#the fears

In my worship of Fears, I adhere to what I call the Fear Hydra. This Hydra is inextricably linked to the Wheel of Fear. This Wheel, in fact, is heavily based on the following: information provided in the podcast itself, real-life facts, and personal gnosis and understanding. It explains which Fears are close to each other, which are distant, and why, as well as the connections between opposites.

The Wheel contains 16 Fears, including Extinction and the 16th, whose name I'm not yet sure of, but whose influence I sense and whose domains I understand—relatively young Fears. I will refer to the 16th as DS for now.

In my experience, when interacting with one Fear, the influence of its neighbours, as well as the inseparable connection with its opposite, will be felt. By choosing one, at a minimum, three more will be involved. When opposing Fears, or non-neighbours, create something or someone, a new species is created. If they survive for a certain period without disappearing, they become established and can channel all Fears through themselves, their creators being the most powerful influence. The older something is, the more independent it becomes, and the more they can channel Fears in more subtle aspects, and can even be the personification of the Wheel. In my experience, the King in Yellow, for example, is one of the most ancient representatives of this species and can channel the entire Wheel, being a creation of the very first pair of Fears. The Slender Man is also a representative of this species, but much younger.

Next, I will explain the Wheel. This will be in two parts, namely, first: moving around the Wheel, starting with the Eye and moving clockwise, the neighbouring Fears, and the rationale, where I'll talk about Extinction and the DS at the end, and second part afterwards, where I'll explain the opposites. The explanation will go like this: Fears, their essence, confirmations from the podcast; confirmations from the real world; personal experience. Confirmations from the podcast and personal experience will always be there, unless stated otherwise.

The Eye and the Web. The Eye, the fear of being watched, that your secrets are known, that someone wants something terrible to happen to you just to watch. The Web, the fear of manipulation, of being manipulated, lack of control, being a pawn in a game, and, of course, spiders. The Archivist, as a role in the Temple of the Eye, belongs to the Eye and the Web. They feed on the meanings and traumas of others, while extracting this experience from people. They can also subjugate people and non-humans with commands and even escape them in things. The Guest of Mr.Spider is also both, for he has eight eyes of all sizes and shapes. Spiders have eight eyes. Both Fears are highly dependent on knowledge: the Eye needs it as food, the Web for its games; both Fears are passive, expectant, and intently watching everything.

The Web and The Corruption. The Web, the fear of manipulation, of being manipulated, lack of control, being a pawn in a game, and, of course, spiders. The Corruption, Fear of disease, insects, rot, decay, toxicity, all things vile. Jane said in her statement that webs have their own songs. Avatars of Corruption are very manipulative, thus manipulating their food. Jane pretended to be lying on the ground so a passing girl would volunteer to help her, thus infecting her. John Amherst manipulated his keepers in the hospital. The dog Agape built a cult around itself. Corruption is also very manipulative, altering the thinking of its Avatars and victims, stripping them of their true will, leaving only itself and its twisted love. Spiders and insects are similar: if you fear one, you're likely afraid of the other. Although Fears don't have a gender per se, both feel very maternal and are especially noticeable in their attention.

The Corruption and The Desolation. The Corruption, Fear of disease, insects, rot, decay, toxicity, all things vile. The Desolation, Fear of destruction and loss, pain inflicted specifically on you. John Amherst is an Avatar of both forces: fire is present in every episode, which is specifically associated with him and his influence, as I can explain later. Asag is the God of fire and disease; they are close, having become distinct relatively recently and previously, judging by Asag, were one Fear. Desolation is associated with the loss of loved ones, and Corruption does just that. Both Fears are associated with a toxic form of love; their Avatars love their Patron in the most unhealthy way, and they love them back in an equally unhealthy way.

The Desolation and the Hunt. The Desolation, Fear of destruction and loss, pain inflicted specifically on you. The Hunt, Fear of being hunted, and being prey. Vampires belong to Corruption, Desolation, and the Hunt. They are monsters, which is the Hunt; they burn very easily, which is Desolation; they feed through a bloodsucking tongue, which is Corruption, because they are mosquitoes. During the Hunt ritual, the participating mentioned their dislike of bloodsuckers, referring to both mosquitoes and after some time vampires; Trevor mentioned that a vampire's home is dusty, mouldy, and full of rotten fruit. You can't escape fire, just as you can't escape the Hunter. Both don't need your death, they only need your pain and fear, and they will hunt you until you can no longer give them either.

The Hunt and the Slaughter. The Hunt, Fear of being hunted, and being prey. The Slaughter, Fear of gratuitous cruelty and war. The similarities are obvious. Both Fears are associated with music, Slaughter itself, and hunters hum melodies while hunting, as seen in the episode about the Murder Club and the episode about hunting in the Appalachian Mountains. The Murder Club itself belongs entirely to both Fears: the masked man resembles the maniac from the movie, wearing a wolf mask; the club members began hunting each other, initially simply enjoying killing and discussing it. In life, if someone enjoys causing pain without reason, they will seek out new opportunities, hunting, so to speak. Both Fears showed me how to assert myself and how to use my inner energy, from movement and anger, for my own benefit; both are very vibrant in their energy and are responsible for resisting the environment and standing up for one's rights. Slaughter is not far from Desolation, for both are associated with cruelty, one without reason, the other with reason. They are separated by the search, or hunt, for something or someone specific.

The Slaughter and The End. The Slaughter, Fear of gratuitous cruelty and war. The End, Fear of death. War and cruelty bring death. Many episodes of Slaughter are characterized by a sense of inevitable death: in the episode about the cave of dead soldiers, everyone entering didn't even consider the possibility of turning back; one of them kills himself rather than enter the cave. Episodes of Slaughter also feature the reanimated dead, who are doomed to a terrible existence: the merged soldiers who shot Melanie; the dead people in the episode Grifter's Bone who fight among themselves and bring death to those who hear it; the entire episode about the cave with soldiers. This terrible existence after death makes one fear death. The End has the Catalogue, the souls trapped in which are alive, but experience terrible pain and agony. In nature, hunting brings cruelty and death, but not for the sake of cruelty, but for survival.

The End and The Lonely. The End, Fear of death. The Lonely, Fear of loneliness, isolation, being abandoned, being cut off from others. The Lucases only meet at funerals. The whole episode with Naomi is about loneliness and death. I've had a series of loved ones die in my life, and the death of others definitely makes you isolate yourself from others and feel very lonely. Cemeteries bring a feeling of loneliness. Long-term isolation kills you.

The Lonely and the Stranger. The Lonely, Fear of loneliness, isolation, being abandoned, being cut off from others. The Stranger, Fear of something wrong, something unknown, and you don't know what, why, or how; the uncanny valley. A scene about a woman who almost got lost in the crowd and a young man who performed on stage about both Fears. If everyone is a stranger to you, then you are alone. There is nothing more isolating than being alone in a group. Both are connected to faces, both distort them; Lonely erases faces and form, the Stranger changes them, distorts them, and replaces them.

The Stranger and The Flesh. The Stranger, Fear of something wrong, something unknown, and you don't know what, why, or how; the uncanny valley. The Flesh, Fear of harming the body, changing or destroying it, the fear of animals being slaughtered for meat. The Stranger has power over objects that act like people, while the Flesh has power over thoughts that people are just meat, objects. Anatomy Class is an episode of both Fears. Both have a skin motif. Losing oneself, disconnecting from the body, being a stranger to oneself, and body dysmorphia are associated with the Stranger, the Flesh, and the Spiral.

The Flesh and the Spiral. The Flesh, Fear of harming the body, changing or destroying it, the fear of animals being slaughtered for meat. The Spiral, Fear of madness, that the world is wrong, that your mind is playing tricks on you. Jared Hopworth, like The Boneturner's Tale, belongs to both Fears. Jared specifically seeks out people with mental issues, especially those related to their bodies; in the episode where the man from the locker watched Jared work, he saw him make a spiral out of bone and insert it into himself. The Spiral makes objects bleed, which I explain in the second half. The Tale also made other books bleed. Michael Crew couldn't get rid of the fractals on his skin using this book; he only added more, which makes sense since the book belongs to the Spiral. The episode about the man lost in the slaughterhouse is about both Fears, as the Spiral also affects disorientation and being lost. Body dysmorphia is about both Fears. Any unnatural change or distortion of the body is about both Fears.

The Spiral and the Buried. The Spiral, Fear of madness, that the world is wrong, that your mind is playing tricks on you. The Buried, Fear of being trapped and in lack, be it space or air. Spiral is associated with feelings of loss and disorientation, and with places like labyrinths, including caves. The Door of Distortion, like the Coffin, are yellow; both lead to impossible places. The episode where the statement giver gets stuck in Mikaele Salesa's box is about both Fears. The episode about Lost Johns’ Cave is about the Spiral, the Buried, and the Dark. The heroine can't remember everything, about the Spiral and memory distortion, about it being in a cave, about the Buried, and about her love of darkness, about Dark. The buildings themselves are about both Fears: labyrinths of walls and doors, where one closed door can trap everything.

The Buried and the Dark. The Buried, Fear of being trapped and in lack, be it space or air. The Dark, Fear of darkness. The caves are dark and there's little space, the ocean is dark and suffocating. In the episode about the endless rain, the hero is in danger of drowning, yet there are many hints of darkness: light bulbs are filled with water and don't work, making it impossible to turn on the lights; thunder is heard, but without lightning, meaning no light; there are no streetlights on the street, and no lights in other houses; The water was described as enveloping, ready to reach the hero's throat and fill him with suffocating darkness; the water is murky. In the episode about the old statement about Rayner and the Sandman, the Sandman's bag was described as suffocating and filling his nose and mouth; sand pours from the mouth of the Sandman, who is associated with the Dark, just as it does with those associated with the Buried, as in the episode about the Mud Storm and the Buried ritual.

The Dark and The Vast. The Dark, Fear of darkness. The Vast, Fear of our insignificance, of losing ourselves in something greater, the fear of the big, open spaces and heights. The ocean is dark and expansive, like space. The episode about diving into the ocean is about the Buried, Dark and Vast, the pressure in the ocean is about the Buried, the darkness of the ocean is about the Dark, the openness of the ocean is about the Vast. In the episode about the teenage Gerry and Robert Smirk's tunnel network, it was noted that the hero walked through a tunnel where he felt the passage getting narrower and narrower until he emerged into a circular room with other doors. He describes the doors on one side as very dark and as one into which he feels he'll fall—that is, the Buried, the Dark, the Vast. Even at night, we see a dark sky.

The Vast and the Eye. The Vast, Fear of our insignificance, of losing ourselves in something greater, the fear of the big, open spaces and heights. The Eye, the fear of being watched, that your secrets are known, that someone wants something terrible to happen to you just to watch. Mike Crew tells Jon that they have a lot in common; after all, heights and gravity aren't scary if you don't know what you're facing and what awaits you. Jude, speaking of Mike, told Jon that he (Mike) was closer to Jon than to her. Our insignificance is only frightening when we realize how small we are compared to the universe. You feel doom and fear in the middle of the ocean only when you realize how far you are from land.

Now, two young Fears.

Extinction stands between Corruption and Desolation.

The Corruption and the Extinction. The Corruption, Fear of disease, insects, rot, decay, toxicity, all things vile. The Extinction, Fear of terrible change, progress, and its consequences, is not the Fear that we will all die, that is the End, but the Fear of terrible change at our own hands. Garbage belongs to both Fears, for it is disgusting; the episode about the garbage field belongs to both, for the local Avatar created people from garbage, just as in the episode about the asphalt jungle. Adelard Dekker assumed that Extinction would manifest itself in outbreaks of epidemics, which is very akin to Corruption. Radiation belongs to both Fears.

The Extinction and the Desolation. The Extinction, Fear of terrible change, progress, and its consequences, is not the Fear that we will all die, that is the End, but the Fear of terrible change at our own hands. The Desolation, Fear of destruction and loss, pain inflicted specifically on you. Nuclear weapons bring fire and destruction. In the episode about the day of the apocalypse, corpses were described as covered in ash. Progress leads to destruction.

Now, the 16th Fear. In the second part, I will describe the opposite Fears in more detail, and DS, as you can see, is the opposite of Extinction. Extinction is the fear of catastrophic change, meaning DS is associated with something that is the opposite of that change. In my experience, this is a Fear associated with stagnation, monotony, and simulation. If we take Extinction as a change, then the opposite is stagnation and the absence of change altogether. If we take Extinction as the end of the world, then the opposite is that the world is not real at all. In my experience, this Fear encompasses both, because all Fears are more complex than a simple proposition. This Fear is about simulations, the world being unreal, the absence of change, time loops, monotony. By monotony and stagnation, I mean the absence of change altogether, like Groundhog Day, boredom—for example, people in experiments have shown they are willing to hurt themselves just to avoid boredom—or, for example, white room torture, where everything is white, from the room and clothes to the food, and without the absence of stimuli, the brain begins to go crazy.

So, DS. DS is between Flesh and Spiral.

The Flesh and the DS. The Flesh, Fear of harming the body, changing or destroying it, the fear of animals being slaughtered for meat. DS, Fear of monotony, simulation, stagnation, boredom, lack of change, that the world isn't real. Flesh makes you think people are just meat, DS makes you think people are just objects, background, or NPCs. People will hurt themselves just to escape boredom.

The DS and the Spiral. DS, Fear of monotony, simulation, stagnation, boredom, lack of change, that the world isn't real. The Spiral, Fear of madness, that the world is wrong, that your mind is playing tricks on you. Both force you to question what is real, with Spiral primarily about the mind and DS about the world around you. White room torture is included here, where, with a lack of stimulation and variety, the brain goes crazy. Groundhog Day, and often a monotonous life, also lead to this.

Now for the second part. Opposites.

In my experience, each pair of opposing Fears has a common theme, with each Fear representing one extreme of the spectrum.

The Eye and The Lonely. The Eye, the fear of being watched, that your secrets are known, that someone wants something terrible to happen to you just to watch. The Lonely, Fear of loneliness, isolation, being abandoned, being cut off from others. If someone is watching you, you're not alone. In the episode about the astronaut trapped alone in space, where the Earth disappears, he's relatively calm until he discovers the camera watching him is turned off. If you're truly alone, you won't feel a presence or gaze. I don't consider Dark and the Eye to be opposites, for although the Eye is associated with eyes, its essence is knowledge. Even in the dark, you can learn something through other senses, like hearing and smell. Before the first microorganisms developed organs responsible for vision, they learned about danger and food through other means. While darkness can hide something, in my experience, it can also reveal something that would be impossible to achieve in complete isolation. The common theme is visibility and socialization. If there's a lot of Eye, then everything is known, everyone is looking at you, maybe even judging you, and you can't do anything about it; if there's a lot of Lonely, then there's no one, you're alone.

The Web and The Stranger. The Web, the fear of manipulation, of being manipulated, lack of control, being a pawn in a game, and, of course, spiders. The Stranger, Fear of something wrong, something unknown, and you don't know what, why, or how; the uncanny valley. The Stranger takes things like dolls and puppets and makes them come alive, while the Web, on the other hand, turns people into dolls and puppets. A Web artefact, a table, held the Stranger's being, Not-Them, where Jon, after realizing his mistake in destroying the table, says that spiders and the table held opposite to the thing is was binding. In the episode where Jon waits with Trevor and Julia for the Stranger's agent to restore the body, he (the agent) says that he doesn't like the one who listens to tapes, which, as we know, are an aspect of the Web. In Breekon's statement, he says that Spiders know too much to be completely stranger, which can be said about the Eye, which is also far from the Stranger. The Anglerfish specifically targeted smokers, and as is known, any addiction, including smoking, is under the Web. The common theme is control. If there's a lot of Web, then you become a pawn in the game, a tool; If there's a lot of the Stranger, you lose yourself and start to resemble yourself less and less, trying to maintain control, because, ultimately, nothing can ever be completely true.

The Corruption and The Flesh. The Corruption, Fear of disease, insects, rot, decay, toxicity, all things vile. The Flesh, Fear of harming the body, changing or destroying it, the fear of animals being slaughtered for meat. Rot destroys meat. If you look closely, Flesh is very clean. There's not a single episode where Flesh is dirty or full of blood*. The Anatomy Class students removed all the blood they left; in the slaughterhouse episode, everything was clean; this is all necessary to counteract Corruption. The episode with the man upstairs was about the Avatar of Flesh, who fought Corruption. The episode about the mosquitoes and the bag of flesh is also about this confrontation, for the bag of flesh is something of Flesh, and the mosquitoes that drained one of the scientists dry are something of Corruption. They weren't able to do this, but he sold the artefact to Flesh, which made Corruption stronger, but that's a whole other conversation. The common theme is intimacy, relationships. If there's too much Corruption, then intimacy and relationships become unhealthy; if there's too much Flesh, then—since flesh, in my experience, is associated with absorption, cannibalism, food, as well as love and pleasure in general—it consumes you, you become merely the subject of pleasure, nothing more.

*The only times Flesh bleeds are when it and the Spiral act together. The Spiral reveals itself through bleeding objects, especially wooden ones, because if you see an object bleeding, you'll think you're going crazy.

The Extinction and the DS. The Extinction, Fear of terrible change, progress, and its consequences, is not the Fear that we will all die, that is the End, but the Fear of terrible change at our own hands. DS, Fear of monotony, simulation, stagnation, boredom, lack of change, that the world isn't real. There's nothing much to take away from the podcast, so let's get straight to the point. The common theme is change. If there's a lot of Extinction, then the changes will bring collapse and destruction, plus Desolation is not far away; if there's a lot of DS, then the world becomes turbulent and monotonous, a Groundhog Day, which negatively impacts everything.

The Desolation and the Spiral. The Desolation, Fear of destruction and loss, pain inflicted specifically on you. The Spiral, Fear of madness, that the world is wrong, that your mind is playing tricks on you. Trees are symbols of the Spiral: they reflect natural fractals in their branches and roots; Lichtenberg Figure tried to lure Mike beyond its gate, where weird trees were visible; it's easy to get lost in the forest, which is the Spiral; the tree on Hill Top was bleeding, which is the Spiral. Trees are also easy to burn. In the podcast, Desolation dislikes the Spiral, because something in the house on Hill Top tried to burn the worker and the priest who came there, both marked by the Spiral: the worker feared schizophrenia from his father, the Priest is the case where he was accused of cannibalism, those very complex statements. The common theme is destruction. If there's a lot of Desolation, then there's physical destruction; if there's a lot of Spiral, then there's mental destruction.

The Hunt and the Buried. The Hunt, Fear of being hunted, and being prey. The Buried, Fear of being trapped and in lack, be it space or air. Hunt is about running and the possibility of escape, when you're in a confined space, there's nowhere to run. When Daisy was in the Coffin, the Hunt couldn't reach her. I don't consider Buried and Vast opposites. Yes, they have opposing symbolism, but that doesn't make them distant on the Wheel. Although aspects of Vast are about open skies, its essence is in our insignificance. What reminds you of your insignificance more than being stuck somewhere? Even the space in the Coffin is vast and endless; there's no up or down, only earth and the absence of air. They even share domain—an entire ocean, equal to the Dark. And, although weather is an aspect of the Vast, the Buried also frequently uses it, as seen in the episode about the endless rain and the episode about the mud storm. The common theme is movement. If there's a lot of Hunt, then you're hunting, searching for something, constantly on the move, searching; if there's a lot of Buried, then you're stuck, unable to go anywhere, unable to do anything.

The Slaughter and the Dark. The Slaughter, Fear of gratuitous cruelty and war. The Dark, Fear of darkness. This pairing, like Buried and Hunt, as well as The End and the Vast, is one of the most ancient. The very essence of survival is based on Hunt and Slaughter, where cruelty occurs quickly and is necessary. In the episode about a father's love, Julia's father kills the monster of darkness by killing a large number of people, completing the ritual with the heart and song, and song is the motif of Slaughter. Julia herself becomes a hunter, and the Hunt is close to Slaughter. Since this pair is one of the most ancient, I date it back to the moments before life. They are next in rank, for when the universe was born, it was chaos, where planets and stars collided with one another, true Slaughter, in the vastness of dark space, true Dark, until everything took on a calmer form. When everything more or less calmed down and the moment for the emergence of possible life began, Hunt and Buried emerged, for that small life hunted each other and feared being trapped. The common theme is activity and stillness. If there is a lot of Slaughter, then it is constant movement, with inevitable pain and destruction; if there is a lot of Dark, then it is true silence and standing still, not knowing where to go or what to do.

It's also no news that the Hunt is one of the most ancient Fears, like Buried, for the region of our brain responsible for the fear of suffocation is far more ancient than other fears. Dark, unsurprisingly, is also one of the most ancient Fears, along with Slaughter, for nothing desires to experience pain, cruelty, and destruction. But they are not the oldest pair.

The End and the Vast. The End, Fear of death. The Vast , Fear of our insignificance, of losing ourselves in something greater, the fear of the big, open spaces and heights. The very first pair. The End is about, well, the end, while Vast is about infinity. The End is the Big Bang, the beginning of all creation, both life and death, with the Vast that appeared immediately after, beginning to expand like the universe. It is their endless dance, where the result is the same, where Vast falls time and again into the End, only to begin again. It's an immovable object, the End, an inevitable something, and it's an unstoppable force, the Vast, which continues to grow larger and larger with every second (and they lewdly kiss with tongue). The Vast grants Avatars, if not infinite, then very long lives—Simon and his 500+ years, for example. Georgie told Jon in her statement that the promise of eternity in the grave would have been a mercy, while the realization of the smallness in which we exist hit her harder, noting in particular that it's not "the senseless vastness of the universe, but its smallness," which is the very opposite of the Vast. The Vast also has another power over lifespan, granting the possibility of not dying at all, that is, eternity. It also grants eternity not only to its Avatars, but even to those touched by the Vast: Ian Killbright fell victim to the prevention of the Buried ritual, where Jon said that Gertrude realized the body wasn't supposed to be alive or whole and thought it was a mercy. It wasn't. This suggests that, despite this, Ian was still alive. The statement about loneliness in the cosmic trio contained the password E10N9GHT8; on the subreddit, it was deduced that it refers to the three Fears that conducted this experiment. 10 is read as lo, with the letters elo, and 9 as n, elon, which sounds like alone; 9, which is ni and ght, night; and 8, which, when put on its side, is the sign of infinity. The Vast also stops the time, as can be seen from the episodes about the fall and the sky devouring the young man, the astronaut from the above-mentioned three experiments, and Simon's statement. If the Spiral does this to make people think they're going crazy, then the Vast does it to make people fear eternity. In the episode about the ocean, the heroine of the declaration says she should be dead, but she's alive because, as is clear, she's touched by the Vast. Vast is Fear, above all, not of dying, which is the opposite of the End, which is the end of everything. It's not surprising that they are the very first, for even in human biology, everything tries to avoid death, and we're afraid of heights practically from birth. The common theme is existentialism. If there's too much of the End, then everything will end, it's scary to begin and continue; if there's too much Vast, then nothing makes sense, only indifference.

Are there Avatars of non-neighbouring forces? Yes! In our world, you can choose and become one, but there are also a couple in the podcast. The most interesting option is Agnes. She didn't become, but was born to the Avatar, and because she was born in the forest, using wood, she was born an Avatar of two opposing forces – the Desolation and the Spiral. Another interesting possibility is Mike Crew. Since Lichtenberg Figure is a Spiral being, clearly influenced by the Vast, so, a creature of both, same species like the King and the Slender Man. After it was locked in Ex Altiora, Mike adopted several of its abilities, particularly disorientation, as well as body deception, very Spiral things, for, as he himself says, Jon felt as if he were not here, but in heaven, even though his body was sitting in a chair.

So, here's my new essay. Thank you for reading.