>>386454767
Okay, so a quick rundown on animators: They're just finite state machines, and each layer is a single machine. You can think of there being a little token that represents where you are in the system. At each point, the transitions determine where the token can move to. The important thing to realize is that there is only ONE token for each layer. 

So, what does that mean? Well, take a look at pic related. We start off in diagram A, at the idle state. After setting thing1 to true, we move to diagram B, where our token has now moved along the transition path to "Thing_On". Here's where the problem arises. From our current position, there is no direct path from "Thing_On" to "Thing2_On". We can set "thing2" to true, but that won't immediately do anything - because there is only one transition out of the current state, and that's when thing1 is false. 

To fix this you can either make a more complicated layer with more comprehensive transitions and states, or you can just split thing1 and thing2 toggles off into their own separate layers. 

>>386454351
not sure from what you've described desu, you can post the animation controller file and I'll take a look but I can't promise anything