The doctor will see you now.
Welcome to Capital City! You'll hate it here. There's something in the water, corruption is everywhere and weird illnesses and phenomenons plague the daily life of every citizen. But not to worry, for in a small back-alley clinic, there's treatments for every disease. For a price, of course.
Clinic of Horrors is a horror-comedy webcomic written by Merryweatherey and drawn by PokuriMio
with character designs created by Satchel the artist of Doki Doki Literature Club!. While not as well-known as Merryweatherey's more popular works, such as parody-comic I Made A Comic About Internet Explorer and horror-romance Stalker x Stalker, it has gathered a significant fan-base on it's own, due to it's creative setting, cool visuals and quirky, likable characters. The comic is available for free on Webtoon. After a long hiatus, the comic began its second season on January 23rd, 2024
"Clinic of Horrors" features examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Bianca's mother was extremely emotionally abusive to her. Her father doesn't get much personality-wise, as he was merely her mother's Chosen Conception Partner and played no role in his daughter's life apart from introducing himself to her in Don't Bother Strangers.
- Anti-Villain: The employee of the Eternal Gaming Café that shows Bianca around. When Bianca attacks him and he grabs her in self-defense, he lets go of her as soon as she tells him to. Notably, this is the only time he drops his smile with what seems to be an expression of remorse. On the other hand, everyone in the EGC chooses to be there and can leave anytime they want. He won't attack anyone or force them into something they don't want, he just has no recognition that it's wrong to provide someone with their wants until they're prioritizing that over their needs.
- Cerebus Syndrome: The comic used to focus a lot on Black Comedy, but later chapters began to explore both main characters' backstories in more depth, the Crapsack World they lived in was being played less for laughs and slowly being taken more seriously, and mostly abandoning self-contained chapters that were essentially a set-up and a punchline for multi-chaptered story arcs.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: If you've lived in Capital City long enough, you get used to just about anything.
- Crapsack World: If the permanently gray sky, the rancid living conditions, and the fact that the comic takes place in a skeevy back-alley clinic hasn't clued you in, Capital City is not really the nicest place to live.
- Eldritch Abomination:
- Capital City has these in abundance. You'd be hard-pressed to find an episode that doesn't have some weird, creepy monster-creature in it.
- Bianca's classmate Michaelis is a horrifying flesh blob-monster who uses pheromones to make himself look like a normal, attractive human.
- The Abomination arc centers around a particularly nasty one. It takes Bianca, Dr. Albright, and an entire squadron of surgeons to separate it from its host.
- Everyone Has Standards: While the clinic does profit from those who can't get sleep by injecting them with something that can shut their brain off for about a minute, Bianca notes in her journal it's recommended you get some natural sleep.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The two people who haul away the Eternal Gaming Cafe customer at the end of the titular arc are disgusted by how the Cafe treats its clientele. It doesn't stop them from taking him away, though.
- Faux Affably Evil: The employee of the Eternal Gaming Café that shows Bianca around. He's perfectly friendly, always smiling, and doesn't once take offense to how she refers to him of the business. On the other hand, he's completely willing to let customers wither and rot under his care so long as they get what they pay for. The crux of the matter seems to be consent. When Bianca attacks him and he grabs her in self-defense, he lets go of her as soon as she tells him to. Notably, this is the only time he drops his smile with what seems to be an expression of remorse. On the other hand, everyone in the EGC chooses to be there and can leave anytime they want. He won't attack anyone or force them into something they don't want, he just has no recognition that it's wrong to provide someone with their wants until they're prioritizing that over their needs.
- Foreshadowing: Bianca's log in episode 19 has her talk about a mushroom infection that takes control of the host. This is well before the start of the mushroom parasite arc.
- Glamour Failure: Michaelis' pheromones don't work on Bianca due to the clinic providing her with vaccinations. To everyone else, he looks like an attractive young man.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The events of the Abomination arc are the results of an experiment conducted by a mysterious Mister Yellow. The episode right after shows him taking interest in Dr. Albright and it's implied he plans on unleashing even more havoc on Capital City.
- Nothing Is Scarier: We don't see what Eternal Gaming Café's "Premium Package" looks like, but whatever it is, it's apparently enough to horrify Bianca, and even the EGC employee admits that it takes some getting used to looking at.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Bianca is a Perpetual Frowner and takes her medical practice seriously. Her tossing away medicine to cure a fungal infection and smiling after doing so is enough to get Michaelis to realize that she's been infected by the fungus.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Bianca's response to Dr. Adler's offer to let her cure the students in exchange for letting him infect them again if they come back to him is to tell him "Fuck you, parasite!"
- We All Die Someday: Bianca's grandfather sent her out to get ice cream so she wouldn't have to see him die, but her mother bluntly broke the news when she came back, telling her that everyone dies.
- Writing Around Trademarks: Episode #11 has Dr. Albright and Bianca playing "Last Fantasy Online".
- You Get What You Pay For: During your time in the Eternal Gaming Café, you can pay extra for various features that will help mitigate the effects of such a lack of physical activity or care... or you can simply pay a pittance each month to receive a frequent flood of painkillers so you can simply ignore the damage your body is undergoing. The state of the customers that opt for the latter is not pretty.
