Anthropomorphic 

Kodiak Bear 

Character Portrait

Wesley Smidge

In the head-spinning heart of Anthroxville, where sanity was a distant memory and rage a constant companion, Wesley Smidge found himself caught in the unholy alliance of madness and fury. The anthropomorphic kodiak bear, cursed with a rational mind in a world gone utterly insane, stood as a living testament to the thin line between being mad and going mad. Each day, as the town's absurdities piled up like a teetering tower of nonsense, Wesley felt his grip on reason slipping, replaced by a simmering indignation that threatened to boil over into full-blown lunacy.

Anthroxville was, without a doubt, a very bad place to be sane. Bad for the mind. Bad for the soul. It was a crucible of crackpottery, a veritable Petri dish of perverse logic that threatened to send any rational being unlucky enough to find themselves within its borders completely sideways. It was also an utter piss-take. Escape was but a fever dream, for this carnival of lunacy seemingly ran ceaselessly, its parade of idiocy marching on day and night.

Anthroxville was, without a doubt, a very bad place to be sane. Bad for the mind. Bad for the soul. It was a crucible of crackpottery, a veritable Petri dish of perverse logic that threatened to send any rational being unlucky enough to find themselves within its borders completely sideways and craving the sweet simplicity of a padded cell. It was also an utter piss-take. Escape was but a fever dream, for this carnival of lunacy seemingly ran ceaselessly, its parade of idiocy marching on day and night.

This perpetual motion machine of madness seemed to be fueled by an unholy cocktail of weapons-grade stupidity and what Wesley strongly suspected, as he gritted his teeth, was a town-wide epidemic of brain-melting cognitive dissonance. For the anthro kodiak bear, cursed with the ability to see the world as it truly was, the cosmic joke of Anthroxville had him squarely as its punchline. As he stood there, his rational mind buckling under the weight of the latest affronts to reason, Wesley couldn't help but wonder: in a world gone mad, was clinging to sanity itself an act of lunacy?

For example, the Department of Transportation had just recently replaced all road signs with abstract paintings, arguing that "art should guide us in life as well as on the streets." This led to a 42000% increase in traffic accidents, which the city proudly touted as "a boom in the local auto repair economy." 

Kingsley Throttle, Anthroxville's self-proclaimed "vehicular visionary," had not only embraced this change but had also volunteered to create some of the new "road signs" himself, his artistic process involving generous amounts of motor oil, crushed car parts, and what appeared to be the fevered scribblings of a madman. Twelve times in week, for the love of all that was holy, Kingsley had transformed Wesley's car into an unwilling sculpture. Even with the recent changes in road signage, this frequency of collision defied probability, logic, and several laws of physics. Kingsley had taken to calling his frequent impacts with Wesley's vehicle "interactive performance art," and had even applied for a grant from the Anthroxville Arts Council to continue his "work."

The most recent automotive atrocity had unfolded with Wesley's car peacefully reposing in his own driveway, its engine as inactive as Throttle's higher brain functions. The lead-footed imbecile had flashed the kind of grin that would send dental hygienists running for the hills. "Sorry, fuckface," he'd chirped with malicious glee, then reversed over Wesley's foot for good measure. "Didn't see you there. Again." Wesley couldn't help but wonder if Throttle's uncanny ability to find and crash into his car was perhaps the town's most abstract and dangerous work of art yet.

The absence of bridges across the river Ting-Fam stands out as another particularly galling example of the town's descent into - and its inducement of - madness. This aquatic divide, which cuts through the heart of Anthroxville like a jagged wound, has become the domain of one Roy Bibbowski, a self-appointed river tyrant whose love for arm-wrestling and hatred for bridges borders on the pathological.

For the average Anthroxvillian, crossing the Ting-Fam is an exercise in frustration, humiliation, and often, mortal peril. The options are as limited as they are ludicrous: pay Roy's extortionate toll, which seems to be calculated based on a complex algorithm involving (as Hercule von Hooter found out, much to his detriment) one's facial features, stance on arm-wrestling as a professional sport, and the phase of the moon; brave the rickety, jury-rigged bridges that Roy and his press-ganged crew are likely to demolish at any moment in his steamboat, the Palm-to-Palm; or attempt the hair-raising, death-defying leap across the river via the "suicide ramps" that line both banks.

As if navigating Anthroxville's bridge-less hellscape wasn't enough of a daily ordeal, Wesley found himself perpetually ensnared in a silent war of attrition with the notorious Binky Pettifogger, a pickpocket of such preternatural skill she could steal the fillings from your teeth while you were mid-sneeze. Every venture beyond his front door became a high-stakes game of "Keep the Wallet," with Wesley as the unwilling and perpetually losing contestant. He had tried every conceivable anti-theft measure known to bear-kind. Wallet chains? Binky stole the chains, leaving the wallet to dangle like the last wisp of Wesley's dignity. Hidden pockets? She found them faster than you can say Cliff Bingo.

At one point, the anthro kodiak bear had resorted to wearing a full-body suit equipped with elaborate locks, alarms, and a complex system of pulleys and levers. He stepped out feeling invincible, only to find himself moments later inexplicably suspended upside down from the Anthroxville Water Tower. His suit had been not just dismantled, but repurposed into an intricate, Fabia Dinkplop-esque contraption that seemed to serve no purpose other than to periodically bonk him on the head with his own wallet. Binky had not only managed to rob him but had turned him into a living, breathing monument to the futility of outsmarting her sticky fingers.

And then there was the daily gauntlet of procuring basic necessities at Mario Miff’s Miff Inconvenience Stores, an exercise in masochism that made Wesley question whether starvation might be a preferable alternative. Mario, a man whose customer service philosophy seemed to be "the customer is always wrong, and also possibly a war criminal," had engineered his establishments to be triumphs of frustration, veritable temples to the god of inconvenience. The stores were labyrinths of ever-shifting aisles that rearranged themselves not just hourly, but seemingly whenever a shopper blinked. Price tags were encrypted in a code that made ancient hieroglyphics look like children's picture books, often changing mid-transaction to values based on obscure mathematical concepts and the customer's perceived level of desperation.

The checkout process was less a commercial exchange and more a nightmarish ordeal that would make the most hardened goons weep. It involved solving a series of increasingly nonsensical riddles ("What's the square root of yesterday's sunset divided by the color blue?"), followed by physical challenges that ranged from impromptu bare-knuckle brawls to competitive sand-castle building in quicksand.

On one memorable occasion, Wesley had entered the store for a simple loaf of bread, only to emerge three days later, dazed and confused, clutching a sentient lava lamp and a deed to a non-existent plot of land in the fourth dimension. He had no memory of the intervening time, save for vague recollections of being forced to recite Mungo Mugwort's preposterous book "Mungo's Search for Meaning" while balancing backwards on a unicycle. Mario himself presided over this retail madhouse like a demented ringmaster, his eyebrows twitching with barely suppressed glee at each customer's descent into shopping-induced psychosis. His coup de grâce was the "Mystery Item" conveyor belt at checkout, which added random objects to one's purchases - anything from time-traveling toasters to self-aware shoelaces - with the ominous note "You'll thank me later" scrawled on the receipt in disappearing ink.

It was a Tuesday in Anthroxville, a day which, for reasons known only to the twisted logic of the town, meant that chaos reigned with even more fervor than usual. The anthro kodiak bear found himself in the town square, a swirling vortex of absurdity that served as the palpitating, arrhythmic heart of this demented burg. He had already weathered a tempest of illogic that morning, but it was here, on this perfectly imperfect day, that the last gossamer thread of Wesley's tolerance for the ridiculous would finally, spectacularly snap.

The catalyst for this mental apocalypse? None other than Bertie Plimsoll, embaristocrat turned town exhibitionist and self-proclaimed "pud-puller extraordinaire." With the nonchalance of one checking a wristwatch, Bertie dropped his trousers in the middle of the square and began to vigorously manhandle himself with a spirited fixtity of purpose. The crowd's reaction? Utter indifference. Not an eyebrow raised, not a gasp uttered. Where were the usual jeers and heckles? In fact, Wesley could have sworn he caught a couple of spectators clapping along in rhythm.

As the anthropomorphic kodiak bear watched this public display of self-gratification, Bertie's glasses fogged up while he stammered, "You know I'm good for it... You know I'm good for it... You know I'm..." At this moment, Wesley felt something crack inside his psyche, a fissure spreading through the bedrock of his sanity. How had this become normalized? How had anything in Anthroxville become normalized? He closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the absurdity surrounding him. And then, as if possessed by the spirit of the last sane person to flee this madhouse, Wesley heard himself bellow, "That's it!" The sound reverberated through the square, causing the very fabric of reality to ripple and Bertie to momentarily pause his frenzied ministrations. Again, louder this time: "That's it! I'm done! I can't handle it anymore!"

He opened his eyes, half-expecting—hoping, even—that this outburst might have shattered the illusion of madness that enveloped Anthroxville. But as he surveyed the scene before him, there was Penelope Snizzsnapper, Flooze Spasmo, Percy Crumpet, Oswald Corkage, Herma Frodite, and...