Ashen Phoenix

Odysseus’s player: I say, “Who me? I’m nobody.”

Homer: Roll for deception.

Odysseus’s player: I got a natural 20.

Homer: The cyclops now completely believes that your name is Nobody. He shouts for help from the other cyclops but they ignore him because he’s telling them that “Nobody hurt him.”

“A-actually, Mr. Ramsay, sir, I could use some, uh, advice. If you wouldn’t mind?”

Gordon stares at you for a long moment, face expressionless. Your heart hammers in your chest, sure that you’re about to die. Suddenly Gordon beams at you and reaches out to clap you on the shoulder. You can’t quite hide a flinch, but he ignores it.

“That’s great to hear!” Gordon tells you. “There’s nothing wrong with admitting you need help. I’ve met plenty of professional chefs who refuse to acknowledge they’re in over their heads and most of them end up making a mess of everything. Come on, let’s see what you’ve got!”

The next while is a blur of terror, awe, and bewilderment. You’d never realized your kitchen contained so many things before. Gordon does make a snide comment about the pre-cooked steaks, but then he coaches you through ways to “beef it up” with a marinade, spices, and side dishes that include frozen veggies and a box of rice you’d forgotten you had.

 So it’s 2000, and my family drives from fucking California and like three blizzards to get to Ohio for thanksgiving, becuase my grandparents are moving into a nursing home and it’s their last holiday in that house.  So its a bit bittersweet but ultimately a good thing.

Since it’s their last holiday there, the family pulls out all the stops when it comes to dinner, all the Russian desserts come out, as does the Lethal Bacon Mashed Potatoes and the horrible candied yams dish because not all expressions of love are good, even if they are sincere.  In the spirit of going all-out, Uncle Bobby smokes a Turkey.  

Uncle Bobby started cooking as a boy scout by tossing foil-wrapped potatoes into a campfire and has been addicted since, and now has a hand-made smokehouse in the backyard where he makes various cured meats and other delights.  He seasons the turkey in the traditional manner, but he and grandpa have a shared passion for a spaicier mesquite-style bird, so Bobby makes a Cornish Game Hen seasoned that way, for them.

Then Bobby has a Brilliant Idea.  He realizes that he can stuff the turkey (once it has been smoked) with regular stuffing, and there is still plenty of room for him to put the game hen inside THAT, and stuff the game hen becuase why not?  He confers with Mom, and she explains how to cut open the turkey so there’s  dramatic reveal as the stuffing and game hen come out.  It’s Genius.

Except, of course, that my Aunt Sue is attending, Uncle Cliff slouching after her.

So the day of the dinner, tensions are running a bit high, between the marathon cooking, the kids all being trapped indoors due to aforementioned blizzards, and Uncle Cliff deciding that the best way to amuse himself is by hiding from the adults in the basement, getting drunk and rambling about how various ethic groups were destroying America.  Being that I had close Muslim friends that were leaving the country becuase of 9/11, I was near tears from this nonsense and ready to fight a man roughly five times my size.  

Sue, for some reason, keeps coming down and defending him, or telling us we’re rotten children for ‘attacking’ him, becuase she Must Stand By Her Man, even if her man is a hefty bag of feces with an ugly mustache.

My sister eventually bolts upstairs to tattle and my grandfather limps down to the basement and brandishes his Hip-Bone Cane, hands rock-steady in spite of the Parkinson’s slowly taking over him.

“Firstly Cliff, It may not be my roof much longer but while you are under it you will be civil, or I’ll beat your skull in.  Also, dinner’s ready, everyone go wash up.”

We go upstairs and sit down, and do the traditional “Name one thing you’re thankful for” as the bread gets passed around the table, and things calm down a bit.  Bobby brings out the Turkey and everyone goes OOH becuase it’s really pretty, them Mom carves it open so that the stuffing spills out dramatically along with the game hen and there’s an appreciative gasp all around becuase it looks cool.

Only Sue KEEPS gasping, in utter horror, before getting up and clasping her hands to her face ala Edvard Munch and shrieks-

“OH MY GOD IT WAS PREGNANT!”

We all stare at Sue.  We all look back at the fully-dressed-cooked-and-stuffed birds that in no way had any internal organs in them or ever gave live birth. Then we all looked back at Sue, trying to figure out where to begin but since she’d been trying to justify Cliff’s behavior she was pretty much free-associating conspiracies and scandals now, and just kept going.

“IT WAS PREGNANT MY GOD WE’VE COMMITTED AN ABORTION WE’RE ALL GOING TO HELL FOR THIS, I’M SO SORRY JESUS-” She goes into full pearl-clutching gibbering horror at this point and falls back into her chair like it’s a Victorian fainting couch only it’s a shitty chair from the Eisenhower administration so it collapses and she slams into the floor, sobbing and kicking her feet like a toddler.

Everyone watched for a moment before my Mom sighs heavily and starts carving and serving the turkey while my grandmother mouths “she’s not coming back”.   

Cliff, reactions delayed by about six beers, finally notices his wife is on the floor and tries to pick her up, falls on his ass himself.  They are assisted by Dad, who is saintly patient man and less immune to this jacknapery at that point. I am stuffing dinner rolls into my face to keep from laughing at this grand spectacle and it’s not working.

“I CAN’T EAT IT, I REFUSE TO PARTAKE IN THIS BARBARISM-”  Sue begins but Dad puts on his best Kindly Father voice (he went to seminary school long enough to learn that before getting drafted but that’s another story) and assures Sue that she need not eat, or even be in the room if she wants.  She nods, placated by being the center of attention again, and Dad goes in for the kill.

“I wouldn’t want you to go hungry.  Can I make you some Eggs?”

“That would be lovely.” Said Sue, joke flying over her head like a boeing 747.  I recall watching my grandmother nearly choke to death on the green beans over that, and everyone pointedly trying to avoid talking about anything poultry-related while Sue sat there and ate the most ironic scrambled eggs in the history of mankind.

Shortly thereafter, Cliff threw up in the sink and they went home, and the party got underway properly, with Grandpa raising a toast to Mom and Uncle Bobby “For marrying well, for a change” “Pregnant Turkey” has been an Ohioan thanksgiving staple since then.  I’ll see if I can hit Uncle Bobby up for instructions but if you decide to make it 1. you HAVE to shriek “OH MY GOD IT WAS PREGNANT” when you carve it open, or it’s not authentic and won’t taste as good 2. Share the pictures with me.

My friend got married yesterday and we missed the wedding because of work but we made it to the reception. Because its mid-September and the reception was in a nature center (awesome!) there was a little bit of a fall theme. Not overbearingly, but the tables all had these tiny pumpkins. 

So they’re cleaning up at the end of it and we’re still hanging out because we haven’t seen these people in forever and we can talk until three in the morning when we get together. All of a sudden, the Maid of Honor hands us a tiny pumpkin. 

“Take one.”

“Um… okay?”

“Take another.”

“….?”

“It is my duty as Maid of Honor to make sure that the guests leave with an uncomfortable number of tiny pumpkins.”

So it turns out that she’d gotten a bunch of them for a Halloween party last year and after the party was over her mom threw them into the compost heap thinking that would be the end of it. But what she didn’t seem to realize was that if you put pumpkins in a compost heap- it grows more pumpkins. It grows pumpkins exponentially. Serious mathematical anomaly pumpkins. 

So this year she has even more tiny pumpkins and she figured it would be a good idea to have them as decor for the reception. BUT- she would still have to throw them out at the end of the day and no matter where you throw them you are doomed to have a ridiculous amount of tiny pumpkins growing SOMEWHERE at your fault. 

take some of the flowers off her hands

help with some post-wedding stuff

watch the presidential debate

play Clue for like three hours

drink a lot of booze. 

And there are just… tiny pumpkins EVERYWHERE.

They were in the bathroom.

Three pumpkins ended up in my purse this time. 

One of them has a face. 

Well… no. 

It ended up being something like two and a half cans-ish. And that’s a really rough estimate. Turns out there’s a lot more meat on those things than you think there’d be. So I figured I could do something like double it and then make a half batch. 

But then I ran out of sugar. I mis-measured the baking soda. I only had whole cloves, so I had to grind them down and had to estimate how much I needed. I couldn’t find the liquid measure.

I’m mixing up this giant bowl of pumpkin batter goo thinking shit shit shit this is going to be a mess. There’s no way anyone is going to be able to eat these things. And there’s no muffin cups. But I already made it this far and I’m stubborn as hell so in the oven they go. 

I… kind of… forgot about them? Woops!

Place starts smelling like Yankee Candle and I’m like SHIT. Get over to the oven and… 

they’re… 

….somehow perfect?

Maybe a little dry, but they’re fucking delicious. Fucking magic pumpkins. Truly I am a witch. 

So the moral of the story is that if life gives you tiny pumpkins, make them into muffins and give them right back. 

We’ve found her in real life guys

An actul fictional character in real life

How to double knit very, very quickly

Mrs. Jonson on the third pew won’t mind her own business, bless her heart. And she buys her pies pre-made for all the church functions.

Ways that women cheated the system in 1950s Texas to get into college and start careers. Including a memorable “He told me I wouldn’t last a week, but then 6 years later, I had to let him go because his production was way down.” *drinks sip of coffee*

We Might Be Conservative But Gosh Darn That Trump Bless His Heart He Doesn’t Know Anything About God Or Texas

And On That Note, God And Texas Are The Only Good Things Left In The World. Erin Write That Down.

How to rescue a dropped stitch and make it look like it never happened

Public schools and inclusive, desegregated education will single-handedly save the world

Sharing recipes is a sacred bonding and community-building tradition that rivals the greatest political negotiations and land deals in history

“It’s better that you prefer girls honey, the Boyfriend Curse doesn’t apply to your girlfriend and a lovin’ god’ll keep on a-lovin. You better make that girl a sweater.’” 

(Boyfriend Curse = knit a sweater for a boy and he’ll leave you when you finish it)

Mrs. Barbara’s husband cheated in ‘76, resulting in a divorce. She thought it was the end of the world because her youth had already passed, but now she’s an engineer and married to a kind, good man who she met when she went back to college in ‘79.

“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, 

So I’ve been writing some trashy vampire fiction as stress-relief during finals, and it accidentally turned into a major world-building exercise and potential Novella and???  I dunno but I want to share some thoughts.

First, some universe specific things:

Vampire cannot “turn” Others without significant effort and/or a specific ritual.  being a bitten by a vamp is no more going to make you one or it;s thrall than being bitten by a st. Bernard is.

Monsters and Cryptids explicitly exist, but most of the world’s governments deny that they do for… reasons.  That I will get into later but probably have to do with tax law.

The two main characters so far are Marion “Red Charlie” Charleston, a vampire turned back in 1890 who made his fortune during the prohibiton era doing aggravated bootlegging for Roy Olmstead, and Alex (Alexander Byron Chesterson Jr.) who is more or less Marion’s live-in tech sspport/tax shelter.

OK, so onto the worldbuilding

Seattle is like, THE city to live in, if you want to be an Urban Cryptid

If you’re a vamp, the weather means you can go outside during daytime fairly often, or emerge dramatically from the fog p much whenever.

Not to mention a a high population of Vegans, which probably taste much less bitter due to the lack of dairy.

If you’re a were-whatever, it’s literally a half-hour drive/ferry ride to some of the densest, most isolated forest in the US so you can go bananas during your shift.

Aquatic or ocean based cryptid? PUGET SOUND IS RIGHT THERE.  Just stay away from the Orcas, they’ll fuck you up.

Bigfoots are the locals that complain about urbanization while getting fancy-ass coffee and exchange beard-grooming tips with the local hipsters.

There is Werewolf/vampires-that-prefer-to-shift-into-wolves/Vamps-that-prefer-to-shift-into-bats/Werebat Discourse and it is INTENSE

ok it’s not quite Seattle but THERE IS ABSOLUTELY A DRAGON ON MOUNT HOOD AND WE DO NOT FUCK WITH HER.

There are Kelpies, but mostly out in the san juans and rich neighborhoods where people are less suspicious and better marbled.   Most of the time though, they get into dumpsters and more than one Marion has run out of the house with a slipper at 2AM to keep them from knocking the garbage cans over.

cryptid-only bars warded against humans, not out of safety concerns, but OH GOD HIPSTERS ARE SO ANNOYING.

Forks is like, 2 hours away and everyone int he community HAAAAATES the twilight series- less about the interpretation of vampirism and were-persons, but OH GOD THAT’S NOT HOW RELATIONSHIPS WORK.

DO NOT  get them started on 50 shades, which takes place in seattle proper.

Before we continue however, a small correction:  The Mountain outside Seattle is MT. RAINIER, not Hood.  There’s dragons on both of them and we leave them the fuck alone.

MOVING ON:

Marion was a young man in the 1890′s and is FURIOUS that corsets have gone of fashion for men because OH GOD, SO GOOD FOR YOUR BACK, but at least in Seattle he can get a properly fitted corset and wear tailored jackets and a top hat and not even be in the top ten of oddly dressed people in the room.

The Pikes Peak Fish Market is run by a Selkie cabal, which may have introduced kelpies to the area in the 40′s in a misguded effort to maintain market share

The Hottest Alternative Noise Band on the scene is made pretty much entirely of banshees and their Deaf human drummer.

Seattle’s own vigilante superhero Phoenix Jones is a ‘regular’ human, but so awesomely cool that he’s privy to Seattle’s “Crypt” scene.

That weird legal battle about pygmy goats a few years ago was really the were community trying to keep the locals safe by having suitable snacks on hand.

As mentioned in the notes, the Fremont Troll is a large part of the Crypt community (Both literally and figuratively) and a force of Chaotic Good.

One of the Crypt demographics Seattle is NOT friendly to is Zombies.  the Humidity and Large Urban Coyote population are Not great for keeping one’s remaining limbs, so most of the continental US’s zombie population is in the LA basin or Pheonix.

Despite this, there are still a few and between them, the Wendigos and large Vamp population, you can find the occasional butcher shop that specializes in “Long Pig”.  These places are HEAVILY regulated and monitored, and get most of their stock my having the other wing of the business be a “Medical Waste Disposal” or “Organic Mortuary”.

A lot of “human-passing” cryptids work for the park service to help keep the humans away from vulnerable deep-woods Sasquatch communities (they’re working on getting the population vaccinated but a measles outbreak back in ‘06 almost halved the population) and away from the nesting grounds of the Highly Endangered Thunderbirds, whose eggs and feathers are highly prized in several folk medicine practices.

For clarity: in this universe, Humans and Sasquatch can cross-breed though it hasn’t happened much since Ye Olden Days, and then it was mostly lonely loggers and the occasional curious Sasquatch.  These Hybrid descendants call themselves Bigfoots, and are genetically and physiologically distinct from Sasquatch.  They’re a lot less new-stimuli-averse and have an easier time learning verbal language, and frequently urbanize these days.

NOBODY likes the Elves, both because they’re creepy manipulative shits, and because they keep getting elected to city council and approving shoddy buildings so they can move about the city now that there’s less iron and doing shifty shit with tax law.

Nobody wants unicorns because 1.  They’re MEAN little shits, and 2. They get from place to place by warping in and out of reality, and if you get a whole herd of them that can leave HOLES.

Wizards that don’t dispose of old potions and magical components properly and keep creating Magically-imbued Pest animals

Like FUCKING LIGHTNING RACCOONS

Gary the Raccoon was a normal raccoon until he got into Mergaster The Fastidious’ garbage and now his third eye sees the future and will tell fortunes for bacon sandwiches.

Side note: Everything the Foxes tell you are LIES that illustrate the Truth, and everything the corvids say is the truth, though not necessarily of an honest nature, and pigeons just spout absurdist nonsense.  The only reliable ones to converse with are the rats.

Moderately-sized aquatic cryptids like kelpies and mers do OK in puget sound, but the huge-sized ones are Too Slow and Can’t Hide, so they immediately turn into Orca Buffets, Hence, the lack of Krackens

There’s a persistent and probably true rumor that Resident orca J-98 is a were-orca, but nobody can figure out his land identity

The Most Powerful Witch in the whole area is R-30, the 106-year-old matriarch of the resident orcas

Even the Dragon does not fuck with her

The Dragon is Totally Done with the seattle wizards, especially Mergaster The Fastidious

However, a few years ago, some of her minions installed Wi-Fi in her lair, so now she works as a “Consultant” for Wizards Of The Coast

THOSE wizards are ok.

The Elves are more like the mob that went legit and changed the laws to suit their purposes, rather than a court like back in Europe

Part of the reason is that the elves were late to emigrate, and the things that got here first set up Precautions to avoid that kind of oligarchy

The statue of Liberty is a big giant iron FUCK YOU to the elves.

Once the Elves did get out to seattle, they became the largest “party” drug dealers cutting magical concoctions with ecstasy, LSD and shrooms. Because elves LOVE to party.

Humans can do Elvish Ecstasy, but only Once.

In fact, cryptids are so far-flung and small minorities compared to N. America’s human pop that they really don’t have the means or need to form much government at all

Seattle is one of the few exceptions, due to unusually high density, though what they have is more of a Neighborhood watch/HOA than a real gov’t.

Which is mostly eyeballing the carnivorous cryptids, chasing elves out of the neighborhood and telling the wizards to STOP

Actually, lets have some more Dragon-related facts:

There’s a dragon on virtually every large mountain in North America, but the volcanic ones are the Most Scary.  The Hood and Rainier dragons talk a lot of smack about her but are secretly terrified.

the bigger the dragon, the bigger the mountain she will try to claim.  Mountains are measured by how tall they are relative to the surrounding ground.  Hence, Mt. Hood (11K) is taller than Mt. Evans (14K) by Dragon standards, because Mt Evans STARTS at 5000 feet.

All the dragons in this universe are female, and breed a lot like Whiptail Lizards, but with more fire, screaming and Property Damage.

There are Absolutely Transgender dragons.

oh man, covering up for the dragons is the biggest problem for cryptids.  there’s a volunteer organization that’s basically Unionized Draconic Henchpersons In Charge Of Keeping This Shit Under Wraps.

they have fundraisers, and Marion is a major donor.

Marion might have history with the Rainier dragon.

Moat of the dragons recruit their minions out of the local colleges by offering paid internships.

They’re like regular internships, but with better hours and you get to take home a literal chest of treasure.

most people call them the “The Mount X Dragon” or the “The X Mountain Dragon” because their chosen names are 1. like 27 letters long and totally unpronounceable 2. a great way to accidentally summon one.

you do not want to accidentally summon one.

Wizards are made, not born-  Pretty much any human can learn how to use magic, but some have a greater aptitude than others, and aptitude does tend to run in families.

So does the urge to hoard secrets for Great And Terrible Power

So most wizards in the US come from a few old families/the people who bought their books at the estate sale and decided to give it a go

Most wizards guard their secrets with the paranoia of a UFO conspiracy Theorist, and lines of magical research are often lost when they pass on.

Magic in this universe is a natural phenomenon, and a by-product of regular physics, like the water cycle, but harder to see.

and like most natural phenomena that have been studied pretty much exclusively by jealous white men, it isn’t well-understood.

Or all that powerful.

Like, if we use D&D as an example, the “Greatest” of the wizards was level 4, tops.

Like the water cycle, Magic needs to be harnessed on an almost industrial scale to really alter the world, but even small mistakes can send the whole system out of whack

Hence, beings like Gary, the future-seeing raccoon exist in abundance

Or The Entire Mess That Is The Seattle Underground

Witches, collectively, have a much more collectivist culture and are better about sharing research and Not Fucking Things Up

But each group has it’s sinners and saints.

“Witch” and “Wizard” are not gendered terms so much as different styles of magical research and use, though they are heavily gender correlated.

I have an editor lined up to remind me it’s PIKE place and the names of which mountains go where. And a large cadre of Satellites willing to fact-check the snot out of me.  Thank you all, Honestly.

Some more world-building:

Lycanthropy and Vampirism are both the results of Ancient Wizards Fucking Up Real Bad.

Lycanthropy can result in people shifting into pretty much any , which includes exciting things like Mice, Whales and Platypodes, which is giving taxonomists fits.

The capacity for lycanthropy runs in families but not necessarily were-forms.

You, a nice Classical Werewolf, marry a nice Werebear and your children all come out rabbits.  Just imagine.

Vampirism has got a suspicious lot to do with Burial Rituals and the eldest extant vampires are all from Egypt and Israel. 

It’s hard to accidentally make a vampire unless you’re being spectacularly careless, but nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of people.

Marion owns one of the theaters in Cap Hill, and is locked in battle with the Elves over the property.  

There’s a play.

and dragons.

the point of the riddle isn’t to figure out which one is lying, in fact, knowing which one lies and which one tells the truth is irrelevant. What you want is the correct answer from the magical beast/two guards/etc. Usually this means knowing which path to take. For that, you HAVE to ask it “if i ask the other head/guard/etc which is the safe way to go, what will they tell me?”

if you asked the truth-telling one, they’ll tell you the wrong way, because the liar will always mislead you. if you ask the liar, they’ll tell you the wrong way, because they’re misleading you, so

ALWAYS do the opposite of whatever answer you get.

“who cares this is a stupid tumblr post this doesn’t matter irl–”

WRONG AGAIN! story time:

A few years ago a friend threw a halloween party, and since he dressed as the Riddler, he decided to have a riddle contest.

now, i’ve been preparing for a riddle contest my entire life, since i first read the hobbit and it got bilbo out of trouble. for some reason, i assumed riddle contests were as inevitable as quicksand.

I answered the first riddle easily (it was one of the ones from the hobbit) and then i had to answer the next one to win a bottle of top-shelf rum. it was a variation on the two-guard riddle, only i had to choose one of two paper bags. one had crappy cheap vodka, the other the nice rum. 

the host and his friend did the classic one lies one tells the truth thing, and of course before i asked everyone started shouting “ask him what color your hair is!” and stuff like that, but i already knew what to ask, so i shushed them and won the rum

remember, kids, it doesn’t matter which one is lying and which one is telling the truth. all that matters is you get the correct knowledge to move you forward, win your rum, and make you seem like a superhuman riddle-solver to a crowd of drunken party guests.

They tell you that one of them always lies and that one of them always tells the truth. And they tell you you can ask them one question.

If you ask “What’s two plus two?” than great. You know which one lies but you also still don’t know which bridge you can cross and can’t find out.

Favorite Friendships - Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble

The free rat, occasionally hearing distress calls from its compatriot, learned to open the cage and did so with greater efficiency over time. It would release the other animal even if there wasn’t the payoff of a reunion with it. Astonishingly, if given access to a small hoard of chocolate chips, the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive — which is a lot to expect of a rat.

The researchers came to the unavoidable conclusion that what they were seeing was empathy — and apparently selfless behavior driven by that mental state.

Ted the Animator: “…I’m sorry?”

Carl the Animator: “Don’t be. Grab this dart, I need to pick a color.”

Ted the Animator: “I’m so confused.”

Carl the Animator: “Dartboard in place. Ready?”

Ted the Animator: “No! There’s nothing more dangerous than ‘sharp objects you can’t see’ plus ‘Carl telling you to do something.’”

Carl the Animator: “I moved at least 70% of the fragile things. Just throw it.”

Ted the Animator: “…oh, goodness, here goes…”

Ted the Animator: “…did I hit anything?”

Carl the Animator: “Beautiful! Narrowly avoided Lime Green, and barely hit the edge of Bright Blue. Blue it is, then.”

Ted the Animator: “I’m afraid to take the blindfold off.”

Carl the Animator: “Aaaaaaaand done. It’s beautiful, fear not.”

Ted the Animator: “…what.”

Ted the Animator: “What… what is… why….”

Carl the Animator: “Good choice, that. Lime Green would have looked weird. Blended in with the hands.”

Ted the Animator: “…why is the pig blue.”

Carl the Animator: “Maybe we should get creative on the chickens, too….”

Ted the Animator: “WHY IS THE PIG BLUE, CARL.”

Carl the Animator: “The same reason this scene has a bank executive dressed up as a green monster with purple hair in a business suit chasing chickens and teenagers while riding a pig through a rentable-for-dances barn.”

Ted the Animator: “…which is?”