The town is Undisclosed. David Wong and John Cheese are fake names. Soy sauce is a drug that lets you see beyond the boundaries of time and the dimensional planes of existence; and it will burrow its way inside of you whether you want to take it or not.
Korrok is coming, and this book has already infected you.
Every Author’s Dream
Not many of the people I know have seen the 2012 feature film “John Dies at the End” starring Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes (with an appearance from Paul Giamatti). Very few of them have read the book that movie is based off of.
I saw the film in 2015, tracked down the book mentioned in the credits to compare, and realized that I’d read something similar online a decade earlier.
I didn’t read all of the webserial content back in 2005, but I do remember sharing the links, laughs, and speculation. I had freshly moved out and was hanging out with a group of internet nerds and online gamers who had LAN parties in their apartment living rooms (with no air conditioning) at all hours of the night. We talked about all of the early 2000s stupid / shocker / funny / offensive websites that we stumbled across, via increasingly difficult to read email chains, and Pointless Waste of Time (PWoT) was among them.
I researched online about how the feedback from the serialization led to edits that became the final novel. I read John Dies and This Book is Full of Spiders. I rewatched “John Dies”. I bought the audiobooks for both John Dies and This Books is Full of Spiders.
I got a little obsessed! As both a reader and a writer. I found it inspiring that a cosmic horror webserial had been published traditionally and made into a live action film. From indie to mainstream is every author’s dream! Well, at least it’s my dream.
To this day, I’m a supporter of indie authors and wholly in love with the concept of blogging a book; so when other science fiction / fantasy / horror writers that I know are feeling discouraged about their publishing journey, I tell them about PWoT, Cracked.com, Undisclosed, and that a webserial is a viable option if they’re sick of querying.
Beheading an undead fascist, a thought experiment in second person
The book opens with a prologue bordering on the Ship of Theseus.
Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret of the universe, feel free to skip ahead.
Dave bookends hardware store trips to get replacement parts for an axe, with stories about decapitating a man (after shooting him), and dicing up a large slug-like creature that appeared in his kitchen.
Upon returning home, Dave encounters the reanimated body from before (wearing a new head), and when Dave raises his axe to strike again, the man rasps, “That’s the same ax that beheaded me!”
Is he right?
The opening of the film is narrated with similar second person dialogue from the book’s prologue. It’s not very descriptive (less than two pages before changing focus). It isn’t fundamental to the story that follows. Writing resources advise against prologues despite online polling that states 84% of the audience will read them.
Yet this scene is impactful, and one of my favourite parts of the novel. Without it, I don’t think I would have finished reading this book. This cold, exposition-less opening sets the tone for the reader. Prepare for things to be weird, maybe even absurd.
Pointlessly profound
I have a love / hate relationship with cosmic horror.
The vast unknown and uncharted space, both in and beyond our galaxy, is no less beautiful than it is intriguing. A literal universe of possibility; that is often portrayed in the same Lovecraftian vision. Tales of the human mind succumbing to the psychic influence of entities, resulting in violence, body horror, or the dissolution of the self. Frustrating and repetitious stories.
John Dies is not the “darkness of space spectacle” I’m used to from this genre. It has all the expected elements: interdimensional entities, body horror, mental influence / psychological instability, the futile insignificance of human influence when facing the unfathomable, and its funny. While modernist, satirical, and self-aware, the writing varies between being offensive:
“The situation has a real Lovecraft feel to it. Though, you know, if you come over it’ll be more of an Anne Rice situation. If you know what I mean.”
“Who’s-“
“Because you’re gay.”
Ridiculous:
Something coming back from the dead was almost always bad news. Movies taught me that. For every one Jesus you get a million zombies.
And poignant:
You see, Frank found out the hard way that the dark things lurking in the night don’t haunt old houses or abandoned ships. They haunt minds.
The horror is cosmic, but the characters are firmly grounded in reality.
Outdated perspectives and ugly truths
While I do love this book, I admit that it’s riddled with problematic elements.
Misogyny and homosexual putdowns (e.g., the “you’re gay” quote shown above) are repeated throughout. These primarily come from John, but David, the primary narrator, contributes, too. There are also environmental induced instances of heterosexual fragility.
I reached for the knob. At the same moment it began to melt and transform, turning pink and finally taking the shape of a flaccid penis. It flopped softly against the door, like a man was cramming it through the knob hole from the other side.
I turned back to John and said, “That door cannot be opened.”
Bearing in mind that this book was originally written for the internet, objectification is still horribly present in the published version. There is a character named Jennifer Lopez who is described as looking exactly like the singer “from behind.” Her breasts are a subject of narration throughout the series (e.g., Jennifer “and her boobs” are described as looking at someone in response to a comment).
Stereotypes are used in lieu of character development:
- A Jamaican drug dealer named Robert Marley supplies John with the soy sauce that Dave accidentally injects himself with.
- Detective Lawrence Appleton is investigating the deaths surrounding the soy sauce substance, and he’s referred to as Morgan Freeman (“I actually couldn’t remember the actor the black guy reminded me of, so I stuck with Morgan Freeman.”).
- Justin White is described as a wannabe gangster with curly blonde hair that always makes me think of Justin Timberlake.
- After being infected with the soy sauce, Justin becomes Shitload (“‘Cause there’s a shitload of us in here.”).
The pop culture references are effective at accelerating the narrative without expecting the reader to retain a lot of details. I’m assuming this was a conscious choice on Wong (aka Jason Pargin)’s part, because that many trending key words would have helped circulate the content to a wider audience.
With that in mind, I also wonder if the toxic masculinity and stereotypical cishet male socializing depicted in John Dies is also intentional. David and John are close friends whose communication styles are similar to the online discourse of young men. In the book, both characters get broken out of the monotony of daily life, via experimental drug use that leads to an apocalypse-level event. Despite these stakes and their surface level conversations, their friendship continues throughout the entire book series.
I think that John Dies didn’t push these sentiments far enough. Men under the age of 50 account for 75-80% of suicides according to statistics dating back to 2005, and male loneliness and social isolation continue to be contributing factors for this tragedy to this day.
There’s a scene early in the novel after John and David are taken to the police station, wherein John dies at will. Both Dave and the reader are not given much time to dwell on this information, because John, powered by soy sauce, phones Dave from the beyond and asks, “Have I died yet?”
Later, John’s body goes missing and this exchange occurs between Detective Appleton and Dave:
“And now he’s gone. Got a call from the hospital, it’s just an empty bed where he was. They figured he skipped out on payin’ the bill.”
“That also sounds like John.”
The fact that John wills himself to die and it’s never addressed by either character doesn’t sit right with me.
Soy sauce, a psychic performance enhancer
Soy sauce is described as a black liquid inside of a syringe. Later, it behaves like a living thing from the tip of the needle. It has tendrils and writhes, reaching for its host. Capsules are in the freezer to keep it in a dormant state.
Soy sauce is a spiritual tool, albeit a sentient one.
Similar to how some Native American tribes use peyote or marijuana as part of their spiritual practices, Dave and John take soy sauce to gain additional insights and face inter-dimensional beings. I have seen things like this in some danmei and paranormal / occult genre focused books, but only used in passing. Soy sauce is prevalent throughout the entire John Dies series, and without it, Dave and John would be ordinary people in a completely different series. Normally spiritual tools are part of pre-existing spiritual practices, and they’re used within the knowledge and framework of those practices. It’s structured; there are teachers and guidelines.
John Dies has none of that. Dave and John are out of their depth from the beginning, and they never really stop bumbling. It’s idiotic, but very entertaining. The narrative isn’t mired by thousands of years of theological rhetoric. Soy sauce wants, and soy sauce takes. It’s a very refreshing take on the hero’s call to adventure. There isn’t a chance for refusal, because it starts boring it’s way inside of John’s face! That’s incredible!
SOCIETY IS DOOMED for one very simple reason: it takes dozens of men working months with millions of dollars in materials to build a building, but only one dumb-ass with a bomb to bring it down.
Read for fun, re-read for awareness
As I re-read through the thoughts I’ve written here, I feel like I’m talking myself out of enjoying this book and haven’t given enough highlights to what I enjoy about it.
Jennifer is an amputee, missing her right hand, and this aspect of her character is crucial to the plot. She’s able to open a door to another world that no one else can operate because she’s an amputee. I haven’t encountered this in fiction before, or since.
The writing is blunt.
Dave and John have an interesting friendship.
“Dave? This is John. Your pimp says bring the heroin shipment tonight, or he’ll be forced to stick you. Meet him where we buried the Korean whore. The one without the goatee.”
That was code. It meant “Come to my place as soon as you can, it’s important.” Code, you know, in case the phone was bugged.
“John, it’s three in the-”
“Oh, and don’t forget, tomorrow is the day we kill the president.”
Click.
He was gone. That last part was code for, “Stop and pick me up some cigarettes on the way.”
I wish I had codes with my friends (not like this, but something that only a close circle of individuals would understand). Despite the context, I find the manifestation of their closeness to be reassuring evidence of their complex and enduring history.
Despite John’s antics, Dave shows up to help him cope with the side effects of drug use, prepared to calm him down and take him to the hospital, if necessary. Without this encounter, Dave wouldn’t have been exposed to the soy sauce, and we would have ended up with a far more mundane story.
Readers do not have all of the details about Korrok, soy sauce, Undisclosed, or even the main characters, but the story progresses in a manner and at a pace that helps the information be accepted as opposed to questioned.
The names! I see the echoes of early 2000s online trending topics in so many of the names used. Reading this is sometimes nostalgic to me. It reminds me of a time of internet involvement and activity that has changed. Similar places exist now, but focus and activity have diluted. Things don’t trend anymore, they go viral, and I think that’s more fitting for John Dies.
…when you read the Bible, the Devil looks back at you through the pages.
