The funniest thing about this clip is deciding which way our talking octopus is talking. It has a certain dignity to its pose if you imagine it the way it really is, facing to the reader’s left. But picture it facing to the right, and the body becomes a Jimmy Durante style nose and it goes all cartoony.

I’m not above mocking the clip, but I couldn’t figure out how to put that effect into the joke.

So I ended up doing some brief research on octopuses (not octopi) for inspiration. I used a joke from an IM conversation I had the night before with friend of mine named Sora, after I found out the bit about the mating. This is not the first strip I got from talking to her. But really I only steal from myself.