Tentacle envy – Chapter 8, Act 2, Strip 145

Naturally, a whole planet getting overtaken by tentacles has a vast number of consequences – some large, some small, but all dire.

Since some illustration of that was necessary, and I couldn’t bring myself to illustrate some of the larger consequences, I’ve opted instead to illustrate one of the smaller ones: The fact that the whole affair is really, really bad for the self-esteem of all other, smaller tentacled creatures on the planet. Just think about it: One day, you feel quite adequate in terms of tentacleness and content with your place in the global tentacle rankings – and the very next day, some alien entity shows up and shifts up the whole scale by two orders of magnitude, making all of the indigenous tentaclers look hopelessly outmatched in terms of number, length, girth and volume all at once. The ones that have the option to hide their shame in the light-less depths of the ocean are still the luckier ones.

And, yeah…I know that an octopus doesn’t have tentacles, but arms instead (I think I’ve already covered that here, in fact). But, inaccurate as it is, pop culture is pretty consistent in referring to all such appendages as tentacles – and that particularly strictly in the case of Japanese-inspired pop culture…where, let’s admit it, using the word ‘arms’ would be quite ambiguous in many cases, and quite awkward to boot. >_>

Anyway, that’s the end of the current act of this chapter, the final act begins on Monday – unless I forget to adjust the numbering. Again. ^_^;