Well, yeah. I felt that, as long as I had a cat as the focus character, I could make a stock joke about the cat-butthole-in-face situation that is bedeviling stereotypical cat owners.
In the execution, however, it turned out that that isn’t quite as easy to do with an anthropomorphic cat than with a non-anthropomorphic one. >_> So I had to do some careful cropping and creative use of the mock RPG interface, but I think it mostly worked. ^_^; There is that slight inconsistency with the copper dragon, but let’s not delve on that anymore in any way, shape or form.
Anyway, every cat owner who’s ever woken up to the sight of a cat butthole in his face can begin to imagine how disturbing that sort of sight must be if you have five times as many eyes as a human. I mean, you wouldn’t see it only in 3D, you’d see it in 11D! O_o This is probably also why spiders, with their eight eyes, are so scared of cats.* But even they only see it in 9D, so they’re still better off than a beholder.
From that (10-fold) viewpoint, perhaps the beholder is a less-valid monster design than I originally assumed. I guess its creators forgot to consider the psychologically disturbing effects of super-keen sight. No wonder those poor beasts tend to have such a grumpy disposition in general…seeing your surroundings in super-clear detail probably isn’t much fun if you live in a grimy underground dungeon.
More on Thurs…uh, Monday.
* Although the whole getting-eaten-bit might also play some marginal role in that.