My husband's sister-in-law is an INFJ and has never liked me the moment we met. For a year, she was very difficult to be around and would make passive aggressive comments to me. Whenever I would greet her, she would avoid eye contact. It got to the point where my husband's dad noticed she was being "snooty" towards me (his words) and had a talk with her.
We eventually had a conversation over the phone once it came to a head. I told her that I understand not everyone will like me but I was worried I did something wrong. She said I haven't done anything wrong and that she's just a very guarded and protective person. My husband's ex-fiance was her best friend and when they broke up, it was difficult for her to move on because she's a loyal person and her friendships run deep.
It's been over three years and she's still been hot and cold with me. It's like walking on eggshells with her. I've tried to be friendly and kind to her. I made a cake for her birthday last year and got her nice gifts for Christmas. I've tried hard to have a good relationship with her but I think something about me she just doesn't like/trust but I don't understand or know why. At this point now, I've resolved to stop trying to go out of my way for her but it does make me feel uncomfortable and self-conscious when I have to see her at family events. I'm an INFJ. Just for context, her husband (my husband's brother) is an INTJ and my husband is an ENTJ.
I'm curious, can any ISFJs provide some insight on why she is this way towards me so I can better understand her?

Third Chapter! I'm having a blast writing this. If you enjoy it, then make sure to like it and give me any feedback you have. I'm grateful for all of it!
Prev First
I was cold, my feet hurt, and I felt even sicker than before. The boreal path stretched on for what seemed like an eternity, the pale sunlight having no effect on me due to the sense, misty fog. Every breath felt like ice, and I could see my breath in front of me, condensed and almost viscous.
I had been waking for at least an hour by now, following the path to wherever it led. This place couldn't be empty, right? There was a tomb built here, so that meant there had to be some kind of civilization nearby, or at least the remnants of it. Even if it was abandoned, I'd kill to have a roof over my head to sleep under.
I wanted to lay down and sleep, but I knew that if I didn't get warm soon I'd die of hypothermia, so I had to keep trudging on. Besides, I was in the deep wilderness, in this place that I knew nothing about, and I wasn't going to risk getting eaten by some wild animal, or worse.
So I trudged on. The sun rose further in the sky after what seemed like an eternity, and the fog cleared up a bit. Birds sang, trees rattled and shook from the wind, and the air became bearable. I still felt awful, but at least it wasn't frigid out anymore and I would feel better eventually. I wanted to sit down so badly, to find a way to start a fire and get some heat into my bones, but I kept going. I needed to keep going. I needed to know what the hell was going on, and I'd rather find some place to sleep that had a roof and even a bed if I was lucky.
I kept thinking while I walked, in an attempt to entertain myself over what seemed like an endless journey. Who was I? I didn't know who I was, or where I was from, or if I even had a name! All I knew is that I was in the body of this weird lizard… dragon… horned thing, and it felt all wrong. The forked tongue in my mouth felt too weird, I was taller than I thought I should have been, and I was definitely stronger than what a human should have been, if I was even a human before. I think that since I defaulted to assuming that my new strength was more than what a human would have instead of any other race, I must have been human before, right? What other races were there, anyway? What if there were only humans here and I was just a freak of nature?
What if I was the only person in this world? What if everything was gone? That couldn't be the case, right? That tomb implied there were people who had been alive at one point to build it. But they could all be dead now…
Okay, that was enough of me being alone with my thoughts. I decided that, if I was going to keep myself sane, I'd have to do something productive to distract myself from the implications of everything going on around me. It was time to consult the useless journal.
I pulled it out and opened it to the page where we had our last conversation, still irritated by how vague it could be. But I pushed that to the side as I pulled out the quill and began to concentrate as I wrote down a question. Where do I go?
Nothing happened for a moment, but eventually my hand moved on its own, scribbling down an answer in the same elegant cursive as before. Follow the path.
That isn't helpful. I wrote back, frustrated. There was another pause, then more furious scribbling.
You asked a question. I answered it. Be more specific next time.
You’re an asshole. I wrote down, snarling. This time, there was no response, nor was there any movement in my hand. The journal remained uncommunicative.
Why didn't you respond? I asked next, surprised that the journal had been silent. More scribbling followed.
I answer questions. Insults are not questions.
I became even angrier at that, knowing my words didn't really affect the journal. Why can't you be more helpful? I wrote down, just to see what the journal would say.
I am only truly helpful to those who are capable of helping themselves.
It took a moment for my emotions to register, but when they did they appeared as a burst of unbridled rage. With a draconic roar, I threw the journal at the closest tree, causing it to elicit a loud thwap as leather hit bark before it fell to the ground. I turned and stomped away, grumbling, just hoping to leave the journal there. Then I looked down and noticed it was in my hand again.
“Wha-” I began, before realizing that the journal was in perfect condition, not even a single scuff. I grit my teeth and slipped it back into my bag with a sigh before returning to my walk,hoping that I'd find something eventually.
After some time, I finally heard it: running water. That must have been a good thing, because villages were usually nestled along some kind of water source. Even if it was a small village, it must have been a safe place because people were living there, and there were enough people to keep the wilderness at bay.
I rushed up the hill and down the path towards the sound, avoiding tripping over roots and rocks before reaching my destination. The creek was a few yards wide and at least a yard deep, so nothing huge, but it was fresh water. I had nothing to store water in, but I had a skin of beer so I wasn't worried about that. What I was interested in was the dirt path beyond this point seemed less faded and more worn, as if it was used more often. Most exciting, however, was a signpost with a few pointed signs hanging from it. There were two, in fact, one pointing to the left of me and the other one forward still, crossing a beaten and rickety wooden bridge that spanned the creek. The sign that pointed left read Forsvolkvr, which was just utterly incomprehensible to me. The other sign has a simple carved framing around the edge, so it might've been a more important place, and it read Ljosavatnsskaro… who in the hell named a place Ljosavatnsskaro? I couldn't even pronounce that right.
Needless to say, I went with Forsvolkvr.
The path led further downhill, into a sparser woodland that seemed more welcoming, and in the distance I saw it: a tiny village of maybe a dozen long huts, with either clapboard or mudbrick walls and thatched roofs. They didn't have chimneys, but they did have little openings at the top that allowed smoke from hearths to escape. Some houses were a bit bigger than others, but all of them were no bigger than a single story tall. As I approached, I noticed that there were people, honest to God people. Humans walked about, wearing pretty ragged clothes but still people nonetheless! I didn't think I had ever been so excited to see another person before, but then I remembered that I didn't actually remember a time before, so that didn't really mean much.
Most of the people I saw from a distance seemed to wear old, stained, and patched clothes: leather trousers stitched together along with long wool shirts and not much else. Some wore hats or pelt cloaks, and all of the men had thick beards, but most seemed to be exceptionally poor. Along with a few barren fields, there were little more than a few sheep and some chickens roaming the stumpy hills and knolls, so beyond the bounty creek I didn't know how this village even sustained itself.
As I approached the entrance of the village, which was a rickety little gate with a sign that simply read Forsvolkvr, people began to notice me, and I could immediately tell that it wouldn't be a positive reception. The adults pushed children into their homes, some picked up hatchets, and a few more had weapons of their own, mostly simple spears and rounded shields painted all sorts of colors with runic designs. One man came riding up on a horse, sword drawn and chainmail gleaming in the sunlight. “Halt, dragon-spawn, how dare you approach this village.” He was a younger man, maybe in his mid to late twenties, with a short beard, baby blue eyes, and golden blonde hair. He wore similar clothes to those around him, albeit a little less dirty and worn, and had a bear fur mantle on his neck, along with a silver circlet with a single ruby in the center that seemed to serve as a lowly crown. “Your kind are not welcome here!”
Great, so I was a freak of nature. I was hoping I was simply just another race in this world, but I suppose I couldn't be that lucky, now could I?
“I'm just looking for a place to rest,” I shouted back, lowering my sword to appear less intimidating. “I simply want to know if you have a place for me to stay: I'm willing to pay.”
“Are you deaf, dragon spawn?” He shouted as he forced his horse to halt, “Get out or I'll slit open your belly and expose your guts to the crows!”
Well, that wasn't good. I was exhausted and ill, but not so much that I was eager to take a dirt nap. And even if I was in peak condition, I was sure I couldn't take on this entire village nor did I want to since massacring otherwise innocent people probably wouldn't be a great start to whatever mess I had gotten myself into. And I wasn’t exactly a master swordsman to begin with. Even though I defeated those undead, it still felt awkward to swing a sword. I was definitely a bit desensitized to violence, but not some kind of warrior. Having a sword doesn't make me a warrior.
I decided to cut my losses and head for Ljosavatnsskaro instead, since maybe the people there wouldn't want to kill me for having scales. But then the crowd began to spread out, making way for a lone figure, hunched over and wrapped in a dusty brown cloak, using a gnarled branch as a walking cane as he pushed himself forward. The crowd’s ire transformed into anxious murmurs as the man passed, not even sparing them a glance. The only one he looked at was the man on a horse, who's face became pale as milk when their eyes met, and when the ringleader was thoroughly cowed, so was the rest of the mob.
“Gone, back to your workings ye shall be,” he rasped, his voice like sandpaper on glass, “begone and allow me to see where others cannot.” As he hobbled past the horseman he waved his hand, sending the mob hurrying away and back to their daily lives, as if I had never appeared.
“Gothi Øbyiorn, you cannot intervene, this thing is an intruder!” the horseman shouted.
“This thing is a person with a name,” the old man said, who's name was apparently Gothi, “And he has humbly requested your patronage. You dare violate the laws of hospitality? Shame on you for insulting the gods so.”
“By the Stormcaster, he's a dragon-spawn! He'll bring damnation down on us all from above! The Stormcaster shall smite us for harboring him!”
Gothi merely shook his gnarled walking branch irritably and gave the horseman an ugly look. “Thorfast Iogæirsson! If you had paid any attention to my lessons when you were a child you'd know that the Stormcaster’s own brother was the father of dragons! They felled the Lord of giants together! Have you no shame in taking his name in vain?”
The horseman, Thorfast, seemed to blush from embarrassment and indignation at that. “Rhörldir betrayed his brother for the skythrone!”
“And then Inir forgave him after humbling him in battle with his spear, and Rhörldir stood by his side ever since,” Gothi spoke, “Yes, some dragons may be wicked and cling to godly grudges, but this young dragon-kin,” he put emphasis on the word kin as if spawn was some kind of slur, “has humbly requested shelter, and even offered to compensate, and you, as Høbding, should be the first to honor the rules of hospitality. Do not shame your late father with your foolishness by being so brash and bigoted towards those who seek you no harm, especially when your father's very own thane himself was of the dragon-kin.”
The horseman, Thorfast, seemed enraged at first, but something about the elderly hunchback seemed to inject some sense in him, because he sighed with disgust and inserted his blade back into his scabbard. “Come, Dragon-kin,” he spoke, as if the words were being forced from him at gunpoint, “I shall find you the accommodations you seek, but he warned: disrupt my village in any way and I'll impale you on a spike in front of my home.”

I know this is a bit odd, but the weirdest thing happened to my husband today. We had a knock at the door, he answered it and an organisation calling themselves Battersea or something began promoting their charity, stating they have saved animals, etc.
I only caught bits of the conversation, but they then began asking what our pets names are, then asked if they could come in to see our pets (which I thought was extremely odd) and my husband looked back at me and I shook my head, absolutely not, we have no idea who these people are so there's no way I'm letting them inside our house. I've known this to be a tactic thieves and scammers use to see if there's anything valuable inside houses.
They then tried to get my husband to sign up to their organisation and he ended up on a page where it asked for his account number and sort code. Very, very strange.
This had to have been a cold calling scam or something, no? I've never heard of charities asking such weird questions like these.
Has anyone else in the UK experienced this?

Hey everyone,
First of all, sorry if my English isn’t perfect; it’s not my first language. I recently read a post that connected parentification with narcissism, which has made me question a lot about myself.
I don't have a diagnosis that I'm aware of yet. I was in therapy five years ago for two years. Unfortunately, my therapist back then switched to another institute, which ended our sessions. For the past year, I've been wondering if I might be a vulnerable narcissist. I'm in therapy again, but this therapist focuses more on the future than the past. Everyone tells me I'm not a narcissist, but I feel like they only know about grandiose narcissism. This thought haunts me, and I've been wondering if my former therapist was treating me for narcissism. Here are some reasons why I think she might have been:

• She told me I was parentified (my dad was murdered when I was two years old, leaving only my mom and me).
• I struggled to end my relationship with my ex-boyfriend because I was scared he wouldn’t get over it. She explained it as co-dependency but never actually said I was co-dependent.
• At the beginning, she often said I needed to be more of an egoist and that even if I felt like I had the biggest ego ever, I wouldn’t be one (I think she didn’t know me well enough back then).
• She wanted me to get emotionally distant from my mom.
• She worked a lot on me feeling worthy, like telling me to close my eyes and perceive a situation from a place of worthiness and to tell myself "I am worthy" whenever I was at a red light.
• She advised me not to fly to my boyfriend after he cheated on me.
• She said I have very high expectations of myself.
• Even though I was feeling pretty good, she offered me to go to a day clinic to gain better insight into myself and my past.

I guess these things might seem like the opposite of narcissism, but since I feel like I'm the vulnerable type, I think she might have been trying to treat it by helping me develop self-compassion, reducing inner conflicts with others, and maybe unconsciously acting less manipulative and comparing myself less.
I relate to almost everything I read in this forum, and I just read an article by @polyphonic_peanut about standing up for yourself, which raises my belief that I might be a narcissist. She also describes parentification, not knowing your own needs, and building your own fantasy world, and so on. I think these experiences can also lead to narcissistic behavior.
My concerns about narcissism started in my past relationship (not the one where I was afraid the guy would do something to himself if I ended things). I noticed a lot of my own toxic behaviors. I was extremely jealous, devalued everything he did and the people he liked (especially girls), had trouble expressing my needs and setting boundaries, so I tried to get my needs met in sneaky ways. I was controlling, moody, hot and cold, guilt-tripping, accusing him of gaslighting me even though I did it, picking fights, victimizing myself, and accusing him of having autism or ADHD because I couldn’t understand his behavior otherwise, silent treatment. I needed constant attention and got upset if he didn’t act as I expected. I even engaged in hovering, stalking, and other unhealthy behaviors.
Since then, I’m really questioning everything about myself, including every tear I cried in my life. Everyone things I am sensitive but I noticed that all my tears kind of go back to myself. For example a guy my age (27) in my small village died and I saw his parents 2 days after. I had to cry after I saw them but more because of the thought of how my parents would have felt if the suicide attempt one year ago would have worked… that’s self centeredness isn’t it?? Was it ever for someone else, or was it all for myself? On the outside I seem nice, but often I think poorly of people in my head.
I wonder if parentification can lead to developing a false self and narcissistic traits because you don’t know how to stand up for yourself and get your needs met in a healthy, adult way.
I’m also considering writing a message to the new institute where my previous therapist now works to ask her about me being a narcissist. I feel like she knew me well, and I was able to open up more to her back then.

I’ve known this girl for 10+ years she always liked me/had a crush on me, she tells me. I met her when she was 14 she told she left and went MIA because I was taken at the time and wanted to get over that crush. Then just last year she came back into my life I decided to message her and catch up. It went well. She’s really sweet and I fell for her so I confessed my feelings. She told me that the feeling was mutual but needed more friends than anything at this time in her life. Which I respected and told her I’m not trying to rush anything. She isn’t a big texter, she’s very closed off and was raised to deal with stuff on her own. She gets overwhelmed with life, work and likes to be alone at times. She’s also told me she tries not to push people away but the thought of talking to people drains her and then she feels terrible. I would go days without hearing from her. Which would hurt and sometimes make me angry but I understood that’s how she is.
As time goes on we end up talking everyday on Discord to just talk, watch shows/movies or play games together. Everything was going great. We ended up meeting IRL for a weekend which honestly was one of the best times of my life. Now physical touch is something she is not used to. Once I picked her up and came home she was very touchy and cuddled up to me and later that night we end up being intimate which we both don’t do unless were comfortable and feel something. After our time together she tells me she had a great time and I was sweet. I then asked her if we can be official and she said “not yet” which hurt because prior to our trip she would send me videos saying “us” and stuff like that basically leading me on. So I figured after being together IRL she would say yes but didn’t.
She goes back home things between us are still going great FaceTiming every night and spending time together. Then three weeks after the trip I ask her to play and she says “playing w my brother today sryyy” I said ok have fun come to find out it wasn’t her brother.. it was another guy. Now I know she has guy friends which she told me from the beginning. When I asked her who this guy was she said he is a friend of her brother and cousin and they’re always over his house and her brother plays on his account. Which I found out to be a lie because they aren’t friends on the game or even follow each other on socials. I told her about this and she got upset giving me the same story about who he is. So we’ve gone back and forth fighting about this. I bring up that she hasn’t gave me anytime. She says I’m trying to spend more time with friends and “my life doesn’t revolve around you and I have a lot on my plate rn” Time goes on and I finally ask “Is there something I need to be worried about you and this guy” she said “nope” then later that night she tells me she doesn’t want anything romantically with anyone right now and she can’t give any type of affection without it being forced. So I told her “I need to step back from this relationship/friendship for my own mental health. I wish you all the best” she then says “I understand, it’s still you that I want & will always only be you, it’s just not fair to you if I’m not in a place where I can give you everything” Which is crazy to me because she is giving this other guy all the time when she’s available. If I get anytime from her it’s an hour here and there or a FaceTime just to fall asleep when she can’t sleep.. We only talk when I try to tell her how I feel and she gaslights me then ends it with “It’s you I still want” Which I don’t believe only saying that to keep me on a string.
The last convo we had was me calling her out on her bs for playing with my head, manipulating me and saying how cruel and cold she was acting towards me and how this guy was her priority and I’m not stupid. She called me while at work saying she was shocked I said that and felt numb. I never disrespected her or called her names, I just said my peace. After the call she said “just don’t message me anymore” last I said was “Funny, You really don’t “have time for anyone” But when I called you on your bullshit you had no problem picking up your phone to call me while at work.” She then blocked me on everything. Not sure if my number is blocked cause I haven’t reached out.
I genuinely think love this girl and Idk what to do. Will she reach out to me? Will she unblock me? Or is this done and a lost cause? I’ve been so understanding of her but she never understands me.
Is this love or am I being played?
TLDR: Girl I was talking to and getting close with went stopped giving me time and went distant. We did things only couples normally do. I found out she been talking to another guy and which she lied about. Then I called her out and now she blocked me on everything.

My mind raced as I stood before the door of the mental institution. I couldn't believe I was actually going balls-deep all because of a post on some random horror forum. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and opened the door, surprised by the lack of resistance from it.
I slowly approached the counter. The receptionist’s eyes were sunken, clearly exhausted after a long day of work. I steeled myself and said, "I wish to visit someone who calls himself 'The Holder of the End'." Her face lost all color, an expression of pure childlike terror washing over her features. She took out a key from a drawer and led me down a dimly lit hallway.
As the receptionist walked me down the hallway, I heard the sound of someone talking to themselves in a language I couldn't make heads or tails of, but something about it filled the depths of my soul with a kind of fear I couldn't describe if I even tried.
Suddenly, the talking stopped, and my blood froze in its veins, but then I remembered the instructions. I stopped on the spot and quickly stammered out, "I'm just passing through, I wish to talk." There were a few moments of silence, after which the voice started talking again. I breathed a sigh of relief and continued on, my heart still hammering in my chest.
After what seemed like an eternity, I arrived at a solid metal door. The receptionist fled and left me on my own to face the horror that awaited me. I opened the door and entered a cold, windowless room with only a single man sat hunched in the corner, muttering to himself in that same unknown language.
I closed the distance between myself and the man, steeled myself once more and asked, "What happens when they all come together?"
The man slowly turned around and stared into my eyes, his gaze piercing me like darts. He began to speak, and out of his mouth came excruciatingly detailed, vivid descriptions of horrors I had once thought to be unimaginable; incomprehensible. With every word the man uttered, I could feel my mind teetering on the brink of insanity, but I urged myself to stay focused. The man held an object in his hands, and I wanted so desperately to look at it, but I didn’t dare avert my eyes from his gaze, knowing that to even so much as steal a glance at the object would lead to a gruesome, cruel death of horror unrelenting and thousands of times more painful than I could ever hope to imagine.
Just as I thought my mind was about to break, the man stopped talking, but continued to stare at me with that razor-sharp gaze. Somehow, however, I knew that it was finally safe to turn around. So I did. I turned and ran through the door, and practically sprinted back up that hallway as fast as my legs would take me. I wanted to get out of that horrible place and back to my reality.
The hallway seemed never-ending, but my efforts were soon rewarded by the exit. I ran past the receptionist’s desk, out the door I first entered… and breathed. The fresh air had never tasted so sweet, but even still, I knew that my journey was far from over.
I wasn’t sure whether the horrors that man spoke to me, or his piercing gaze, would ever leave my mind, but there was one thing I knew for certain. That object the man held, the object I didn’t dare to look at, was only one of 538. It was my duty to ensure that they would never come together. Never.

The stress of the last six months has nearly killed me. Besides the general cratering of the outside world—political strife, climate change, inflated rents, corporate greed, and the baffling resurgence of crew socks—my internal life was falling apart, too. I'm at the point where I can't see a way out of the darkness, and that feeling has only grown in the last few days.
My struggles ramped up exponentially in the last two weeks. It started when my long-term girlfriend and I called it quits after five years. There was no definitive relationship-altering fight or infidelity. It was simply the boring banality of the "roommate-ification" of our lives together. We both felt the shift but never talked about it. Turns out communication is important.
Truthfully, we'd stayed together for so long because we couldn't afford to live apart. Our rent had nearly doubled the last time we re-upped our lease but even that was a bargain compared to what was out there currently. We were trapped by our need to have a roof over our heads.
My job had stagnated, and I couldn't find anything better. I was stuck. Like me, she'd been job hunting as well. Unlike me, she had a master's, and her prospects should've been higher. They weren't. For five months, she applied to hundreds of jobs and couldn't break through. If she got a rejection email, it was a win. Most of the time, the companies never responded.
Finally, she found a great opportunity at a Fortune 500 company. It was an involved process. She nailed the five interviews, and her "test project" was well received. She was offered the position, and it came with a massive pay increase—double her current salary. I was proud of her—she needed a win. We celebrated with pizza and beer that night.
Two days later, she dropped the bomb that she was breaking things off. The relationship ending wasn't a surprise. The timing was. The discussion was brief, and there was zero chance of reconciliation. She declined when I asked if she could stay until the lease ended. Mentally, it would've been too much for her. Two days after that, she moved out, taking half the rent with her. I was stuck in a lease I couldn't afford on my salary for the next six months.
My free time evaporated as I took on two extra gigs to help make ends meet. In addition to my office nine to five, I drove for a delivery app on the weekends and took a part-time night job stocking shelves at a local grocery store. When I wasn't hustling for housing, I slept or ate. I did nothing beyond that. Nothing brings me joy. There is no spark.
This drudgery has become my daily routine, and it's killing me.
To help cover some cost gaps, I've started selling off some of my stuff online. It was just me here, and I decided that the Spartan lifestyle would have to work for now. Anything I could fetch a decent amount for went up for sale. My apartment is so empty now every noise causes an echo.
Before my shift at the grocery store, I agreed to meet someone who wanted to take a look at my kitchen table. It was a lovely table – my ex had obsessed over it – but I didn't see a need at the moment. Now that I was a bachelor, my TV trays became my default kitchen tables anyway. I wasn't planning on any dinner parties in the future anyway.
A couple showed up later than they said they would. It was a bored-looking guy and a fastidious young woman. She made friendly small talk as she looked over the table. Her boyfriend (I think) stayed quiet and played bodyguard. I gave him a friendly nod at one point, and he just looked away. She said they'd take it without trying to talk me down. I took the small win.
She asked if I could help carry it down to their truck. I was running late, but feeling helpful, even for a fleeting few seconds, was worth it. Her silent boyfriend and I hauled the table through the hallway and even managed to avoid hitting the walls the entire way down.
I placed it in their truck, got my money, and turned to leave. The girl said thanks, and the boyfriend finally returned the nod. I gave a weird half-wave to them both and started to walk away when I heard the passenger window being rolled down.
"Hey man," the boyfriend said, his voice higher pitched than I thought it would. "What was up with your brother giving us the evil eye in the lobby when we got here?"
I turned around, "Huh? I don't have a brother."
"A cousin then?"
"My family lives about a thousand miles away. What happened in the lobby?"
"A dude that looked just like you was hiding in a dark hallway in the lobby and staring at my girl's ass."
"Jacob, really," she said.
"I'm sorry that happened, but I had nothing to do with it. We do have the occasional homeless guy meander in. Maybe you saw one of them," I said. "Did he say or do anything bad?"
"Jacob, I asked you to not say something," the girl said, burying her head in her hands.
Jacob's frosty attitude to me made sense now. "He said something about running up that ass. I dunno, he was mumbling. I told him I'd beat his ass if he didn't stop staring. Seemed to shut him up."
"Oh. Well, congrats," I said. "I'll tell the manager. Thanks for letting me know."
"You should do a better job keeping jokers like that out of the building."
"Jacob, he's not a security guard."
"He should still be a man and protect his home."
"Have a good night," I said, ending the conversation and heading back up to my apartment. I had about five minutes to change and head out before I'd be late. Last thing my ego needed was to be fired from my backup job.
Thankfully, I was able to slip into work and not get spotted by my boss. That was the last of the good news, though. We had a massive weekly order come in, which meant I'd be there late, plus someone had called out. Worse, our hand truck had a flat tire, and I spent the next few hours torturing my muscles, schlepping heavy boxes around the store. I soldiered on, counting down the minutes until I left and fantasizing about going to bed for the night.
If wishing for sleep wasn't a sad statement to my mental well-being, nothing was.
I came home after my shift at the grocery store and plopped down on the couch. I had contemplated selling it, but it was an older Ikea number, and I didn't think the value would replace my desire to sit. I could feel my body sink into the cushions, and the day's tension seep out. I was beat and tired to the point that turning on the TV was a chore.
I picked up my phone and thought I'd doomscroll until sleep overtook me. I didn't expect it to be a long scroll, as even the methadone that is my phone has failed me lately. As I lowered myself from a slumped position to a supine one, I heard footsteps outside my apartment door. This was not unusual, but the noise I heard sounded like kid footsteps. That was unusual, as nobody on our floor had kids, and it was almost midnight.
Despite my body screaming at me to not move, my brain suggested I check it out. I rolled myself off the couch and eventually stood up. I listened again and heard the kid running down the hallway. I walked over to my door and looked out the peephole. I didn't see anyone.
"Maybe I'm dreaming," I said to myself. "Maybe I'm not staring out a peephole, expecting to see a kid running down the hall at midnight, but instead, I'm cuddled up in my bed, snoozing." I pinched my arm and felt the pain. I was definitely in the waking world.
I turned to head back to the couch when I heard the running again, this time louder. I opened my door and peeked out into the hallway. Nobody was there. The door from the apartment across me opened up, too. Gloria, a young at heart grandma who was friendly/constantly buzzed in a wine mom kind of way, gave me a once over.
"You heard that, too?" she asked.
"Kids?"
"No rugrats around. I assumed it was some drunk assholes stumbling home from the bar."
I laughed. Gloria was, as always, blunt. "I didn't see any assholes," I said.
"Then you're not watching the right kind of internet videos," she said with a wink and a hoarse cackle.
I blushed. How do you respond to that? I just kind of nodded in agreement and shrugged.
"Gotta get your jollies while you can," she said before adding, "You need some rest, dear. You look like hammered shit." She shut her door and went back inside.
She was right. I felt like hammered shit. Since I wasn't going to solve the case of the mysterious runner and was sure it wasn't some lost kid, I decided to call it a night. I went back inside, shut down the apartment, and crawled into bed.
I thought about watching one of the "right kind of internet videos" but fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
***
"Your problem is you think the world owes you something."
John, my elderly coworker at the grocery store, was standing by while I unloaded a pallet of cereal. I liked John, and when I first started, we instantly clicked. He's quick with a joke and fun to talk to. He's also about thirty years older than me and speaks with the Boomer combination of accumulated wisdom, backhanded compliments, and fringe conspiracy nonsense. Still, regardless of how couched the kindness is in gobbledygook, he's usually coming from a good place.
"What?" I said, putting a box of Captain Crunch on the shelf.
"You're complaining about your situation, right? Saying it ain't fair. The world took a paddle to your hind quarters? Hey brother, that's the way the cookie crumbles. Gotta just pick yourself up and start over. You're smart enough – figured this job out right quick – you can do it."
The job was wheeling pallets around the store and stocking shelves. It wasn't much to figure out, but I understood his meaning. The other stuff wasn't necessary, though. "I'm just in a funk. I don't see a way forward."
"Hey, so you've bottomed out. No shame in that. Happens to us all. Silver lining, you can only go up," he said before adding, "Unless some other bad shit happens to you like your car dies or your apartment building burns down. But after that, it's only up."
"The apartment building burning down would be a blessing," I said, hoisting another little Captain on the shelf. "The rent is killing me."
"Have you tried negotiating a lower rent? They used to do that when I was your age."
"I think they'd evict me if I even asked."
"Hell, then you'd have at least thirty days, maybe forty, before they'd kick you out. Plenty of time to turn things around."
"Uh-huh," I said, "Any chance you could give me a hand here?"
"My back is screaming like a pretty young thing after prom," he said, holding his back for emphasis.
I didn't push. "Hey, I meant to tell you about some weird shit that happened the other night."
"Lay it on me. I love the strange."
"So, after my shift the other day, I got home around midnight and was flopped on the couch. I heard someone running down the hallway outside my apartment. I wasn't the only one. A few other neighbors heard it, too. When we checked, though, nobody was there."
"That ain't strange," John said, waving his hand, "that's a man who's plowing another man's wife running for his life."
I laughed. "That's not the weird part. So, for the next two nights, it's the same thing. Around midnight, someone runs down the hallway. Only this time, they're trying the door handles as they pass. So, I asked the front desk to check the security cameras, and they do."
"They see a man running away holding his clothes?"
"There wasn't anyone running down the hall," I said, "But the weird thing was, you could see the door handles turning on the video."
"Damn, that's a good one," John said, "You sure it wasn't just a camera glitch. These new ones from overseas aren't as reliable as they want you to think. Chinese probably using them to spy on you, too."
He continued as my brain tried to reconcile John's two opposing comments. "Weird shit happens at night, man. Before working here, I only worked the day shift. Even when they offered me more money to work nights, I turned it down. Even when they promised me a promotion, I turned them down."
In a previous life, John had worked as a paramedic. He came by it after serving in a medical unit in the army. He'd told me he loved the rush of the job, but after a while, the death and hurt in people's eyes got to be too much to handle. But he worked there for almost twenty years. So, the man had a tolerance for shenanigans and odd occurrences.
"Why'd you agree to work nights here?"
"Shit, we're home before the witching hour. This is like late afternoons, at best. But if it was overnights, hell no. Captain Crunch can anchor his own ship to the shelves. I'd take my ass to 7-11 for a day shift before agreeing to work an overnight."
"Something happen to you during the army?”
“I got the clap,” he offered.
I sighed. “What turned you off nights?"
"Oh. I heard enough stories from coworkers to know I didn't want to experience any of that hoo-doo shit," he said, "trying to save someone's life is hard enough without adding in demon kids and ghosts."
"Did your coworkers see demon kids?" I asked, moving on from the good Captain to the Trix rabbit.
He nodded, "They saw too much. I find it odd, even with all the surveillance we have now and all the science we know about these days, that the night still scares us. You ever know someone who worked a night shift?"
I had. My ex. During college, she worked the overnight desk at a hotel for a while. She quit because the job gave her bad vibes. I told John as much.
He pointed and laughed, "See! Don't you find it odd that every person who works at night always has a story of something eerie happening to them? Every person, buster. That's what they call an irrefutable fact."
"Maybe the ghost running down the hallway is an old employee still doing his rounds."
"In that case, keep that door double locked. I'd even wedge a towel under the door just in case."
"Maybe they're friendly? Casper-like in that way."
"You ever heard someone tell you about a friendly ghost outside the funny papers?"
"I'm sure it happens," I said, "The scary ghosts are more popular though."
“We think we know everything there is to know but we are just babes in the woods when it comes to night things.” John shook his head. "Imma tell you one or three things that happened to a guy I worked with back when I first got hired on to chase after corpses in the ambo. Guy's name was Gil. Quiet man, kept to himself. Didn't rock the boat or demand a bigger paddle. Just rowed with us. Good cat to learn under," John said, finally handing me a cereal box.
I took it, and he kept going, "Now, Gil, ya see, he had a little wifey that would pester him about working days. She was a cop and worked evenings at that time, so they never saw each other. When married people can't align their genitals every now and then, it spells doom."
"A little too much information but sure," I said, shelving another box of Trix.
"Probably part of what happened with you and yours," he said. He wasn't wrong, but that didn't mean I wanted to hear it.
John kept on, "Gil finally got approved to move to nights. Little pay boost and a happy, 'fulfilled' wife should've made that man happy. But it didn't. I saw him a few months later, and he had changed. He might've been quiet when he was working with me, but he'd talk to you if you engaged. When I saw him that time, though, oh boy. He looked sick."
"Wasn't a fan of working nights?"
"Wasn't a fan of living anymore is the feeling I got," John said, "After some prodding, he got to talking with me some. Told me he missed days because the nights were messing with him. I thought it had to do with the schedule change, but that wasn't the case. He said he saw things in the dark he couldn't explain. Things that would turn James Brown into James White, ya dig?"
"I...dig," I said.
"Told me they got a call to an abandoned apartment building one night, around three in the morning. Wasn't unusual. Old buildings in the city are where hop-heads congregate and share drugs. Sometimes, the drugs are too much. Sometimes, they find a person passed out or, worse, dead. When you work in the ambo, you aren't scared of death like a civilian. You've been around it. Probably seen a few folks take their last breaths. It doesn't bother you the way Mother Nature intended it should."
He handed me another box, continuing his assist streak, and kept going, "Ambo pulled up, Gil stepped out and looked for someone to talk to. Nobody there, though. Not uncommon. Some people want to help but not be involved. There's not a soul around. He calls out, but nothing comes back. Tells me he turns to get back in the ambulance when he hears a scream from inside the run-down building. They're calling for help. He's gotta go in the abandoned building in the dark."
"No thanks," I said.
"But it don't bother a medic like that. Gil's done a million of these calls. No big deal. He runs into that building but doesn't come back out until twenty minutes later. Just goes missing. After five, the crew heads in to back him up but can't find him. Gil tells me his crew called the cops. It was like he had vanished."
"What happened?"
"I asked him and he got real quiet. Said he fell into some place that looked like here but wasn't here. Said he felt their eyes on him. Judging him. Told me they followed him home and wouldn't leave him be."
"Who?"
John shrugged, "He didn't say. Shut down after that and left. Just walked past me like I was shit on the sidewalk. He quit about a week later. Heard he had a stroke a year later and was a tombstone owner three months after that. Good guy, though."
"Your aversion to overnights makes a little more sense."
"Never in a million years. You don't want something like that coming after you."
"In my case, could it get much worse?" I said with a half-smile.
"Man, I wouldn't even joke about that," he said, making the sign of the cross, "You don't want that shit attachin' itself to you. With your luck, you'd bring him in here, and it'd hop over to me. I can't have a ghost crimping my style."
After a bit, he got called away to sign off on a delivery. I finished out my shift and headed out to the parking lot. When I exited the building and spotted my car, I froze. My doors were all open, and the interior lights were on. Someone had broken in.
I glanced around the lot to see if the thief was still around, but there wasn't another person near me. I walked over to the car and peered inside. My glovebox had been ripped open, and my registration was pulled out, but nothing else was missing.
I found little hand prints in the dirt all along the body and the windows. I held mine up for comparison, and they were about half the size. It must've been some tweens or teens who did this. Maybe they were going to steal some things and got cold feet. I contemplated calling the cops, but since nothing had happened and they wouldn't do anything anyway, there was no reason to delay sleep any longer than I had to. I closed all the doors and climbed inside.
I started the car and heard something rattling in the AC vents. I pulled out my phone and shined the light at the vent. There was a small piece of paper inside. I looked around my car for some tool to pull it out and only found an ink pen and a bent-up paperclip. After McGuyvering the vent for a bit, the paper finally came out.
I held it up and unfolded it. There was a handwritten note. It simply read, "I know you're here. I know you're hiding him. I will find you both, and then it'll be your turn to run the race. We all have to run at some point."
I had no idea what that meant, but my body still provided goosebumps. Who was trying to find me? Who was the second person? Why leave a note in my AC vent? What the hell did run the race mean? I hadn't run a race since elementary school and wasn't planning to do so any time soon. Did they mean the rat race? Because I was basically marathoning that motherfucker already.
"Jesus Christ," I said, shaking my head. "What else, universe?"
As if it were a well-practiced comedy routine, the universe responded. My back passenger door swung open, and I heard footsteps running away from my car. I sprung up and scrambled to get out. There wasn't anyone else in the lot that I could see, but very clearly, someone had been hiding in my backseat.
My nerves were shot already, and this was not something I wanted to deal with at the moment. My brain decided that to avoid a breakdown, I needed to shift into automatic mode and just get back to the safety of my apartment. I'd be more prepared to deal with this – whatever it was – in the morning.
Either that or I'd jump in front of a bus. Both sounded satisfying, albeit in different ways.
***
"There he is," Gloria said as soon as I turned down the hallway. I looked up and noticed a small cabal of my neighbors standing in a semi-circle, waiting for me. They all look displeased.
"Hey guys," I said, confused. "I miss an invite for a block party?"
"What do you have to say for yourself?"
"About?"
"Don't play dumb," another neighbor said, jabbing their finger in my direction.
"I'm not playing," I said, realizing the self-burn only after the words escaped my lips.
Gloria showed me the screen on her phone. It was a static shot of her door from across the hall. She pressed play, and nothing happened for a beat until something darted across the screen. That was the whole thing. I looked up at her, my face twisted up in confusion.
"Well," she said, "What do you have to say?"
"What was that?" I asked.
"That was you!" the pointing neighbor said, pointing harder than I thought possible.
"What?" I said, laughing. "Are you all serious?" They didn't laugh, and I realized they weren't joking. "How can you even tell it's me? It's a blur. Never mind the fact I've been at work for the last five hours. Plus, this blur is half my size. I get we're all weirded out about the Phantom Runner, but it's not me. I swear to God. I don't even have the energy to think about running, let alone the physical desire to."
"Then explain this," Gloria said, slightly swaying from the half bottle of Pinot Noir coursing through her blood. She rewound the video and froze it on a specific frame. I couldn't believe my eyes, but I was looking at...me. Or, rather, something pretending to be me.
"What the fuck?" I said, my jaw dropping.
"Still think we're lying?" the pointer said smugly.
"No, but, guys, this isn't me. I... I've been at work. Wanna see my schedule?"
I reached into my phone and pulled it out. There was an email with my work schedule that confirmed what I was saying. They relaxed, and, for the first time, anger gave way to fear. Their very plausible explanation was suddenly invalid. It left two implausible answers floating in the ether: either I had a pint-sized doppelganger terrorizing the hallways of my apartment, or a ghost was haunting the building.
"I'm...gonna go inside," the pointer said, walking back to their home. Everyone else drifted away until it was just Gloria and I standing alone in the hallway.
She looked at me and sighed, "I feel like an asshole," she said. "Sorry I accused you of causing the racket."
"If I had seen the video, I would've thought the same thing," I said. "We're good."
"What do you think it is?" she asked.
I shrugged and let out an exhausted sigh. "Honestly, Gloria, I've had a screwed-up night already, and this is the cherry on top of the shit sundae; forgive my language. I don't have the mental bandwidth to even comprehend what's on the video at the moment."
"Think it's after you?" she asked, though I suspected the wine had forced her to put that idea out into the universe. As I had already seen, the universe seemed to take requests on my behalf.
"Maybe it's after you?" I said, coming off a little meaner than I intended, but I didn't care. I left her there to contemplate that scenario and went into my apartment.
As soon as the door shut behind me, I felt on edge. Just because I didn't have the mental bandwidth to discuss the doppelganger didn't mean it wasn't dominating my thoughts. I saw the frame of the video. The damn ghost looked exactly like me. What could that possibly mean? I know I had wished for death, but I was very still alive. I had rent due to prove that.
Did I happen to live in a place haunted by a ghost that looked strikingly like me? Was it some kid with a passing resemblance just causing chaos? Was it something else I couldn't even comprehend – an alien? A clone? A secret government project?
There was a thumping coming from the hallway. The mini Usain Bolt was at it again. I knew the neighbors would ignore it. Since they had all thought it was me, which was proven to be untrue, they would avoid the running man from now on. While curious and confused by the creature, they'd never put themselves in harm's way to discover what it was. They were not a brave lot.
Neither was I, but maybe my life crumbling around me had forced my hand. I walked over to my door and swung it open. I hit record on my phone, stuck it out like a periscope, and glanced around the hallway. Nobody was there. No neighbors were looking. No person was running.
"You gotta stop, man. I need to go to sleep," I said to the empty space. No response, not that I was expecting one.
I turned to walk back in, and I caught something out of the corner of my eye. A face at the end of the hallway peeked around the corner. For a quick second, we locked eyes, and it was like I was looking into a mirror. This thing was me. But...how?
I tried to get it on video, but it ducked back into the shadows. I took that as a cue to shut and lock my door. My heart was racing, and I didn't want to think about this anymore, but I couldn't help it. There was a me in the hallway who enjoyed pestering my neighbors. Worse, they liked to run for some ungodly reason.
I put my phone on the counter, the video still rolling, when there was a knock at my door. It echoed in my near-empty apartment. I tried to ignore it and convince myself it was something else, but it wasn't. The ghost was knocking on my door. Even with my brain paralyzed, I couldn't help but think that it was awfully polite to knock.
Another knock, this one more forceful. I wondered if the neighbors thought I was making this up?
"I know you're in there," a voice said. It sounded just like me. "This is about the race. We all have to run the race. It's your turn now."
I froze. My legs went wobbly like a boxer on the brink of a blackout, but I stayed tall. I opened my mouth to speak and found the words dying in my throat. I grabbed a nearby bottle of water and took a chug.
"We all have to run the race."
"What race?" I choked out, "What are you talking about?"
"Open up. They're in there already, and I need to get them."
I glanced all around my empty apartment. I didn't see anyone else in here. I didn't hear anything. Whatever this thing was, it was lying. I grabbed my phone and held it in my hand. I wanted to document this to prove that I wasn't crazy.
“Did you leave the note?”
“I know they’re in there with you,” it repeated.
"There's no one in here," I said.
"They're hiding. I think I know where. I can hear them."
"You've gotta get out of here," I said. "There's nothing here, and you're scaring people."
"I'm scared, and you should be! You have to run the race, man! Open up, and I can show you."
The handle started to shake. I peered through the keyhole and only saw the top of the other me's head. They began to shoulder the door, and it crunched against my nose. I screamed out in pain and stumbled back. I tripped over my feet and landed hard on my ass.
The thing slammed into the door two more times, shaking the walls. The strength seemed unnatural. On the third hit, the door burst open. I finally got a view of the thing. It was me. Scaled down by half, but it was me. We both seemed shocked.
"You're so much taller up close," the other me said.
"Who the fuck are you?"
I felt a buzzing in my feet that seemed to climb up my body until it reached my brain. There was an intense pain that rippled through the folds of my mind. Through the pain, I could hear a disembodied voice whisper, "We all must run the race. We all have to run. Chase it. Chase yourself." It felt like my skull was going to split in two. I clutched the sides of my head and let out a primal scream that hurt my own ears.
Then it was gone. But I could still feel the echoes in my mind. "We all have to run the race. We all have to run." The thought would waver between making no sense and making complete sense. One second, I was questioning what was happening to my mind, and the next, all I felt was the desire to continue the race.
"There he is!" the other me yelled, pointing at the hallway.
I glanced over and saw another version of me standing in the hallway. It was half the size of the other me that had broken into my place. When tiny me locked eyes with my intruder, he ran for the open hallway closet.
The other me followed, screaming that it would catch the little bastard if it was the last thing he'd do. I pushed myself up to my feet and felt queasy. I watched as the other me ran head-first into the closet without slowing. I expected to hear a loud thump as it hit the back wall but none came.
"We all have to run the race," the voice in my head said, soothing my nerves. "It's your time to run the race."
I moved down the hallway, each footfall echoing loudly in the empty apartment, each step bringing me closer to the closet door. Something was drawing me there. The voice's words echoed in my mind as well: "We all have to run the race. It's your turn now."
I grabbed the door and stopped. Something was compelling me to move forward. To go into the closet. To chase myself. To run the race.
"No," I whispered and yanked my hand from the door. I pulled out my still recording phone, and stared into the camera. My face was devoid of color, and you could see the fear etched into me. "I'm freaking out because...because…"
I stopped. I felt an invisible hand grab my body and tug. "Because...because if I don't run the race, something bad will happen. I have to chase it. I...I have to."
My phone dropped from my hand, and I didn’t care. The force pulling me forward stopped but my body kept going. I could feel the last strands of my rational mind splintering. My thoughts became focused on one thing: I had to catch myself, find out what was happening, and run the race. If I ran, maybe I'd win.
I needed a win.
I walked into the back of the closet and felt a door handle sticking out of the wall. I'd been in that closet a million times before and never had seen this. But a sense of calm washed over me. This….this was supposed to be here. This was perfectly fine.
I turned the handle and pulled open the invisible door. In front of me was a hallway that looked strikingly like the one outside my apartment. At the end of the hallway, I saw Gloria step out of their home to leave for the night. She was huge. Twice my size, easy.
Another door opened, and I saw...me—a giant version of me. The Hulk version of me was getting ready to go to the grocery store for work. I watched as the giant Gloria and giant me joked and laughed. I was stunned.
I stared, and a new thought came to me. I have to find the smaller me and talk to it. I needed to find out if there's a way out of this...this….
"It's your turn to run," the voice said.
Calm embraced me. "It's my turn to run," I repeated. As the giant me took off and the giant Gloria re-entered her apartment, the hallway beckoned.
"We all have to run the race," I said softly, "It's my turn now."
I started running.

Hello!
So, I decided to make a part 2 because my original post ended up being more theory based and stuff, which resulted in it getting to be to similar to F2. I really did not like the story I came up with, especially the ending with Arendelle and Northuldra combining, and Anna and Elsa being representatives of one of the people each. I mean, if you really think about it, how was that even supposed to work at all? How were to completely different people supposed to even coexist in the same town. One was pretty modern, while the other people lived in tents and took care of animals all day.
Anyways, I did have more ideas that did not fit in before because I was trying to figure out what the creators were going for, so here they are. Plus! I also thought of my own Frozen 2 story idea I would love to share!
First Idea! Elsa and her learning not to shut the door!
Now, we all know this is pointless. She learned the lesson in Frozen, and OFA showed she was getting better. I do think there is potential of a sequel fully tackling this bad habit of Elsa's and finally showing she has gotten over it, but it has to be done in a way that does not set her character back to zero. I think maybe having her slip up near the end, which results in something bad happening is a good idea instead. Another thing that needs to happen is that Elsa has to work to make things right afterwards. It cannot be another, "Elsa makes a mistake by pushing Anna away, resulting in something bad happening and Anna having to fix it", kind of story. No, have Elsa see she made a mistake and try to fix it herself. This way it is actually clear that she has learned her lesson. Just like she tried to do in OFA.
Another thing I noticed with Elsa and her habit of pushing people away, is how Anna responds to it. In OFA when Elsa once again slams the door in Anna's face, Anna does not push it. Instead Anna leaves and tries to solve the problem herself by going up to the attic and try and find a tradition for Elsa and her.
I know we all focus on how Elsa tries to do everything herself, but I think Anna has the same problem, just in a different way. She wants to do things together but as soon as she meets resistance or is denied, Anna then just goes at it alone. I am picturing Elsa's coronation where Anna tries to get Elsa to say why the gates cannot just stay open, but Elsa jerks away and shouts it just can't, and Anna leaves. Anna has been rejected all her life, so it makes sense if even know that Elsa has opened up, Anna is still afraid of pushing things to far, just like she ended up doing at the end of Elsa's coronation which resulted in Elsa's powers getting revealed.
Another thing about Elsa and pushing everyone away, it is not just that she tries to do things herself, but also that she just gives up. If something feels hopeless to Elsa, she shuts down. But nothing ever seems hopeless to Anna, so she ends up foolhardily trying to solve it by herself.
So, when it comes to the story, I am imagining Anna and Elsa go on an adventure, but as the movie goes on, Elsa loses more and more faith until she finally gives up. Anna argues with her that they are almost there, but Elsa says enough and walks away. Anna becomes determined and sets out by herself but quickly is in danger. Elsa learns about this and realizes it is because of what she had done, not only giving up, but also not even trying to explain her reasoning to Anna as well. Elsa rushes and she saves Anna. She apologizes to Anna and tells her that she can rely on her more now. Anna in turn also apologizes for rushing into things to much.
And now for my second idea, which has to do with Olaf and Kristoff!
So, in OFA, Olaf, blow up Kristoff's sled. So that means Kristoff is currently unable to do his job. For Kristoff's story, I think he should be working to try and pay for a new sled. Anna tries to insist on paying for a new one, but Kristoff refuses. He does not just want to live off of Anna and Elsa's wealth, and he takes pride in the hard work he does as an ice harvester. So Kristoff gets a job. This I think is a much better thing for Kristoff to do, instead of just trying to propose.
As for Olaf, he has a character ark about responsibility. He feels bad about destroying Kristoff's sled and tries to get a job himself. And he also ends up being the one who tells Elsa that Anna went out on her own. Anna had asked him for help, and then told him not to tell Elsa, which resulted in making Olaf feel torn. On one hand, Anna had asked him not to tell, so he does not want to betray her trust. But on the other hand, he knows that Elsa should be told that Anna ran away. In the end, he realizes it is his responsibility to make sure everyone is safe, and Anna clearly is not safe, so he goes to tell Elsa.
Well that is all the ideas I had, based off of what is set up in OFA.
I do think a sequel should tackle more about Anna and Elsa's traumatic childhood so they can become closer, and that dealing with how their parents raised them is probably the best next option. And I think Anna and Elsa would want to somehow become closer with their subjects.
As for my rewrite idea. I am going to create another post that is dedicated just to it. It is going to be an outline of the story. I have a beginning and a really great ending, with some ideas for the middle, including song suggestions. So look forward to it. Plus, it has nothing to do with F2!
Her is a little bit about what it is going to be about. So, has anyone else been getting all of those North Sea short videos on YouTube or Tick Tock? Showing all those big ships and all the large and dangerous waves? I was watching them, and briefly remembered that Elsa also crossed a sea. That sea was called the Dark Sea, and it was nothing compared to what was being shown of the North Sea. I mean, there were video's of whorl pools, and tornados, humongous waves, and even lightning striking the water. Not to mention the sea is supposed to be very foggy as well. I saw one video where it was just a huge wall of fog, and a ship slowly sailing and disappearing into it. I don't know if that was real or CGI, but it looked so threatening and cool!
So! for my Frozen 2 story, Anna and Elsa are going on a high waters adventure! And what are they doing? They are searching for their parents lost ship!
I think being on a ship surrounded by dangerous waters, would actually keep everyone on an even playing field. Elsa knows she cannot use her powers carelessly, or she might end up damaging the ship. For instance, if a giant wave came crashing towards the ship, Elsa cannot just freeze it, because then it would be like a giant iceberg hitting the ship instead of just water. And even if the ship sank and she froze the entire ocean, then what? She would be stranded in the middle of the ocean and would have to walk to land, which would be miles and miles away.
Kristoff would probably be a big help to the crew. He is big and really strong, not to mention is used to cold weather and risking his life for his job, so he adjusts to being on a ship really quickly.
And Anna has been shown to be really nimble and can climb anything, so she ends up helping a lot as well.
The main conflict is going to be with the ships captain. He feels like the journey is pointless as there is no guaranty they can even find Agnarr and Iduna's ship. Plus he has sailed these seas for years and knows how dangerous they are, so taking the queen and princess on this journey is something he really does not want to do. He is constantly butting heads with Elsa, especially in authority, because even if she is queen, this is his ship and his crew. Elsa in turn is also struggling with her confidence in this journey. She starts of strong and really wanting to find her parents ship, but as the waters become more dangerous, Elsa's hope of reaching the end dwindles as well. Anna on the other hand truly believes they will find their parents ship. And finally, Kristoff, who has gotten a job on this ship is trying to keep the peace. He knows how much this journey means to Anna and Elsa, but he also does not want them to get hurt, and he also does not want to lose the job he finally managed to get.
Well, that is all I will say. What do you think? What should I call it? Definitely not Frozen 2. I was thinking Journey of the Frozen Sea, or The Frozen North Sea.

Hey Im the founder of a new startup that let's stripe business owners ditch the Stripe post-payment invoicing fee and reduce their invoicing customer support. I've already settled who my target audience is; that being Stripe business owners who sell one time purchases obviously. However, I've been banging my head against the wall wondering the best way to find my target audience out in the wild since it's still pretty broad range.
I've considered just focusing on cold outreach and then using any money I generate from my saas on paid ads. Is that a decent approach? I've heard of doing content marketing but since my tool is so simple I'd run out of content pretty quickly.
If your were in my position, knowing who your ideal audience is, what would be your first step?

Hey Im the founder of a new startup that let's stripe business owners ditch the Stripe post-payment invoicing fee and reduce their invoicing customer support. I've already settled who my target audience is; that being Stripe business owners who sell one time purchases obviously. However, I've been banging my head against the wall wondering the best way to find my target audience out in the wild since it's still pretty broad range.
I've considered just focusing on cold outreach and then using any money I generate from my saas on paid ads. Is that a decent approach? I've heard of doing content marketing but since my tool is so simple I'd run out of content pretty quickly.
If your were in my position, knowing who your ideal audience is, what would be your first step?

He is a friend… He’s kind. He’s respectful. He is gentle. He’s soft with his words. He makes me feel safe and warm. He likes to have fun. He likes to travel. He loves his parents. He loves his family. I think he’s everything I want in someone. Minus the quiet and shy part but he’s definitely opening up in a fun and exciting way.. I met him through my sister and BIL. And we have been friends for 2 years now. They had originally wanted to introduce me to this guy but I said I wasn’t interested in getting to know anyone and from what they told me I had a hunch he would be someone who liked really pretty skinny slim petite girls. I wasn’t that. So they just introduced me to their whole friend group and we all just became friends. Our friends would casually joke about us being together when we all hung out as a group. Or if both of us were busy and couldn’t hang out with them at the same time they’d joke that we were secretly on a date etc. He never said much and just took it. I would brush it off as well not much thinking much of it since we were the only two singles ones… but There were times when I couldn’t tell if he was just being nice or if it was him showing me signs. But the more we all hung out the more I got to see what kind of person he was. I remember admitting to my BIL that I was kind of interested in getting to know him more now but I was really drunk when we had that convo and never brought it up again when I was sober cause I was embarrassed. He was supportive though and said I was a really good person and he thought we matched really well. The first time I admitted to myself that I probably really liked him, I was really hurt. i never confessed to him or anything like that but i just came to a realization… It took me so many years to finally love myself and appreciate every stage of who I am where I am and what I look like… but I realized I must have really really liked this guy cause I tried so hard to change who I was to see if he would like me or give me a sign. I tried working out to become skinny and I went out of my way to always hangout with this friend group. Our friend group was scheduled to go on a trip together. I told myself I’d see how the trip goes and really feel him out to see if he was interested… I thought I mentally prepared myself well enough but I guess I didn’t. On this trip I had mentioned a different girl friend that I wanted to meet up with with our friend group. I don’t remember how we got into this convo but I ended up showing him a picture and his face lit up. She’s a really beautiful girl who’s fit. He wanted to meet her too. So the next day my friend group met up with my other girl friend and her friend. This girl friend of mine knew about my lole for this guy so she was never interested.. I could instantly tell the shift in his body language. Keep in mind he’s a really quiet and reserved guy. But I could see the way he would watch out for her. Like her bottle fell and from across the friend group he told her she dropped her bottle. Little shifts like that in his attitude that made me realize what he was like if he was interested in someone… any way fast forward we started walking around and at one point my girl friend’s friend(who I just met that day as well) randomly asked him if he liked me. I was right in front of them. But I heard. With no hesitation in his voice he said no she’s like my sister… my heart fell to my stomach… the first time in 6+ years after my last relationship that I was allowing myself to like someone again and I got sister-zoned… if I’m being honest it really hurt my self esteem. I worked so hard to really love myself and I felt like I was a good person who was funny and kind and selfless and giving and family oriented(I’m not just trying to boost my ego lol almost all the people In my life has said these to me before) but the first person I allow myself to like in so long has no interest in me. All the little clues I got were stories I made up in my head. I prided myself on being good at reading people.. but it was really all in my head… anyway I just pretended like I didn’t hear anything and continued with where I was going. I realized then that he was just nice to me not interested in me. After that trip he started talking more to the friend group about the girls he had asked out on dates and the kind of girls he liked and how his dates went. Then I really realized I prob was just like a sister to him. And he’s was just like any other guy.. the ones who likes pretty skinny girls. He would talk to girls that weren’t the best people but they were really pretty and skinny. After that I tried to stop myself from continuing to like him so I distanced myself from the friend group. Just a little bit. But I also started a new job so that also prevented me from seeing them too often. I noticed myself think about him less and being less effected by his dating life. I felt good again. Just really focused on myself and reminded myself to stay true to who I am so I can attract my person to me. But just this past weekend… we went on a trip together again. I really thought I was good! He really has just been feeling like a friend. But this trip was only my sister and BIL and him and I. Everything seems to be going great I played wing woman for him and helped him meet girls! But I think I realize.. I really do like him. Like I like him probably a lot more than I thought. Yes I played his wing woman and I wasn’t very jealous or anything like that.. I know i was hella cute on this trip and I know I’m a good person. But the whole time I when he was talking to girls.. I didn’t wish to be them.. I just wished he’d see me. I introduced those girls to him to see if he would choose me.. even with a married girl with 3 kids who says she’s in an open relationship and who is older than him he didn’t choose me. We got into a deep conversation about his last super toxic relationship and about the kind of woman he wants. He named everything I am(traits about myself that others have said about me not just what I think about myself). I kept listening and realized the only thing that prob would make me not fit to be his ideal woman is because I’m a bigger girl. Anyway I guess moral of the story is that I just really like this guy who prob doesn’t see me anymore than a sister. And I can’t help it that I’m not the one he’s unwilling to choose. I just have to stay true to who I am. And I will naturally attract my person to me.
Also I don’t think I am delusional and obsessive. I have kept a good distance and I have never crossed any boundaries of friendship. I just had a lot of people we know question why we weren’t together and many people always said they thought we are a good match.. but I’m just not the one he is choosing to have. And maybe it’s time I accept that.
What do you guys think? Idk what kind of validation or answers I’m looking for I think I just want to share my pain and heartbreak as 28 year old who will prob stay single Forever because this one sided like was Kind of painful. lol

Hi everyone. My cat Lucy is about 5 and a half years old and was diagnosed with a pulmonary mass on May 2nd. About a week before then, I had noticed she was limping and brought her to her regular vet. Our vet thought it was a broken toe at most, or maybe a twisted claw. I was thankful that it was just something small that would heal on its own with time. Then, the next day, May 2nd, she had a sudden onset of neurological symptoms - circling, head tilt, right limbs collapsing - started breathing very quickly, and was crying in distress. I freaked out and went to the ER. The doctors were going to do an MRI to try to figure out the neurological symptom cause, but in the process of prepping her for that, some chest imaging showed a mass near her lungs, which they sampled and confirmed to be cancer.
She seemed stable aside from the neurological symptoms, so they sent her home with me with the plan to follow up with either neuro or oncology depending on how her symptoms progressed. A vet tech told me at one point that she had had a cat with neurological issues too, and it was a long, slow healing process. That's what I was hoping for, and for the first few days, Lucy seemed to get better. I had to give her meds for dizziness, pain, and yeast in her ears (she's a chronically waxy girl), but she made such good progress with the neurological stuff. She wasn't purring and laid down most of the time, but she laid in the sun and in her cat beds. She ate less, but enthusiastically. After a few days, she finally groomed herself again. I thought this all meant her main problem right now was this neurological thing - we just happened to find cancer in the process. They felt separate to me. She wasn't having breathing issues, so the lung cancer must not be affecting her yet - it'll just be something we deal with down the road.
I was wrong. On May 14th, I started noticing bad signs. She was hiding most of the day, eating and drinking much less, not pooping, barely peeing. I thought she was just stressed, maybe mad at me for giving her so many pills and ear liquids. She started crying before going to the litterbox and afterwards, and I still wasn't seeing much in there, so I thought, maybe she's constipated. Her regular vet agreed it could be possible, did an X-ray of her stomach, did an enema to get some hard stool out, and prescribed an appetite stimulant and Miralax. The day after that appointment, Lucy seemed worse. Whenever she wasn't under the couch, she was crying. I took her back to the ER, who told me that she was mildly dehydrated, her behaviors since the initial ER visit were very worrisome, and I should start thinking about her quality of life. I asked how sure they were, how likely it is that we just need to figure out what medicine she needs, or if she's just stressed, and they're very sure. I have accepted that she is dying.
Now, the question I meant to ask before I ended up writing out the tale of Lucy's medical journey: euthanasia. Lucy hides most of the day. She barely eats even with the appetite stimulant. She is starting to walk more slowly. She doesn't play or jump. She is normally the sweetest cat in the world, and now she does not want to be touched. She can go to the bathroom and has normal-looking poop and pee, but still cries in distress before and after, and it seems to take her a long time to poop. Her life is mostly hiding, me taking her out to get her to take meds or subcutaneous fluids, a little eating, and what appear to be distressing trips to the litterbox. But she isn't showing the very bad signs that the vets told me to watch for: no vomiting, no bloody diarrhea, no trouble breathing. Do I need to wait for that? Is it good for her to wait for it to get that bad?
I already feel like I have let her down by not pursuing further diagnostics of her cancer and neurological issues. When she cries in distress, I feel like she's saying "help me," as in, if you just figure out how to help me, I will be okay. Like if we were to do an MRI and CT scan and more bloodwork, we would find the right medication that would get her back to normal. But that's probably not true. Even if the neurological part is unrelated to the cancer and we fix it, she still would have cancer. I think the best thing I can do for her now is keep her comfortable and get the euthanasia timing right, so she doesn't suffer needlessly. But if she isn't responding to medications, hides and cries most of the time, what is the quality of her life? The thought of scheduling the euthanasia soon is horrifying - like I would be killing her early. But I've read about how hard it is when it is done too late. And I look at her now, and she is never happy.
I am going to talk this all over with her vet tomorrow. Just wanted to share it here too since I stumbled across a few posts from this community and saw a lot of caring and supportive people.

right now i’m suffering from a flu or cold of some sort. 100.9F fever, clogged nose that i have to twist and turn every minute trying to sleep to be able to breathe, and just feeling like garbage overall. everyone in our house including my parents are sick with the same thing as well because my dad brought home some virus. i know tu* is uncommon with illnesses like this, but of course my emetophobia is not letting me live in peace. it’s telling me i’ll be a part of probably 1% that tu* from a cold or flu. also the last time i tu* was when i was in 3rd grade and i had a bad cough and ended up tu* phlegm. i don’t have a cough rn but i’m scared it’s gonna happen. i skipped dinner last night because my stomach felt weird and i felt n* after consuming pizza in the afternoon and i’m so scared to consume anything now. i really feel like absolute trash with the symptoms and my anxiety on top of that. any words of comfort or support will help :(

UK based.
TLDR: ongoing symptoms of MS for the last 4 weeks but I have now been diagnosed with FND.
It all started 4 weeks ago when I felt extremely fatigued and light headed. I drove home after work at 5pm and suddenly I had lost all control of the movement in my arms. It was like a partial paralysis. An ambulance was called and they took me to the stroke unit where they did a CT scan of the brain and kept me in overnight. The use of my arms came back at around 10pm.
The next day, they carried out MRI scans on my brain and in my spine, all of which ruled out a stroke. They referred me for an urgent neurology appointment (which was 4 weeks later).
Since then, I have experience at least one or more of the following symptoms daily: - loss of control in my arms - loss of control in my right leg - stabbing pains in my thigh - extreme fatigue - vertigo and dizziness - numbness of the muscles in my face - tingling and cold sensations through my upper body - muscle spasms and tremors in my hand
These symptoms can last between 30mins to 6hours.
When I was younger, I had optic neuritis which lasted just over a week and the scan showed small lesions of MS. They had mentioned if I have other spells in the future that it would likely be diagnosed as MS. With this information and all the symptoms I have experienced we all assumed this would be the case. Every symptom I had is a symptom of MS, and in all honesty, I was waiting for the neurology appointment to confirm this.
Anyway, I had the appointment this morning and to my surprise he said the scans are clear and it is not MS (he was also an MS specialist). He told me that I have Functional Neurological Disorder. I was shown a web page that outlined this and not much further advice was able to be given in terms of how to manage my symptoms on a daily basis, particularly with work.
I am being sent for further bloods to check my vitamin levels and have a catch up appointment in a month’s time.
Having researched this throughout the day, I can see what a broad spectrum FND covers. Is it just a diagnosis they give when they don’t know what is wrong with the signals to your nervous system? Has anyone had a similar experience? Is it worth going private and getting a second opinion? Will the symptoms get better?

Can I ask for those of you who had minimal symptoms during pregnancy what were the symptoms you did notice that you suspected you were still pregnant around week 6 mark.
I currently have a terrible head cold and just cannot feel any symptoms any more. I had sensitive breasts and bloating about a week ago but I've not noticed anything since.
I guess I'm just looking for reassurance pregnancy symptoms can come and go in early pregnancy without meaning it's a loss.

At the world’s top college of magic and technology, every day brings a new discovery -and a new disaster. The advanced experiments of the college students tend to be both ambitious and apocalyptic, with the end of the world only prevented by a mysterious time loop, and a small handful of students who retain their memories.
Surviving the loops was hard enough, but now, in his senior year, Vell Harlan must take charge of them, and deal with the fact that the whole world now knows his secrets. Everyone knows about Vell’s death and resurrection, along with the divine game he is a part of. Now Vell must contend with overly curious scientists and evil billionaires hungry for divine power while the daily doomsday cycle bombards him with terrorists, talking elephants, and the Grim Reaper himself -but if he can endure it all, the Last Goddess’s game promises the ultimate prize: power over life itself.
[Previous Chapter][Patreon][Cover Art]
“Should I be worried?”
Why would you be worried?” Kim said. “Dean Lichman loves us.”
Dean Lichman had asked the two of them to stop by his office, though his brief message had not said what for. That left Vell to concoct nightmare scenarios in his head.
“He doesn’t love all of us.”
“Alex doesn’t count as ‘us’,” Kim said. She was a looper in purely a technical sense, mostly due to her own refusal to be a team player. “Besides, she’s been behaving lately. She’s only been an asshole, not an active liability.”
“That we know of.”
“If we don’t know about it, Dean probably doesn’t either,” Kim said. “It’s fine, Vell, he probably just wants to ask us for advice or deal with some problem he has.”
“That’s not much better,” Vell said. “How weird would things have to be that the Dean is asking us for help personally?”
“Only one way to find out,” Kim said. She gestured to the door to the Dean’s office.
Kim entered first, and found it in much the same state as it always was. The desk piled high with paperwork, a small bowl of assorted candies shoved into the corner of the desk, and Dean Lichman behind it, frantically tapping away on a laptop. Vell had not been in this office for several years, and it was vastly different than the last time he’d been here.
“Ah, there you are, come in, have a seat,” Dean Lichman said. “Unless you’d rather we have our conversation elsewhere, Vell.”
“Why would I want that?”
“Well, it’s my understanding you haven’t been in this office since my, uh, predecessor,” Dean Lichman said.
“Oh, right, the kidnapping,” Vell said. “No, I’m good, I don’t really get traumatized by things anymore.”
Vell had been killed too many different ways in too many different places to have a functional trauma response. A few days ago he’d gotten his legs chewed off by a vending machine, and still stopped by it to pick up a soda on his way to the office.
“That’s a very concerning response, Mr. Harlan.”
“Yeah. Anyway, what did you need?”
Dean Lichman gestured for the duo to take a seat, and both did so. He folded desiccated hands in front of himself before beginning to speak.
“I would like to ask you two to take a look at an experiment that will be occurring later this week,” Dean Lichman said. “I don’t have any reason to believe it poses a threat, but I would like to be assured it is a safe and ethical environment, and, well, you two have a knack for identifying trouble spots.”
“You could say that,” Kim said. It was more accurate to say that trouble had a way of identifying them -and then leaping at them and ripping their heads off.
“I’d appreciate it if the two of you could simply examine the laboratory and give it your approval, or disapproval, as the case may be,” Dean Lichman said. “Though if you’re too busy, I fully understand.”
“If you don’t think this is dangerous, why are you asking for our help anyway?”
“Simply for my own peace of mind, frankly,” Dean Lichman said. “The school’s policies on animal experimentation are...satisfactory, I suppose, but I do want to take extra precautions when the subject is a creature as smart as an elephant.”
“An elephant?”
“Yes, a resident of a reserve in Thailand,” Dean Lichman said. “An older elephant by the name of Mae Noi. She has cancer, apparently, and she is submitting to experimental treatment in the hopes it will be useful for younger elephants.”
Kim’s digital face briefly flashed with a facial expression of concerned skepticism.
“‘She’ is submitting to treatment? As in the elephant?”
“Yes. Apparently the elephant can talk,” Dean Lichman said. “No, I don’t know how it works, they said it was ‘more impressive in person’.”
“Well now I kind of want to go just to see the talking elephant,” Vell said.
“Same.”
“Well, do try to take a few glances at the experiment’s safety while you’re there,” Dean Lichman said.
“Sounds like a plan,” Vell said. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“I’ll be there too,” Kim said.
“Excellent. Thank you both, and I’ll try not to take up too much of your time,” the Dean said. He then bid them both a polite goodbye and returned to his mountains of paperwork. Vell took a step out of the office and then took a sip from the soda he’d recently retrieved from the evil vending machine.
“So, what do you think?”
“I think I really do want to see the talking elephant,” Kim said.
“Obviously, yeah, we all want to see the talking elephant,” Vell said. “I mean the whole situation. You think the elephant thing is going to be the daily apocalypse for that day?”
“Well, on the one hand, an elephant seems like the kind of thing that would kill us,” Kim said. “But on the other, I feel like the fact we have advance warning means it’s not going to happen.”
“True. The universe probably wouldn’t make it that easy for us.”
“Yeah, but the elephant thing still feels pretty threatening,” Kim said. “Only way to find out is to wait a few days, I guess.”
A FEW DAYS LATER
“Hello you two,” Dean Lichman said. “And Hawke.”
“Hey,” Hawke said.
“He also wanted to see the talking elephant,” Kim explained.
“Well, that’s not a problem, it was an open invitation,” Dean Lichman said.
“Thanks. Still, sorry for not saying I was going to show up in advance,” Hawke said. “It took me a long time to make up my mind whether I was more interested in or afraid of a talking elephant.”
“They are rather large, aren’t they? I suppose that could be intimidating.”
“I’m okay with elephants on their own, it’s the talking part that doesn’t sit right with me,” Hawke said. “What if the elephant doesn’t like me? What if I’m the first person to ever get insulted by an elephant?”
“You’re less afraid of getting trampled by an elephant than insulted by one?”
“I’m a little afraid of trampling, but elephants are chill,” Hawke explained. “They wouldn’t attack unless provoked. I kind of feel like one might call me a dipshit unprovoked, though.”
“You have oddly specifics fears, Mr. Hughes,” Dean Lichman said.
“Yeah.”
In spite of those fears, Hawke happily stepped through the door to the zoology lab. It did not take a long time to locate the elephant in the room, as it was a literal elephant. The towering pachyderm was in a makeshift pen in the center of the lab, with an ample supply of food and a strange pedestal in front of her.
“Dr. Chanthara,” Dean Lichman said, with a polite wave to one of the researchers in the room. “Good to see you. These are the students I told you about.”
“Hm. Nice to meet you,” Dr. Chanthara said. He was, perhaps not unreasonably, skeptical of why three seemingly random students were in charge of a safety inspection. The fact that one of the three was a robot made him even more skeptical.
“Hi, nice to meet you too, and, uh, don’t mind us,” Vell said. “We just have an eye for weird things other people might miss.”
“Sure. I- wait. Aren’t you that kid who got chosen by a god?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Vell said. “And her too, technically.”
Kim shrugged. She didn’t care for any extra attention on that point.
“Right,” Chanthara said. He was beginning to see why these students might know their stuff. “I suppose we should start by introducing you to Mae Noi. Say hello, Mae.”
The elephant shifted on her feet and poked her trunk at the wide pedestal in front of her twice.
“Hello. Friends,” a synthesized voice droned. Vell stepped a little closer to the pedestal, just enough to see that there were an array of buttons on the side facing Mae Noi.
“Oh, it’s kind of like a keyboard,” Vell said. He’d seen similar things used with dogs, though usually in a much simpler fashion. Mae Noi seemed to have a few dozen buttons at her disposal.
“Smart,” Mae Noi said, with another prod of her trunk.
“We initially put it into our sanctuary as a bit of a novelty, something elephants could choose to interact with,” Dr. Chanthara explained. “Mae Noi took to it a bit better than most. Especially once she found out she could use it to ask for food.”
“Food. Pumpkin. Pumpkin. Pumpkin.”
“No, Mae, no food until after experiment,” Dr. Chanthara scolded.
“Experiment,” Mae Niko said with a prod. “Pumpkin.”
“Yes, experiment then pumpkin,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“That’s not really a talking elephant, is it?” Hawke said.
“It’s more talking than most elephants,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“Elephant. Smart,” Mae Niko said. “Smart.”
“Yes, uh, right, elephant smart,” Hawke said. He took a step back, to avoid any further offense and any further risk of being insulted by Mae Noi.
“You’re very impressive, Mae, don’t mind him,” Kim said. “How many words does she know?”
“Our platform back home has around three hundred words, though she’s still learning some of them,” Dr. Chanthara said. “The ‘travel’ version we put together only has a hundred, just enough to make sure she can get her basic needs met and communicate about the experiment.”
“Right, speaking of, I do believe we should put some time into our reason for being here,” Dean Lichman interjected. “You’re welcome to stick around afterwards, at Dr. Chanthara and Mae Noi’s discretion, of course, but we should get underway.”
“We probably should get to business, yeah,” Kim said. She tapped the side of her metal head. “I’m going to scan the lab. Vell, you talk to the elephant and make sure everything’s above-board.”
“Abov- oh, right,” Vell said. “Sorry, not exactly used to being able to ask animals if they agree to animal experimentation.”
“Experiment,” Mae said.
“Yeah, experiment,” Vell said, as he turned to Mae. “So, Mae Noi, this experiment might hurt, do you know that?”
“Experiment. Hurt. Elephant,” Mae Noi prodded. “Experiment. Help. Elephant. Help. Baby.”
“Help baby?”
“Baby. Baby. Elephant. Sick. Baby. Sick.”
“We’ve explained the nature of her condition to Mae Noi as best we can,” Dr. Chanthara said. “She has several children, and is concerned they might be similarly affected.”
“Help. Baby,” Mae Noi said. “Experiment. Help.”
The way Mae Noi frantically tapped the buttons tugged at Vell’s heartstrings, but he choked those emotions down.
“So you want to do this experiment to help baby, got it,” Vell said. “Even if it hurts you?”
“Elephant. Old,” Mae Noi said. “Hurt. Okay. Help. Baby.”
“Huh. Well, that does sound like informed consent to me,” Vell said. “Passes ethical muster, at least.”
The campus rules allowed students to be experimented on, with their consent, so Vell saw no reason not to apply the same standard to an elephant.
“You speak up if you change your mind about the experiment, okay?”
“Stop. Stop. Stop,” Mae said, mashing the same button a few times. “Yes.”
“You got it. I’m going to go help my friends check things out,” Vell said. “Good talking to you, Mae.”
“Good. Talk. Friend,” Mae said. She waved goodbye with her trunk, and Vell waved back. He wandered away from Mae Noi’s pedestal and found Kim and Hawke carefully examining rows of beakers and various other supplies.
“Nothing sus yet, boss,” Hawke said.
“Nothing caustic, mutagenic, or explosive?”
“Well, something mutagenic, but it’s supposed to be,” Kim said. She had scanners built into her body much like those that had once been in Vell’s glasses, allowing her to analyze the complex chemical formulas at a glance. “They’re going for some gene editing similar to what we’ve tried to do on human cancer patients. Low success rate, but not harmful. Some adaptations to work on elephants, of course.”
“Run it by any of our chemistry and biology student friends yet?”
“A few,” Kim said. “Haven’t gotten anything back yet, though.”
“Maybe run it by Skye, too,” Vell said. “She’d recognize anything that’d mutate an animal.”
“She does love to mutate things,” Kim said.
“Benevolently,” Vell insisted. “Just show her. I’m going to check for any stray equipment.”
The presence of an unusually large test subject had resulted in the lab being rearranged and reshuffled, so Vell did a quick scan for any misplaced equipment that might pose a threat. He found, to his surprise, a tidy and well-organized environment, with any and all extraneous materials securely locked away. There wasn’t so much as a shrink ray out of place. Vell did another loop just to be sure, but returned to his friends empty-handed.
“This place has less safety hazards than my lab,” Vell said. Hawke stared at him for a while.
“Why does your lab have safety hazards?’
“I do runecarving, there’s like, hammers and chisels,” Vell said. “Those can hurt people.”
“Mm, true,” Hawke said. “So you really didn’t find anything?”
“Nothing,” Vell said. “This place is secure as I’ve ever seen a lab be.”
“It’s like I said,” Kim began. “We got an actual warning about it, so obviously nothing’s going to go wrong. That’d be too easy.”
“Maybe,” Vell said. “Things can get teleported in, or someone could cast a spell, or something.”
“Yeah, but that applies to anywhere, at any time,” Kim said.
“Kim’s right,” Hawke said. “I say we go business as usual.”
“I guess,” Vell said. “We have to branch out a little, at least. Can’t keep an eye on one room all day.”
The trio stopped sulking around the outskirts of the lab and returned to Dean Lichman and Dr. Chanthara.
“Everything looks good,” Kim said. “Probably the safest lab I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ll choose to take that as a compliment,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“We have very high safety standards here at the Einstein-Odinson,” Dean Lichman said, defensively. “Relatively speaking. Innovation requires some risk.”
“I understand perfectly. So does Mae.”
“Hurt. Okay,” Mae said.
“Not that okay,” Vell said. “Nice meeting you, Dr. Chanthara. You too, Mae.”
“Wait.”
Mae prodded one of the buttons on her pedestal and then pointed her trunk at the three of them. Hawke looked deeply concerned, but stepped forward alongside Vell and Kim. Mae Noi appraised them with massive brown eyes, and then moved her trunk back towards the pedestal. Vell noticed a distinctive scar on the bridge of her long nose just as Mae Noi pressed another button.
“Joke.”
“...Joke?”
Dr. Chanthara sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Just go along with it,” he said. “She likes to tell her joke.”
“Uh, okay,” Vell said. “Let’s hear it.”
“What. Elephant. Favorite. Part. Tree.”
“Umm...I don’t know, Mae,” Vell lied. He’d heard this joke from a kid, once. “What part?”
“Trunk,” Mae said. She gave a loud bray of amusement and then slammed her trunk down a few more times to emphasize the punchline. “Trunk. Trunk.”
“Oh, ha, I get it,” Kim said, hoping her feigned laugh was convincing. She’d never tried to lie to an elephant before. “Good one, Mae.”
Mae Noi shifted from side to side, looking pleased with herself, while the trio took a step back and stopped their feigned laughter.
“Did you give her buttons just to tell that joke with?”
“She gets upset,” Dr. Chanthara said. “I’m not even sure she understands the pun, she just likes people’s reactions.”
“As long as she’s having fun,” Hawke said.
“We’ll get out of your hair now,” Vell said. “Good luck with the experiment, feel free to let us know if you need a hand with anything.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Dr. Chanthara said. Some of his earlier skepticism seemed to have softened, but he did not seem entirely onboard with three strangers mucking about with his experiment. Vell and his friends left before they stretched what little goodwill they had any further. Mae Noi waved her trunk goodbye as the three left the lab and stepped back onto the quad.
“I’m going to try and sneak some classes in,” Hawke said. “Later.”
“I’ll check some of our usual hot spots,” Kim said, before she too left. Once again alone, Vell headed to one of his own classes, and called up Samson.
“Hey, Samson,” Vell began. “See anything interesting while we were playing with the elephant?”
“Well, I thought I clocked someone acting suspicious, but it turns out he was only sneaking around to go see his boyfriend,” Samson said. “Nothing apocalyptic, but I did get called a homophobe, which is pretty emotionally devastating.”
“I’m sure you’ll recover someday,” Vell said. “Keep an eye out. Usually the safer things look, the more dangerous things end up being.”
“Will do,” Samson said, before saying goodbye and hanging up.
***
Vell got increasingly nervous the longer the day went without its daily disaster. He thought about checking in on Mae Noi again, but then recalled Kim’s warning about it being too obvious, but then remembered that nobody had seen anything suspicious anywhere else, but then remember that Mae Noi’s lab had looked perfectly safe-
“Vell.”
“Huh?”
“You’re spiraling,” Kim said.
“I’m not spiraling, I’m just,” Vell said, with a pause for contemplation. “Considering multiple options.”
“In a spiral fashion,” Kim said. “Eat the damn french fries. Honestly, what’s the point of ordering so many if you’re just going to let them get cold?”
“It’s not like they’re going to go to waste,” Vell said. The same time loop that allowed him to eat massive amounts of french fries without fear of gaining weight also allowed him to avoid food waste. One of the upsides of life in a time loop.
“Just eat, Vell,” Kim said. “You worry too much about all this shit.”
“I’m in charge, it’s my job to worry about it,” Vell said.
“It’s your job to handle it,” Kim said. “There’s no point thinking about this shit before it happens, you spend all day thinking about an elephant and then the universe drops, like, a bat with tentacles on your head. Just deal with as it comes, Vell.”
Vell leaned on the table and managed to chomp down on a french fry or two.
“You know, next year, when I’m not running the show anymore, I’m going to call and see if you still think it’s that easy.”
“I sure hope so,” Kim said. “I’m saying all this shit trying to make myself believe it too.”
“Oh good, you’re lying to both of us,” Vell said. “That’s cool.”
“Fake it ‘til you make it, Vell, that’s how it goes,” Kim said. “Eat your damn french fries.”
Vell rolled his eyes and returned to his fries, which were now starting to cool. Thankfully he would not have to worry about finishing them. A loud crash from across campus interrupted him mid-bite and nearly made Vell choke on his fries. He painfully swallowed the half-chewed food and then looked over his shoulder.
“Son of a bitch, finally,” Vell said. A few years ago he’d found it weird whenever he was relieved about a disaster, but now he was just genuinely glad to get it over with. The waiting was as killer as the apocalypse. He tossed his fries in the trash and headed toward the sound of chaos, with Kim right behind him.
“Already told everybody?”
“Well, I may or may not have left Alex and Helena out of the loop…”
“Kim.”
“They’d find out anyway,” Kim said. “I got to use my brain parts to get in touch with them, even over wi-fi that shit feels dirty.”
“Just get in- stop.”
Vell held out his hand. Kim froze in place and did not move. Not intentionally, at least. There was a small amount of unintentional movement. The ground was vibrating.
“Always love a good earthquake,” Kim said.
“That’s not a quake,” Vell said. “That’s...footsteps!”
Vell grabbed Kim and dove out of the way just in time for something to barrel through the walls of the dining hall and stampede across the room. Tables, chairs, and more than a few students were crushed under the feet of a hulking, brown-furred behemoth as it charged. Kim picked herself and Vell up off the floor and tried to trail its progress.
“That’s a- oh fuck me,” Kim said. “Please don’t say you told me so.”
Vell got his bearings and looked across the room at the titanic form of a woolly mammoth. Though it was definitely recognizable as an archaic mammoth, the ancient creature was also heavily mutated, unnaturally large even by mammoth standards, and with multiple curled, jagged tusks protruding from a slobbering maw.
“Well that could be unrelated,” Vell said. “Mammoths can come from a lot of places, cloning accidents, time machines…”
The mammoth reached a wall, and rather than barreling through, turned around, facing directly towards Vell. A prominent scar covered the bridge of its broad trunk.
“Oh, nope, that’s definitely Mae,” Vell said. The scar was in the same place and at the same angle. Even a clone wouldn’t have an identical scar.
Once the revelation had struck, Mae took her turn. Vell found himself staring straight down the barrel of a very angry mammoth coming right at him at Vell-squishing velocity. Luckily he’d been charged at by a lot of creatures over four years of looping.
Vell jumped up and to the side, and latched on to one of the curled tusks, which made for very convenient handlebars. Kim did the same on the opposite side of Mae, and punched her in the head.
“Wait, wait, hold off on the violence for a second,” Vell shouted. He tried to wave at Kim to stop, but Mae was thrashing so violently he had to grip the tusks with both hands.
“Good plan,” Kim shouted. “Can you get Mae on board?”
Another set of tables got crushed underfoot. Thankfully the other students were out of trampling range by now, but Mae Noi’s feet were still coated in the blood of earlier victims.
“Mae’s smart, maybe we can calm her down,” Vell said. He then ducked to dodge a swat from Mae’s mutated trunk.
“Call me crazy, Vell, but I think this is more than just a bad mood,” Kim said, as she climbed up Mae’s seven jagged tusks like a ladder.
“We have to try,” Vell said. The loopers rule against hurting other intelligent life forms had some flexibility for blood-crazed mutants on violent rampages, but they had to at least try to reason first. Vell climbed up on of Mae’s tusks and looked into one of her bloodshot eyes for any sign of recognition. “Mae! It’s Vell, do you remember?”
The only response Vell got was an enraged trumpet, which he didn’t think was a “yes”.
“Come on, bud,” Vell said. “What’s an elephant’s favorite part of a tree, right? The trunk?”
The massive brown eye staring at Vell blinked, and he felt a brief glimmer of hope. He then felt a brief glimmer of his lungs being crushed as Mae swung her head and slammed her tusks into the wall, and Vell along with them. Kim punched Mae in the throat and then jumped across the tusks to grab Vell and carry him to safety.
“You okay, Vell?”
He opened his mouth to respond, and a pint or two of blood came out instead.
“Apparently not,” he mumbled. “I might be down a few ribs. And a lung. Or two.”
Kim carried Vell a safe distance from the fight and set him down on the ground, where he promptly spat out another mouthful of blood.
“Okay, uh, you just lie there and try to die peacefully, I guess,” Kim said.
“Way ahead of you.”
***
“Was that last bit as funny as I thought it was?” Vell asked. “I think the blood loss was affecting my sense of humor.”
“It was kind of hard to appreciate in the moment,” Kim said. “But as far as dying jokes go, it was pretty good.”
Vell and Kim walked into the lair for their morning meeting and joined the loopers that had already gathered.
“Okay, what’d I miss while I was dead?”
“Well, after Alex was done getting herself killed,” Samson began.
“You’re saying that as if it’s something to be ashamed of,” Alex said. “Vell also died.”
“Yeah, but he got killed trying to do something good. You got killed trying to do something stupid.”
“Trying to eliminate a threat is not stupid,” Alex said.
“We don’t kill intelligent creatures,” Hawke said. “Sometimes we punch them into a coma, but we don’t kill them.”
“When a dog bites, you put it down, I don’t see why the same principle doesn’t apply to a mammoth that’s crushed seventy people.”
“That wasn’t Mae’s fault,” Vell said. “She got mutated, or something. On that note: did you guys figure out what happened to Mae Noi?”
“Nothing,” Hawke said. “Looked like Mae smashed up the entire lab, trampled everyone involved in the experiment too. Nothing left to investigate, and nobody left alive to interrogate.”
“Typical,” Vell sighed. “At least we have an easy out. Dean Lichman was really concerned about the ethics of that whole experiment. We raise some kind of complaint, we could probably get the whole thing shut down.”
“The problem is getting the complaint,” Hawke said. “That lab was airtight, Vell.”
“Apparently not completely airtight,” Kim said. “I can camp out in the lab and raise an entirely justifiable stink whenever something capable of making a murder-mammoth shows up.”
“And what if it happens so suddenly you can’t complain about it?” Samson asked. “For all we know that could’ve been some kind of dimensional rift, or time anomaly, or something. It might not be as simple as somebody just putting in the wrong syringe at the wrong time.”
“He’s got a point,” Vell said. “We might want to shut this down before it gets there.”
“Seems like our best option is to plant evidence, then,” Alex said.
Everyone else at the table spent a few seconds brainstorming ways to prove her wrong, and much to their frustration, could not.
“Okay, fine,” Vell said. “But it needs to be something incidental, not something anyone would get blamed for. We want to cancel the experiment, not get anyone in trouble.”
“I could have a seizure on some sensitive equipment,” Helena offered. “It’ll break something and nobody would dare get mad at me.”
“Can you fake a seizure?”
“No, but I’m allergic to elephants, so I’d probably have one anyway the moment I stepped in the lab,” Helena said.
“I don’t feel entirely comfortable sending you into anaphylactic shock for a bit,” Vell said.
“Offer’s on the table,” Helena said. “I’ll live. Wouldn’t have made it through that trip to the zoo otherwise.”
“Anybody have any non-medical emergency suggestions?”
“Seagull in the air vents,” Kim said.
“Will that work?”
“It happens now and then,” Kim said. “Seagull gets in, and Dean has to close down the whole lab for potential material damage and biohazard risks if they shit in the vents.”
“Really? We’ve never had to deal with anything like that,” Hawke said.
“It may shock you to learn that sometimes minor, tedious bullshit happens that we have nothing to do with,” Kim said.
“That is kind of surprising, actually.”
“Enough. Kim, can you grab a seagull?” Vell asked. He shouldered his bookbag, and stuck a hand into the extradimensional pocket that existed within it. “I can probably smuggle it in with my bag.”
“Yeah, I can get you a seagull,” Kim said. Since she did not need to sleep, she had to find ways to keep herself entertained at night, seagull-grabbing being among them.
“Alright, we’ll go grab one and put it in the bag,” Vell said. “The rest of you, be ready to meet us when I call.”
***
Roughly three minutes later, Vell put out the call and they reconvened in front of the biology lab.
“Yeah, that was much faster than I thought it would be,” Vell said.
“I’m great at grabbin’ birds,” Kim said. Seagulls were among the easier birds to snatch, even. They were suckers for food, and many of them were attracted to her shiny metallic body anyway.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Vell said. “I want this thing out of my bag ASAP.”
Even though the seagull was safely within a pocket dimension, Vell would swear he could still feel the bird thrashing and squawking inside his bag. He tightened his grip on the shoulder strap and led the way towards the zoology lab entrance. He grabbed the handle and held it as he froze for a second.
“Vell, what’s up? Is this bird escaping?”
“No, the handle’s vibrating,” Vell said. It was shaking the same way a wall near an incredibly loud speaker might. He pressed his ear to the door and listened closely. He opened the door immediately, and let all his friends hear the frantic trumpeting of a panicked elephant.
Inside the lab, Mae Noi was stomping her feet and trumpeting as loud as he long trunk would allow. She swayed from side to side in her pen, bumping against the walls not quite hard enough to damage them, but hard enough that it was clear she was doing it on purpose.
“What the heck is happening here?”
“Ah, Vell,” Dean Lichman said. He hustled over to Vell’s side and gestured to the entire room. “Maybe you can figure out what’s going on.”
Mae Noi stopped braying long enough to start mashing her trunk against her pedestal, mashing out the word “Bad” over and over again.
“Our test subject, Mae Noi, has been throwing an absolute fit ever since she got here,” Dean Lichman said. “Dr. Chanthara, these are the students I was telling you about earlier.”
While Vell reintroduced himself to Dr. Chanthara, Kim and Hawke stepped up to examine Mae Noi and her enclosure. It was a far cry from the peaceful, orderly scene they had examined on the first loop. They were half an hour earlier this time than before, but Kim found it unlikely that they had been able to calm Mae Noi down, clean everything up, and get back to work in such a short amount of time. They hadn’t mentioned any of this panic on the first loop either. They were soon joined in their confusion by Chanthara and Vell.
“We’ve tried everything; food, water, her favorite toys, even videos of her children,” Dr. Chanthara said. “We’ve even offered to call off the experiment, but she won’t listen.”
“She is an animal,” Alex said. “Sometimes they do things arbitrarily.”
“Not Mae,” Dr. Chanthara said. “Some of our sanctuaries residents from traumatic backgrounds can have outbursts, but Mae was injured in the wild. She’s never been like this.”
“Maybe some experiment on the island is upsetting her,” Vell said. “A sonic experiment only she can hear, or something…”
Vell stopped and thought about it. If there had been such an irritant, it would’ve been there on the first loop too. Everything always repeated exactly the same, except for-
“Could you, uh, take a step back for a second?” Vell mumbled. “I want to try talking to her.”
“Don’t get close,” Chanthara warned him.
“I’m not, I’m not,” Vell said. He didn’t need to get very close to tell a joke.
The massive brown eyes of Mae Noi stayed locked on Vell as he approached, and she continued to mash the “Bad” button on her pedestal.
“I know, I know, bad,” Vell said. “But, uh, do you want to hear a joke?”
Mae Noi stopped. She locked eyes with Vell for a few seconds, and then cautiously tapped a button on her pedestal.
“Joke.”
“Right, joke,” Vell said. He tried to recall the exact sequence of words Mae had used on the first loop. “What elephant favorite part tree?”
Mae didn’t blink.
“Trunk,” Vell said.
After a moment of contemplation, Mae Noi let out one final, fervent, trumpet, and then started mashing buttons on her pedestal again.
“Bad. Help. Help. Experiment. Bad. Help. Bad. Help.”
“Yeah, bad help, one second,” Vell said. He turned away from Mae Noi to look at Dean Lichman. “Hey, uh, excuse me, Dean? Hey, uh, if I remember correctly there are some pretty complicated rules on having intelligent animals on campus, yes?”
“Well, yes,” Dean Lichman said. After hearing of some questionable ethical practices involving an octopus back in first year, he had instituted a few clauses into the school’s ethical code of conduct regarding intelligent animals like elephants, octopuses, and dolphins. “Mae’s presence here is a bit of an outlier, but there were workaround, given her apparent consent to the experiment.”
“Yeah, about that, is she, uh,” Vell began. “Is she registered as a student?”
“Yes.”
Vell pursed his lips. It took a few seconds for his friends to catch on.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Samson snapped. He turned his back on the crowd and leaned against a wall while Hawke put his head in his hands.
“The first rule of looping,” Alex said quietly. “Loopers are randomly selected-”
She looked up and locked eyes with Mae Noi.
“From all registered students.”

UK based.
TLDR: ongoing symptoms of MS for the last 4 weeks but I have now been diagnosed with FND.
It all started 4 weeks ago when I felt extremely fatigued and light headed. I drove home after work at 5pm and suddenly I had lost all control of the movement in my arms. It was like a partial paralysis. An ambulance was called and they took me to the stroke unit where they did a CT scan of the brain and kept me in overnight. The use of my arms came back at around 10pm.
The next day, they carried out MRI scans on my brain and in my spine, all of which ruled out a stroke. They referred me for an urgent neurology appointment (which was 4 weeks later).
Since then, I have experience at least one or more of the following symptoms daily: - loss of control in my arms - loss of control in my right leg - stabbing pains in my thigh - extreme fatigue - vertigo and dizziness - numbness of the muscles in my face - tingling and cold sensations through my upper body - muscle spasms and tremors in my hand
When I was younger, I had optic neuritis which lasted just over a week and the scan showed small lesions of MS. They had mentioned if I have other spells in the future that it would likely be diagnosed as MS. With this information and all the symptoms I have experienced we all assumed this would be the case. Every symptom I had is a symptom of MS, and in all honesty, I was waiting for the neurology appointment to confirm this.
Anyway, I had the appointment this morning and to my surprise he said the scans are clear and it is not MS (he was also an MS specialist). He told me that I have Functional Neurological Disorder. I was shown a web page that outlined this and not much further advice was able to be given in terms of how to manage my symptoms on a daily basis, particularly with work.
I am being sent for further bloods to check my vitamin levels and have a catch up appointment in a month’s time.
Having researched this throughout the day, I can see what a broad spectrum FND covers. Is it just a diagnosis they give when they don’t know what is wrong with the signals to your nervous system? Has anyone had a similar experience? Is it worth going private and getting a second opinion? Will the symptoms get better?

This is the last episode of the first half of the season with the actors for young Rhaenyra and Alicent and it ends in both a fantastic way and absolutely stupid and odd way all at the same time. This is one of the more dissected episodes in discussion but still felt like sharing:
-First point is how the hell is Daemon complaining about lady Rhea when she is absolutely gorgeous and a total badass with her armor. If there was a character I wish we could see more of it was her, just because of how she verbally obliterates Daemon in the few minutes. Her death being caused by Daemon is an odd point, it’s one of the things that he actually didn’t do in the book though I could see his character doing, but still just felt unnecessary as they could have just mentioned that lady Rhea passed away in passing dialogue. I don’t know, as someone who wants as close an adaptation as possible I just don’t see the reason especially after a certain change I absolutely despise some episodes later but we will get there eventually and I will just leave it at odd.
-The scene between Alicent and Otto was really emotional. At this point Alicent is still trying to stay convinced she did the right thing, and the actress does such a great job but Otto tells her the hard truth that no matter how much she may try to ignore the succession issue, it’s not simple matter of dinner table politics but a matter of life or death for her children and stability of the realm. She clearly needed to have it said out loud in this blunt way to truly encapsulate what is at stake and the actress just does a phenomenal job. That scene captures perfectly a lot of the spirit of Team Green and why we support the rightful king.
-The whole power move of Corlys making the king walk all the way to him while he sat on the driftwood throne was pretty cold and so disrespectful but again the actor just Carries that aura of power that it just seems natural. Even when he does bend to Viserys, he is still the “gravity” of the scene. One small nitpick that gets me is how they constantly talk about how it’s time to unite the two great Valyrian Houses, but this isn’t a first time thing, like Velaryons have married Targaryens before many times including during the dynasty. Obviously it makes sense to keep the ties close but just the way they mention the idea, they make it sound like it’s never be done before which annoys me. I don’t know maybe I’m the only one. Still just a slight nitpick. Also I do like how they actually discuss the surname issue of would Rhaenyra’s heir would go by Targaryen or Velaryon. It makes sense they go with the former since they are the upper house, but still an odd thing that’s it’s never mentioned in the literal historical book that is all about showing and analyzing these small facts.
-Ser Criston offers Rhaenyra to escape and go to Essos leaving it all behind. While this is definitely a bit naive, it’s clear he is trying to cope with his mistake by wrapping it under a blanket of romanticism. When Rhaenyra just shows that it will never happen and this is basically a fling for her, a very likely a childish game, it just sets on him the full weight of what he did. The actor just perfectly captures the level of regret, shame, anger, disappointment, heartbreak and loss of self the character is experiencing. He isn’t a second or third son of some great House, this position is literally all he had and he betrayed it. Rhaenyra doesn’t understand the full weight of this and instead just doubles down on how her future husband will still allow her game, just frustrating him even more. If he had been caught he could have ended like Lucamore Strong or worse. Again some of Fabien’s best acting is in this episode. He later accidentally (I’ll admit it’s a bit funny still how he spills the beans on himself when Alicent was just asking a different about a different suspicion all together) tells this to Alicent and you can how heavy it rests on his conscience. His character will later be paralleled and reversed with Arys Oakheart, a character who also broke his vow of chastity and feels massive guilt over this and tries to make up for it and find some honor ironically trying to become the Queenmaker as Cole would become the Kingmaker which is funny to me, granted I would argue Arianne is clearly manipulating Arys while Alicent later on genuinely offers Ser Criston a second chance (I know a lot of people don’t like the Soiled Knight chapter, but I just love POV’s from Kingsguard members and will take as many as I can, even if it’s just one.) Technically different canons, but the comparison is an obvious one that stuck with me
-While on that subject, it is perfectly paralleled by Alicent’s own realization. She got her own father and one of few people she could personally count on despite some issues dismissed all to defend an ungrateful friend who swore on her dead mother something that is just awful in general, but twice the insult considering her own background of having lost a mother. She has to reanalyze everything. Including what her father just recently told her. This is where later we get the iconic scene with the green dress. Obviously I am not breaking new ground by saying how the dress, the walk, the score were just perfect! The way Alicent just coldly and sarcastically congratulates Rhaenyra knowing the truth and ready to fight for her children becoming the green queen. I get why after this scene many fans in this sub wanted more of that demeanor. While I personally like the more diplomatic and sympathetic side to Alicent and have defended some of her portrayal and actions, I must admit I also loved seeing this more hardened type.
-This is where the stupid writing shows its face. Joffrey Lonmouth guesses that Ser Criston is Rhaenyra’s paramour and despite the fact that Laenor and her already came to an agreement of allowing each other to have their own people under the hush hush, this absolute moron decides to engages Ser Criston who could have very well not been the paramour, and tells him it’s best for everyone to keep everything well hidden (he doesn’t know about the whole reveal to Alicent but generally just wanted to warn him for whatever reason). Then Ser Criston beats him to death. Now how will the episode deal with the consequences of this, I mean a Kingsguard literally killed what was an innocent man under everyone’s perception unless he tries to explain the situation which is even more incriminating. There is a nice later scene where Criston Cole tries to commit Seppuku out of shame and regret with the moonlight shining on him next to a weir wood tree which is some gorgeous imagery, and when Alicent just comes and stops him, giving him a new path in life towards redemption. It is really beautiful crafted but because we have that stupid Joffrey Lonmouth scene right before it just makes it so frustrating. Of course this is also an awkward inclusion since this is the last episode right before the time jump, so all the questions that arise are left absolutely unanswered. Yeah you can guess Alicent probably pulled some strings to help him keep his head, but this scene just did more harm than good and honestly should just been cut. This episode was about the final rise of the green queen and the mostly formed factions, it should have ended on that note.
Overall this is one of the weaker episodes so far, despite having some of the strongest and most iconic moments of this season. Again they had a good structure until they decided to add that scene for tension.