Anthropomorphic

Poodle Character

Portrait

Fruma Putz

Anthroxville is a town that seems conjured from the fever dreams of mad poets and deranged architects, a surreal landscape where twilight perpetually hangs like a conspiratorial whisper. The air is thick with the mingled scents of jacarandas, exotic spices, and the electric whiff of secrets waiting to explode. Cobblestone streets coil and curve with the unpredictable logic of Marty Shuffle's drunken ramblings, leading to shadowy nooks and forgotten courtyards, each echoing with the preternatural cackles of bygone scandals.

Buildings of every conceivable style clash and jostle for space, creating a chaotic patchwork that could drive a bimbling flâneur to reach for the crackpipe. Gothic mansions, bristling with grotesque gargoyles—some bearing an uncanny likeness to Agatha Collop—and wrought-iron filigree, loom over sleek, minimalist glass cubes that reflect the warped sky with cold, clinical clarity. Art Deco theaters and Art Nouveau studios, like those of Charles Moneyshot and Quentin Marmalade, with their opulent façades and sinuous curves, flirt outrageously with Brutalist towers, such as the one where Ottoline Puffplinth and Zofia Squits separately reside, their stark lines a harsh rebuke to frivolity. Neon signs buzz and flicker in a riot of garish colors, casting shifting, lurid shadows over the town’s wide-eyed denizens, while vintage gas lamps sputter and glow, lending a nostalgic pallor to the nocturnal wanderers. The streets themselves seem alive with a frenetic energy, a dizzying collision of eras and aesthetics, each corner revealing another layer of visual and architectural cacophony.

The ferment extends beyond the architecture, spilling into the very soul of the city. The atmosphere is whetted with the mingled spoors of acid and audacity, a potent cocktail that assaults the senses with its acrid tang and potency. The harsh tang stings the nostrils, while the kinetic hum of the city vibrates through the ears. The glaring neon lights create a visual feast of chaos, and the gritty texture of urban grime clings to the skin, making every breath and touch a visceral experience in this anarchic cityscape. Overhead, a tangle of power lines crisscrosses like erratic scribbles, occasionally sparking as if to punctuate the urban symphony with bursts of electric fury. Street performers, dressed in a mishmash of eras—Victorian top hats meeting neon punk—vie for attention on every corner, their acts as varied and kinesthetic as the skyline is chaotic. An accordion player wheezes out a mournful tune beside a juggler tossing flaming torches and invisible balls into the air, his hands moving with hypnotic precision as if manipulating the very fabric of reality. Meanwhile, a mime, inexplicably painted in shades of gray, silently protests the absurdity of it all.

Smack dab in the middle of this swirling cesspool of ingenuity and upheaval are the infamous Putz twins, Fruma and Grissel, whose sibling rivalry is the stuff of local legend—a melodrama of epic proportions spiced with a touch of absurdity. Fruma Putz, the unfortunate caboose of the Putz twin express, was saddled with the indignity of being the younger sibling by a paltry three minutes. Grissel swaggered out of the womb like a miniature despot, and from that moment, the anthro poodle was doomed to play the supporting role in the relentless Grissel Show. This wasn't mere sibling rivalry; it was guerrilla warfare waged with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

Grissel, armed with a wit as sharp as broken glass and ambition as ruthless as a corporate tycoon, such as Graffen Gruntsqueeze or Dinero Cashmoney, ruled her domain with an iron fist wrapped in velvet. She reveled in her role as the reigning diva, her every move a calculated strike in an endless war of attrition against Fruma. Grissel’s entire existence seemed dedicated to tormenting her sister, wielding her firstborn status like a cudgel, always ready to bludgeon. Fruma, meanwhile, was left to navigate the minefield of Grissel's ego, a perpetual underdog in this farcical drama, with the anthropomorphic poodle struggling to carve out her own identity amid the chaos.

Anthroxville, with its riotous mix of gothic mansions and minimalist glass cubes, neon signs buzzing like demented wasps, and gas lamps sputtering like dying stars, served as the perfect backdrop for their operatic clashes. The town itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the next installment of the Putz saga, where each encounter promised new depths of outrageous spectacle.

Fruma wasn't going to let Grissel's dominance go unchallenged. She scoured every corner of her incongruous town for an edge, something, anything, that could tilt the scales in her favor. And then, as if the universe itself had decided to play a cosmic joke, she stumbled upon the House of Soulqueef. This wasn’t merely a cult; it was an odyssey into the surreal, founded by the dangerously charismatic and delightfully deranged Gwlyim Soulqueef. It was a sanctuary for the misfits, the disillusioned, and the chronically bewildered. Within its psychedelic walls, Here, under the glittering gaze of Effie Lollygag—a sage with the allure of a cabaret showgirl and the sagacity of a fervid oracle—Fruma discovered a weapon far more potent than any she had known: the power of indifference.

Effie, adorned in a checkered blouse and flower crown, preached the gospel of indifference with a flourish. “Meh,” she declared, her voice a blend of irony and hypnotic insight, “is the answer to all of life’s injustices.” Fruma absorbed this philosophy. She meditated, she chanted, and she even learned to levitate her chakras, transforming indifference into her secret weapon. Cloaking herself in a newfound calm that was both disarming and impenetrable, the anthro poodle stood ready to counter Grissel’s reign with a serene and devastating composure.

Then came the day she met Digby Bladder during one of those offbeat meditation sessions. Digby was a washed-up entrepreneur, the once-celebrated brain behind Skedaddle Sodas, now more of a punchline than a powerhouse, a man with more issues than a tabloid scandal. His downfall was a grotesque spectacle, a masterclass in surreal decline. It all imploded with a spectacularly bitter falling out with his business partner, Humphrey Skedaddle. Humphrey, in an act of diabolical creativity, circulated a false obituary announcing, with cruel precision, that "Digby Bladder found dead by way of autoerotic asphyxiation." The scandal tore through Anthroxville like wildfire, leaving scorched reputations and gossip-charred minds in its wake. And thus so it was that Digby found himself, rather inconveniently, in the same bizarre orbit as Fruma. Adding to the farce, he was one of Grissel’s many ex-husbands—a casualty of Anthroxville’s infamous welfare weddings, which takes the form of a televised state-run raffle during which singletons of Anthroxville have their names pulled out of a tombola drum at random and are forced by law to get hitched to whoever is pulled out next. "Meh'lady," he cooed, with a tip of the fedora he was wearing...