ISH01
ISH spent months title-less while I had most of the first and second chapters written. It existed, like its predecessor, in a file called teeth.doc for some time, with ‘Here’ ‘Heir’ and HEIR (this one standing for something I’ve forgotten) before ‘I’m Still Here’ (and thus ISH) was determined not to suck. I wanted the name to have a nice pronounceable acronym like SWAN had and have it be even partly as relevant as SWAN had been.
Wanting to take clothes off with teeth is a ref back to the JTHM comics
The ‘We Cheat You Less’ flyer from my parents’ trip to Mexico rears its ugly head for real this time. For more on this, check out the deleted scenes file for SWAN and Ctrl F for it.
‘The World’s Worst Apple Pie’ is advertised somewhere in Forest County Pennsylvania, off of the Turnpike. I saw the sign for it every year coming home from camping, but we never went to try it.
Jimmy and Johnny are humming “A Little Priest” from Sweeny Todd in the pie flashback.
Many of the stories that Johnny suggests throughout all of ISH (the one here being corpses used to smuggle illegal drugs) come from the Encyclopedia of Urban Legends. Since so much of ISH is rooted in mythology, I wanted to include bits of this kind of mythology as well.
‘rabbits being hit by trucks’ are what I drew over and over and over again in Kindergarten. I’m sure my parents think everything I’ve done since then just makes sense, considering.
Someone, somewhere, once said ‘glitter is the herpes of craft supplies’ and after working in a Claire’s AND being an artist, I can confirm the hell out of this.
‘skull to hold punch’ is a reference to Viking Valhalla, which Edgar apparently knows about. Vikings were sweet on the idea of drinking from the skulls of their enemies in paradise.
Safari Sam’s exists in Cranberry Pennsylvania. I’ve been there for many a birthday party. http://www.safarisams.com In their defense, it’s not quite as shitty as portrayed here, but you go to enough of these types of places, and you know the drill.
The original idea for Banshee is referenced here with the pictures/accusations of Devi being pregnant. Back in 2005-ish, Lana and I jokingly spawned a universe in which the Homicides took care of a small girl on a tour bus. The girl was Devi’s and someone’s, but they weren’t sure of who that someone was due to drunken craziness or some other such madness. In reevaluating this, we all (me, Lana, and PolyesterRage) determined that Devi would not be going through with a pregnancy at all, let alone that one that could potentially result in Jimmy’s spawn. This actually started some theories that Banshee was aborted and was then reborn or regenerated like in a myth we discovered, but that was ultimately weird and kind of creepy and so the current Banshee existence came into shaky being soon after.
‘AF’ doesn’t actually stand for anything. If it does, I have forgotten it.
Tenna references her own song with ‘we’re with the band.’
I am sure that Edgar does know where the spot that would break Johnny in half is.
This is one of the few public kisses between these two that isn't ridiculously staged. Fun that pretty much no one saw it.
To the loudspeaker woman’s credit, she just timed her announcement badly since she had to restrain the children first. It was in response to their swearing and frolicking and not the kiss. Not that it matters terribly.
‘threatened to throw him a ditch’ is a Banshee foreshadowing, in a way, considering her relationship to Johnny and that we find her in a ditch.
ISH 2
Starting with Tenna’s first ‘huh’ is the first of this story that was written. ISH started just as ‘Banshee’ in my LJ, which I tested with a group of about 9 readers. When their reactions were largely positive, I decided to go forth with ISH properly, and thus wrote chapter 1 and the Tess related material. Nearly every chapter contains bits that are months and months older than the rest of it.
The abandoned shoe and clothes is a reference from the Imponderables series, which is another set of books that carries a sort of daily mythology to it. Where DO those single shoes come from? These books answer questions about those shoes and the Braille on drive-through ATMs.
The Homicides’ calendar doesn’t have tour dates on it, but it does have things like ‘Edgar threw up in purple today’ and ‘Jimmy made fucking sense’ carefully logged.
Oldest to youngest: Devi, Edgar, Tenna, Jimmy, Johnny
‘everything is made of corn’ is the result of a science class I had the semester while I wrote the original Banshee installments. Almost all food in America, with very few exceptions, contains corn or a corn derived element. Check out the book Omnivore’s Dilemma to find out more about this and ruin your entire eating existence at the same time.
Devi is a fan of the Darwin Awards.
Banshee asking why people are so unpleasant, I hope, doesn’t need explaining, but since I’m tallying things, it’s a ref back to JtHM proper – Edgar's segment of course and a reference made knowingly on Johnny’s part.
I always hoard the hotel soap for some reason.
On the changing table in one of the bathrooms at my college, someone drew a pentagram with ‘sacrifice baby here’ and an arrow. Johnny’s phonebook vandalism was inspired by this. Had Banshee shown up as a baby, this would have been less 'inspired' and more 'yanked from real life'.
Children are minors, Edgar, LULZ. I really had to hold back from making that pun.
Banshee is watching Jem. I am not even ashamed. Since the Homicides were inspired by a Jem flier, I felt it was necessary to include the show at least once.
The ‘Milton’ that Johnny mentions is the one that wrote ‘Paradise Lost’ which is an epic poem detailing the fall of Lucifer and several of his posse. It’s some great Hell mythology if a bit mind crushing to deal with in stanza format. I read it for class in my senior year of highschool and my best friend and I were pretty sure Lucifer and some of his buddies were up to something together.
ISH 3
To ‘go left’ in Russia is slang for ‘to cheat on one’s partner,’ apparently. This is the usage Banshee most commonly cites.
It was during the writing of this chapter that I considered Edgar/Jimmy and then had it derail into some kind of OT3-5.
Banshee’s room is my aunt’s old room and the room I slept in when I spent the night with my grandparents.
Ich denke ich will Hier bleiben. = I think I want to stay here.
Banshee’s cannibal comment partially based on Issei Sagawa.
Morgan = Lady of the Lake from Arthurian legend, in case anyone missed that.
ISH 4
“Ich kann es nicht versteh’n!” - I can’t understand it.
“Wir sind ein Buch gelesen – und, und, nur ein Buch für die Kindern!” – Jimmy is actually not using the right grammar here, but he’s trying to say ‘We were reading a book – and, and, only a book for kids!’ He's teaching himself, so he kind of fucks it up on a regular basis.
Edgar and Devi take Banshee to a store that isn’t there anymore, but was probably ten or so years ago, like so many of my memories of things in this damn town. It was an “Ames” for a while, though I imagine Edgar and Devi in something more like Wal*Mart.
Edgar’s references to heart sacrifice and dancing in skin are Aztec rituals.
Orpheus (Greek), Izanagi (Japanese) and Lot’s wife (Hebrew) are the people Banshee refers to when she talks of people looking back. Persephone (among other people) is also referenced when Banshee mentions eating the underworld food.
Stephanie/Banshee has a Speak-N-Spell.
Her speakers phenomenon actually happened to me, just with my speakers, my girlfriend’s computer and a Mexican radio station and not weird French tunes.
ISH 5
The “hour” label on the top of this chapter is not a reference to how long it took me to write it, or how long it will take you to read it, but to the Egyptian Book of the Dead and how the soul passes to the other side. The story is divided in hours.
Johnny’s small pox line is a reference to the small pox blankets given to Native Americans during the French and Indian War.
The Greek myths are full of rape. Zeus has taken the form of at least an eagle and a bull to rape people, and I’m sure those are only the most well known stories. The other two Banshee mentions did some classy raping, and I’m pretty sure they aren’t alone.
Johnny’s story about Sekhmet was at one time linked to an actual source on Wikipedia, but has since been unlinked, and the sentence containing the info just regurgitated on every website, ever. I like to think this is true, regardless, since Sekhmet is totally my favorite.
Goddess of Suicide – the Mayan Ixtab
The closet in Edgar’s room really is there, and it really is totally fucking mysterious. When I toured my girlfriend around the actual house a few years before this was written, I wandered into my grandparents’ room and was so alarmed I shrieked. I’d honestly never seen the room before in all my time there. I was in the middle of SWAN at that point, with nowhere for a magical closet to fit in, so I had to set it aside and hope I could just write a side story about it. A sequel is fine too.
My grandmother used to collect the kind of paperweight that Johnny plays with the light in. I still can’t imagine the house without them, even though she gave them to me years ago. And yeah, they are pretty tacky.
‘Shitfuckdamn’ is my favorite swear word. It was first uttered by my dear Melisty, who spat it out when she dumped my magnetic poetry into a pile of laundry in our old dorm room.
Tess and Edgar are talking about Star Trek: The Original Series, which I completely love.
ISH 6
- The title marker this time is ‘gate’ in reference to Inanna’s decent into the underworld in Mesopotamian mythology.
Johnny talking about bees in his sleep is a personal reference. One night the winter before this was all written, I was awoken by my girlfriend affectionately wrapping her arms around my midsection. I screamed bloody murder and then apologized when it startled her, groggily explaining my outburst in the context of the dream I'd just been having with “I’m sorry, I thought you were bees.”
“Probably punctured a lung…” resulted from Johnny’s line about his spine from the Hell section of the comics.
‘Guru’ is a really old joke. The person I share the joke with doesn’t even read this, but it’s still here. The joke was that anytime someone showed a large amount of knowledge or common sense in any topic, we’d call them ‘guru’ and then they would be harassed for the rest of the day for random knowledge on everything, regardless of (and especially if) it was unconnected to the topic that had earned them the title in the first place. Fortunately, the ‘guru’ title makes sense without knowing the joke, but Johnny’s line makes me smile just a little more with the memory of doing this. God, we were assholes.
As you’ve probably seen, those Mr.Right/Wrong cards exist, though I can’t claim to be the person who found them. They showed up on wtf_inc on LiveJournal and PolyesterRage and I could not stop giggling at how appropriate they were.
‘girl wearing giant pink bow and a hoodie’. It’s June from my Chaos Knot series. I’m not even gonna lie.
‘dirty water from my brainwashing’ My friend Amy used to say “Always be sure to wash your brains lest someone else do it for you.”
Johnny’s ideas of medication are some that I share. When I knew that my pain was from stress or something, I wouldn’t take anything, but when the cause eluded me, then it was okay to take something.
“World’s Best Secretary” is a mug sitting in our cupboard as I type this. Neither my girlfriend nor I have ever been a secretary.
‘bestest friend’ is a ref to the original comics, of course, but also to the TV show ‘Dexter’ as its third season used this phrase that cracked me up for ten minutes after it was said.
In some weird kind of fashion, the ‘old lady with the yard’ is actually the yard that the house that Edgar lives in really sits on – my grandmother’s. There is a straight half-mile shot right down to the football field from her back porch and the fireworks are great from there.
The newspaper headline is not taken from anything, but is inspired by the girlfriend and I laughing painfully at “Children Die in Firey Plane Crash”.
Mythology features lost of people eating fruit of the dead and never coming back and lots of women eating seeded fruit like pomegranate and becoming divinely pregnant through them. Banshee is keenly aware of this.
Athena was born directly from Zeus after he swallowed her mother in the form of a fly in one myth and accidentally killed her in another. In the fly version, Athena busts out of Zeus’ head, and in the other, Zeus lets her form in a skin pouch he stitches in his leg. In both myths, Athena is fully formed and ready to kick ass when she emerges.
“Uncle Jimmy’s bits” – Aphrodite is said in one myth to have formed from the mix of semen and blood in the ocean from her father was castrated and his bits tossed in the water. The semen formed the seafoam, and Aphrodite came from 'aphros' – sea foam.
ISH 7
My mother works for the air quality program in my home state and when I was growing up she often had a serious distaste for a certain bridge near where I lived. She said it had been built with asbestos (which wouldn’t surprise me). Asbestos is seriously poisonous stuff, and my mom wanted them to replace the bridge. She hasn’t talked about it in years, but I always held my breath when I passed underneath it.
In addition to that, when I first moved to the town SWAN and ISH take place in, my neighbors were really pretty cruel to me as an impressionable little girl and they told me that the irregularities in the concrete that made up the asbestos bridge were parts of the sneakers of the kids who were buried in the bridge. I combined this for ISH with the ancient superstition of walling a child, virgin, or prisoner into a new bridge to ensure its stability. I hear the final verse of “London Bridge is Falling Down,” which few people actually sing, involves the - seemingly out of nowhere (if you don’t know of this custom) - appearance of a prisoner. Since the rest of the song is about how the fucking bridge won’t stay up, I’m sure you can guess this sorry soul’s fate.
Keeping in the tradition of ‘things my neighbors told me’, the silver that Banshee mentions on the sidewalk is actually still on the corner of the block I grew up on and the neighbor girl did tell me a dramatic story of how a girl had thrown up there and then needed to be taken to the hospital and then even died, so the fuss was so immense that no one cleaned up the mess. They left the vomit there, this girl told me, and then it turned to hard silver after either a bad summer or bad winter. I was six and totally believed her.
The mayonnaise, however. The mayonnaise I was there for. A friend of mine from elementary school smeared mayo from a packet in his lunchbox onto the wall of the chiropractor’s office and left it there. We expected this to be hilarious for a few days. This was in 1996. It was still there when I checked ten years later. I don’t know why no one has cleaned it off, but it did grow and swell turn yellow and grow hair. I have a picture of it somewhere.
The toy freak out thing that Tenna has going on was written with the imagery of those Darth Maul figures they had years back that freaked the fuck out and swung their sabers with lights and whatnot when you pushed a button. Get all of those together in a toy store? Hell yes.
There was a story behind bra signing and I am dismayed to think that I’ve forgotten it.
The guys who visit the van were introduced to me by smilefortyeight on dA, who linked me http://www.ufodigest.com/news/0806/bek2.html there.
I learned to drive in the dark and the rain. I guess Banshee does too.
ISH 8
The story Johnny tells, and that we see the end of, is the story of binding the wolf Fenrir, from Norse mythology. The gods trick Fenrir into letting himself be bound and they use Tyr’s arm in Fenrir’s mouth as a ‘we swear we’re not up to no good’ offering. Fenrir doesn’t believe it and ends up bound, but not before he bites Tyr’s arm off. The ending of the original story actually does end the way Johnny told it. http://web.mit.edu/norvin/www/somethingelse/fenris.html
Johnny laughs at Edgar during their conversation in the hotel room when Edgar asks about treating Tess like Jimmy. Johnny laughs at the idea of Edgar manipulating Tess sexually, which is essentially what Johnny did to Jimmy.
Clearly the way to win Johnny’s affection is to joke him into submission.
I imagine the Flying Dutchman Hour as a kind of dark fucked up variety show.
Professor Greenwood is the name of a Professor I had who would frequently get bored with his own lectures and send us home, if not go off on a tangential rant about Jesus and party tricks. Incidentally, his class was the class the Homicides were created in, though the professor here has a totally different specialty.
Marcy was the name of my girlfriend’s laptop at the time this was written.
Grocery-store lady makes a return appearance as a caller to Dreaming Dan.
ISH 9
Kali is a Hindu goddess, associated with many things – time, death, change, etc. Her recent manifestations are of a mother goddess, but her origins and powers are kind of violent and unpleasant. She, like Sekhmet, has a drunken blood-lust origin story. She is particularly not friendly toward enemies of people faithful to her.
Ammit is like the Egyptian Cerberus. She’s crocodile/lion/hippo in construction, and devours the hearts of the evil at judgment. She’s made of pretty much the most dangerous animals the Egyptians knew, so Ammit means business. Obviously, Banshee is not feeling particularly positively about Johnny by this point.
Ragnarok is the Norse end of the world, basically. They have it all written in that their gods will die and the world will get a reset.
Dreams about losing your teeth are very common, and so have many interpretations depending on the circumstances of the dream. Mostly, though, they don’t mean anything good. Luckily (?) for Banshee, she didn’t dream hers.
The book Banshee was reading before her boobs exploded was ‘Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel’ written by Milorad Pavich. It was originally in Serbo-Croatian, but has been translated into English (and probably the primary language of many of you guys who aren't native English speakers as well). The princess in question is Ateh, who is a very mystical and interesting figure. It’s a very unique kind of book, and I think it’s something that requires two or three go-throughs before you really get it.
Things written on Johnny’s cast: “Fuck Off” from Tenna, “Just die next time, you bastard” from Devi, and “Mmy Loves You”, which hopefully should be obvious. There’s also some random doodling from Jimmy and a decapitated rabbit from Tenna. Edgar and Banshee wrote nothing, but for different reasons.
The snacks on Pepito’s table are also really there. My grandfather, who lives in that house, for some reason accumulates enough snacks for a small kindergarten class on every shopping trip, and just leaves them all on his table. I don’t remember a time when we ever ate off that table, or even a time when we would have been able.
ISH 10-
I really don’t remember how the licking came into being, but my girlfriend and I were up until 5:30 one morning laughing about it. It actually did not come off that funny in the story, because things at 5:30 have a certain charm that things at two or so in the afternoon don’t, but let me tell you this was a joy to envision.
Johnny and Banshee listening to the same CD player is an image I’ve had since Banshee’s first few adventures with her ‘family.’
So that scene with Edgar visiting Jimmy? Spawned several thousand words of a spin off continuity in which the romantic relationship du jour becomes Johnny/Edgar/Jimmy. My beta and I had been furiously shipping Edgar/Jimmy since sometime late in SWAN and it only got worse throughout ISH. This was apparently the breaking point.
That is probably the first alcohol Edgar has ever consumed on purpose.
So yeah, that thing on one of the SWAN extras pages about Johnny having previously done something with Jimmy? It’s been in my head for a long time, obviously.
Johnny and Banshee were watching Star Trek when Edgar came home.
ISH 11-
Of course I hope I don't have to mention it, but once again for the sake of completion, the bit about 'fucking a chicken' is a reference to a Meanwhile.
Banshee is playing Ruslana's 'Wild Dances.' Because.
It sounds nothing like it, and it isn't even in the same sentiment, but when I wrote Johnny's line about keeping the thing in Tess in a fishbowl, my immediate association was with a line from The Last Unicorn, specifically from the film version, though it must be in the book too. “Have sense, man. What were you going to do with the last unicorn in the world? Keep her in a cage?” I can't not hear that line when I read Johnny's here. I have no idea why.
I can't explain the thrill I felt upon discovering 'Kingdom Burning Down'. Banshee pretty much bleeds this song, and I can't separate the two in my head now.
Both Banshee and Johnny say “I'm still here” in this one. Johnny's is in a far more humorous context.
ISH 12
'Moose' again being the name of the wall monster, thanks to the notes in the corners of JTHM on the relevant images.
Most of the time, throughout SWAN and ISH, when Johnny stops Edgar from saying anything that starts with “I-”, it was meant to be an 'I love you.'
I like the idea that Pepito would be involved in the Homicides' shows on a personal amusement basis. He'd like to be summoned and loom over people for a little while before vanishing dramatically.
Johnny's conversation with Tess about his relationship to Edgar is one of my favorite things in this chapter.
I was overly pleased to be writing about Johnny discussing his bandmates' murders with them.
Johnny's 'You. Play something,' sounds in my head so much like Gaz talking to GIR in the Tak episode of Invader Zim that is probably horribly wrong.
“Chicken's Got A Kickstand” was partly made and sent/given to me by TheDibHuman on dA. It is my favorite of the collection of songs meant to be dumb one-offs by Jimmy and Tenna that were written while the others were bickering. Another of the set 'Goth Broth' is referenced later in this chapter after Banshee vanishes and Tenna and Jimmy sing about Devi's hair to fill up space. Both songs are available on the fanart page for SWAN/ISH.
For the last Homicides performance I'd ever write, I had to include 'Greatest Show Unearthed.' That song was the eureka moment for the band, and I don't think they'd have debuted the same way had I not heard it.
The band's songs make another appearance. Only Edgar's and Devi's were written by me, Tenna's and Jimmy's are credited and linked in their debut chapter, SWAN 16.
Tenna playing the kazoo for the band has been a long-standing joke, just about as long as Tess playing the triangle or tambourine has been. I had to include both. So much of this chapter is just a love note to the things that have come before it and the fun I had making it all.
This is the first time we see it, so it feels appropriate to mention that the lyrics for Banshee were written by me, inspired by mythology and a sudden flash of inspiration walking by an old car one day.
I hope to be forgiven for Mojot Svet. It is so much me and so much Banshee and so much of what I hope can be everyone, ever, that it had to be Banshee just as much as Kingdom Burning Down had to be.
Banshee's behavior before she's taken into the ceiling and the colors she talks about later are related to each other and to the story about her life after ISH, if I ever get around to writing it out!
Ceiling-Guy, by the way, isn't any monster in particular, but just something I felt would be appropriate in a Jhonen-esque universe. I didn't want anyone struggling to connect him to some canon thing!
I can't explain how badly I wanted 'How Much Is The Fish' to be involved in ISH and SWAN, really. It was one my favorite things when I started SWAN, and it remains a fond nostalgic thing for me and members of my family to this day. Nostaglic wacky shit felt so much like ISH and the Homicides that it had to be included. This is one hell of a concert.
I was so happy to do a mostly care-free van scene again. I think it shows.
It was my hope to wrap up everyone in a way that felt satisfying. I hope it worked.
The last scene of this story was written almost before the rest of it, back in 2008. It has been waiting a long time. I wanted very much to leave it open, even though I don't think I'll be starting a third ridiculously derivative novel-length Johnny thing. It's a very 'Lady or the Tiger' kind of ending. Edgar and Johnny could be dead (and on to being Other!Edgar and Nny) with the others maybe finally able to deal with not having Johnny now that they're not rooted to him with songs, or maybe they just sleep for a week and wake up unsure of if they're still in reality. Pick one, and enjoy it.
It had to be 'My TV and You.'