you’re a bard who has had a really good life, overall. Relatively humble life, no terrible trauma, no complicated revenge plot, no evil relatives and no enemies worse than, “that’s Jeff, he’s a prick, but he makes a nice pudding, the wanker.”
At least until this jerk of a noble stole your dog. Now you are on a quest, In Search of the Good Boy.
The journey isnt exactly frought with danger, there’s a misunderstanding with a goblin whose startup food wagon business gets mistaken for some kind of extortion or toll booth, but boy howdy, if these kebabs she’s selling are extortion, you don’t mind one bit! You leave that encounter several silver less, with a bundle of delectable foodstuffs in hand. You take it upon yourself to tell people how delicious this goblins food is. Then you set up camp in a field, and while you’re sitting by the campfire, wishing you had saved some of the goblin’s kebab for later, a couple of orcs emerge from the night to ask you to please put out your fire, there’s been a drought going on and there’s a severe risk of wildfires breaking out. They instead invite you to their farmhouse for the night, and are very pleasant company that brew wonderful tea.
Eventually, after many enjoyable encounters and after making many new friends, you finally reach the noble-who-took-your-dog’s house. You knock, and the noble in question, to your great surprise, answers the door themself.
They are much more good-looking up close than you thought they would be.
You explain why you’re there and they apologize profusely for the misunderstanding, because they thought your Good Pooch was a stray, and you hear barking and wagging and excited pup sounds as your dog races to greet you.
Your quest is complete. You have found The Good Boy.
Also the Noble asks you out, and then you eventually get married, and the orc farmers are there, and their farm is flourishing, and the goblin food wagon chef is there, and her business is booming thanks to your patronage, and now she has a brick and mortar restaurant that you and the Noble helped her to open.
hey fellas last night i took a medication which is more or less the anxiety equivalent of a horse tranquilizer & essentially enterred the fifth dimension of sleepwalking in which i awoke but enterred a dissociative fit so strong i was really confused why my loving girlfriend was not my good friend and fellow viking bjorn, who i had to bring some furs to. also i might’ve cried about this. don’t remember
was informed i left out the best part of this 3am experience which was the bit where i, in tears, gestured to our dog and shouted, “i don’t know what this is!”
I see a lot of writing advice, particularly about giving characters flaws. The main advice is “everyone has flaws! make sure to give your character flaws or else it’s not realistic!” And after thinking about it… I would like to challenge this.
It essentially posits a view of human nature that there are good and bad traits, and that these traits can be neatly diagrammed into separate columns, one set of which can and should be eliminated. It tends to go along with a view that posits character development should be about scrubbing away of “flawed” traits until the character achieves more a higher level of goodness, or else the character doesn’t and falls into tragedy. This is not untrue, necessarily. There are definitely some “flaws” that are 100% bad and sometimes a good arc is about slowly losing them. However, I could call this advice incomplete.
Consider thinking about it this way. Characters have traits and often whether or not that trait is a flaw is purely circumstantial.
For instance, fairy tales I read as a child. In some, when an old beggar asked for money on the road, it was a secret test of character. The prince who gave the old man money or food would be rewarded. But in other folktales I read, the old beggar would be malevolent, and any prince who stooped to help him would be beaten, punished for letting his guard down. Now, in a story as well as in real life, either of these scenarios can occur–a stranger who asks for help can be benevolent or malevolent. So which is the flaw? Is it a “flaw” to be compassionate? or is it a “flaw” to be guarded?
Trick question–it’s purely conditional. Both traits are simultaneously a strength and a weakness. Either has an advantage, but either comes with a price as well. And whether the price is greater than the advantage depends on circumstance. The same can be said for most character traits, in fact!
An agreeable character who gets along with everyone will be pressured into agreeing with something atrocious because it’s a commonly held viewpoint. A character who’s principled and holds firm even under great pressure will take much, much longer to change their mind when they are actually in the wrong. A character who loves animals and loves to shower them with affection will get bitten if they try the same on every animal. As the circumstances change, flaws become strengths, and strengths become weaknesses. And even a trait that’s wholly virtuous, such as compassion, comes with a price and can be turned for the worst.
You don’t have to think about inserting flaws into your character. Your character, even the most perfect “Mary Sue,” is already flawed the moment you give her any traits at all. The problem with Mary Sue isn’t a lack of flaws, it’s a lack of circumstances to challenge her properly, to show her paying the natural price. Your job as an author is to create circumstances in the narrative that 1) justify why these traits exist in your character 2) show what your character gains from these traits and then 3) change the circumstances to challenge her.
Make your character pay the price for their traits, for their choices. And then, when challenged, you can make a hell of a story by showing us how they adapt, or why they stick to their guns anyway.
this is well said. there is no such thing as a mary sue character, really, only a mary sue story. when every other character and circumstance revolves completely around the protagonist, that protagonist becomes a mary sue, no matter how ‘flawed’ they are. when the story is true to its own momentum and consequences, and the other characters are complex and have their own motivation, even the most perfect character can’t be a mary sue.
a mary sue isn’t a ‘perfect’ character, it’s a black hole that eats the story.
My family is not very religious most of the time. We pray at Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving dinners, and my mom’s entire side of the family excluding her parents and siblings is hardcore religious so whenever we do anything with them it’s kind of religious.
But the point is, most of the time we aren’t, but every year at Christmas time, a church in the next town over puts on a Bethlehem and it’s kind of a tradition to go. They go all out. The building is massive, and they’ve got it all decked out. There’s animals and stalls and everyone is in costume and in character. When you get there, they give you some pennies and you can go and barter for cool little trinkets, and there’s other more expensive things you can buy with your own money. And they have the best apple cider. All in all, it’s pretty cool.
But anyway. We go every year, bundled up in hats and scarves and mittens, and have a good time. We’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, and my mom talks about going when she was a kid.
I’m going to mention again that everyone is massively in character, especially the really super hardcore religious adults. Because this is an important fact.
Every year since I was about thirteen or so, there’s been this one lady who worked at a stall selling ponchos (I have, like, three. They’re really cool). She was probably there before that, but I was thirteen when she started trying to barter for me to marry her son, who was also about thirteen.
“What a pretty little thing. I think you’d make a very good wife for my son. These are your parents? I’ll give you six goats for your daughter’s marriage to my son.”
Her son, meanwhile, is in the “shop” behind her looking absolutely mortified and like he’d rather be anywhere else than there, and I’m pretty sure I probably looked just as embarrassed.
My parents gave her some sort of excuse, like it wasn’t enough goats or they weren’t ready to marry me off yet or something, and we moved on.
The next year we’re back again, and come up near to the same stall.
“Ah! You’re back again! Have you married your daughter off yet? I can up my offer to nine goats and three chickens for your daughter to marry my son.”
Somehow she remembered the exact people she’d tried to buy their daughter off of for an entire year? So my parents are refusing her offers again and me and the son are trading embarrassed looks and we go on our way.
And then it happens again. And again. And again. Each and every one of the last six years this lady has tried to buy me in goats to be her son’s wife.
A couple years ago when we were waiting in line to get inside my mom jokingly said that they should accept this year and see what she’d do and I completely refused because it was mortifying enough as it was.
One year we brought my friend with us and we’re waiting outside and my sister was like “Are you gonna sell Kee this year?” and my dad was like “Maybe if there’s enough goats” and my friend was confused as heck and I was like “This lady tries to buy me to marry her son every year. I told you that” and she’s like “Yeah but I didn’t think this was a thing that actually happened” and she was still skeptical and by the time my parents had finished refusing the lady’s offer, she’s killing herself laughing and then spent the next few months telling me I couldn’t look at guys because I already had a fiancée.
Anyway, it happened again this Christmas and the son has somehow gotten almost ridiculously attractive since last year. The speech this year had something to do with how I was far too old to not have a husband yet, and the son and I just rolled our eyes at each other as his mom tried to barter with my parents for me.
This year’s offer was twenty six goats and nine chickens. My sister looked up how much goats are worth, and was mad our parents didn’t sell me so she could have sold the goats and gotten $2000-$8000 for them. My dad says they’re waiting out on an offer of a camel. My brother thinks they should have it more than once a year so he can get more apple cider.
Now I’m back at uni, and in my first psych class of the semester the guy sitting beside me looked really familiar.
As in his-mom-tries-to-buy-me-with-goats-every-Christmas familiar.
That kind of familiar.
We introduced ourselves before class started and I sat there for a couple minutes readying to make a total fool of myself in case I was wrong before turning to him again.
“This is going to sound really weird if you aren’t who I think you are, but by any chance does your mom try to buy you a wife with goats every Christmas?”
His friend gives me a weird look as he walks past me to sit on the other side of him, but he’s definitely putting the pieces together.
“That’s you? Bethlehem in [city name], right? God, my mom is so mortifying.”
And we both kinda laugh and meanwhile his friend is giving us both weird looks now because apparently he didn’t know that his friend’s mom was trying to buy him a wife using livestock.
So he turns to his friend and is like
“Oh, I forgot to introduce you. Danny, this is my fiancée, Kee.”
And I kinda rolled my eyes and was like
“I’m not actually your fiancée. Your mom hasn’t offered my parents enough goats yet. But apparently my dad will sell me for a camel.”
And he laughed and shook his head like
“I am not telling my mom that. I don’t want to see what she has planned for if your parents ever accept.”
So yeah. His friend was really confused by that point and we explained it to him and it turns out he’s pretty cool and we’re Facebook friends now and hang out in psych classes. Apparently his mom only ever tries to buy me for him and she and my mom had gone to the same church growing up which is why she can always pick us out.
So yeah. That’s the story of how some lady tries to use goats to buy me to be her ridiculously attractive son’s wife every Christmas, and how he’s in my class and we’re friends now.
It was the 23rd of December, 2017, and my sister had convinced her friend to come with us this year.
“And that’s where Kee’s fiancé usually is,” Sam explained as we stood in the line waiting to get inside. Her friend gave her the same sceptical look she’d apparently been giving since Sam had first told her.
“He’s not my fiancé,” I pointed out, trying to rub some feeling back into my hands. The Goat Guy had been texting me updates since that morning. The organizers had discussed it at length, but apparently temperatures of negative eighteen, thirteen inches of snow, and a blizzard warning weren’t quite enough to have Bethlehem cancelled (or for my parents to decide to skip it this year). Hashtag Canada.
The line was long this year, and we’d already been standing out in the cold for the better part of half an hour. My brother was loudly lamenting the fact that we couldn’t get to the hot apple cider until we’d made it inside.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I braved taking off a glove to check it.
“Who do you keep texting?” my mom asked, not-so-subtly trying to peer over my shoulder at my phone.
“Gregory from psychology,” I told her, sending off a text informing him that we were still in line. It wasn’t technically a lie, since, you know, that was his actual name and he was in my psychology classes. It wasn’t my fault that my family only knew him as the Goat Guy.
“Ooo,” Sam teased, elbowing me in the ribs, her bony elbows hurting less than usual through all our layers. “I’m going to tell your fiancé he has competition, and then maybe they’ll offer us something useful. Like a car or a trip to Hawaii or something.”
I snorted again. “One, he’s still not my fiancé. Two, he doesn’t have competition, because I’m not interested in him or in Gregory. And, three, this isn’t a game show. If anything, his mom will just offer maybe a horse or something.”
“Can I have the horse?”
I rolled my eyes, glancing at my phone as another text came in. Hurry up. “Sure, Cole.”
My brother pumped his fist in the air. “Nice.”
It took another ten minutes or so to make it to the front of the line, and my family had placed their bets on the amount of farm animals that would be offered this year. My dad reminded me that he was selling me if they offered a camel, and I rolled my eyes, trying to act as reluctant to get to that part of the night as I usually was. Apparently I didn’t do as good a job as I thought I did, since Mom questioned me.
I shrugged, feeling my phone go off again. “I guess I’ve just decided to go with it.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “She thinks he’s hot,” she told her friend. Which, well, it wasn’t exactly untrue. Objectively the Goat Guy was ridiculously attractive, but that doesn’t mean I want to (or have time to) date him.
We’d reached the entrance by that point, and were given our little pouches of pennies to buy small trinkets and ducked into the (compared to outside, at least) warmth of Bethlehem.
Roman soldiers milled amongst the people, asking for taxes and wanting to see our papers. We didn’t have papers, obviously, but the soldier who checked us took an extra penny as a bribe.
“Wait,” Sam’s friend said, stopping in her tracks. “There’s a petting zoo?”
There was, in fact, a petting zoo. The petting zoo and the apple cider were there to keep us pacified as we waited for the soldiers to allow us entrance into Bethlehem, and Cole and our parents went off to get us something to drink while I followed Sam and her friend to see the animals.
“What is this?” Sam asked, frowning. “Where are all the animals?”
There were significantly less animals than usual. Two whole pens were empty, and I could see a few soldiers and townspeople whispering to each other in a panic.
“Maybe they were too cold,” I suggested, reaching out to pat a pig’s head. It snorted and turned away.
My parents and brother returned with our drinks, and I sighed into the bliss that is Bethlehem hot apple cider, and, by the time we made it to the gates to listen as the soldiers reminded us of laws that I don’t remember, I actually had a bit of feeling back in my fingers and face.
I pulled off a glove, typing up a quick text. We’re in.
The stalls were as neat as they always were. I bought a wooden hammer to add to my collection for a couple pennies. My mom dug out her wallet to buy a carved wooden bowl. Sam and her friend took selfies with a girl from their soccer team who was working in a bakery and she snuck them a free scone. Cole found another apple cider vendor and took three cups for himself.
“Look,” Sam said, grinning wickedly as she wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “There it is.”
And there it was. The Goat Guy’s mom was standing outside her shop, heckling with a couple over the price of a rug.
“That is a poncho,” I agreed, glancing at one hanging on the side of the shop and deciding I was going to buy it after this whole thing was over.
Sam rolled her eyes. “You know that’s not what I mean,” she pointed out, craning her neck. “I don’t see your fiancé, though.”
“That’s because I don’t have one,” I pointed out, stopping to look at the smithery so I didn’t look too eager to get there.
No one bought that I actually wanted to see some guy pound metal with a hammer (there wasn’t an actual fire or anything, so he was really just sitting there hitting it), so they dragged me across the hall, grins on their faces.
The Goat Guy’s mom, who we will henceforth refer to as the Goat Mom for sake of ease, perked up as she saw us heading towards them, finishing up her bartering and holding her arms out in greeting.
“Ah,” she called, grinning at us. “Back again, I see. Surely you must have found a suitable husband for your daughter by now.”
“Nope,” my mom said, giving me a pointed look. “She’s still single.”
(And, yeah, I was, and still am, but she doesn’t have to be so judgy about it)
The Goat Mom gasped, pressing a hand to her chest. “My dear, you’re far too old to be without a husband,” she cried, causing people to stop to watch. I could feel my face heating up, and glanced around wondering where the Goat Guy was at. We had agreed months ago that this was always far more embarrassing for me than it was for him, so why was he taking so long?
“You won’t be young forever,” the Goat Mom was continuing, grabbing my hands and forcing my to look at her. “You’re running out of time.” She glanced past me to my parents, a smug look on her face that said she got just as much enjoyment out of this as my family did. “My son is still in need of a wife. I’ll tell you what, I will give you thirty goats and ten chickens for your daughter. She—”
“Aww, Mom. You started negotiations without me? How are they supposed to know I’d be the perfect husband for Kee if they can’t see how hot I am?”
The Goat Mom froze for a moment, her grip on my hands loosening enough for me to pull away. I followed the shocked gazes of my family and his mom to the Goat Guy.
He was leaning casually against the shop, somehow managing to look good in clothes that were 2000 years out of fashion, a smirk on his face and a half dozen goats and a llama surrounding him.
“That’s Kee’s fiancé,” Sam whispered to her friend, as if there was any doubt about his identity.
His mom blinked out of her shock, narrowing her eyes at him. “Are you drunk?”
The Goat Guy looked offended, raising a hand to his chest. “What? No!”
Cole started cackling. I don’t think he had any more idea what was going on than the rest of them, but fifteen year old boys are weird.
His mom glanced back at us for a moment, and I had to look away to keep the grin off my face, and noticed quite the crowd had gathered.
She took a deep breath as she turned back to her son, pressing her fingers to her temples. “Then why do you have goats?”
I couldn’t keep myself from snorting then, but, thankfully, everyone seemed too distracted to notice.
The Goat Guy rolled his eyes, relaxing back against the shop once more. “I mean, you’ve been failing at bartering me a wife for eight years, Mom,” he pointed out. “I think they just don’t believe we really have as many goats as you say we have. So I brought goats!” He waved the ropes in his hands, and sent me a wink. “And a llama! Girls like llamas.”
“I think that’s actually an alpaca,” my brother helpfully pointed out, and the Goat Guy grinned.
“You’re probably right, my man,” he agreed and turned back to me. “I’m adding this alpaca onto the list of whatever my mom’s already offered. We can ride off on it into the sunset. What do you say?”
“I say it probably wouldn’t hold us.” I was grinning now, too, no longer able to hold it in.
The Goat Guy just shrugged and stayed silent, letting our families stew for a moment.
“Are you sure you aren’t drunk?” his mom finally asked, glancing between us in confusion. “Maybe you’ve been spending a little too much time at the, uh, tavern.” She glanced at the goats and the llama (alpaca?), realization dawning on her face. “Gregory, you had better not be the reason everyone is panicking about the animals going missing from the petting—trading post.”
“Not drunk,” he insisted, ignoring the part about him stealing the animals from the petting zoo as he thrust the leads of the animals into her hands before she had a chance to protest. “I’m just excited to see my future wife.” He crossed the distance between us, my family stepping back, still mostly in shock, and wrapped me up in his arms. “How’s it going, Kee?”
I laughed, hugging him back quickly before pulling away. “Hey, Gregory,” I echoed loudly, my grin growing at the gasp that came from someone in my family. “How’d you find the psych final?”
He groaned, burying his face in my neck. “Ugh, don’t even get me started,” he whined, an arm wrapping back around my shoulders. “I didn’t fail, but that’s about all I can say.”
I hummed in sympathy, watching our families try to piece together what was going on and the crowd that was wondering if this was supposed to be happening. His mom’s mouth was opening to say something as I caught sight of a couple of soldiers pushing through the crowd, and nudged him.
“You!” one yelled, and the Goat Guy’s head snapped of my shoulder, staring at the soldier in shock. “He stole the king’s animals!” One of the others came forward, pulling him away from me.
“You, uh, have the right to remain silent,” he started, fixing his grip on the Goat Guy’s arm. The soldier who grabbed his other arm rolled his eyes.
“He doesn’t have any rights.”
“Oh, right.” The second soldier nodded and turned back to the Goat Guy. “You don’t have the right to remain silent,” he amended.
“Take him to the king,” the first soldier ordered, taking the leads from the Goat Mom. “He should be tried at once.”
The Goat Guy regained his wits and started to struggle against their hold.
“Wait for me, Kee!” he cried as they dragged him back through the parted crowd. “I’ll come back for you!”
By the time he’d disappeared and the crowd had filled in their path, I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe. It’d gone better than either of us could’ve hoped.
I calmed down after a moment, and the Goat Mom was still staring in confusion in the direction her son had disappeared in. I stepped past her to the shop, pulling the poncho I’d noticed earlier off the wall.
“I’d like to buy this, please,” I said, and her eyes snapped back to me. I grinned and handed her the money, and she pocketed it without bartering, and I walked away, the crowd parting for me as I wandered towards the next stall.
My family joined me a few moments later, as I was browsing some blown glass ornaments and ignoring the fact that the shopkeepers were whispering about me.
“What was that?” my mom demanded.
I shrugged. “That was her bartering for me to marry the Goat Guy like every year.”
“Yeah, that was not like every year.” Sam snorted and I could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “Since when do you know the Goat Guy?”
“Since January?” I tried to look confused, but I’m pretty sure I was still grinning. “You knew that.”
“No?”
“Yeah?” I countered. “Gregory from psychology?”
The stared at me for a long moment before any of them spoke. Sam’s friend was the only one who seemed more entertained than confused.
“That was Gregory from psychology?” my mom asked, and I shrugged, grinning wider. “You planned this, didn’t you? That’s why you kept texting him outside?”
I shrugged. “I mean, we didn’t plan him getting arrested,” I admitted. “But, yeah, we planned the rest.”
“How’d he steal the goats and the alpaca?” Cole wondered.
“He knows a guy.”
“Like that’s what’s important here.” Sam rolled her eyes.
“Why?” my dad asked, and I shrugged again.
“Seven years’ worth of revenge.”
“That’s not what’s important either,” Sam interjected, huffing loudly. “Kee’s totally dating the Goat Guy. I called it.”
“We’re not dating.” I rolled my eyes, pushing past them to continue through Bethlehem. There should’ve been another apple cider vendor coming up soon, and I’d lost all the heat from the last one.
My family did not drop it through the rest of Bethlehem, and neither did any of the vendors who, apparently, knew exactly who I was (my toque was kind of distinctive, so I guess I’ll give them that) and let me know how sorry they were to hear that my man had been locked up just for trying to provide for his family.
We also saw the Goat Guy again, who had been locked up with the prisoners in a large cage, guarded by a handful of soldiers.
He grinned as he saw us approaching, calling out for me and sticking his arms through the bars.
“Can I borrow your notes later?” he asked. “I’m in here for nineteen years, so I’ll be missing a bit of class.”
Sam and her friend posed for selfies with him, and then she made me pose for one with him that will definitely be used for blackmail at a later date.
And that was Bethlehem. No one shut up on the entire drive home, or for the rest of Christmas break, for that matter, about the fact that I’d been keeping my knowing the Goat Guy a secret for almost a year—which I hadn’t, as I pointed out multiple times. They all knew about Gregory from psychology, and he was literally in my phone as The Goat Guy. It wasn’t my fault they hadn’t put the pieces together.
My family is convinced the Goat Guy and I are meant to be and still not entirely convinced that we aren’t currently dating, and I’m kind of dreading what that might mean for Bethlehem 2k18. Honestly, I’d rather not have to deal with the fallout of my parents actually giving in and getting me a bartered husband, no matter how hot he might be. But I feel like they’re going to accept one year, especially after what we did this year.
The Goat Guy says his mom isn’t any better, and is already planning for next year but won’t let him know anything. Maybe I can convince my parents that I never have to go back ever again.
Two weeks later, I caught the Goat Guy’s eye from across the psychology lecture hall, waving him over.
“Hey,” I said, grinning at him as he slipped into the seat beside me. I turned to my friends. “Guys, this is Gregory the Goat Guy.”
“Her fiancé,” he added, and I snorted at my friends’ incredulous looks and punched him gently in the shoulder.
“Not my fiancé,” I corrected, and turned back to him. “The llama was impressive, but you know my dad’s expecting a camel.”
“Darn,” he said, laughing. “I could have sworn you said llama. I guess I’ll have to find a camel by next year if we ever want to get engaged.” He paused, raising an eyebrow. “But you know, I did get arrested before your parents had a chance to decline the offer this time. Maybe they were going to say yes to the llama.”
“Wait,” my friend said, leaning around me to give the Goat Guy a once over. “That story was real? The Goat Guy actually exists?”
So I had the strangest dream this weekend and nobody understands me so I need to share it with you because you might. Press J to skip this post if you can’t deal, I will accept this.
In my dream I was standing on the back deck of a rural cabin that overlooked a beautiful Vermont/Scottish Highlands landscape of unspoiled wilderness. It was a crisp, perfect autumn morning. I held a cup of cooling coffee in my hands as I leaned against the railing and scanned the perfect rolling hills in the midground, behind which the great patterned mountains with their snowcaps marched on until they blended with the horizon: #aesthetic
As I gazed at a distant meadow clearing in the trees, a pair of brightly coloured humanoid creatures emerged from the woods and began to dance for each other. It was an esoteric, beautiful mating dance, a strange combination of instinct and choreography. I felt awe washing over me. I marvelled. I felt a deep sense of wonder and peace as I observed this vanishingly rare encounter that I had never thought to observe in person. These animals were instantly recognisable but had never been studied in the wild. I felt incredibly humbled and privileged to witness this behaviour – I knew that I was the first human witness to observe this behaviour – and I reached for my phone, wondering if I should film it, so it could join the scholarly record, where it NEEDED to be. This could change everything. But then I held back – something told me “no,” to let the creatures have their privacy.
Ok, I can’t go any further without telling you that they were Teletubbies.
A red one and a yellow one. I know. I know. Stay with me here.
The cryptids melted back into the woods. My subconscious drew a discreet veil over the rest of their mating ritual, but I knew instinctively that this had been a dance of courtship. I was busy pondering the implications, because they were critical. You see, although the creatures were instantly recognisable as Teletubbies, as I had studied them, even at a distance, I had an incredible realisation.
They were adult Teletubbies.
This realisation dawned on me and in my dream I understood it fully. The ones that we know of – the captive ones that we have seen on television – are juveniles. In fact, they are the equivalent of toddlers. When you see the adults this becomes obvious. The garbled speech and silly movements of the four captive Teletubbies we know are the babbles of babyhood, a private primal toddler-language brewed up between sentient beings who have never encountered an adult of their own kind.
The adult Teletubbies have more branching, complex antlers and shaggy coats. They are less brightly coloured. They are terrifyingly large. Their strangely human faces, emerging from the thick fur, are unquestionably adult; remote, serene, reproachful. Their television screens are glitchy, esoteric and unknowable. They are cryptids whose public exploitation has undermined their rarity and their strange, alien dignity.
In my dream my feelings of awe and peace turned to great sadness at the fate of the captive toddler Teletubbies. I realised that I had to be the scientist who brought this discovery to the world and raised awareness of their plight. And I also questioned: are Teletubbies like axolotls? Do they exhibit neoteny? (Axolotls, the cute aquarium pets with flaring gills, are actually juveniles of an amphibious species – if given the right conditions they’ll grow up into land-dwelling black newts. But they can breed in their aquatic juvenile form, and most spend their whole lives in this form. Deprived of their wild potential, will the Teletubbies ever mature? Or are they merely experiencing a long childhood, natural for a species that is unimaginably long-lived?)
So in my dream my husband came out onto the back deck and I began to share these discoveries with him and before I could even bring up the axolotls he just said “what the fucking fuck” and went away again.
I woke up disgruntled and unable to capture the feeling of peace and sadness. I then tried to explain this to my husband in the waking world, and he said “what the fucking fuck” and walked away before I even got to the explanation of the Teletubbies being toddlers, which just goes to show that you never know someone as well as you think you do.
Anyway I’m sure you guys will join me in this knowledge. And also I’ve googled it and apparently the Teletubbies reboot features infant Teletubbies, so clearly they are getting more from somewhere and the time to question this is NOW
I have a personal theory that how a dream makes you feel is more meaningful than the content.
What I got from your dream was a sense of wonder and privilege (the good kind), followed by the need to bear witness and advocate for the cryptids. Topped off with a disturbingly accurate example of the attitudes you’d face.
(staring nobly into the distance) yes. yes, you understand. you understand.
I’m so sorry but this is what came to mind and so this is what I drew
Holy
Thank you so much for sharing that dream, it was EXACTLY what I needed to stop feeling like shit. Now I, too, am honored by the knowledge of adult teletubbies.
Dad kept hiding pine nuts in the pages of this magazine and letting Edgar root around for them.
(Edgar cannot be released to the wild due to an injury. He now works as an ambassador bird and general household nuisance.)
Edgar has added to his vocalizations since I last saw him! He used to only say “oh wow” in a really sarcastic voice and to mimic the trill of a screech owl. Now he also screams “WHAT?!” and mumbles “what a WHOPPER!”
It was hysterically funny discussing politics with him in the room. We’d mention some new scandal and he’d randomly interject with cries of astonishment.
Please let Edgar know that I love him
Edgar has graced my dash twice today and I learned something new each time. I too love him.
I love everything about this, most of all the fact that you named him Edgar because it makes me think of Poe’s “The Raven” immediately
Tonight I may have had an encounter with the smoothest human being on earth.
As many of you know I work as an actor in a haunted house. This is a fun job for many reasons, but witnessing people’s reactions to being scared is by far the best. I’m a scare window actor, which means I hide behind a section of the wall that is held up by a latch that I can lift and drop away suddenly, scaring people with both my scream, and the loud sound my window makes upon being dropped. I have a small hole drilled in the wall to look through to see people passing.
The smoothest human being on the planet wore a white hoodie. He came in a group with three other friends. I did not expect to scare him much. After a while you can kind of gauge just by what you can glimpse from your peephole whether someone will be a good scare or not. Men in their 20’s in a mixed group of friends typically do not get scared easily. But this guy was wearing white in my blacklight-equipped hallway, so he had made himself an easy target and I had to take advantage.
I dropped my window precisely when he was in front of it.
He leapt back toward the wall on the other side of my narrow hallway and his drew back his arm like he meant to punch me.
“This is it.” I thought. “I’m finally going to be socked in the face for scaring someone.”
But I was wrong.
His arm kept curling back behind his head. Smoothly, flawlessly, effortlessly he tucked his hand behind his head, leaned back on the wall opposite me, and propped a foot up on the plywood frame of my open window, reclining with ease.
“So, come here often?” He asked.
All of this occurred within the span of a second. Maybe two.
I was shook. I was stunned. I almost broke character.
I shrugged. “Only on the weekends.” I replied with my character voice. His group laughed. He double finger gunned me and walked on.
I will never forget him.
I cannot stress enough how perfect his transition from his fear reaction to his playboy act was. It flowed so naturally.
i walk into starbucks and order a pumpkin spice latte with 13 shots of espresso. i tell the barista that i intend to transcend humanity and become a god. i ask for no whip cream
you say this jokingly but i had a customer actually order a pumpkin spice latte with 9 shots of espresso (also no whip) and when i asked her to verify that she did indeed want 9 shots of espresso she looked me dead in the eyes and said “i have 5 kids”
I once had a woman come in and ordered an Americano with 19 shots of espresso. The drink took ages. It held up the line. I asked her why, and she shrugged and said “I just don’t care”. We still talk about that woman. We never saw her again.
new cryptid: exhausted woman at starbucks
Actual conversation I had at register:
“Hi, welcome to [Starbucks]! What can I get you, today?”
“How much is it to fill a Venti with Espresso?”
“I- I’m sorry?”
“A venti cup. How much to fill it with Espresso?”
“Oh. uh. Well, it’d be I suppose… I only have a button for a Quad. I don’t have special pricing for twenty ounces of espresso in a single… drink.”
“Price is the furthest thing from my mind right now. How many ‘add shots’ is that?”
*deep breath of fear* “It’d be a quad with,” *clears throat* “uh, sixteen additional shots of espresso. But, ma’am, I should tell you that the shots will start to get really bitter if they have to sit and wait for us to pull twenty of them-”
“Taste means nothing to me.”
At this point I am truly fearing for my very existence in the presence of what must clearly be an eldritch being.
“Oh. Well, okay.” I put on my absolute best customer service smile to hide my terror and accept that I must face this dragon, fae, or demon with dignity. “We can certainly get that for you! The price will be _____.”
She begins to pay, I shit thee not, with golden dollar coins. We are a block from Wall Street, and this eldritch demi-being is paying for an unholy elixer with golden coins. My life will end soon, I am sure of it.
“Do you still have the ‘Add Energy’ packets?”
My heart began to race at this request. “Yes ma’am.”
“How many can I add?”
Futile though it is, at least I know the rote response to this. “For health reasons, we won’t add more than one per drink and we cannot sell the packets individually.”
“One then.”
I alter the order and tell her the new price. She pays, dumps the change and five golden dollars into the tip box. I write the order on the venti cup and pass it silently to the girl working the hot beverage station. Normally we called and pass, but this was … not something to be spoken aloud.
My fellow takes the cup, not thinking anything of the minor break with protocol, until she sees the order. She stares at me. “No.”
The woman, which I call her for no other greater insight into her terrifying being is within my grasp, simply stands on the other side and says, calmly but with a commanding tone I expect of Admirals in bad movies, “Yes.”
My fellow barista pales before her task. But we are dutiful, we are true to our task, great though it may be. She sets about clearing the two brand new Matrena’s of all distraction, and sets two tall cups in the ready position. The energy packet is emptied into the venti cup, and the shots begin pouring.
The barista was damn near shaking. This woman’s gaze felt like the fires of the sun. Finally, the shots are pulled, the cup is filled, and the hand off takes place.
Our visiting Incomprehensible takes it to our milk bar and adds a dollop of cream. Satisfied, she proceeds to down what must have been half the damn cup.
Then she smiled at us, like a benediction and I was honestly filled with joy. And horror. She left, and we knew nothing more of her after that.
When I talk with other former employees, we quickly begin talking about “The Company” as if we’d never l, perhaps knowing that part of our soul still powers that awesome and terrible corporate machine. And when I share this stroy, other Baristas at first act shocked but quickly settle and comes the chorus,
today, friday 13th, i had two things scheduled to happen. 1 was taking my drivers test (not really relevant to the purgatory thing but i feel the need to include it on the basis of friday 13th fuckery), 2 was picking up my diploma. as it turns out, somewhere between home and the dmv a taillight went out, so the administrator wouldnt let me take the test, and rescheduled me to NOVEMBER. so thats how my 9am went.
with that under our hats, me and my mom went to find my diploma.
it started bad. google maps did not recognize the address as existing. it took us several tries to convince it there was a west school avenue in anywhere but california, and when we finally did, the street names didn’t match. some of them just didn’t match the physical signs, but others changed or disappeared in the map itself. and as we approached, we discovered that the facility we were looking for was not only off the road, but the only way to get to it was through a backwoods neighborhood, inhabited EXCLUSIVELY by hicks sitting on their porches and judging us for some unknown sin.
finally, google says we’ve arrived. surely not, we whisper. please no. jesus christ. we’re faced with what appears to be a small penitentiary, the front of which is plain white with massive blinded windows, and the only parking in sight is through a gigantic chain-link fence. there is no signage anywhere whatsoever to indicate whether we’re allowed in, but there’s nowhere else to stop without blocking the teeny little road, so we pull in. the energy of this place is absolutely befuckened. we’re talking deserted. the parking lot is jam-packed, but there’s not a human in sight. it’s not a closed building either, more like a campus, with dozens of doors opening onto little courtyard areas. the doors are all either unmarked or covered in seemingly arbitrary words and numbers. some of them have strangely large locks and no knobs. some of them have keypads.
well by now we’re both thoroughly fuckin spooked, so my mom calls my dad to explain we were gonna be a little uh late and i go to find. something. anything. civilization, perhaps. i find a little hallway to the front of the building, where i can now see a gigantic sign declaring the name of the facility. the letters are two feet tall, but the exact same color as the roofing behind them. they are not faded. they were painted that way. beneath them is an easily 4-meter-tall arched metal gate, which is the only opening on the entire front of the otherwise clean building, and, therefore, logically represents the main entrance.
directly inside and left of the gate is a door with a cartoonishly large keypad lock and a sign which reads ‘NOT AN ENTRANCE.’ there are no arrows and no directions.
i turn around and head the opposite direction, down a long hall. at the end of it is a set of double doors which are shrouded in darkness. i’m about 30 feet away when there’s a flicker of movement behind the doors. then, out of the shadows, steps an old hick. “you look lost.” he says. “y-eAh” i reply. he enquires what i’m there for, and i explain my diploma. he directs me to a door next to a blue car. there is no logical way for the car to be inside the buildings courtyard, but it is no less next to a door. as i turn to see where i’m being directed, a young woman seemingly materializes in the middle of the hallway perpendicular to us, walking briskly. without slowing she turns to me, says “she’s making a pb&j sandwich,” and carries on her way. when i turn around the man is gone. when i turn back, she’s gone too. i run for my mom.
ngl at this point im dead fucking sure she wont be where i left her and when i find her the car will be gone and we’ll be trapped in this hellhole if we don’t get out before sunset, but she’s there, and we go and enter the door. inside we can hear idle chatter from an adjacent office. after a few seconds a woman comes out. she does not ask who we are. she asks whose diploma we want. we tell her mine. she pulls it out of a stack of loose paper, hands it to us without another solitary word, and bids us farewell.
mom drove outta there about 70mph and tbh i wouldve done the same that was an evil place and i do not plan on returning
just moving along like everyone else 