PSINKTOBER_DAY05

The figure in the third panel is H. P. Lovecraft. The building behind him is Butler Psychiatric Hospital, where both of his parents where institutionalized.

Again, my goal isn’t to “diagnose” anyone in my family, or go into autobio. I think the fear of hereditary illness is near-universal in “normative” US families, which is why movies like Hereditary and Raw were so well-received. I myself love both movies, even though Hereditary is deeply flawed in the ways I’m talking about in this comic (I think Raw goes deeper beyond epigenetic determinism). My grandparents (and their parents) were flawed and neurotic in specific ways, but so were yours. The fear is generic, even if the details are specific.