Also, ha, Becky’s internal dialogue. Yup, I was wondering where the hygiene stuff was going to rear up. Guess Becky’s Tuesday is going to involve a trip to the mall* to get a toothbrush.
Dina and Becky, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes slipshine, then comes oh no wait that doesn’t rhyme at all and they’re not in a tree WHO CARES IT’S DINA AND BECKY
Disloyal Subject
There IS a conveniently climbable tree outside the room Becky’s been granted Billie’s spot in, though…
Justin
Hmmmm now comes the question of who to ship/focus on next….Danny Ethan? nah…erm, crap name’s are blanking on me…Marcie and ….and….whats-er-name?
Not usually, no. Well, unless you’re talking about a strip mall. A full-sized mall doesn’t generally feature a supermarket at least in the US.
Arian
Isn’t an American mall the same thing as a shopping centre? That is, a usually multi-storey building with a lot of different shops in it? It’d be a pretty weird shopping centre with no supermarket. Where do you keep your supermarkets, if not in your shopping centres? Or do I misunderstand what a mall is?
Toes14
Grocery Stores/Supermarkets are usually in stand alone buildings or in a Strip Mall in the US. A strip mall is different than the mall you are thinking of. It’s just a long row building divided into separate businesses, almost always one level, as opposed to the mall you describe, which is expansive, sometime multi-storied, and generally contains department stores, clothing stores, a food court, jewelers, shoes stores, and more.
For some reason that I don’t fully understand, in the U.S., supermarkets are very seldom part of an enclosed mall. They’re either stand-alone buildings, or the centerpiece of a strip mall, which is just a row of attached buildings, not enclosed. Malls frequently have a supermarket in the same shopping complex, but it won’t be part of the mall proper, but will be a standalone or a strip mall set apart a little, across the parking lot from the main mall.
The anchors for U.S. malls are typically overpriced clothing stores.
Lurlock
I think it’s about parking. More than two thirds of the footprint of a typical American mall is devoted to just parking. When you go to a mall, you generally don’t get a good nearby space unless you’re really lucky, but it’s okay because you’re expected to stay there and shop for a while before leaving. Whereas with a supermarket, you want to be able to go in, grab your stuff, and not have to hike a mile and a half back to your car while your ice cream melts. Also, there’s generally shopping carts at a supermarket, and it takes work to send people out to retrieve them all constantly. Having a smaller and closer parking lot mitigates this somewhat.
Wizard
A mall, such as College Mall in Bloomington, is pretty much as you describe, but here in the US, they rarely feature supermarkets. (Don’t ask me why, they just don’t.) Supermarkets are usually either free-standing stores or the anchor for a strip mall. (A strip mall is typically smaller and doesn’t feature enclosed common areas. You have to go back outside to move from one store to another. Also, as the term “strip” implies, all stores are arranged in a line.) We also have Super Centers (pioneered by Wal-Mart, though other retailers have since gotten in on it), which feature a large department store and a full-service grocery in the same building. These are also usually either free-standing or part of a strip mall.
Yet_One_More_Idiot
Yeah, I’m a Brit too and I was thinking of British shopping centres as being like American shopping malls, an expansive covered area with all sorts of stores, dept stores, smaller retailers, food courts, etc etc…and maybe a supermarket. The one several miles away from me, for example, has a (small) Sainsburys in it.
We also have much bigger-than-average supermarkets, genreally termed hypermarkets over here, which do the full groceries experience as well as everything else in a kind of supermassive department store. The nearest one for me is part of a large retail park area some miles away (closer than the shopping centre though, in fact), and takes up a fairly large chunk of said park.
Chuk
Here in Canada malls may or may not have a supermarket, they almost all have a dollar store or drugstore where you could get a toothbrush though.
Jamza Beoulf
Actually the College Mall in Bloomington has a Target, which would have toothbrushes.
Better resources for toothbrushes would include the various Campus stores in and around the dormitories, the gas station a five-minute walk away from Read hall (where I think they are?), or one of the numerous Kroger supermarkets in Bloomington.
They sell some random things at campus bookstores. Earlier this week when I went to mine, I saw them selling Xbox controllers there. Right next to the chef’s knives.
Disloyal Subject
Well, there’s certainly a market for them.
Really? Chef knives at the campus bookstore? Must be nice to live somewhere that the schools aren’t panicky about anything obviously weaponizable…
Microsoft products and weapons should never be mixed.
Roborat
Must have a cooking program. You don’t know often a sleep deprived culinary skills student comes running in a 10 pm looking for a deboning knife so they can practice for their final exam in the morning.
In addition to campus bookstores, there’s also numerous drugstores. (Reminder to DoA readers: the university that this takes place at is a real university, and Willis sources visual references for real-life locations for the strip.)
Still less awful than how Illithid actually reproduce, a process called cerebromorphesis, where their tadpoles burrow into a sentient humanoid’s head then slowly eat their brain alive assimilating the host’s sentience till it’s tentacles burst through it’s victim’s face and it assumes full control. From there the subject’s external form slowly changes to become a full-fledged Illithid, when it will add it’s tadpoles to the central spawning pool, which will usually also serve as residence for the Ruling Elder Brain.
Disloyal Subject
I thought there was some gradual conversion of the nervous system too, starting as the brainmunching is nearing completion and ending a while after the tentacles manifest.
io
Much more elegant than beholders, who reproduce once. The reproductive sack swells up until the beholder can bite it off, and from there the young eat their way out. The parent beholder then eats the sack and ugly offspring before kicking the rest out of its lair.
Don’t think about it too hard or it’ll eat out your brain.
And we come full circle…
Rutee
No, I understood that. I don’t understand the problem.
nothri
I dunno. I’m obviously not opposed to porny cartoons (my avatars is from Slipshine, afterall) but the non-consenting variety really squicks me out. And based on my admittedly limited knowledge on the subject, tentacle porn is almost exclusively the latter.
I would’ve thought Drow in the bedroom, given the choice of the walking fetish-bait dominatrix race, or the sexless brain eating parasites that drool acid, I know which I’d prefer in the bedroom.
io
Either way the male gets murdered in the process.
Flohomie
When it comes to me getting murdered, I personally prefer the good ole giant mantis!
I mean the feeling of an exoskeleton hooking into your flesh, flinging your body face down, snapping your arm behind your back, and eating your head just before…
Lemme stop Im getting hot n bothered just thinkin about it!
Io
The fact that your grav is Joe makes this even more awesome/horrifying
263 thoughts on “Nearing”
Cerberus
Apparently Becky is a Mind Flayer in the bedroom.
Also, ha, Becky’s internal dialogue. Yup, I was wondering where the hygiene stuff was going to rear up. Guess Becky’s Tuesday is going to involve a trip to the mall* to get a toothbrush.
*Uh oh
Inkblot
JUST DO IT
FishBonePendant
DON’T LET YOUR MEMES BE DREAMS
Inkblot
Dina and Becky, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes slipshine, then comes oh no wait that doesn’t rhyme at all and they’re not in a tree WHO CARES IT’S DINA AND BECKY
Disloyal Subject
There IS a conveniently climbable tree outside the room Becky’s been granted Billie’s spot in, though…
Justin
Hmmmm now comes the question of who to ship/focus on next….Danny Ethan? nah…erm, crap name’s are blanking on me…Marcie and ….and….whats-er-name?
Riku
Malaysian?
Wait no she’s Filipino
ə snow ʍouse
Malayarcie
Doctor_Who
I wouldn’t think of the mall as a place to buy a toothbrush. Maybe if they have a dollar store.
But today’s special is Toedads, so Becky should consider alternatives.
Dean
Maybe they’ll offer a trade-in on the one she has.
Yet_One_More_Idiot
Maybe one of the others will go to the mall and pick up a new toothbrush for Becky while they’re there. 🙂
Arian
Surely there would be a supermarket at the mall?
Lurlock
Not usually, no. Well, unless you’re talking about a strip mall. A full-sized mall doesn’t generally feature a supermarket at least in the US.
Arian
Isn’t an American mall the same thing as a shopping centre? That is, a usually multi-storey building with a lot of different shops in it? It’d be a pretty weird shopping centre with no supermarket. Where do you keep your supermarkets, if not in your shopping centres? Or do I misunderstand what a mall is?
Toes14
Grocery Stores/Supermarkets are usually in stand alone buildings or in a Strip Mall in the US. A strip mall is different than the mall you are thinking of. It’s just a long row building divided into separate businesses, almost always one level, as opposed to the mall you describe, which is expansive, sometime multi-storied, and generally contains department stores, clothing stores, a food court, jewelers, shoes stores, and more.
John
For some reason that I don’t fully understand, in the U.S., supermarkets are very seldom part of an enclosed mall. They’re either stand-alone buildings, or the centerpiece of a strip mall, which is just a row of attached buildings, not enclosed. Malls frequently have a supermarket in the same shopping complex, but it won’t be part of the mall proper, but will be a standalone or a strip mall set apart a little, across the parking lot from the main mall.
The anchors for U.S. malls are typically overpriced clothing stores.
Lurlock
I think it’s about parking. More than two thirds of the footprint of a typical American mall is devoted to just parking. When you go to a mall, you generally don’t get a good nearby space unless you’re really lucky, but it’s okay because you’re expected to stay there and shop for a while before leaving. Whereas with a supermarket, you want to be able to go in, grab your stuff, and not have to hike a mile and a half back to your car while your ice cream melts. Also, there’s generally shopping carts at a supermarket, and it takes work to send people out to retrieve them all constantly. Having a smaller and closer parking lot mitigates this somewhat.
Wizard
A mall, such as College Mall in Bloomington, is pretty much as you describe, but here in the US, they rarely feature supermarkets. (Don’t ask me why, they just don’t.) Supermarkets are usually either free-standing stores or the anchor for a strip mall. (A strip mall is typically smaller and doesn’t feature enclosed common areas. You have to go back outside to move from one store to another. Also, as the term “strip” implies, all stores are arranged in a line.) We also have Super Centers (pioneered by Wal-Mart, though other retailers have since gotten in on it), which feature a large department store and a full-service grocery in the same building. These are also usually either free-standing or part of a strip mall.
Yet_One_More_Idiot
Yeah, I’m a Brit too and I was thinking of British shopping centres as being like American shopping malls, an expansive covered area with all sorts of stores, dept stores, smaller retailers, food courts, etc etc…and maybe a supermarket. The one several miles away from me, for example, has a (small) Sainsburys in it.
We also have much bigger-than-average supermarkets, genreally termed hypermarkets over here, which do the full groceries experience as well as everything else in a kind of supermassive department store. The nearest one for me is part of a large retail park area some miles away (closer than the shopping centre though, in fact), and takes up a fairly large chunk of said park.
Chuk
Here in Canada malls may or may not have a supermarket, they almost all have a dollar store or drugstore where you could get a toothbrush though.
Jamza Beoulf
Actually the College Mall in Bloomington has a Target, which would have toothbrushes.
Better resources for toothbrushes would include the various Campus stores in and around the dormitories, the gas station a five-minute walk away from Read hall (where I think they are?), or one of the numerous Kroger supermarkets in Bloomington.
Bicycle Bill
Remembering the old ad from when I was growing up — “If you can’t brush after every meal, chew Dentyne!”
Roborat
Could probably ask Joyce, she likely has a few dozen brand new ones stashed away.
LeslieBean4Shizzle
**slow claps for the phrase “Mind Flayer in the bedroom”**
3oranges
Right from the playbook of being a lady in the streets and haunted clock tower in the sheets, I guess.
Roborat
Thanks for the link, that website is very funny.
Solenoid
Yeah, that phrase is a real beholder. Be proud, Cerberus.
C.
There’s probably a store on campus which sells toothbrushes.
Tacos
They sell some random things at campus bookstores. Earlier this week when I went to mine, I saw them selling Xbox controllers there. Right next to the chef’s knives.
Disloyal Subject
Well, there’s certainly a market for them.
Really? Chef knives at the campus bookstore? Must be nice to live somewhere that the schools aren’t panicky about anything obviously weaponizable…
WolfLann
Pfff xbox controllers are not that dangerous.
Meyers
Shouldn’t have lol’d at that…
Lol’d anyways
zoomer296
Microsoft products and weapons should never be mixed.
Roborat
Must have a cooking program. You don’t know often a sleep deprived culinary skills student comes running in a 10 pm looking for a deboning knife so they can practice for their final exam in the morning.
Halloween Jack
In addition to campus bookstores, there’s also numerous drugstores. (Reminder to DoA readers: the university that this takes place at is a real university, and Willis sources visual references for real-life locations for the strip.)
nothri
I have some issues with your metaphor. Things with tentacles involving bedrooms and and asian girls….yeah. No. Stop.
Cerberus
Damn I’m ace, I didn’t even think of that…
sps48
Bedrooms?
That Damn Rat
Still less awful than how Illithid actually reproduce, a process called cerebromorphesis, where their tadpoles burrow into a sentient humanoid’s head then slowly eat their brain alive assimilating the host’s sentience till it’s tentacles burst through it’s victim’s face and it assumes full control. From there the subject’s external form slowly changes to become a full-fledged Illithid, when it will add it’s tadpoles to the central spawning pool, which will usually also serve as residence for the Ruling Elder Brain.
Disloyal Subject
I thought there was some gradual conversion of the nervous system too, starting as the brainmunching is nearing completion and ending a while after the tentacles manifest.
io
Much more elegant than beholders, who reproduce once. The reproductive sack swells up until the beholder can bite it off, and from there the young eat their way out. The parent beholder then eats the sack and ugly offspring before kicking the rest out of its lair.
Rutee
I don’t understand the problem here.
Spencer
Mind Flayers are dudes with squids for faces.
It’s a really stretched hentai joke.
nothri
Don’t think about it too hard or it’ll eat out your brain.
And we come full circle…
Rutee
No, I understood that. I don’t understand the problem.
nothri
I dunno. I’m obviously not opposed to porny cartoons (my avatars is from Slipshine, afterall) but the non-consenting variety really squicks me out. And based on my admittedly limited knowledge on the subject, tentacle porn is almost exclusively the latter.
Nightsbridge
…Never been more ace in my life.
Adj
It’s a classic phrase: You want a partner who is an elf in public, a halfling in the kitchen, and a mind flayer in the bedroom.
I can’t be the only one who has heard this, right?
That Damn Rat
I would’ve thought Drow in the bedroom, given the choice of the walking fetish-bait dominatrix race, or the sexless brain eating parasites that drool acid, I know which I’d prefer in the bedroom.
io
Either way the male gets murdered in the process.
Flohomie
When it comes to me getting murdered, I personally prefer the good ole giant mantis!
I mean the feeling of an exoskeleton hooking into your flesh, flinging your body face down, snapping your arm behind your back, and eating your head just before…
Lemme stop Im getting hot n bothered just thinkin about it!
Io
The fact that your grav is Joe makes this even more awesome/horrifying
nightsbridge
Well good thing that’s not a problem here
sjmcc13
Tiefling, They are all hot and fiery…
I quess you also want them to be a Dwarf at work…
Rutee
Is that a thing? I’m not mad or nything, mind, I’m only surprised.
Disloyal Subject
Ew, elf? No thank you.
motorfirebox
*unless the mall is in Indianapolis she should be ok
stegosaurus
Bloomington has a mall of its own. Toedad was shipped off to the one in Indy, so she’s fine. Or there’s always Dollar Tree.
Ana Chronistic
Don’t worry, Becky! Dina will clean that with her tongue! =D =D =D
…DAMN YOU WILLIS
Darkoneko
…uh.
Inkblot
Y’ever had someone use their tongue on your teeth during a kiss? ‘Cuz let me tell you, it’s hot.
Darkoneko
Won’t really help with the bad breath, is what I was thinking.
Disloyal Subject
…is that not the purpose of a kiss? Nothing else made sense.
Disloyal Subject
*primary technique of a ‘french’ kiss, rather
inqntrol
Like one of the birds that sits on sits on hippos?
inqntrol
Damn,i really need my morning coffee.
Explosions
yeah i missed mine but im sddghjiurereewagfoolijmjddsaqeszxf fine
Darkoneko
gmzkjgzljnhglkjzknzgm,ml;mezkp
Cerberus
I think Dina may have liked this whole “kissing thing”.
Darkoneko
That or Becky’s parasital device is starting to make effect.
Nightsbridge
Which parasite will win out in the end, the Becky or the hat?
Solenoid
Who says these parasites are in competition? This is clearly symbiosis.
Deanatay
I dunno, look at the way the Tricera-top is getting scrunched up in panel 4 – seems to me like it’s getting displaced by Becky’s hair-parasite.