#katzenjammer

This is adorable and I honestly wish it was in the actual book. Something about how cats like to sleep in boxes.

Har har har har… she’s so mean to him wtf cat. This makes me think about how mark doesn’t have any friends & now I’m kinda sad.

Was cat going to go by they/them originally?? Nyanbinary????

okay so like. Narrative aside the punctuation choices, leaving quotations out of the memories was a fantastic way to differentiate the worlds!

School is such a cool setting, with the way it breathes and lives and devours the students. A living building? Great. A living building that HATES you? Even better. But a living building that sees you, knows you, and DOES SO LITTLE ANYWAY because its nature is not to aid growth but to contain growth???? My perspective on crowded spaces is forever altered. I'm choosing to interpret the breathing of School as Cat's final breaths.

And like the way that everyone's mutations (or lack thereof) are a reflection of the way Cat interprets their lives?? SO COOL

I didn't understand why Laserbeams was a ventriloquist until the very end when Ryan Lancaster apologised on behalf of the world. That tied it together so well, especially in how Laserbeams acts in School, taking over bodies, speaking and acting through them as allegory to both the violence in his world view (the world is cruel, I'm killing as a message to the people of the world, by letting me kill you you're implicitly agreeing with my mission) and the violence in his actions (I am removing your agency over your very life by killing you in a space where you should feel safe).

And Time playing Tetris!! I loved that bit bc Tetris is my favourite game but also because it's so fitting for Ken Kapoor, who seems (at least through Cat's eyes) to want control over and understanding of the people and situations around him, to play a game where every effort is rendered null by its own completion. I'm still mulling over his interactions but I like the idea that he's seeking impact (writing a novel in a surreal hellscape, acting as information broker to gain social influence) while avoiding the realization that he's dead and can't do anything more. I think that realization is represented by the sea monster, had Time kept going as he was he'd eventually be consumed by it.

Jeffrey's whole box head situation too was super fun to read!! The whole "I pale in comparison to my brother, a crude child's drawing next to a human" is portrayed so well by being a box guy. The way his transformation progressed, indicative imo of the way he didn't feel right in his body was fascinating. I will admit to crying when I realized his cardboard wound matched his real life wound, and that all the other characters died differently (torn apart, hanged) because Jeffrey was the only person Cat actually saw shot.

And like!! Cat herself!! The mask being a quadruple metaphor for her insecurity, her inaction in the face of bullying, her denial of her own death, and the fact that she didn't have a face anymore at death?? Masterful work, and I loved the design in illustrations. Giving Cat a lazy eye also added to the narrative as a reason for her to feel apart (though I don't think anyone directly ridicules her eyes which is nice) and a possible metaphor for Cat being unaligned in the way she saw the world.

I have fewer words for everyone else but the rest of the mutations were so cool!! Jake's hand as metaphor for his desire for connection, and intentionally severing his hand to cut himself off from his brother, only for School to give him a new hand because he never stopped Wanting connection anyway! Sissy and her tentacle, representative of the way bullying is sometimes just the first thing people see to make fun of! Julie being porcelain, beautiful enough to admire and follow but still fragile and insecure! Mark being a mascot costume was so gross and also a fun nod to the archetype he was filling after his brother set the status quo! The staff being objects and landforms in reference to Cat's belief that they can't/won't do anything to help!