Endtown by Aaron Neathery for January 20, 2016

It looks like she’s wearing a wedding band on her right hand.

Name Lyn.

Diner is Ernie’s

Cheese Confirmed.

Ring on the right hand – engaged.

Somehow, I don’t think he’s referring to MONETARY cost

So Holly has the mind-set of " we have more money we can blow more money"! Makes you think that may be part of the reason she morphed into a mouse? To make her a little more “meek”? Just a thought…

They got cheese on my Soylent Green, the fiends.

Are those really flying cars out the window? Is that normal, or a sign that something’s different?

Yes flying cars existed in Hillside before the EOCAWKI. Yes we saw them in Sparky’s flashbacks. Aaron has commented on this several times.

The devil is certainly in the details (and that goes for Endtown in spades) but I think the details of interest here are to be found primarily in the dialogue at the moment… ;-)

Holly’s a mover-upper… Seems a bit different from the mouse we thought we knew. Though, truth be told, she did seem to have a harder edge to her when we first met her in the diner… curiouser and curiouser. ;-)

I have to wonder if Our Holly has morphed into This Holly—-or whether Our Holly is off observing it somewhere like Wally (and Holly) did with his journey through his past.

I can kind of relate to Holly’s reaction to getting an order screwed up. Even when I was employed, eating out was a major treat and I have a certain way I like my food. Getting said food not the way I wanted it, when I paid good money for the meal, was a major bummer.This isn’t quite the Holly I imagined. Before the Milk Trial did a number on her sanity, Holly was very cheerful and compassionate. She took an interest in Wally when he was in the hospital suffering from a concussion and helped him get the backpack that contained his worldly possessions back. She followed him into the wastelands during the rocket mission and even tried to help Linda, a mutated Topsider, adjust to life in Endtown. Maybe losing everything forced her to reflect and change for the better.

Actually, mice aren’t all that crazy about cheese. When my paternal grandma set mouse traps in her farm home, she baited them with butter, peanut butter, or (most effective) bacon grease. They didn’t really go for cheese much.

She rotated through the three baits because if you only used one, the mice would learn to avoid that bait. They’re not dumb.

I very much suspect what one mutates into has a lot to do with mindset, subconscious or otherwise. Flask had control and dominance issues, hence a tiger. Wally has the instincts of a survivor – 9 lives – hence a cat. Holly apparently wanted to eat cheese because she couldn’t as a human – and even though real mice might not like cheese all that much, humans commonly portray otherwise, hence she became a mouse.

If everyone else is getting the whole “here’s pre-mutant Holly” story, it makes you wonder if perhaps Holly might be getting the “here’s pre-mutant Wally” story.

I also find myself amused by the bowtie. For a long time I’d thought Aaron Neathery just an oddball throwback to an earlier time, but now we would appear to have proof that bowties are at least somewhat in fashion right before the fall.

Well, someone’s got to say it..If we weren’t liking Holly the mouse, post Unity,.I’m really, really not liking her now!

Aaron seems to have a thing for Bow ties. Let him. It doesn’t detract from the story.They seem to be a little more common here in the PNW, along with hats. In fact I wear a short rimmed fedora now, primarily due to my dermatologist telling me to wear a hat whenever outside to protect against the sun and the fedora covers my ears, one of which had a cancer.Cowboy hats suck (sorry Veteran).

I think that we are in a Ditto-powered virtual flashback—powered by Holly’s memory, and only Holly’s memory. We will probably see Holly’s memories of just before When It All Turned to Thit until …maybe she gets to Endtown. The dittos “tormented” Sparkplug with endless replays of the same period of time, and I think it’s because those horrible memories are so strong that the dittos “reflect” them. Even Wally’s ditto flashback showing the teacher was from nearly the same period of time…and of traumatic events. But something has to bring them to the surface. Sparkplug’s wife was exposed, Wally saw an assault rifle, Holly lost Clive. That’s my theory…and it’s mine. :-)

Wow, Holly can’t eat the food here, because it’s crappy food, and everybody gets down on her for being unlikable and hard edged. Jeez, people, let the story unfold and stop making snap judgments. I’m betting that when they leave the restaurant, they’re going to encounter a mutant cop, and then all hell is going to break loose.

Come on TSOJ ( :) ) We’ve got to do something with the next 48 hrs and pointless speculation is always at the top of the list. I only intended to imply that it’s likely that there’s more to Holly than that which we’ve seen so far, and I think that’s a pretty mild assumption given the track record here. You’ve got to admit that the first glimpse we got of Holly in the diner seemed to fit more with the one we saw interacting with Linda on the clock tower and less the side we saw as her relationship with Wally developed. I think at least part of this current storyline serves to point out that there’s much more to these characters than meets the eye; and therein lies much of what makes Endtown special. BTW, it’s not so much that the food is crappy, but that it’s not what she ordered. ;-)

Good thing her transformation came with a cure to her lactose-intolerance.

Avoid the Soylent Red Green. It’s made from whatever’s lying around the garage.

Mr. Neathery has said the security rats did not start off as human, so I would guess they were originally lab rats, possibly used in hybridization experiments.

To be fair to Holly, the restaurant gave her a meal she can’t eat after she specifically told the waitress to hold the cheese because she was lactose intolerant. I also have an impression that this is not the first time they screwed up her order. Even if it was, its hard to fault her for being angry and wanting to dump the place.

Could just as easily be a dinner ring; something for everyday wear…

Dont know any men named Lyn, though I know 2 ladies named Lyn and 3 named Lynne.

In defense of those of us who have issues with the recent incarnations of Holly; in particular, today’s installment:.It isn’t the cheese or the botched order that’s bothering us. It’s the attitude..And Neathery has added new negatives to her personality as of today: That money “burns a hole” in her pockets..The picture painted of her today is that this is a woman who feels the world revolves around her, and doesn’t care who gets hurt around her..Just ask (today’s) Lyn..In defense of those who defend Holly, yes, I suppose that when she became an anthro, things may have happened that made her a better person..Clearly, those things haven’t happened just yet..And another question: Was the “good” Holly a temporary state? Is the Holly we’ve been seeing of late the REAL Holly, just now starting to come back out?

I know this has been brought up before but…where’s our Post-appocalyptic Holly in this Ditto world? She came the gate before our heroes did, is she in Ernies Diner as well??

Dittos responded to Wally’s request for breakfast etc, maybe its time to holler for a mouse-waitress.

It would be good if everyone has or had been breastfed as long as possible. It’s that good for babies and toddlers.

Y’know, I got to thinking—-this usually happens when there are major plot twists on display—-and it occurred to me: We know her as Holly Hollister, but is “Hollister” her maiden name or her married name?

Three Steps,I had the opposite impression from Lyn’s car. It actually looked like a very nice ‘50s car, more Buick than Chevrolet in my opinion and a lot nicer looking than the police car that they pulled up to. It gives me the impression that they have recently came into money. Lyn might have gotten a recent promotion or a business he started might have taken off. Holly is somewhat eager to enjoy their new good fortune while Lyn is uncomfortable with leaving his old trappings behind.We don’t know much about the flying cars yet but it seems that, while they’re more common than helicopters, they’re not as common as ground cars. They may be beyond the means of even the upper middle class and not something that Lyn and Holly can realistically spire to at this point.

Folks were asking whether this was the “future” or not… Panel 1 of today’s strip clearly shows flying cars down below, which means the diner is located quite a ways up in a high rise building. Even the decor is distinctly diner-ish, Denny’s or such, and as seen, many people pay before eating, so this is evidently an “all-you-can-eat” buffet style diner. Yet I’ve never heard of an “affordable” diner-style eatery being located 20+ stories up in a high rise building – those spots are typically taken by well-heeled businesses that can afford the view. So either this is a very exclusive diner (not), or this is indeed far enough in the future that even a Denny’s can afford the view high up in a high rise building.