For minor setbacks, maybe Elsa had it right: let it go. But not every difficult feeling is a minor setback. When we're experiencing something deeper, pressure to “look on the bright side” can stop feeling encouraging and start feeling smothering. And sometimes that pressure doesn't even come from other people. We learn to do it to ourselves. Someone asks how we're doing and, almost automatically, we say: “Fine.” But what might happen if we didn't?

If you ever played The Sims, you probably remember those little needs bars. Your Sim could be getting on with their day while, in the background, their energy, hunger, comfort or fun was getting lower and lower. You could keep giving them things to do and, for a while, they would. Until they wouldn’t. Children obviously don’t have handy needs bars floating above their heads, but it can be a surprisingly useful way to think about something called after-school restraint collapse.

In K‑Pop Demon Hunters, the spotlight falls on the girl group HUNTR/X, dancing, singing, and slaying literal demons in glitter and platform boots. It's a high-stakes story about saving the world on stage. But one of the most important characters? He never sets foot onstage. His name is Bobby. And the world needs more people who show up like him.