and bless the daughter but fuck the family

You might be aware of Louis Wain. If not by name then by his art. He's the artist behind that series of cat drawings that slowly became more and more abstract and bizarre.

This series of paintings of cats are often labelled as a visual representation of Wain's deteriorating mental illness and schizophrenia. Even more so often labelled as "a tragic display of a painter's failing battle with schizophrenia."

The paintings look like this and were painted around the very early 1900s.

Ok got all that?

So here's the thing.

Although Wain did suffer from a mental illness that was strong enough for him to be institutionalized, his mental illness was never diagnosed with clear certainty. Although "Schizophrenia" is so heavily applied to him based purely on how his series of paintings LOOK, despite actual specialists widely disputing this. On top of this, although he did paint the kaleidoscope cat portraits during this time, it was not the only things he painted, and he was quite capable of painting "normal" pictures of cats.

The Kaleidoscope Cat portraits are more images of him experimenting with colour and shapes, something the Smithsonian themselves state on their website.

Wain had actually made his entire living painting whimsical images of cats, often for product adverts, before he was incarcerated and was actually a very beloved artist at the time. When his friends learned of his incarceration, they started a collection of donation money to help transfer Wain to the Bethlam Royal Hospital instead, one of the best mental health facilities of the time. Even the Prime Minster of the time donated, and they raised a large amount of money across England to help him.

4 years later, Wain drew this as his final image which he released publicly

I knew all about "the Schizophrenic cat Guy" but he had always been presented to me as some tragic case of an artist going mad and his skills and work unraveling as he went insane.

This might be a hot take, but I thought what they did for the "monster" of the Backrooms was ABSOLUTELY GENIUS! How it organically builds upon how the Backrooms work, how it connects to the real world and its people (specifically Clark), and how it creates something that is dangerous and terrifying, and yet at the same time, frighteningly human!

Let me ask you something. Do you think it's interesting that out of all the "people" that were in the Backrooms, Clark's was the only one that was actually dangerous and was actually going around killing people? That's because the Backrooms remembers things in the real world, and "the more times it remembers, the less it does" until it only remembers the details that stand out the most, like how, when you remember a childhood bedroom, you only remember specific furniture or decorations. And the same goes for people!

Because Clark's life is dominated by his anxieties, frustration, fears, and, most importantly, his desire to lash out at everything he thinks is to blame, the Backrooms only remembered those negative feelings. And eventually they all culminated into this dangerous entity. Just like how he lashed out and attacked others that he believes are the fault of where he is, this entity of his own (unintentional) making lashes out and attacks everyone in sight, because, as you can see by the expression on its face, it too is driven by those same anxieties and fears!