the girl who only knows tenna

I've always loved IFS, but I think my biggest problem with it is that it leaves you wanting so much more from it. Devi is an interesting character, and giving her depth outside of getting almost stabbed is a good premise for a spin-off, but I feel she doesn't get a lot of breathing room as herself outside of how she's responded to trauma, and said trauma by extension. It's supposed to have her art, and her relationship with it, as the central focus of the narrative's conflict, but her paintings are only ever in the background and her individual relationship with it isn't expanded upon. What's inspiring her? What are these images which she's so desperate to get out of her head? How does she process the events of her life through painting? I'd like to make a post getting screenshots of all her art throughout the comics and attempt to figure out an answer, but you wouldn't get one reading her comic.

It's implied that Devi throwing herself into her work is a compulsive behavior born out of self-avoidance, at least in part, so I think this might be an intentional writing decision. It definitely leaves the ending in a bittersweet place that I find interesting, and realistic all things considered, but considering the fact that IFS dwells on this complication so much it does feel strange that the overall resolution that it comes to is that Devi's incapable of finding social furfillment, and the solution is to continue throwing herself into painting. I find it compelling that it ends on a note that's more complicated than Devi triumphing over Sickness, and magically becoming a different person through force of will. However, if she was intended to have a semi-static development, with IFS being a window-exploration of the end point she's reached more than anything else, it just would've been nice to have her art be a bigger part of the comic for that purpose. It was basically a ventpost about working for Nickalodeon though, or at least that's the impression I got, so I'm not surprised this ended up getting sidelined.

There are many ways that you can see this happen- usually in 80s and 90s series that switch direction and teams, or student films/essays that try to take a familiar concept and turn it on its head without understanding how and why that concept functions- but almost any example I'm familiar with enough exemplifies how badly it can warp from what you were trying to say while also blending in perfectly with the world building of their story more than Johnny The Homicidal Maniac does.

Now Vasquez has stated himself that the story and how it could be interpreted ran away from him, and what was originally a one shot being continued with no plan is a breeding ground for your characters gaining a mind of their own and ending up different from what you wanted but these problems were there in the first issue due to JV not realizing the extra implications those inspirations bring with them.

Almost every panel of this comic takes inspiration from the fly, alien, hellraiser, and other body horror films from the time. And because of the nature of our protagonist he is also based off of stereotypes attached to well known serial killers with mental issues, that cause the main dissonance between what JV wanted to write versus what he actually wrote that being sexual abuse from a woman in nny's life.

Nny differs from these male serial killers in almost every way, they usually target mostly or only women and are driven by sexist and sexual motivations. Nny kills an even number of both men and women, and is loudly sex repulsed, but Nny does a bias towards women that shows in a weirder more subtle way. Excluding nny's Twitter for now nny actually has a more positive dynamic with the women he's killed, most female victims are killed at the first location not fitting nny's criteria for being kidnapped and brought to the basement which is seemingly him recognizing you from before gaining the doughboys or thinking you deserve some type of additional punishment. If a woman is kidnapped they aren't held for long, the method of torture is generally less painful comes to the men drawn on the same page, and their deaths are faster.

When taking Nny's Twitter into account nny has a clear preference towards pregnant women, giving every pregnant woman he runs into a free abortion then killing her or leaving her to bleed out. This is one of the only clear preference he has except for cheerleaders- a female dominated sport by the time jthm was written- and cats a pet that is considered feminine and will give no reasoning as to why besides "cat people are weird", never even killing the owner of the cat afterwards.

The distaste for pregnant women even looms in the background through the entire series, with multiple side comics about parents (usually the mother) regretting having children, Or it literally being in the background. Body horror itself as a genre is inherently feminine with its entire premise of your bodily autonomy being forcefully being taken from you and repeatedly use sexuality as symbolism/metaphor including Alien and hellraiser that is repeatedly used as an Easter egg in the backgrounds of each panel. When these movies got used as inspiration for the setting of the basement become sadomastic, every device is either a real bdsm machine or could be used in a extreme way where the person in the machine will consensually die in a painful way, and the use of electricity is never deadly in itself (nny had to tie someone in a bathtub and throw a toaster in to kill them in that way). Even moose themselves can be interpreted as a metaphor for a fetus/pregnancy when viewing jthm with these movies in mind, it's a parasite that demands to be fed and mentally and physically drains you to get that food with no care that its at your expense. Most people that bleed out and die when the baby is born is because their body couldn't handle it from the baby making them unhealthy or some underlying condition or to much gets damaged on the way out.

If JTHM was a novella written by someone else taking what they were actually writing down into account and doing this on purpose it would have been a well written story about some college age man getting taken advantage of and raped because of his mental illness, killing her in self defense and instead of taking it out on more women he blames himself and kidnaps, kills, and sexually mutilates the other men around him that connects every aspect to nny's behavior and mental state to the setting around it

But JTHM isn't a book, and it wasn't made to bring awareness to men's mental health, it was made to be a satire on how the alt community is cruel and hypocritical to each other while they believe they're part of the "good" side of that community. And if it wasn't for issue 7 creating Reverend meat and the headcannon that nny was assaulted by the woman that gave him to nny this entire analysis would sound completely fucking insane, but because it does the Fandom can go back and reread from the beginning with the ending and mind and find new details to analyze like I am now. Because that is how death of the author is supposed to work and if you don't have multiple people beta read your story more than once so you can identify where you messed up and you stopped writing what you wanted to, you are gonna have some words in your mouth you really don't want and no amount of Q&As and retcons online will fix after you publish.

**I only realized I forgot this after posting it also missing tags but one of the art pieces that can be assumed johnny made pre-splinter is the wall of dolls shown when the survey guy is at the house are the ''sexually abused person takes of the clothes and damages the crotch of a doll" trope and they are also all male or a rabbit which johnny is associated with.