. The more he starts to take from me the more he starts to disrespect me. The more I feel like it’s getting to hard to get out even if I want to.
Emotionally he tears me down, physically he expects me to take care of our daughter for him, clean the house, cook three meals, work, cover groceries and part of rent, change my schedule to whatever he wants, have sex whenever wherever he wants, be silent blah blah.
I don’t feel like me anymore I’m just a shell. I’m angry and sad all the time I feel used. There is always something wanting something from me and I never get a break to just do what I need to for myself and my future. I’m always asking myself how do I get out and keep pushing if he keeps cornering me. It’s this constant battle and i hate myself for ever believing he had changed.

This will be long. Hopefully it’s entertaining and informative enough to be interesting but honestly i just need to put this somewhere. I may delete it later. This will be my entire story of working in this industry. I write this not only as a vent but to serve as a warning and inform people that there are possibly BAD centers out there.
I started work at a preschool in October of 2023. I was encouraged to apply by my family and friends because they say im good with kids, and I had worked in classrooms for years before. I had been a paraprofessional for 3 years with high schoolers with disabilities and a classroom aide at a public school, so different age groups, but the point was I had a background in education, as well as experience in diapering and hygiene and special ed students. The job would also accommodate my school schedule, at the time I was enrolled in community college courses in the evenings. I thought I would love it.
I was hired on as an infants class assistant and I loved it at first. For me, most of my days were pretty predictable. Babys crying? The solution most of the time was either food, bottle, diaper, nap, or cuddles. Im not trying to over simplify things because its not easy work, but for me I was able to control the situation and handle the class smoothly for the most part. I loved my babies and my coteacher was fun to work with and i became friends (I thought) with my coworkers. I would come in every day ready to face whatever happened and I was very happy.
Didn’t last long.
I think the longest stretch i went staying in the infant room consistently was that first two weeks. After that they kind of used me wherever they needed me as a floater, which I really didnt like and was very opposed to. I was in the ones classroom for about a month and oh my god I just about quit right then. They had a bakers dozen of students with two teachers. The classroom was small and it was chaos, lots of hitting and kicking and biting. One time, the lead teacher, who is in her sixties and very grumpy, was having a rough day. One of the one year olds kept hitting and making kids cry. I was changing diapers at the time. I guess the lead got fed up with him because i saw her swoop in, pull a lock of his hair towards her and she said “YOU. WILL. NOT. HIT.” while she hit him on the back of the head with a hard plastic block she was holding 4 times, one for each word. I was shocked at first and didn’t know what to do. I had been working there less than 2 months and had just come out of training, so I knew I was a mandated reporter and it was my job to report anything and everything that was not ok, and this was certainly not okay. Who knows, maybe she was having a bad day. Maybe she had other things going on. Everyone always said she was a sweet lady and had been nothing but a kind teacher for the last 30 years, but that day she snapped i still didnt like what I saw.
I took it to the director and told her what I saw and what time stamps she would need to check on the cameras. I came to reddit and was told that i should call licensing so I did. I called and reported the teacher and after I did i felt so sick to my stomach that I had to call out the next day. I was so anxious and felt so guilty for reporting this teacher. No one believed me when i said this teacher did what she did. I couldnt handle going back in that classroom the next day.
The next week licensing came to do an investigation. They called me into the conference room and asked me what I had seen and I repeated the story. The people from state were very nice and assured me that I did the right thing, but that they have no control over whether or not the teacher would be fired or not. After that, the ones lead teacher went in to see them. At that point she had no idea I reported her but after the interview she put two and two together. When she cane back out, she took all my stuff that was in her classroom out and gave it to me and told me I was no longer welcome in her classroom . Whenever she saw me in the hallway for the next like week she did the “fuck you” sign in ASL at me and was just cold to me in general. I felt so bad. I didnt set foot in that classroom for months because i wasnt allowed to as per request by the 1s teacher.
I should have quit right then because the teacher who hit kids never got any consequences and still works at the center.
The rest of my experiences arent really in any chronological order until the end, so I’m just gonna list them off in no particular order.
I was often returned incident reports that I had written and asked to rewrite them to be “better”. When asked to clarify, management said that some of my wording made them (the director and AD) “look bad” and dictated to me what the note should say instead. I protested because what they were asking me to say was stretching the truth, and sometimes just plain lies. For example, one time a 4 year old ran out of the classroom and down the hall towards the front door that opens to the parking lot/street. I buzzed on the intercom but no one was at the front desk to grab him. There was another teacher in the room and the kid was about to open the door to the parking lot so I BOLTED down the hall and snatched him right as he was going out. In the incident report, I wrote that the child had run down the hall so I followed him down the hall and returned him to class. My assistant director told me not to say that because that was admitting that I left the room out of ratio, and to instead write “management was called and management returned him to class.” I was a little apprehensive, as I dont like lying, so I said “But thats not what happened. That is untrue. There was no one at the front when I called”. Shouldnt the parent know their child almost made it to the parking lot? Wouldnt that be useful to know so they could teach him that cars drive there, and that he could get hurt? Why there was no one at the desk at the time I dont know. Theres four of the management people and they were off who knows where, theres supposed to be someone up front at all times.
This was another issue. When people would buzz up front for bathroom breaks, ice for owies, to be let inside from the playground, etc, there would be no one there to answer it they would just downright ignore it. I would be left for 30 minutes to an hour waiting for someone to come relieve me so I wouldnt pee my fucking pants.
The director was always enrolling. Always pushing more and more kids into already full classrooms without the staff to accommodate them. More often than not the new students almost ALWAYS had some special need. Whether it was autism, extreme ADHD, or just incredibly violent due to issues at home/ being in the foster system. Thats not necessarily a problem in it of itself. Any center is gonna have special needs/ behavioral children. The problem is the director seems to be enrolling these kids on purpose, talking up our teachers and center about how we deal with these types of kids all the time and that their child will thrive here. Then, she enrolls the kid and offers no extra support to the teacher she just dumped this on. There are toddlers with autism biting, hitting, destroying the room, hitting themselves, throwing themselves into walls and running out of the classroom. A couple kids have almost made it to the parking lot, and the previously mentioned eloper has made it outside by the trashcans multiple times (theres a side door thru the kitchen). When the teachers beg her for help, the director just assigns more of the online training videos for teachers to watch, insinuating that its the teachers fault that they arent doing the corporate mandated training protocols, which were most likely created by people who have never set foot in a classroom. Then she just keeps packing the rooms full of problematic kids. The teachers are suffering.
There was a kid that was developmentally delayed. He was four years old, but he wasn’t fully potty trained yet. He was about half the size of the other four-year-olds, and would throw tantrums over very minor things. When it was nap time, he would not take a nap. He would scream at the top of his lungs, and when he really didn’t want to take a nap, he would poop his pants on purpose, I was the person in charge of this student for about a month, because the lead teacher in the preschool room refused to deal with him, and the Director didn’t want to call his mom out of fear of making her upset. My life was a living hell at that time. My whole day was practically being a one on one with the student, which made the director upset, because “we don’t do one on ones“.
One time this student was building with dominoes, and his dominoes fell down when he wasn’t ready for it. He screamed and cried, threw a domino at my head, threw a domino at other kids and started dumping toy buckets over. Once he was calm. I redirected him to do something else, and wrote the incident report since other kids and myself were hit. When I got to the front office at the end of my shift, the Director told me she would not be sending the report home to Mom. She said that this was a “age appropriate response“ for his dominoes, falling down, and that I needed to take more training on how to redirect inappropriate behavior.
This happened countless times. A child would hurt themselves or others, endanger themselves, or exhibit aggressive behavior, and any incident reports would be sent back. The director wouldnt give them to parents, and imply that it was the teachers fault, sometimes not so subtly and very rudely. This was problematic because both the families and the teacher are not being supported. Parents didn’t know what was happening with their children, especially when the teacher left before the child was picked up and couldnt have a proper talk with them.
I was often left to my own devices with these kids. Children who would bite, hit, mess their pants on purpose (I’m not just saying this. Multiple kids would would straight up tell me they gonna poop their pants just because they wanted to). And the only thing i would hear from management was “redirect, redirect, redirect.” All of my attention would be on one problem child and the rest of the kids didnt get the attention they need. I was told this was common in the industry. I detest that.
Often times we were left in the classroom without a lunch break or a bathroom break. For 10 hours we would have no break from the packed full classrooms with special needs kids. Some people can handle it. Im not one of those people. Once we were so understaffed that we were each clocking 10+ hours no breaks for a week straight. That was hell. No apology from management. Always with assurances that they were hiring. Nothing changed.
The amount if gossip was mentally crippling. A couple weeks before I resigned, my director stopped me when i was on my way to lunch. She said that she was concerned about what “multiple girls” had told her and she was wondering why I was complaining to licensing without coming ti her first. I was confused because I hadn’t called licensing. The only time I did was to report the teacher who was hitting and that was months ago. There was apparently a rumor going around that I had called licensing to tell them we hadn’t been getting breaks because of a comment I had made to a coworker about wondering what licensing says about employee breaks. I had called out with a fever the day before (which no one believed i was actually sick EVER) and since the last time i called licensing i also called out sick the next day, people thought i snitched to state. (No one should have known it was me who called the first time, it’s supposed to be anonymous.) I admitted to the comment, saying that I was curious and possibly even a little upset because we hadnt had breaks, but I didnt report anyone to licensing. My director said “Well, all the other girls dont think you are trustworthy now, and you dont really feel like a part of the team. They feel like they cant trust you.” She said that with a gross smile on her face.
I got a new job a week later.
No one said a word to me as I walked out on my last day.
Im sure there are good centers out there. Im sure that its not all bad. But from what Ive seen the pay is typically not great, the culture can be very toxic and especially in chain centers the kids aren’t prioritized. I dont want any part of it anymore. I commend those who can be in this profession and love it. But its not me. Its not fair.
So goodbye to this sub. I posted many a rant and asked for plenty of advice so thank you all for the support. I’ll be leaving this sub now.

Hi! I recently had a bad illness (symptoms started about 1.5 weeks ago) that began with a very swollen right lymph node in my neck a few days prior to having any symptoms. After the first ER visit I was negative for strep so they said it was likely viral pharyngitis but it later progressed into high fevers, extreme headaches, nausea and pain in my throat to the point i couldn’t eat anything. After returning they tested for mono which was negative so they said it was likely an infection and I was given augmentin (amox clav) 2x a day 875 mg. After taking it I noticed the symptoms of the illness improved but now I had a new debilitating set of symptoms. I was so nauseous I would be gagging forcing myself to eat and would get so dizzy and lightheaded I could not stand for sometimes hours at a time. I also noticed swelling in my face, tightness in my throat and headaches that were so bad I would wake up from my sleep that felt different than the headaches I had before. I ended up calling the doctor who prescribed the antibiotics and he said to stop them all together and not prescribe something else. Yesterday (the first day I had not taken them) I was able to eat a normal meal for me for the first time in 1.5 weeks after eating bites of food and low calories all week. I ended up throwing it up 5 hours later. I drank some gatorade, a probiotic drink and a protein shake after to try to recover the nutrients. Today I still feel extremely nauseous and weak. Is this normal after coming off antibiotics? I really want to begin going back to my normal life since I haven’t been able to work or barely leave the house in a week and a half but it’s hard when I’m still not able to eat normally and feel so weak. Is there anything I can do to feel better quickly? Has anyone else experienced this? Sorry this is a lot to read but I wanted to include all the details!
Age 22
Sex female
Height 5’5
Weight 120 lbs
Race White
Duration of complaint 1.5 weeks
Location MO
Any existing relevant medical issues no
Current medications no
Include a photo if relevant

Hi all. In March my sister (28 years old) had a liver transplant after liver failure caused by Epstein Barr Virus (EBV). She was recovering pretty well after the transplant, but then all of a sudden started losing weight, throwing up, experiencing nausea etc. After some tests, they found that she has Stage 4 diffuse large b cell lymphoma (they said its PTLD, and the specific type of lymphoma is large b cell). The PET scan they did showed the lymphoma has spread in the stomach, colon, and brain (brain isn't 100% confirmed, spinal tap results are showing no lymphoma, but MRI scan shows lesions and the doctors think it is in the brain).
She is starting chemotherapy tomorrow (6 rounds, 3 weeks between each round), but my parents and I are beyond concerned and worried. Right now she is going through spiking fevers, increased heart rate, and cannot eat anything as she throws up almost immediately after eating or drinking. They believe all of these symptoms to be caused from the Lymphoma, as they've been testing for a bunch of infections and it is all negative. They told us they want to be aggressive with the chemotherapy, as her type of lymphoma responds well to aggressive chemo.
I was wondering if anyone has experienced Post transplant (not specifically liver) lymphoma, or if you know someone in your life who has gone through this, and if you'd be willing to share your experiences? More than anything, I just feel so horrible for my sister. A liver transplant on its own was traumatic enough for her (it was very unexpected and the transplant was an emergency procedure as her liver failed so fast), but now just 1.5 months later as she started regaining some normalcy, she has stage 4 lymphoma. She is being really strong about this and is showing a strong will to fight, but we are just wracked with anxiety over all of this. I would really love to hear peoples experiences with PTLD to get a sense of what we should expect over the coming months.
Thank you

Hi all. In March my sister (28 years old) had a liver transplant after liver failure caused by Epstein Barr Virus (EBV). She was recovering pretty well after the transplant, but then all of a sudden started losing weight, throwing up, experiencing nausea etc. After some tests, they found that she has Stage 4 diffuse large b cell lymphoma (they said its PTLD, and the specific type of lymphoma is large b cell). The PET scan they did showed the lymphoma has spread in the stomach, colon, and brain (brain isn't 100% confirmed, spinal tap results are showing no lymphoma, but MRI scan shows lesions and the doctors think it is in the brain).
She is starting chemotherapy tomorrow (6 rounds, 3 weeks between each round), but my parents and I are beyond concerned and worried. Right now she is going through spiking fevers, increased heart rate, and cannot eat anything as she throws up almost immediately after eating or drinking. They believe all of these symptoms to be caused from the Lymphoma, as they've been testing for a bunch of infections and it is all negative. They told us they want to be aggressive with the chemotherapy, as her type of lymphoma responds well to aggressive chemo.
I was wondering if anyone has experienced Post transplant (not specifically liver) lymphoma, or if you know someone in your life who has gone through this, and if you'd be willing to share your experiences? More than anything, I just feel so horrible for my sister. A liver transplant on its own was traumatic enough for her (it was very unexpected and the transplant was an emergency procedure as her liver failed so fast), but now just 1.5 months later as she started regaining some normalcy, she has stage 4 lymphoma. She is being really strong about this and is showing a strong will to fight, but we are just wracked with anxiety over all of this. I would really love to hear peoples experiences with PTLD to get a sense of what we should expect over the coming months.
Thank you

Tonight is one of the strongest semi-finals of all time, with sixteen sensational acts taking to the stage to compete for the final slots in the final. But which ten will rave again on Saturday night, and which six will be gone before the party is over? Back by popular demand, here's my tongue-in-cheek look at everybody's chances tonight. As ever, please don't take anything here too seriously, and remember I'm writing this as a regular Eurovision fan lost in the excitement, confusion, hopium and copium of Eurovision euphoria, not as a mod.
Malta

• Why they will make it:
  • Colourful, energetic, an ideal opener
  • Sarah is brilliant - she can dance, she can sing, having the time of her life!
  • Impressive wow moments in the choreography which stand out even after every song has performed
  • It's basically a better version of what Cyprus was going for on Tuesday. Cyprus qualified, why not Malta?
• Why they might not:
  • Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it doesn't often work very well at Eurovision (i.e. Iceland 2016 after Sweden 2015). The comparisons with Slomo do not help her
  • Malta is one of the countries most disadvantaged by televote only semifinals, with no reliable diaspora partners and most frequent supporters UK & Ireland not voting in this semi
  • Facing stiff 'girlbop' competition from Austria, Georgia and arguably Greece

Albania

• Why they will make it:
  • One of Albania's more contemporary songs in years
  • Basically a perfect draw for optimum diaspora support, with Italy, Greece, ROW and Switzerland all guaranteed to award high points, and likely smaller points from many others
  • Besa will only be able to give us more wholesome insights into the ESC 2024 artists groupchat if she's still around - she must be protected at all costs!
  • Even if she fall, she gon' get up, standing tall proud with her head up
• Why they might not:
  • Having great diaspora support didn't help Poland on Tuesday
  • Far too many ideas going on both musically and on stage makes this quite a mess
  • The dreaded curse of the #2 strikes again

Greece

• Why they will make it:
  • Has captured the hearts and hopes of a nation, blending urban and folk sounds perfectly
  • Standout colourful stage graphics and clever choreography, including a one-camera-shot gimmick
  • TA TA TA TA TA TA
  • Appeals to the small yet noteworthy 'butler' diaspora with impressive display of handkerchief choreography
• Why they might not:
  • Queen Marina is currently ill with a fever according to Greek media, and may struggle to have the energy and vocals to carry this song
  • Filming the majority of the performance from one camera-angle leads to moments where the performance feels flat and lacking in dynamism
  • Domestic popularity does not always translate to international support

Switzerland

• Why they will make it:
  • One of the most engaging and endearing performers of the year, with perfect vocals and immense live energy
  • Staging taken from the Gjon's Tears playbook of 'stick our performer on random geometry', which somehow still works brilliantly
  • Performance full of clever lighting and wow moments
  • The prop brings back warm nostalgic memories of watching Beyblades as a kid for many viewers
• Why they might not:
  • Staging taken from the Gjon's Tears playbook of 'stick our performer on random geometry', which fails to fully convey the story of the song and lacks the creativity of the music video
  • A musical-theatre style genre-blend of opera, rap and drum & bass is far from the most digestible song, especially on first listen
  • Big Bird's gay cousin is writing a petition to ban Nemo as we speak for unsolicited use of his feathers
  • Agent Smith emerges from the Matrix to capture Nemo for breaking the code

Czechia

• Why they will make it:
  • Vocals were the main reason most people were writing this off, and Aiko has been significantly better in dress rehearsals so far
  • Many stories of fans' casual friends and workplaces loving this song a lot more than fan polls have indicated
  • The nipple bra is now gone, replaced with a more tasteful red one!
  • Aikonation could be this year's Aijanation
• Why they might not:
  • Whilst pretty, the staging concept of the dancers representing the five stages of grief is not at all explicit and doesn't aesthetically match the musical genre
  • The revamped bridge is bizarre and doesn't really work
  • Stiff competition with San Marino and Norway for rock-lover's votes

Austria

• Why they will make it:
  • Clever lighting and funky lasers match the techno sound and give the staging its own unique atmosphere
  • Very catchy chorus and polished choreography
  • One of the most physically attractive artists of the year, which will surely result in at least a few votes
  • Kaleen = Kalush + Loreen. Illuminati confirmed
• Why they might not:
  • Shaky vocals throughout - Tuesday's qualifiers show that Europe is not feeling particularly forgiving towards weak vocals this year
  • Whilst beloved in the fandom, could well be the 'fan-hype' of the year, with its dated sound not necessarily impressing casuals
  • I'm still ram-di-dam-don't think they fully understand what a rave is (i.e. not a fun steamy time with a bunch of shirtless men in a garage)

Denmark

• Why they will make it:
  • One of the most meme-able titles and choruses of the year - SAND! SAAAND!
  • Easily Denmark's most competitive song in years, and conventional pop will appeal to a broad audience
  • Probably significant number of Danes in attendance will lift this live
• Why they might not:
  • A disappointing lack of sand on stage and on visuals, on top of a generally static performance
  • Being accessible, conventional pop can be a double-edged sword, making this easy to overlook in a strong line-up
  • They've missed the opportunity to do a Dune tribute and have a giant sandworm eat Saba at the end of the performance, leaving 'bits and pieces lying everywhere'

Armenia

• Why they will make it:
  • One of the most charismatic performers of the year in Jaklin, who owns the camera and the stage
  • Colourful, fun staging
  • Sounds nothing like anything else this year, standing out well in the line-up
• Why they might not:
  • The song is very repetitive and feels surprisingly flat in the arena as a result
  • The band aren't able to play their instruments live which makes it a bit less impressive
  • WHERE IS THE CHICKEN??

Latvia

• Why they will make it:
  • Dons always gives an eggcellent performance vocally
  • Tuesday's qualifiers shows that Europe is down for voting for ballads this year, and there is very little ballad competition in this semi
  • Latvia is one of the ultimate underdogs at the moment, and everybody loves an underdog
• Why they might not:
  • The giant donut prop does nothing to add to visual storytelling, and Dons' emoting also isn't all that convincing
  • The song is sadly too forgettable in such a strong semi
  • Dons may take vengeance for months of egg jokes by bringing a pack of eggs on stage to throw at the audience

San Marino

• Why they will make it:
  • Some of the most creative, engaging and entertaining stage graphics of the entire year
  • The full kitchen sink thrown at the staging, with costume changes, clever camerawork, pyro, and presumably the entire bank account of a rich Sammarinese businessman behind them
  • Although San Marino lack voting allies, this year they have both Spain and Italy voting in the semi when Italy has historically given them some televotes in the semi and the band is Spanish
  • We didn't suffer through the painful mess of Una Voce per San Marino for nothing
• Why they might not:
  • Facing stiff competition from Norway and Czechia for rock-lovers
  • It's San Marino, who always struggle in the televote unless they have a certain Turkish man to draw in diaspora and drunk support.
  • Spanish rock representing San Marino may be a bit confusing for first-time viewers

Georgia

• Why they will make it:
  • Nutsa is probably the best vocalist of the entire semi, belting out the tune flawlessly whilst dancing
  • Never underestimate the wide appeal of a woman singing an ethnic-tinged bop with a load of pyro on stage
  • Everybody loves an underdog, and Georgia is one of the biggest Eurovision underdogs at the moment. Surely they break their streak this time?
• Why they might not:
  • Facing stiff 'girlbop' competition from Austria, Malta and arguably Greece
  • A great performance and a decent song hasn't always lead to a Georgian qualification (cries in Iru)
  • The 'fire' that Nutsa is 'putting out' seems to be the sun (see the stage graphics), which is inadvisable and would exhaust all life on Earth

Belgium

• Why they will make it:
  • One of the most instant songs of the year, and one of the only ballad-like songs in the semi
  • Has consistently ranked well in a variety of fan polls, demonstrating widespread appeal
  • Some atmospheric and effective moments in the staging, especially early on and with the platform of mics
• Why they might not:
  • Consistently wonky vocals, especially in the the falsetto choruses which are for many people the best part of the song
  • Incredibly disappointing and underwhelming staging, especially given the music video seemed tailor-made to translate onto the stage
  • The ending is repetitive and lacks power in a live setting

Estonia

• Why they will make it:
  • Quirky and pure fun in a way which should appeal to televoters
  • Great late draw
  • One of the most recognisable and imitable dance moves of the year, beloved by the audience who will lift this song
  • Our community hasn't produced countless memes and fan-art pieces for nothing, right? Right?! UUUUUUUUUUUU YYYYYYYYYYYEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH intensifies
• Why they might not:
  • Incredibly messy and unimaginative staging are drawbacks you can't afford in a semi this competitive
  • Could well be the subreddit fan-hype of the year as Estonian folk/hip-hop mix is potentially a niche genre for a casual audience
  • The police investigation concludes that in the end they (really) do know quite a lot about (those) drugs

Israel

• Why they will make it:
  • Flawless vocals, one of the only ballads in the semi
  • Great late draw
  • Some effective staging moments, especially with atmospheric use of dry ice
  • The boos and criticism will only encourage some voters to vote even more for them
• Why they might not:
  • Maybe far more of Europe feels uncomfortable about Israel's participation at the moment than we all suspect
  • Eden risks getting oxymated slightly in the dry ice
  • Lack of audience support may influence voters at home

Norway

• Why they will make it:
  • Purely a magical experience from start to finish (#unbiasedjournalism)
  • Musically full of wow moments, especially the intense final chorus and Gunhild's impeccable vocals
  • Effective use of dry ice and lasers to add to the moody atmosphere
  • Everybody loves a good fairytale!
• Why they might not:
  • Folk-rock could be too niche of a genre for a widespread casual audience, and the song is facing competition from other rock songs in the semi for votes
  • The staging is a bit of a downgrade from MGP, lacking some of the intimacy and effective pre-recorded inserts
  • Gunhild may accidentally pull a muscle doing her famous leaning back trick
  • The lyrics may summon a werewolf who eats the stage, disqualifying the band

Netherlands

• Why they will make it:
  • Creative and witty stage graphics and impeccable live energy from Joost
  • Perfect draw position
  • Incredibly effective ending which gives added poignancy to the performance
• Why they might not:
  • When you promise innovative, never-before seen staging and bring a bloke in a blue bird costume, you are going to rub people up the wrong way
  • Focussing entirely on the sad ending in all recaps may feel like using tragedy for cynical gain, instead of presenting the balance the song gives
  • Brexit means Brexit - Eurosceptics may unite to overturn this EU propaganda!!

Whatever happens tonight, remember to have fun - at the end of the day it's just a song contest. Enjoy the performances, and may all your favourites qualify!

Question is, will I ever leave you? The answer is no, no, no-no-no, no, no No, no-no-no, no, no No, no, no, no Question is, will I ever leave you? The answer is no, no, no-no-no, no, no No, no-no-no, no, no No, no, no, no Yeah, you feel the pressure, man, I know the pressure And my wifey is a spice like I'm David Beckham A lot of pent up aggression comin' out of my section OVO on me while y'all niggas was playin' dress-up And I know who gon' take the fall with me They right here on call with me, they all with me You could throw curve balls but I got the glove fitted They've been sayin' it's love, but it isn't love, is it? Toast to the days when they wasn't out to get me I worked at Jaydees Connections whenever Jason let me Ceesay's, I was buyin' fitteds everyday Kiddie's Caribana, tryin' not to catch a stray I dropped out right before I graduate Six credits left, my mama had her saddest day "It's only up from here, I promise, you just gotta wait" And she took my word for it, that's all I had to say Lately I just feel so out of character The paranoia can start to turn into arrogance Thoughts too deep to go work 'em out with a therapist I get a blank page when I try to draw a comparison I'm gettin' straight to the point with it Need y'all to know that I never needed none of y'all niggas Fuck bein' all buddy buddy with the opposition It's like the front of the plane, nigga, it's all business But I haven't flown with y'all boys in a minute Look, they'd rather run up on me than towards their goals My niggas still hit the club when it's twenty below Who you think runnin' this show? You saw it in me at twenty years old The lingo start to sound like we talkin' in code I got a pure soul, I don't do the hate You don't worry 'bout fittin' in when you custom made Me and Niko used to plot on how to make a change Now me and Kobe doin' shots the night before the game Still drop 40 with liquor in my system Numbers goin' unlisted just to create some distance I might see you on and off but I'll never switch ya Niggas quick to double cross like both of us Christian Lamborghini got me feelin' like I'm Christian Bale And I never bend my morals for the ticket sales Tippin' scales, bars heavy like triple XL I never tag no one in, I'd rather get you myself Runnin' through the 6, thumbin' through the contracts I'm possessed, you can see it under the contacts They think I had the silver spoon but they'll get it soon I still got somethin' left to prove since you left me room Paint a plan for the family debt, we in the minus And like it's goin' in a trunk, I put it all behind us Where you tryna go? I got it, I'll take us wherever I'm a staple in the game, all my papers together And my life is on display like Truman They wanna pree the movements, gotta start to make 'em sooner My exes made some of my favorite music I dated women from my favorite movies Karma's such a thing of beauty I'd share more of my story but you wouldn't believe it It's far-fetched like I threw that shit a hundred meters I keep it a hundred like I'm running a fever I might take a breather but I won't ever leave you If I was you, I wouldn't like me either

^{3rd Moon, 6 AC}
Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.
So the rhythm goes within the hearts of Arryn lances, within the wooden cores of those pieces from that stupid Essosi game. Aye, so was Ronnel Arryn's own bloody heart thumping when he lead his first charge, when he snuck out of the Gates of the Moon to gather what boys he knew and push back the wildlings calling themselves the Sons of the Tree.
Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.
It was not just his own heart. It was the click of hooves against mud, the roar of riders in the wind. But a boy then, he still yelled the loudest, sat astride a galloping courser in the thick of battle and held.
Ronnel saw it true, he saw it all clearly when he was atop Vhagar, freer every time Visenya allowed him the escape: his lands, draped in the tranquil blue shine of the sky and brushed with green. Out of the thickets emerged castles, keeps and holdfasts buttressed the ridges, leagues of rolling fields dotted with towns and villages filled with His. People. To. Protect. That fact was doubly stressed when they veered too close to the margins of that tapestry, over snowy mountain peaks and to crueler lands nestled near the throat of the world. Sparse smoke, fires that burned bright in the night. Camps of warriors, not the hamlets of smallfolk.
Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.
He scouted. Laid the ambush, stakes and carts blocking the entrance to the valley while his men ascended up goat tracks. His gyrfalcon nearly gave them away, but by some stroke of luck, the wildlings were none the wiser. He was at the heart of the formation, leading his men when they crashed down the hillside. And he won.
Why, then, did that victory amount to naught when he looked at the knight slumped against a tree stump, gripping the earth in one hand while he struggled to get up? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. A smaller camp of raiders, easy to scatter, easy to defeat.
And here sat a man dying.
Ronnel Arryn knelt by his side. “A maester,” he said, “We can get—Jonos, get Harmune!”
The knight shook his head, before he raised up his sword-hand, slowly, weakly, plied by wheezing as he spoke a scarce few words.
The gyrfalcon cried when the blade landed on Ronnel’s shoulder.
“In the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave.”
“In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just...”
^{12th Moon, 24 AC}
To hunt was to grip the wilds by their heart, squeeze till they bore fruit, to rule, truly, unfettered by the domain of words and compromises. There was respect to be shown to the creatures they slew, of course, and honorable conduct, and, and… the heady rush of victory could not be as potent without such trappings.
And by the seven above, he needed it. The Eyrie had taken on a much more different chord after the white raven had arrived and sparse snows began to blanket the courtyards. Dreary. Sullen, almost. The windows offered a peek into dark clouds and rain and freezing rain instead of valleys covered by a sheer blanket. It was not all bad. The hearthfires roared, the children—all except Robar—liked the snowfall well enough, and some quiet could be found, though that slipped away more often than not. Fur-laden lords and ladies were oft more straightforward, Ronnel found, when that hint of winter settled into minds and coated their words. No longer did he have to listen to lengthy, summery addresses.
Or he’d just conjured that story up to glean some good from the bad. It made no matter. Small comforts while they all waited for winter.
Beneath that, however, was a sense of… gnawing. A wait for the next raven, so that they might finally move down to the Gates at the perfect moment. Decreed by tradition, it was a week after Alyssa’s Tears slowed in their descent, but he grew impatient. Shook his leg up and down when holding court, and stilled that tic when Serena called.
It was with a deep exhale that Ronnel met the news of quarry. Good enough distraction. The huntsmen departed that night, and at dawn, a cast of hawks descended, first to Sky by way of the handholds, then meeting with the guides and their mules at Snow. Ronnel took the fore, his uncle Cortnay grumbled as he looked down the ledge, Cousin Denys was still half-asleep, and Marq Hardyng nudged him awake when he threatened to fall off his mule. A trio of handlers led them down the path to the Gates. Their leader in Maryam the Harelip gave glares and instructions to the servants, and quick nods when the Arryns spoke to her.
“Good weather today,” Marq noted idly.
“Good weather? We’re like to have supper at Stone at this pace.” replied Ronnel, the wind battering his voice. “Come on. Uncle, wake Denys up properly.”
Over the horizon were flocks of birds soaring over the valleys, villages beneath that looked like specks of dust, peaks of mountains caked in frost that reached out into the heavens. The Lord of the Eyrie could swear that he saw Vhagar somewhere in the shadow of the Giant’s Lance. Still, under his breath, Ronnel cursed the King Roland for the blight that was this descent. Such a mighty castle did he call his seat, but every love suffered some pitfalls.
Soon enough, they sighted the Gates of the Moon, and relief washed over them. They could make it in time… provided that they could attend to other obligations swiftly. Ronnel coughed twice as he dismounted.
Cavaliers, spearmen, and soldiers in sky-blue cloaks hailed them at the gates, and Ronnel had a mind to head right for the stables—before one face caught his attention. The man standing by the walls bowed then rose, halberd in hand.
“I know you.” Ronnel pointed a finger at him, the surprise clear in his tone. “Theron.”
“Theron of the Lungcatch!” Marq added with a chuckle. “Unhorsed Sers Donnerly and Shett in their heyday! A victory to remember.”
“The Tourney at Crossmont. Damn good show, but their prime was a year before then,” Ronnel objected, “before Donnerly caught that blow to the head and Shett went into his cups.” He spared a glance toward his cousin, the man’s eyes yet closed. “Best listen well, Denys! If you want to be half as good a jouster as this man.”
Cousin Denys shook himself awake, but his father interrupted before he could speak.
“My lord,” said Cortnay as he climbed down from his mule. “Perhaps we should visit with Mother sooner rather than later.”
Ronnel looked at his uncle for a beat before clapping Theron on the shoulder. “You earned your spurs then, aye? What’s happened since?”
Marq approached as well. “I heard you joined the Four-and-Forty. Could scarcely believe it, sorry lot that they are.” A few of the Cavaliers around them snickered at that.
Ronnel responded with a click of his tongue. “Enough of that.” Rivalries between the knightly orders, however friendly, were best cut off quickly.
Where Theron was straight-backed before, his stance eased when the lord met him with familiarity. “Thank you, milord. You know how it is; times change, horses and lances are too much of a rush when you’ve a family to feed. I served at the Bloody Gate for eight years, and the Keeper was gracious enough to name me a serjeant when I was transferred here.”
Another approached from the courtyard, a woman donning a gambeson with the badge of the Cavaliers sewn into it. “My lord,” she said with a bow. She motioned to the Falcon Tower, where the Queen Cynthea’s chambers and solar lay. She was awake, then.
“Right, right. Theron—you’ll come with us to the hunt. Take a horse from the stables. In fact,” Ronnel motioned over to a side. “Denys! Get this man a courser. Which one did you say was spirited last time, Hardyng?”
“Shade would do well enough,” Marq advised. With a sigh, Denys beckoned the serjeant over with him and trudged toward the stables.
So too were the remaining three—Ronnel, Marq, and Cortnay—escorted to the Falcon Tower. Before entering the Queen Grandmother’s solar, Ronnel and Cortnay near-interrogated a servant about her well-being. He replied with a nonchalant “same as always,” and the three were shown inside.
Myrish carpets and spring colors covered the room, while new oaken tables and baubles to decorate them were scattered about. The Queen Cynthea was nestled between cushions on a couch, her companion Jeyne sitting to her side. “Too bitter,” Cynthea muttered as she raised a spoonful of soup and took a sip. Her expression turned sour. A thin circlet rested on her brow, wrought of red gold and studded with garnets. The gold and the gems glistened as sunlight seeped into the room.
“Your Grace,” declared Ronnel as he stepped in. He gave a bow and placed a kiss on her outstretched hand.
“Still so courteous, Ron.” Cynthea looked him over before she waved over a servant. “Bring some tea!”
“Marq Hardyng. Come, come closer, boy. The beast next to you can wait.” Marq obliged while Cortnay grunted and took a seat. Cynthea pinched Marq’s cheek. “Look at him, hair on his chin and all. In Oswell’s time the men wore mustaches to imitate their king. I suppose it’s beards now.” That took on a note of disappointment.
“They all look so disheveled with them,” sighed Jeyne.
Cynthea continued. “Ronnel told me you went to the Free Cities. Was it Braavos? You know, when you were but a boy…”
Despite the delay, Ronnel found some comfort as he settled into a seat and the tea was brought. Cynthea continued conversing with Marq for a time, and Hardyng was poked at by questions from her companion as well.
“Ronnel,” Grandmother turned back to him. “How has the child been?”
“Robar?” Ronnel asked and offered a smile. He knew the answer already. “Artos? Or…”
“My daughter. Cynthea. Even Rowena and Arwen don’t visit me enough. Must you deprive me of my namesake too?”
“Do you remember that volume on wyverns you gifted her? She’s collected three of those books now. Scarcely even read them. Too taken with dragons, she is, though ice dragons have been close competition of late. She’s not wont to leave the Eyrie unless Vhagar flies her down. But,” he shrugged, “Serena would hardly allow that.”
“Dreadful creatures.” Cynthea said, aghast. “She’s right. I told your mother not to let you and your siblings fly at all, lest you think yourselves too lofty for us common folk.” With a scoff, she turned her eyes then to Cortnay.
The conversation shifted. By Grandmother’s mention of ‘that one’, Ronnel knew that they were speaking of Visenya. Something about banners and colors, blue-and-white and red-and-black. He drank down the tea while his thoughts once more drifted to the hunt. Plans to corner the boar at first, but then, something else. A thought that he couldn’t quite place a finger on.
With a lull in talk came another look from Grandmother. “Your brother stopped by earlier.”
Ronnel furrowed his brows. “Roland?”
“Would he come by without your knowing? No.” Cynthea wrinkled her nose. Jonos, then. “He brought his gyrfalcon with him. Have you seen it? A graceful bird, silver and dappled with black, but he boasted so much about it. It’s unbecoming, you know.”
Fucking Jonos.
Why was he here and not at the Bloody Gate?
“I’m sure he’s just proud of that raptor. I’ll talk to him.” Ronnel slowly rose to his feet. “But I’m afraid we must leave. We’ll be back soon enough, I promise. Our cook at the Eyrie,” he looked over to Cortnay, “send for him. I can’t let you settle for bitter soup, grandmother.”
Where they might have japed and drank before on this same rutted road, there was nothing of the sort now. Ronnel was sore angry, and the dozen riders that left the Gates of the Moon knew it well enough. There would be no tales of some bygone tourney, nor of a winesink they’d frequented in the days before the obligations mounted. Ronnel felt a scraping within his ribs, some itch that would not abate.
Once the dirt path turned and went deeper into the forest, they had arrived at the hunting grounds. He saw people there. His own hunters and trackers, and several that stood out, all gathered around tables and horses, and—a tent, blue and white with the livery of House Arryn.
They went to hail him as he climbed down his horse, but he held up a hand. There was that fucking bird, silver-and-black and perched with a hood on its head. As he drew closer, he heard voices from within the pavilion. Jonos’ voice.
“...Why, Lord Egen told me so himself. Lazy Lyn’s bed is barren, his head full of doubts, but he’s too much of a craven to speak such ‘treasons’ in public.” A snort of a chuckle. “This queen of theirs is listless, and her dragon grows weaker and fatter by the day. Why, then, must falcons limit their flight when we can soar so much higher?”
“A toast! To the—”
So soon as the tent opened did Ronnel throw a punch for his brother; caught unawares and already in his cups by the smell of him, Jonos reeled and hissed. Ronnel tugged on his arm to pull him outside.
“THERON!” Once the serjeant ran over, Ronnel swept a hand over the handful sitting about the tent. “Take them to the Gates. OUT, ALL OF YOU!”
When Theron took them outside, Ronnel’s attention turned to his damnable brother.
“Why are you here? Hm? Who gave you leave.” That was not a question. Ronnel paced about his brother. “You’ve spat on all that I’ve done for you. All the chances, all the posts and duties that I’ve afforded to you as my fucking blood—and you look at me not with respect, but envy. A gyrfalcon?!” A pause. Jonos knew what he meant. Ronnel raised his arms wide. “Is this what you do now? The old man turns his ear away, so you wring what dissent you can from your ranks of lickspittles and gutter knights?! You should thank the bloody gods that I did not hear more from you.”
“Are we ridding ourselves of pretense?” Jonos put in. “Fine. What of you, brother? So much do you give our enemy. Lands aplenty for her dragon to sully, a castle whole to hold her and her twisted brood, and you bow to an empty fucking throne for her sake. Is it so much that I ask to what end? How much more will you let them take? The Gates? The Eyrie? Or perhaps she’d ask for Robar’s head next. You’d assent, wouldn’t you?”
In a trice, a brawl had started with another blow from Ronnel—Jonos put up a fight, but the retainers quickly intervened to restrain the man from striking their lord.
“PICK A FUCKING SPEAR UP!” Ronnel yelled. “Bring him a spear. BRING HIM A SPEAR!”
All of those around them hushed. The Lord of the Eyrie took a boar spear in hand and marched into the forest. Jonos was not far behind.
Through the afternoon, the pair trudged over the undergrowth, ducking beneath fallen trees and pausing to examine tracks. Not a word was exchanged. Only glares when their eyes met.
The sun had approached the horizon when they heard the first noises. Their steps slowed, Ronnel cocked his head about to seek out the quarry. The clearing ahead looked to be the source of the growls.
When they stepped into the glade, Ronnel and Jonos exchanged a look. Jonos stepped on a branch; a crack resounded. Ronnel made to approach his brother, Jonos flinched, drew his spear closer—just as he did, the boar erupted squealing from a bush, he lunged, and…
The pork leg was skewered, sizzling and crackling when it was placed over the fire.
Night had fallen by the time that the maester arrived. Harmune appeared with his apprentice and boxes upon boxes of herbs in tow. Ronnel had not asked for his presence, but with the pain that erupted from the slash on his shoulder, he could not turn him away either.
“A clean cut,” Harmune remarked, otherwise silent as he worked to cleanse the wound and wrap it with linen.
The Lord of the Vale occupied a campfire alone, while the others had dispersed along the hunting grounds. Jonos was there, in the corner of Ronnel’s vision, flanked by Theron and another blue-cloaked guard.
The coughs had returned. Not too many. Not too consuming. But they were there, lingering, and Ronnel felt the scratch within his lungs worsening the more he held it in.
Once the wound was bandaged, Harmune waved his apprentice off and began. “My lord… I’ve consulted the tomes and exchanged correspondence with the Citadel. My previous reckoning was wrong. But I must needs examine your breathing again to come to a conclusion.”
Ronnel supposed it was time enough. “Not consumption, then?”
Harmune placed a hand on the Arryn’s chest. “I don’t believe so… breathe in?”
An inhale. An exhale. A cough. Then another, and another, each more hacking than the last. Ronnel’s hand went up.
The maester drew away. Focused 0n the fire, Ronnel could not discern the man’s expression. He would not hear the next words, either, but he sensed the shift in tone, the absence of a ‘take these herbs and drink that poultice’.
There were senses that he missed. The wind battering against his face as he clutched onto Vhagar’s saddle. High above, as high as honor and the gods, though nothing but the dirt underneath his riding boots truly made him feel free now.
The fire-given glow grew. The heat scorched.
To what end? What bloody end would he meet, would his family meet, would the whole kingdom meet?
There was nothing to the future but Fire and Blood and all the rotten fruits that Aegon had left behind. He felt an anger welling inside of him. Not the same kind of feeling that he’d felt when Jonos grew too truculent. It was something foreign, blade-sharp, pinpointed.
“...no more than a year.”
Silence filled the air. The flames danced.
Ronnel spoke.
“Do you remember that one—what was it, a story? The riddle that you used to tell us?”
Harmune puzzled a brow. “Which one, my lord?”
“You know the one,” Ronnel insisted, “the one about… mountains, something of the sort. You know. I never understood that one.”
“Ah,” the maester squinted, “I’ve forgotten the exact wording. Lord Jonos asked me to retell it many a time when he was poorly with fever. The first winter after Aegon’s landing, I believe…?”
Ronnel nodded twice. “He pestered me about it for days. Came up with near a hundred different answers, the halfwit. None fit. What the fuck was it?”
The wizened man gave a small shrug in response, the chains about his neck rattling as he did. “He asked me for a riddle. I could not think of one…” A pause. “I suppose there was no answer.”
The Defender of the Guarded Domains grunted to dismiss the maester. He held his hand up before the fire. Clenched it into a fist. Opened his palm, then observed as the smeared red droplets within winked under the light.