Grab your popcorn, chocolate-covered almonds, and Gatorade, folks; you’re about to bear witness to what just might be one of the most subversive mini-sagas to ever unfold this year.
Our story begins with TikTok‘s @phoenixagent003—henceforth known as Elijah—taking to the endangered social media platform to inform us all about the rudest awakening he may have ever received; with nothing but a last-minute email to his then-absent roommate to prepare him, Elijah awoke on his day off greeted by the absence of the lone set of stairs leading to the front door of his second-floor apartment.
Elijah would go on to reason that, if the straits got especially dire, a rope out the window or a leap of shrubbery-fated faith would maybe suffice. But, beyond the obvious problems with getting out, he still wouldn’t have been able to get back in, and since there was no communication as to when the construction team would be finished, Elijah had no way of knowing if he would be able to get back up in time to feed his roommate’s cat.
The situation ultimately got resolved not long after, with a fresh new set of stairs compensating for Elijah’s inconvenience as much as it could, but the folks in the comments were miffed beyond belief. Driven by second-hand indignation, a flood of replies urged Elijah to call the fire marshal, sue the property owner, chew out his roommate, and generally perform a swath of other such actions that would serve as retribution for just how irresponsibly this situation unfolded.
Elijah, however, wasn’t having any of that.
In the third and final update that we’ll ever get on The Stairs Saga, Elijah sat down with us all for a firm but fair heart-to-heart about turning other people’s problems into larger fiascos than they would prefer. He made very clear that he had no intention of pursuing legal action against the property manager, and he shot down the slander about his roommate by pointing out that they had only been contacted the night before, and didn’t check their email until that next morning when they were already at work. By the time Elijah had woken up to his roommate’s text about the news, it was already too late.
Elijah did have plenty to say about how poorly the building manager communicated everything, but those complaints have all been heard by the front desk, and so all he hopes for now is for them to be more responsible going forward. He then ended the video by properly introducing us to himself; a published author whose bread and butter lies in the fantasy genre.
In short, we may have just bore witness to the single most unhinged fantasy author marketing campaign in the history of the literary industry. If so, I applaud you, Elijah; if not, I applaud you nonetheless for this commendable exercise in patience.