Characters / mewithoutYou

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It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright

The Fox

The clever fox crept close behind, kept an ever-watchful eye

The fox as featured in "The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie",.

• Adaptational Heroism: In the original fable by Aesop, the reader isn't shown how the crow obtained his snack. Given that the crow is himself a thief in this version of the story, it makes the fox come across as simply giving him his just desserts.
• Cunning Like a Fox: Is even described as "clever" by the narrator.
• Guile Hero: Athough "hero" would be stretching it a little, he is one of the two central characters of the story and is indeed quite crafty.
• Opportunistic Bastard: Attempts to steal from the baker, and when that fails, tricks the crow into giving up the treats that he successfully stole.
• Sweet Tooth: Implied given that he attempts to steal from a baker peddling sweets.

The Crow

Looking down was the hungry crow, "When the time is right I'll strike"

The crow as featured in "The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie".

• Badass Boast: The entire second chorus of the song involves him hyping himself up.
• Clever Crows: Zig-Zagged. Smart enough to steal from the baker at an opportune moment, but not enough to realize that singing would make him drop the confections in his beak.
• Didn't Think This Through
• Heel Realization: The song's outro is essentially him bemoaning his folly and recognizing what a fool he's been.
• Humble Pie: Considering the song's motif of sweets, this might quality as a Stealth Pun.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Suffice to say, it's pretty unlikely "every rook and jay in the corvidae" has been singing his praises.
• Sweet Tooth: Attempts to steal from a baker and additionally uses sweets as metaphors for his own foolishness.
• Thieving Magpie: A crow who steals a cookie and a tart from a baker's cart.

The Baker

The baker shouted threats by canzonette to curse the crafty bird

The baker as featured in "The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie".

• Angry Chef: Becomes quite incensed by the crow's theft.
• Big Stupid Doo Doo Head: The insults he hurls the crow's way are appropriately baking-themed.
• Canon Foreigner: He isn't a part of the original fable, and mainly exists to explain how the crow got his food in the first place.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Implied by using "most unfriendly words that the village children had not yet heard" and shouting "by canzonette", although the actual threats we hear from him aren't profane.
• Comical Overreacting: His reaction to a bird stealing some pastries from him is quite over-the-top.
• Edible Theme Clothing: Wears a hat shaped like a sundae or a frosted cake.
• Flowery Insults: "You rotten wooden mixing spoon! Why you midnight-winged raccoon, you better bring those pastries back, you no-good, burned-black macaroon!"
• The Hilarity of Hats: His dessert-resembling headpiece is quite comical.
• Symbol Swearing: Used in the music video by actually hanging and pulling plastic symbols on strings across the screen.

The Beetle King

Why not be utterly changed into fire?

The titular protagonist of "The King Beetle on a Coconut Estate".

• Ambiguous Situation: He either metaphorically Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence through his death or literally did so by becoming "utterly changed into fire".
• For Science!: Ultimately, his suicide stems from his desire to know what exactly fire is.
• The Good King: He spends his last moments giving all of his wealth away to "the poor and alone".
• Mundane Object Amazement: Fascinated by "the great light", a fire ultimately started by a maintenance crew for the sake of getting rid of dry leaves.
• Rage Breaking Point: When the lieutenant returns empty-handed as well, he furiously berates him for his failure.
• Scarab Power: A beetle monarch who possibly achieves a state of divinity or similar spiritual unshackling.

Other Characters

• Anthropomorphic Food: The various fruits and vegetables in "Bullet to Binary (Pt. Two)".
• Call-Forward: The donkey in "A Stick, a Carrot, & String" tells an infant Jesus that in about 30 years, he'll ride someone like him, referencing His entry into Jerusalem.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: The titular angel of death in "The Angel of Death Came to David's Room" is polite and soft-spoken.
• Good Is Not Nice: The Angel of Death, despite being fairly patient and gentle, nonetheless rebuffs David's pleas for a longer life and reminds him of his Uriah Gambit.
• Gruesome Goat: The goat in "A Stick, a Carrot, & String", who is possibly Satan in caprine guise.
• Loving a Shadow: The potato accuses the lettuce of this with regards to his infatution with the eggplant, describing him as "[projecting] on her your inward scene" and his view of her as "a blank external movie screen".
• The Marvelous Deer: The deer in "Cattail Down" doesn't just talk, it dispenses philosophical wisdom.
• Obfuscating Disability: The tortoise in "Goodbye,I!" bandages his forehead from a cast made for his uninjured leg.
• Satan: Possibly present in the second verse of "A Stick, a Carrot, and a String", given the spiritual connotations of a goat who deliberately avoids celebrating Christ's birth with the rest of the other animals while mentioning that someday, he'd like to "make friends" with them. The third verse outright mentions a snake being "crushed beneath the foot of Your not wanting anything" which definitely refers to him.

Ten Stories (Animals)

In General

As Elephant addressed the frightened animal car: "Let's return now to the dust, as the dust we are!"

The animal characters of Ten Stories.

• A Dog Named "Dog": All of them are known only by the kind of animal they are.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Peacock: indecision
  • Tiger: despair
  • Fox: cynicism, giving up too easily
  • Rabbit: being a poor judge of character
• Intellectual Animal: All of them are presented as having the intellectual capacities of humans despite being physically depicted as animals.
• Interspecies Friendship/Romance: Many in Ten Stories
  • Given that the escaped animals beg Elephant to come with them when they escape the train, it can be assumed that she was beloved by most if not all of them.
  • Rabbit ends up falling in love with a Fortune Teller.
  • Tiger and Peacock end up bonding as they do their best to deal with their circumstances.
  • Bear's former lover is likely a human given that Fox refers to her as "that Anabaptist girl".
  • Bear and Fox become very close over the course of their journey.
  • Owl attempts to (maybe) propose marriage to Walrus upon seeing him for the first time, but is rebuffed.
• Riddle for the Ages: How exactly did all of them end up as prisoners to the Circus?
• Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: All of them are depicted as non-anthropomorphic in the accompanying album artwork. That said, some of them display human characteristics to the point of Funny Animal status
  • Bear is more or less presented as a human in the contexts of the story. He was apparently integrated into human society well enough to visit amusement parks and have a girlfriend, and clearly isn't capable of surviving in the wild.
  • Rabbit is shown to be literate, capable of working jobs, and understands the concept of laws. While he does live with his family rather than any humans, they're implied to live similarly to them.
  • Walrus and Owl are the most long-lived and likely the most erudite out of all the animal characters, but both don't seem to have any problems living as animals or in the wild. Of course, it's definitely not unheard of for people in real life to choose that kind of lifestyle either.

Elephant

"Now, my children, run free!"

The old elephant on board the Circus train that derails it, kicking off the multiple storylines of the album.

• Cruel Elephant: She's as such by those that hear news of the crash, and by the townsfolk that ultimately execute her.
• Decoy Protagonist: Being on the forefront of the album cover, you would expect her to play a larger role, but she's ultimately killed in the fifth track.
• Egocentrically Religious: Maybe. Either she or a chaplain sings "Lord for sixty-so years I've surrendered my love / To emblems of kindness and not the kindness they were emblems of", indicating misplaced religious devotion to ideals rather than actual action.
• Face Death with Dignity: She meets her end calmly and without any fear.
• The Fatalist: A rare positive example. She sees all of her actions as simply being part of a long chain of cause-and-effect while her real self watches "idly through [her] eyes", but it's this denial of self that motivates her sacrifice in the first place.
• Foil: Both she and Tiger remain in their cages, but she does so deliberately out of self-denial (and more practically, because of her size and age). Tiger remains out of despair and a lack of belief in the value of freedom.
• Gentle Giant: She's the largest animal in the story, but also the kindest and most serene.
• Honorable Elephant: She's an elephant with a strong desire to free her companions from the captivity of a Circus of Fear, even if it means her death.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: Refuses to flee with the other animals because of her age, at least according to her.
• Messianic Archetype: Elephant frees everyone from their prisons, is taunted by her captors, put through a Kangaroo Court, and then publically executed for no real wrongdoing, altogether facing her death stoically, in addition to being altogether wise and focused on spiritual enlightenment.
• Obi-Wan Moment: Her penultimate words are essentially a declaration that the mob assembled to kill her can only wound her body, something she no longer holds value in.
• The Stoic: She displays absolute calm for the vast majority of her scenes. She seems slightly melancholic at Tiger's refusal to flee and possibly regrets a lifetime of misplaced love, but is otherwise completely at peace with herself and her trial.

Rabbit

"I'm still counting on you like an invisible rosary"

A rabbit on board the circus train who aims to reunite with his family followinig the derailment.

• Ambiguously Jewish / Christian: In "Four Fires", he asks his mother to sing his "favorite hymn", while Ein Keloheinu is sung in the background. Simultaneously, he describes himself as counting on the Fortune Teller like an "invisible rosary", and his family is described as having a Christmas tree.
• Author Avatar: As shown above he likely has some form of a multireligious background, he ends up in a doomed romance, and is deeply affected by the death of his father. If that wasn't evidence for him being this for Aaron Weiss enough, a line in "Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore" from [Untitled] describes "Uncle A." as being "part-rabbit".
• Expy: He acts as one to the Prodigal Son, with his story being a Whole-Plot Reference to the parable.
• Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: He mentions working as a farmhand and being paid under the table to cover living costs.
• Fatal Flaw: Being a Horrible Judge of Character and being easily distracted - it's his fling with the Fortune Teller that delays his reunion with his family to tragic results.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Attempting to form a longstanding relationship with the Fortune Teller, who's implied to be a footloose itinerant, was evidently a pretty poor idea.
• Massively Numbered Siblings: He writes a letter addressed to seven sisters. He is a rabbit after all.
• Money Dumb: He manages to spend all of his saved money in what's implied to be a short amount of time.
• My God, What Have I Done?: "Four Fires" shows that he feels an incredible amount of guilt over not returning home before his father's passing. The song's artwork◊ even shows him with his face buried in his hands, presumably in shame.

Fox

"And what better means to our inevitable end?"

A fox aboard the circus train that flees the wreck along with Bear.

• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Philosophical, prophetic, and defeatist in contrast to the guile, pleasure-seeking, and goal-oriented vulpine in "The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie" from the previous album.
• The Cynic: She wonders whether or not they were happier as prisoners to the Circus, or at least better able to pretend that they were happy.
• Doomed Defeatist: It seems that her character fits this, with her coming close to death via starvation, but she's ultimately saved by Bear's Heroic Sacrifice.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: A good part of the aptly-named "Fox's Dream of the Log Flume" involves a prophetic and heavily symbolic dream of Bear's death framed in a mystical light.
• Fatal Flaw: Cynicism and defeatism. She somewhat regrets even escaping in the first place, and her and Bear's lack of focus or direction is what leads them to aimlessly wander the wilderness.
• No Party Like a Donner Party: She's implied to have eaten Bear's dead body to stave off starvation. The sheer difference in size between the two animals ensures that this act would have bought her quite a bit of time.

Bear

"Though some with certainty insist 'no certainty exists'!"

A bear with a mysterious past who flees the circus train along with fox.

• Ambiguous Situation: It isn't clear if he was telling the truth about having a deceased brother, or if the entire story was entirely made-up.
• Beary Friendly: He's a bear who's one of the nicest and least-flawed characters in the main cast.
• Crisis of Faith: "Fox's Dream of the Log Flume" is largely a song about a crisis from his point of view.
• Dark and Troubled Past: The fact that he's established to have lived with humans in the past indicates that his present role at the circus was not the result of a voluntary decision. Additionally, he also suffered a Rejected Marriage Proposal with his girlfriend and possibly had to watch his brother die from an unknown disease.
• Declaration of Protection: Gives one to Fox in "Grist for the Malady Mill".
  "I'm clearly not as handsome or caring as what you seem to want
  But I'll gladly walk you home
  Because those streets can be dangerous!
• Determined Defeatist: He never gives up or loses hope despite the terrible predicament that he and Fox find themselves in.
• Final Speech: The penultimate verse of "Bear's Vision of St. Agnes" is this, in which he establishes his ultimate determination in his decision to sacrifice himself. The final verse has him comfort himself with the knowledge that his death will ultimately save Fox.
• The First Cut Is the Deepest: His relationship with Fox is implied to be this, given that he seems hung-up on his past romance for most of his presence in the story.
• Furry Reminder: In his final words, his reminisces about acorns and salmon, both of which are a food source for brown bears.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He throws himself to his death so that Fox can survive by feeding off of his dead body.
• Humble Hero: He responds to Fox's philosophical rambling by stating that he doesn't really know if he knows anything in a roundabout manner.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Played for Drama during his Crisis of Faith
  "So by now I think it's pretty obvious that there's no God
  And there's definitely a God!"
• Insecure Love Interest: Acts as this to Fox; he never directly reveals his feelings, both out of insecurity and nostalgia for a past love.
• Lying to Protect Your Feelings: Before throwing himself off of a cliff, he tells Fox that the body she's about to find actually belongs to his brother, who has just died of an illness. Presumably, he was too delirious to come up with a better lie, and she was too delirious to understand that he was even lying.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot:
  "I asked her, 'Do you ever have that recurring fantasy
  Where you push little kids
  From the tops of the ride?'
  And she shook her head no
  I said 'Oh, neither do I'"
• Rejected Marriage Proposal: He suffered one in the past, likely as a result of the date being poorly planned out and his own comments not helping matters.

Tiger

"All once without now lives within"

A tiger who chooses to remain in his cage when the train is derailed.

• Dark and Troubled Past: His line "Gone my next of kin, all once without now lives within" implies that he was either taken from his family, or they were killed.
• Despair Event Horizon: He apparently reached this a while ago, given his refusal to leave his cage.
• Fatal Flaw: Despair and learned helplessness.
• Hidden Depths: While he seems like nothing more than a showcase of how the circus has broken some of the animals' spirits, he later displays a remarkably unique personal philosophy in "Cardiff Giant" regarding the innate worth of the animals, and additionally resolves to comfort Peacock even amidst poor circumstances.
• Paper Tiger: One of the most physically impressive species among the animals, but also the least willing to escape.
• Self-Restraint: He's the only named animal not to leave his cage on the circus train following its derailment.
• Took a Level in Idealism: After he's taken back by the circus, he displays a much more positive outlook on life and resolves to make the best out of his current situation.

Peacock

"I often wonder if I've already died"

A peacock who escapes the crash, but is quickly recaptured.

• Call-Back: Much like the peacocks mentioned in "A Glass Can Only Spill What it Contains" from Brother, Sister, she seems to be quite conceited.
• Despair Event Horizon: She reaches this upon being captured, but fortunately, Tiger is there to console her.
• The Ditherer: She's unable to decide where exactly to run towards, and as such, is swiftly caught by the police.
• Fatal Flaw: If you haven't guessed, it's indecision.
• Proud Peacock: The narrator of "Grist for the Malady Mill" ironically mentions her "stalward sense of style", implying that her focus on her own beauty is what led to her lack of decisiveness.

Walrus

"What unprecedented gift does this afternoon provide?"

A long-lived walrus that leaves the wreck of the train to eke out a solitary existence in the wilderness.

• As the Good Book Says...: He references both the vine in the Book of Jonah and Jacob's ladder in the Book of Genesis to convince Owl to join him in his solitary existence.
• Death Seeker: He apparently dreams about being executed by firing squad, likely due to a desire for greater spiritual transcendence but which could also be motivated by his ordeals in the circus or simple world-weariness.
• The Final Temptation: Owl provides him with this, offering him the chance to journey across the world with him for centuries to come. Walrus doesn't take the bait.
• Foil: To Owl. They're both centuries-old Intellectual Animals who've traveled all over the world, but while Owl's desire is to continue traveling, Walrus only wants to live a solitary, peaceful existence.
• Grumpy Old Man: He'd old enough to have witnessed the conclusion of the The American Civil War firsthand and finds Owl's proposal rather bothersome.
• The Hermit: He even describes his plans as being "eremitic".
• Inexplicably Awesome: Walrus claims to have traveled to the Arfak Mountains in Papua New Guinea, Tangier in Morocco, and Appomattox, Virginia, in addition to being centuries old, despite belonging to a semi-aquatic^note While the first two locations border the sea, Appomattox is over 150 miles inland species with a maximum lifespan of 40 years and a habitat localized entirely to the North Pole.◊
• Intellectual Animal: He possesses the sapience of a human but at least in the present day, prefers to live as an animal.
• Rule of Symbolism: Like Elephant, Walrus is a large, wrinkled mammal with tusks, and he also demonstrates the greatest spiritual clarity out of any of the animals, not being distracted by any potential snares along his journey nor finding survival in the wild to be a challenge.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: He and Peacock are the only animals who aren't specifically exhorted by Elephant to flee, but unlike her he successfully does; specifically, he's mentioned as moving toward Athabasca Falls, which would put him over 700 kilometers away from the original train crash in Trout Creek.
• Warm-Hearted Walrus: Downplayed. He's not the nicest of the escaped animals, but he clearly has the most spiritual clarity and wisdom, and even extends an offer to Owl to join him in his hermitage.

Owl

"So if you're ever so inclined"

An amorous owl who invites a recently-escaped Walrus to join him in his worldly travels.

• Ambiguously Evil: It isn't clear whether his lifestyle and offer to Walrus is deliberately intended as spiritually deletarious, that it isn't inherently negative but would be for Walrus's own spiritual aims, or that he simply wants a partner on his journey that's as long-lived and well-traveled as himself.
• Ambiguously Gay: In his proposal to Walrus, he offers to "pour the matrimony wine", which could be taken literally (given that Bear also attempted to propose marriage at one point) or simply as a metaphor of a lifelong bond.
• Depending on the Artist / Inconsistent Coloring: The owl depicted on the album cover of Ten Stories is a horned owl while in the artwork for "Nine Stories" shown above he's drawn as a barn owl. The lyric "A lovesick barnyard, an amorous eye" implies that the latter depiction is the intended one.
• Inexplicably Awesome: Like Walrus, he's lived (or at least claims to) for centuries and would have had to cross the Alantic Ocean if he truly saw "Charlotte Corday with a knife in her hand".
• Intellectual Animal: Also like Walrus, he has the sapience of a human but never describes actually living among them, only observation.
• Love at First Sight: He develops a strong attachment to Walrus upon encountering him, although it isn't clear if it's specifically romantic in nature.
• The Owl-Knowing One: Given his long life he obviously holds an absolute wealth of historical knowledge gained through experience.
• Rejected Marriage Proposal: His offer of companionship to Walrus is rebuffed.
• Walking the Earth: Specifically flying, anyways. It's the lifestyle he chooses to lead.

Ten Stories (Humans)

The Circus

"Did you come knocking on my door? Or did I come to yours?"

The traveling circus that the animals are prisoners to, and that is forced to continue without many of them after the derailment of their train.

• The Alcoholic: Peacock describes them as drunks using "wormwood shots", likely referring to absinthe or similar anise-flavored alcohols.
• Allegorical Character: For institutional life and its dehumanizing nature.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: They're implied to treat the animals rather poorly, and are the primary antagonistic force in the narrative.
• Bullying the Disabled: The carnival barker relentlessly mocks Julian in front of an engaged audience.
• Circus of Fear: They've stolen at least two of the animals (Rabbit and Tiger) from their families and lead a third (Elephant) to her death. Most of them flee when given the opportunity, and Peacock is driven to a state of absolute despair after being recaptured.
• Crappy Carnival: Their sets look artificial, many of its workers are alcoholic Con Men, and they obviously rely on the animals to bring in any kind of income. With many of them lost, they're forced to put on weak acts like shell games, medicine shows, and inaccurate "sharpshooting", and as a result, their entire business begins to collapse.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: The singer of "Fiji Mermaid" and the carnival barker (implied to be one and the same) have a propensity towards wordplay.
• Repulsive Ringmaster: The barker, mainly for his treatment of Julian.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: At the end of the day, given the obvious sapience and desire to be free of the animals, they're essentially slavers pretending to be entertainers.
• Snake Oil Salesman: They're mentioned running "snake oil plots" and medicine shows.

The Fortune Teller

"You still see who I once was"

A footloose Fortune Teller that Rabbit falls for after leaving the wreck.

• Fortune Teller: Stated to be such by Word of God here and implied in-story given the cards and crystal balls on the "East Enders Wives" artwork and the references to Reading Tea Leaves in the song proper.
• Intentional Heartbreaker: She leaves Rabbit in the middle of the night at an arbitrary point in their relationship. Her line "You still see who I once was" implies it was her intention all along.
• Interspecies Romance: With Rabbit.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: While she isn't directly stated to have suffered any consequences of abandoning Rabbit, her mentiong of "[waving] like a flag from the White Star Line" bodes poorly for her given its track record of losing its ships out at sea at the same period in which the narrative takes place.
• Reading Tea Leaves: Rabbit narrates that "Our salt-fire danced as our tea-leaves dried", implying this trope.
• Rule of Symbolism: Fortune Tellers are often associated with carnivals, and much like the circus in Ten Stories, she ultimately acts as a snare that impedes Rabbit from reuniting with his family.
• Uncertain Doom: See Karma Houdini Warranty above.

The Court

"Hang, the elephant must hang, the elephant must hang!"

A mob that forms a Kangaroo Court for the sake of executing Elephant for derailing the train.

• Ambiguous Syntax: Their chorus can be read in three ways. "Hang the elephant", "The elephant must hang" and "[We] must hang the elpehant", emphasizing their confusion and madness.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: They're responsible for killing Elephant.
• Disproportionate Retribution: For derailing a train, something which isn't stated to have resulted in any casualties, they have Elephant executed.
• Egocentrically Religious: Maybe. Either Elephant or the town's chaplain sings "Lord for sixty-so years I've surrendered my love / To emblems of kindness and not the kindness they were emblems of", indicating misplaced religious devotion to ideals rather than actual action.
• Kangaroo Court: Elephant points this out repeatedly
  Elephant refused to swear the oath, said "I don't know anything about truth
  But I know falsehood when I see it, and it looks like this whole world you've made"
  Elephant: "This mock trial can no more determine my lot than can driftwood determine the ocean's waves"
• Karma Houdini: They never receive any comeuppance for their actions as they aren't mentioned in the narrative after Elephant's death.
• Public Execution: Of an elephant no less.
• Torches and Pitchforks: They're a mob gathered to conduct an execution.

Julian

"No I am not this misshaped body, and I'm not long for this world"

A deformed man that the circus presents as its newest show to make up for the lost animals.

• Ambiguously Human / Ambiguous Situation: Is he truly a Plant Person, or does he only outwardly resemble one? Ten Stories as a narrative is fantastical enough for the former to be a possibility, at least.
• Dark and Troubled Past: If the carnival barker is to be believed, he's lived an incredibly difficult life due to abuse incurred due to his appearance.
• The Grotesque: He has an unknown disorder that gives him the appearance of an onion, but has no mental impairment whatsoever.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: He's a physically deformed man that is part of a Freak Show in the latter half of the 19th century, and is abused by his boss and mocked for his appearance despite his sharp mental acuity and deep spirituality. The only major difference between him and Joseph Merrick is the fact that he's American rather than British.
• Psychological Projection: He tells a jeering crowd that their mockery and disgust is only emblematic of their own self-loathing.
• Punny Name: His title is "Julian the Onion", a play on julienning.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivers a scathing one to the crowd gathered to see him, telling them that eventually they will face the consequences of their actions, either naturally through aging or supernaturally through divine judgment.
• Smarter Than You Look: Despite appearing or perhaps even being a plant-human hybrid, he's perfectly eloquent in speech and perspicacious in thought.