This is a 24-panel, hand-drawn, satirical comic that I (autistic man) made. It's called "Masks / Noise", and it's about society's imposition of what I like to call "prescriptive proverbs": all the little phrases that we hear from birth which tell us in broad strokes how to live our lives.

For example: "Idle hands are the devil's workshop." "The early bird gets the worm." "Time is money." - When a child hears these phrases repeatedly (through general exposure to people/media/literature/society), they are conditioned to accept them as universal truths--axioms for the "objective" "right" way to live your life. Especially if you have a literal and impressionable mind (me).

The comic depicts the life of a stick figure and the multitude of prescriptive proverbs that the character has been exposed to. With each new rule, a physical burden manifests on the character. I view this as a visual representation of masking. Each new mask/burden is a new layer of separation between the character's true self and how he feels he must live.

As this is a personal expression of my own experience, the LDS church is depicted as a source of some of these rules and masks.

In the end, the character becomes so burdened by the imposition of ideologies/beliefs/morals/etc. that he is literally crushed by them. But he emerges, unscathed and untethered, choosing to block out the noise of the world with his own vision for his life and his happiness.

r/ArtisticallyHealing - "Masks / Noise" - A 24-panel, hand-drawn, satirical comic by me (autistic man) about finding freedom through rejection of imposed societal rules