Anthropomorphic 

Bull Terrier 

Character Portrait

Milton Mouthbucket

For longer than he wishes to remember, the anthropomorphic bull terrier, Milton Mouthbucket, has been batted and bruised, smacked-down and slapped around, in the post-apocalyptic hellhole of Anthroxville’s dating scene. His mission: to land a date, a mere flicker of romantic interest, a fleeting moment of tenderness from any of the city’s elusive femmes fatales. Yet, despite his best efforts, he’s been relegated to a sorry parade of rejection and humiliation, unable to even secure a fake phone number on his mishap-ridden odyssey of scoring some skirt.

What’s with all these ice queens, anyway? Kiki Gobflap, with her glacial stare that could freeze the blood of a champion arm-wrestler mid-grunt. Norie Bluffbork, her name an indestructible fortress of disdain. And Mitzi Midriff—ah, Mitzi—the mere thought of her sends shivers down his bristly spine. Then there are the unequivocal man-eaters: Bella Imbroglio, Binky Pettifogger, and the unattainable Vanessa Trifle, with her coy smiles and subtle mockeries. The loin-lynchers, Tiffany Taradiddle and Nina Glücklich, elusive as whispers in a windstorm. When did these seductive apex predators start swarming every corner of his existence? Did he miss some cosmic memo on their sudden proliferation? He had been led to believe that they were the fairer sex, but as far as he’s able to tell, there’s been little to go on in the way of fair play when it comes to sealing the deal with any of these saucepots.

“Come on, love, what’s fair is fair,” he’ll plead, cornering an unsuspecting target of his affection in the street, nostrils flaring with a desperate intensity. “Now, at the risk of repeating myself, what color knickers are you wearing?” This, predictably, never ends well.

In this bleak and unjust world, there’s only one way such encounters go down. “The game's rigged!” Milton will cry out, nursing a fresh shiner for his efforts as he is carted off in the back of Lieutenant Larry Mooch's paddy-wagon. But his protestations invariably fall on deaf ears. A level playing field it ain't, and the unsporting sisterhood have things locked down with their thumb well and truly on the scales, what with their friendzonings, their already got a boyfriendings, their take one step closer and I’ll pepper spray you-ings – the whole frickin' shebang. They're the nobility of this asphalt jungle, and Milton is just a jester in their court—a drooling halfwit chasing an illusion wrapped in a dream.

Desperate times call for even more desperate measures, and Milton is not proud to admit to having once bitten the barnacled bullet and stooped to unprecedented depths. He made a disastrously ill-judged pass at Florence de Looselips, an infamous ice queen with a reputation for freezing out even the boldest of suitors. His misguided bravado didn't stop there. He then turned his foolish attentions to Agatha Collop, whose charm could be likened to that of a festering hemorrhoid, and Herma Frodite, a banshee so explosively unappealing that mere mention of her name could cause spontaneous male combustion. These were far from his finest moments in the Mouthbucket chronicles of howling lows, but sometimes you've simply got to do what you've got to do—or so he thought. For his troubles, the anthro bull terrier was treated to the indignity of a simultaneous triple-whammy hat-trick of rejections. Florence, with a withering glare, delivered a verbal uppercut that sent him spinning off his axis and reeling into the ether, before he managed to stagger back to his feet and...