Hello! I saw your post about JTHM and really enjoyed reading it :) Its nice to see peoples interpretations unclouded by things they've read on the subject matter beforehand.

Anyway, that being said, I hope you check out I Feel Sick as well! Its the other comic Jhonen wrote, set in the same world as JTHM. Its just 2 issues and follows a female character who showed up briefly in JTHM, although with a tweeked design. I wont say anything more, as not to spoil things, but I think its important to give it a look as well after reading JTHM!

Thank you very much. I was actually planning on reading Squee next and then I Feel Sick third- Squee was probably my favorite character besides Johnny himself. Sounds like both will be fun.

I just finished reading Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez. To be honest, I didn't really know what to expect going in- all I've ever heard about it was from people going "Can you believe Nickelodeon asked a guy who makes stuff like that to make a children's show!?" After reading it, I can say that it's definitely interesting in a way I don't think any basic plot description could've fully prepared me for, and I kind of want to dump my thoughts about it as I just come away from it.

As the title would suggest, its most noticeable surface-level feature is that there is a lot of gore. It gets about as brutal and graphic as it can with its cartoony art style- I was actually a little bothered by it a couple of times. There are a lot of things reminiscent of Invader ZIM beyond its art style- it shares a lot of the same humor, its randomness (often to the point of stupidity), and the chaotic nature of the story progression. (There are also two aliens that show up in a few pages that I'm pretty sure are the same aliens that appeared in the IZ episode Abducted, which would mean that ZIM and JTHM take place in the same universe...? Interesting.) In a lot of ways, it had the same energy as ZIM, but lacking the restraints of a children's network- admittedly, it was very fun and tickled the twelve-year-old ZIM fan part of my brain.

The story itself is a bit trippy and somewhat disjointed. There are lots of times where Johnny will go on long monologues about how he sees himself and the world (alongside blocks of text at the beginning and end of each issue from Jhonen himself). The actual story is cut up in-between little unrelated comics of various characters getting slaughtered and mutilated in some way, facing their inner turmoils and making other people miserable, or yelling incoherent word salads and then getting murdered. You are often left unsure as to whether some of the story's events were really happening or just Johnny dreaming or making things up. It also gets kind of cosmic horror-ish at one point, but that proceeds to end itself somewhat abruptly.

I haven't looked at any discussion of the comic and what it's *really* about yet, but my first impression coming out of it is that it's... a lot of things, really? It's a nihilistic black comedy, but I got the feeling that it was also somewhat of a vent story- A lot of JTHM is dark humor and absurd scenarios for the sake of societal criticism and expressing frustration with the world. It brings up a lot of ideas about what the "nature" of humanity is, if there is a caring God, the good and bad of living, and ultimately, what the true "evils" of society are and what causes them- all told through the eyes of a weird morally bankrupt loner that likes torturing and murdering people he doesn't like.

Most of the people that Johnny goes after are assholes and bullies, generally bad people, or anyone that just generally upsets or inconveniences him in day-to-day life. His arc throughout the story is discovering who and what "controls" him in his search for true freedom- and through that, he realizes that he, himself, is a massive contributor to why everything is so awful, eventually seeing people like himself as one of society's issues (but not really doing anything to change or control his behavior, which, to me, suggested he really never attained the "freedom" he desired so much). It was quite interesting to have a main character like that.

And, while I do not really know anything about Jhonen Vasquez as a person, a good amount of Johnny's traits struck me as... maybe a bit of a projection? A lot of the blocks of text from Vasquez at the start of issues will have him describe his thoughts and behaviors, and then in the story, Johnny displays a lot of those same thoughts and behaviors, like his hatred of sleep resulting in him regularly staying up the entire night and his tendency to experience loneliness and sadness (though, of course, these blocks of text might also be Jhonen simply putting up a persona as well.) Still, though, I wouldn't be too surprised if a lot of things about Johnny were in fact an exaggerated depiction of the author's own perceived negative traits and turned into an edgy serial killer character (especially since I know that this is indeed the case for a lot of Vasquez's characters, like ZIM in his inability to realize when his ideas won't work and Dib in his undying need to prove himself above all else in IZ.)

JTHM was one of the most unique things I've read in a while- it's one of those stories that sticks in your brain and leaves an uneasy feeling in you when you come away from it, but it definitely has a lot of substance to it beyond the "edgelord serial killer gorefest" surface-level appearance. It doesn't give you any moments of comfort in its overt negativity, but I think it manages to come out as something meaningful beyond just a nihilist "everything is awful and there's nothing you can do about it" message. It's definitely not for everyone, but if you're up for it, I'd really recommend giving it a shot.

So, today I finished watching The Godfather (I watched it over the course of a few days because it was long so I needed to break it up into chunks).

Embarrassingly I must admit one of the main reasons I wanted to watch it (other than the fact that I just felt like I needed to watch more classic films) was to make connections between it and Vento Aureo since I heard much of VA was inspired by it, but now after finishing the film I feel like staring at a blank wall for an hour and then watching even more hours of analysis on it. It was excellent.

The Godfather, for me, was one of those movies I spend a certain amount of time kind of bored getting through, but then it gets to a specific scene that just hits you like a freight train and suddenly all of that time you spent kind of waiting for something to happen felt 100% meaningful and you're thankful you sat through it. The deaths hit me like a baseball bat to the head every single time even though I knew lots of people were going to die in it. I was genuinely at the edge of my seat and near tears a few times. Michael's character development was fascinating and the ending was just perfect to both the completion of his arc and the story. The characters and the cinematography and the music score and the plot were all genuinely fantastic. Like... holy shit 100% deserved classic. I'm going to need a minute.

Today I finished reading The Great Gatsby. To be honest I thought it started off really boring but it got interesting around halfway through. It was alright

And then they are like the only plus size Chara in the show.

warrior cats is irredeemable media because those fuzzy cunts are decimating the local songbird population

Of course Hunter immediately became the fan-favorite owl house character. Don't get me wrong I like him too but... of course

i think about this comment thread every day

this is so ?????????

i was correct... but at what cost

Ok new prediction: Feathertail is actually the "silver cat" prophesized to kill Sharptooth and not Stormfur

Stormfur is dark gray and feathertail is light gray how did they not see her as the silver one (or like. even look at her)

Ok new prediction: Feathertail is actually the "silver cat" prophesized to kill Sharptooth and not Stormfur

Stormfur is dark gray and feathertail is light gray how did they not see her as the silver one (or like. even look at her)

Okay... I have to admit the descriptions of the cats slowly starving to death due to lack of food and being poisoned by the bad rabbits that had been infected by the twolegs is a little disturbing.

why is the new prophecy the most forgettable warrior cats arc ever written literally all i remember about it is "they move" when like a bajillion other things happen in it. several characters die + are introduced and new aspects of the world are established that drastically change the series forever and i don't remember a single bit of it. how did you accomplish that Erins

wayne mcloughlin’s yellowfang portrait is my favorite official warriors art of all time actually

Okay so I really like the implications that, not only do other cat societies have real religions/warrior ancestors, but other animals are intelligent and have their own languages and cultures, too. Do prey like mice and birds have human intelligence as well? Do foxes have religions? I guess I'll never know unless that comes up later.

twolegs quit destroying the forest 🤬🤬😭🤬😭

i love yellowfang so much. she's just an angry raggedy old lady and i think that's very based