#jthm ask

sure man

I tried to get to this sooner but my drawing process is so spontanious because I leave and come back to stuff so frequently it was hard to sit down and focus. I could've probably done this with no sketch since I rarely do but freehanding while being time-lapsed gave me cold feet + would've been 5 hours of nonesense before the actual drawing.

HII thank you for asking im glad you've noticed how often I do it. I actually love parasites (specifically tapeworms the most) so I end up drawing them alot.

First of all there was an actual Canon tapeworm that was meant to be a voice of Johnny’s much like the doughboys but was scrapped and it's name would've been Scolex. With that I came up with my own interpretation of what purpose Scolex would've been

And before I get into that, I've explained it in a few posts before but to me Johnny's psychosis and depersonalization causes him to doubt his insides are even human. He can't know for certain because he hasn't seen them and he can't know in detail because that will kill him. Even realistically you can only really assume your insides are the same as everyone else but can't guarantee it since you haven't been the one studied for anatomy and that goes for everyone else who hasn't been cut open as well.

-Now with that in mind back to Scolex, my interpretation of him goes like this: Scolex is a tapeworm Johnny shit out. Being appalled by the possibility that anything could survive in something that he thinks is unlivable, he keeps it in a jar for his own curiosity or like a trophy or something. When Scolex's voice manifests into his head it's bargaining point is that if Johnny eats it again it can give him insight to what his body is really like.

Johnny of course has a vendetta against giving into anything regarding the voices in his head since Johnny is a free boy and stuff so he struggles to follow through with an act so disgusting and delusional and that hes not stupid enough to trust him. (Thinking about it now, Scolex seems like a voice Johnny wouldn't be able to stand to keep forever. I think Johnny would get rid of Scolex impulsively while having an episode by flushing him down the toilet.)

The reason that tapeworms have become a consistent theme in my demon designs or around Johnny when it comes to anatomy is because of my interpretation of Scolex. A lot of the lovecraftian horror in johnny is derivative from whatever is in his psyche or whatnot, so when drawing a design that includes guts or bodies it feels fitting to tie the voice that puts emphasis on knowing and being a part of his into them.

Like he should not have one but people have kids when they shouldn’t all the time (take my parents)

To me Johnny would never keep a baby and he'd never produce one either. Johnny is aware the world is cruel but I dont think he takes it upon himself to make up for it at all by rescuing some orphan.

If he were to find a baby I think he would just give bad advice and send it on its way. It doesnt need to but that interaction fits JTHM's type of humor, yknow to overexplain how cruel the world is to something JUST born into it, then leaving it to fend for itself. Maybe his advice would equipt it with some "psychic visions" for danger (crippling paranoia) and that'd be a silly gag.

In general I think Johnny isn't above hurting children, his homicidal urges don't make exceptions for kids or animals or anything. (Pretty sure there was a POV diary jhonen made through one of Johnnys victims where Johnny was laughing at child abuse, but I might be misremembering.) Of course hes not off slaughtering babies cuz hes a maniac, its just that hes not NOT going to kill a kid, Y'know?

With Squee I think Squee just keeps narrowly avoiding getting murdered all because Johnny loses his train of thought before committing. Additionally i dont see that relationship as parental at all, Johnny knows better than to befriend a child and he's not going to be any kids father figure.

I found it amusing

I HAVENT!!!

Short answer: I think my favorites would have to be #4 and #5 the 4th issue is where he dies, very iconic, and the 5th one is a follow up so it leaves so much to chew on that sounds basic but i mean i really like everything that implies and what comes from it, i dont even know where to start honestly when it comes to complimenting it legitimately because alot of my favoritism toward it is personal but those 2 parts are on their own so hefty with potential it makes me crazy. I think most of my ideas stem from those two issues aswell, either because I misinterpreted something or I obsessed over a detail to the point I made something about it. Like this panel i thought was a mirror for some reason then later thought of it as a self portrait:

long-er answer: There's alot of little things I can hyperfocus on, I really like the conversation with nailbunny at the start of issue 4. Ive always really adored Johnnys self aware monologues, that characteristic about himself was always very comforting. That conversation is very obviously a display of his bipolar personality but in general moments of self reflection makes being crazy harder because whether it be self awareness or self hatred you know you cant justify what you do yet you can't help but do, along with not being able to change because you feel like it's pointless or too far gone. You won't be yourself if you change, just hate who you are and live with that. 

Additionally i cannot get over the fact that the Doughboys and Nailbunny are a coping mechanism created by his brain to hear his own thoughts told to him from a different body, Nailbunny being so he won't automatically dismiss it because he just can't trust any thought that originates from himself and the Doughboys being a separate entity he can blame the horrible parts on them and not realize they come from his own psyche. I really love it because even after all that is stated it feels easy to overlook the panel where he brushes off the wall as a creature mimicking his own voice, again pretending like it is not himself just because he hates it.

I feel like its easy to take this literally because this is literally what is happening but after everything that's said this reads to me as another instance of him reassigning aspects of himself to creatures to help cope with it better and the same thing happens when he "realizes" the Doughboys are too alive. I dont think they become alive like that, i feel like in the moment Johnny has a moment of clarity and feels so disconnected from them and their horrible intrusive blabbering its only logical to assume it isnt HIS doing anymore even though it always was. In general i think of the wall as non-confirmed if it exists or not. if you delude yourself into thinking something is there it is there you will feel the same obligations and paranoia as if it was there, practically making it real. That seems self explanatory but its given more weight because i think i remember reading a tidbit of Jhonen talking about monsters and he convinced himself they were real and a bunch of other stuff. I cant recall the reasoning but if im remembering right it really gives good insight. Ive taken alot of stuff in the comics personally and its hard to write down my thoughts because naturally something I love stresses me out to describe so I think i might end up formatting this even messier than before One of the personal things that really drew me in was the whole concept of the world disappearing when Johnny dies. At the time I was at a very bad point of believing nothing was "real" and one of the things I remember thinking about alot was that nothing existed outside of my room and that if I left my room everything outside that room didnt exist either. I remember imagining my windows as solid black because I was always up at night which reinforced the feeling of “nothing is out there”.  This panel still makes me kind of sick to look back on (in the best way possible) because of the house sitting in nothing. i love it alot even with Kriks ugly face on the side.

I know that it now in the comic could be interpreted as his brain losing consciousness so everything "fades to black" as an extreme version of that but at the time it felt very reminiscent of my feelings of nothing existing outside of my perspective or everything being a fabrication just for my sake until i die. Alot of my obsession with JTHM started because i felt like i could actually project my problems onto a character and have them make sense and it wouldn't just be pointless to live through these events. Alot of things in my life connected with the comic which is why i think so many people get drawn to it and it roots itself in them aswell which is very wholesome to me. Like i said alot of my favoritism on moments and issues in the comic are heavily personal, its hard to talk about JTHM without also indirectly inserting some of my POV or issues because theyre heavily incorporated into every idea and thought i have with it but i dont want to babble on too long. (shut up i know i have) Issue 5 really is so amazing because of how extreme it is, everything disappears so what happens after that? What does that mean? Why did that happen?  I remember reading something about jhonen just writing whatever he wanted even if it didn't make sense, so that really made me love that part of the story so much more because It doesn't feel like I need to get the interpretation or specifics correct because it “was” intentionally exaggerated or random. I say was in quotations though because another thing that makes me love it is that I don't believe that very much. Things can be random but they will still always have some reason and I feel like Johnen always downplays how much his emotions and state of mind contributed to JTHM everytime I've read his little notes about the comic, but anyway