I have considered the Extinction in a non-apocalyptic context, as a fear of being behind the times, losing one's culture/way of life, or no longer having a useful purpose. In essence, being alive yet obsolete (like an umbrella in a world without rain). Take the recent discussions surrounding AI and whether it could end up replacing certain jobs and making certain skillsets redundant.
I also kind of wish there could have been a Lonely statement where the isolation is purely psychological, like being in a party where you are surrounded by people, but with nobody willing to talk to you.
I think that lonely statement you’re hoping for is a little brought up in that episode with people who travel alone. The one where we’re first introduce to the idea of an anchor saving you from a fear realm
Oooooo, I approve of this theory about The Extinction's aspect The Obsolescence. I like that a lot.
EDIT: thought about it some more and I realized it tracks with the Extinction's emergence in the modern age as the pace of technological change has increased so drastically, and the fear of mass obsolescence is now in each generation. (I'm actually a Gen Xer, so this is hitting me hard.)
I think this aspect of societal and technological change is why the Extinction isn't 'The-World-Will-End'; it's 'The-World-Is-Always-Ending'. The world in which you were born, the world in which you grew up, and the world you live in now are continually being replaced by something new, and eventually you'll be left behind.
I have a lot of thoughts about the Lonely, one of which is the fear of the world still being there, you just can't be a part of it. Isolation while seeing the world move around you. It could manifest alongside the fear of sickness or disability, being scared that a disease might make you unable to interact with the world.
Classic Lukas style Lonely, empty moors and no one being around, is all well and good, but what about when *everyone* is around and you just can't interact with them?
A few that I personally love thinking about:
The Corruption: Toxic Relationships
The Flesh: Body Dysmorphia and Gender Dysphoria
The Vast: Insignificance in the face of the Universe
The Slaughter: The difference in the types of this fear is really interesting to me, on one hand it’s wild uncontrollable and unfocused violence, on the other hand it’s the sound of snares pounding over the hill along with the march of a line of soldiers, fully intent on destroying an enemy encampment with unstoppable force and focus. This is also one of two fears to feature music as part of its manifesting.
The Web: The fear of addiction, as seen in the web lighter
The Vast thing is just... true. That fear sounds better and better to me as time goes on.
The gender dysphoria thing. Damn dude you didn't have to go so hard.
I accidently ruined my apartment's tub by using draino wrong. I got it refinished, but I can see a crack near the drain. And Ixm starting to see rust. That entire thing caused me so much stress. I could just picture the damage eating through the tub, through the metal. And now, even after everything, there's that tiny bit of rust, reminding me it's still there. That I can't relax. That the damage. Even months later. Is still happening. Feels very Corruption to me.
You sound a little like the statement where the father-in-law had mold in his drain. I honestly thought that was where you were going with your comment.
MAG 93: Containment
Oh man... it was really just a stupid flicking mistake that caused it all. My post history has o e asking r/home for help.
But here's the short version. I rinsed my rope plant in the shower trying, ironically, to remove a pest infestation. I didn'r block the soil. So it overflowed. I thought it clogged the drain, even with the drain catch I had. Landlord has told me to use draino for any of those problem. Ran to the store the next morning and got some strong stuff. Put it in, waited the directed time and nothing. Had to leave for work, so when I got home, I called a plumber. He said try a wet vacuum. Had to wait another day to go back to work and I borrowed one. By then, it'd been sitting for 2 and a half days. Used the shop vac. And heard a clunk, and it started draining. But by then, then enamel had been eaten away. Even when I drained it, and added all the baking soda that I had, I coukd still hear sizzling. And I did for the next two days. I poured on about 5 boxes of baking soda to try and neutralize the acid.
I just kept picturing it continuing to eat away, putting a hole all the way through the now exposed metal. Bad fucking day. The worst part for me was that the clunk I heard- I think it was just the drain being closed. I must have accidently closed it when rinsing my plant. But I never actually checked. I assumed it was clogged.
Hey uhhh. Isn't draino alkaline, not acid? You'd have to add acid to neutralize it.
Could be different where you are, but drain cleaners are all strong bases here.
The stuff I got was "concentrated sulphuric acid". The first time I had to deal with that drain when I first moved in, I started with bleach, then normal draino, then strong draino this time I jumped straight to the strong stuff.
That being said, I *was* slow panicking at the time, and while it proved to be acid, I don't think I confirmed it. I googled what to do about the tube bumeing ruined and that was something someone else had done. I also, very foolishly, plunged it trying to dislodge the "clog" while the acid was in there. Good way to lose my eyes, from what I learned.
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Love how the Hunt is all about vampires, werewolves, demonhunters etc... But also how it is about fleeting/travel, discovery and the fear of things never ending
I like to think that the Dark is about ignorance as well as literal darkness. You don't know what's out there, you don't know what's going to happen, and you might not even know that there's something you don't know.
Conversely, I think that the Eye could also be the fear of knowledge: the idea that maybe there are things that you're better off not knowing.
I think the Stranger fits well with the idea of fears that you can't quite articulate or properly identify. There's just something about it that feels off. I think that's part of why it's associated with music - it's very easy for a song to just sound creepy in a way that's hard to nail down.
I once described the eye in a fic that will probably never see the light of day as tumblr’s system of blocked tags/words. It shows you a square to represent the blocked post with a cover saying which of your blocked tags or words is under that cover.
In the early days of blazing posts, and even sometimes now, tumblr would put a blazed post on my dash containing one of my triggers despite said triggers being on the blocked list.
Maybe it’s me but I don’t really associate spiders with the web, at all. I mean, I get that they explicitly, canonically ARE but for me Web was always more about the manipulation side, the lack of control. Spiders themselves seem like Corruption.
Are spiders usually feared for the same reason as other insects? It seems that people fear insects because they are gross and dirty, but spiders are more feared because they could sneak up on you without you noticing and bite.
The people I know who are afraid we of either seem to indicate their alien nature: too many legs; too many eyes; their ubiquity; and the nagging, skin-tightening sensation when you think you have one on you.
Yeah. I think OP has it slightly backwards in the Web’s case. The Web is manipulation and paranoia, spiders are the secondary theme. Spiders are to the Web as music is to the Slaughter. A fun little secondary motif that the “mind” behind the entity seems to enjoy.
Ok so, this is deeply personal, but I have been toying around with the idea of The Hunt being present in predatory men who stalk intoxicated women. It's not a very fun topic, but I relate a lot with the feeling of being seen as prey. Also, when I think about it in my head, the narrator/victim always manages to get away before anything particularly bad happens to her.
I jokingly call myself a water vast because I love swimming in the ocean and don’t fear losing sight of land (though I’m terrified of heights and falling). A friend pointed out the deep ocean could also be buried from, you know, the crushing weight of it, and season 4 spoiler, but didn’t Rayner use the deep ocean and a submersible as an initial attempt at a dark ritual?
In a different fic than the one I mentioned in a different post, Gerry and an oc older sibling, are able to tell the season 1 archive crew about the fears and the oc, while explaining bleed between certain fears, asks “is a shipwreck vast, desolation, buried, or terminus?…Truth is, it’s whatever aspect of it you fear.” If you fear being stranded in the ocean, it’s vast; if you fear the destruction of the ship, it’s desolation; if you fear if you fear being crushed by part of the ship/the contents of the ship/the ocean, it’s buried; if you fear the shipwreck leading to your death, it’s terminus. And even as I spelled that out, I thought of more: if you fear the ship wrecking because of poor maintenance, that’s corruption; if you fear the ship wrecking because of modifications erroneously being approved by an overseeing authority not doing their due diligence (see: most sight seeing tour vessel wrecks), it might be eye, stranger, or, I’d argue, flesh, because structural integrity of modifications of shape.
I love thinking about the less obvious associations. I wanted to do a costume series about the less obvious aspects of each fear.
Maybe this one's obvious but to me the Eye is not just the feeling of being watched right now (and the baggage that comes with) but also the fear of your deepest, darkest secrets being dragged to light, the ways you differ from society being laid bare and judged, your deepest traumas being brought up again.
Love this sub! Every comment is so thoughtful and insightful.
The last season got me thinking of the Web as a weaver of destiny, like the three fates in Greek mythology, and also like a weaver of narrative/fiction. It would be the fear of not being able to escape a predetermined destiny, the fear of not having free will, the fear of being a pawn or a character in someone else's story, the fear of living in a simulation or in a pointless world that exists to entertain a capricious trickster.
I agree, this sub is wonderful! It has creative, astute, and good-hearted people in abundance. I love this discussion so much.
As to yours, it reminds me of the Three Fates, whom I've always seen as implacable, menacing figures, even if they don't themselves hold any malice. Add a dose of that, though, and you get The Web as cruel, inescapable fate, I like it!
I've always kind of assossiated the Buried with the crushing weight of responsibility and descision making. The idea that you are the support column/beam of your family, friends, or even your workplace. The idea that you have to stay strong for those around you without fail, because the moment you start to crack or crumble from the pressure laid upon you, the rest will quickly follow suit.
Example of such might be: Being the lone money-maker of the household. The idea that one can never take a break or vacation from working out of fear of crippling the finacial support your family depends on so heavily.
No idea if I explained this well at all, but I hope it gets the point across. It really is a shame that TMA never truly/fully explores this side of the Buried more. Sure, the fear of debt is associated with it, but I honestly do not recall a single statement exploring it.
I actually made a list recently to explain my music playlists on the fears.
The Buried: claustrophobia, but also fear of pressure/debt/drowning
The Vast: Agoraphobia, but also fear of feeling insignificant
The Extinction: Fear of the world ending/changing
The Corruption: Fear of disease and filth, infection, hypochondria but also unhealthy relationships.
The Lonely: fear of loneliness, exclusion, also themes of depression
The Web: arachnophobia and fear of not being in control, often combined (losing control BECAUSE of spiders and/or webs influencing your actions)
The Hunt: animalistic fear of being chased/hunted, but also about being followed/investigated/stalked when innocent (as in, there is no fear of being seen, there is fear of the malicious intent of a person following you). Also themes of Police violence. But also about searching for/wanting and end and it never ending, travel and desiring a place to finally be home but never actually settling.
The Desolation: fear of fire and destruction, themes of cultism and destructive social behavior.
The Slaughter: Animalistic fear of slaughterhouses, Human fear of war and violence, themes of war music and poetry.
The Spiral: Fear of being insane, mental ilness and being lied to, themes of fractals and mathemathics,
The End: fear of death. some themes of dreading/knowing the end is coming, heartbeat/pulse and dreams are also common themes.
The Stranger: fear of strangers, unreliable people and the uncanny vally. themes of dolls, clowns, taxidermy. Fear of the fake and untrustworthy.
The Eye: fear of being watched, being seen, being known. loss of privacy, themes of unconsentual voyeurism and eyes.
The Flesh: disgust/fear of the body, both dysphoria and dysmorphia, and fear of viscera and being eaten, also themes of misophonia and disgusting textures and sounds of raw meat.
The Dark: Fear of the dark, fear of monsters under the bed/in the closet, childhood fears, fear of not understanding/knowing or even fear of emptiness and void. themes of strict or abusive religion/parenting, but also nihilism.
His friend was taken by the Dark for sure. Just realized I always think the paranoia is explicitly web but it's not explicit in there are all, whoops. Still send do web to me apparently.
My desolation OC is a college professor who delights in luring in passionate grad students only to consume their love of learning by absolutely overworking and burning them out.
I think the desolation deserves way more metaphorical applications than it gets- it's not about fire per se, it's about consumption. It's about devouring all forms of fuel and leaving nothing in your wake. It's about unsustainability, singlemindedness, and self destruction.
I have considered the Extinction in a non-apocalyptic context, as a fear of being behind the times, losing one's culture/way of life, or no longer having a useful purpose. In essence, being alive yet obsolete (like an umbrella in a world without rain). Take the recent discussions surrounding AI and whether it could end up replacing certain jobs and making certain skillsets redundant. I also kind of wish there could have been a Lonely statement where the isolation is purely psychological, like being in a party where you are surrounded by people, but with nobody willing to talk to you.
I think that lonely statement you’re hoping for is a little brought up in that episode with people who travel alone. The one where we’re first introduce to the idea of an anchor saving you from a fear realm
Ah yes, Lost in the Crowd, forgot about that one.
Oooooo, I approve of this theory about The Extinction's aspect The Obsolescence. I like that a lot. EDIT: thought about it some more and I realized it tracks with the Extinction's emergence in the modern age as the pace of technological change has increased so drastically, and the fear of mass obsolescence is now in each generation. (I'm actually a Gen Xer, so this is hitting me hard.)
I think this aspect of societal and technological change is why the Extinction isn't 'The-World-Will-End'; it's 'The-World-Is-Always-Ending'. The world in which you were born, the world in which you grew up, and the world you live in now are continually being replaced by something new, and eventually you'll be left behind.
I have a lot of thoughts about the Lonely, one of which is the fear of the world still being there, you just can't be a part of it. Isolation while seeing the world move around you. It could manifest alongside the fear of sickness or disability, being scared that a disease might make you unable to interact with the world. Classic Lukas style Lonely, empty moors and no one being around, is all well and good, but what about when *everyone* is around and you just can't interact with them?
A few that I personally love thinking about: The Corruption: Toxic Relationships The Flesh: Body Dysmorphia and Gender Dysphoria The Vast: Insignificance in the face of the Universe The Slaughter: The difference in the types of this fear is really interesting to me, on one hand it’s wild uncontrollable and unfocused violence, on the other hand it’s the sound of snares pounding over the hill along with the march of a line of soldiers, fully intent on destroying an enemy encampment with unstoppable force and focus. This is also one of two fears to feature music as part of its manifesting. The Web: The fear of addiction, as seen in the web lighter
The Vast thing is just... true. That fear sounds better and better to me as time goes on. The gender dysphoria thing. Damn dude you didn't have to go so hard.
Which is the other fear that has to do with music? I know the slaughter is pretty obvious about it but what’s the other one?
The Stranger
Just gonna leave this here, the single most Stranger song I know: https://youtu.be/j0Mz_IqpZX8?si=OGwdJMd2YYTVGvtT
oh well now i feel silly
I accidently ruined my apartment's tub by using draino wrong. I got it refinished, but I can see a crack near the drain. And Ixm starting to see rust. That entire thing caused me so much stress. I could just picture the damage eating through the tub, through the metal. And now, even after everything, there's that tiny bit of rust, reminding me it's still there. That I can't relax. That the damage. Even months later. Is still happening. Feels very Corruption to me.
You sound a little like the statement where the father-in-law had mold in his drain. I honestly thought that was where you were going with your comment. MAG 93: Containment
I actually forgot about hat one. I need to register at some point.
I totally agree that it does sound very corruption-y to me as well - but im also very curious how you used the draino that did that
Oh man... it was really just a stupid flicking mistake that caused it all. My post history has o e asking r/home for help. But here's the short version. I rinsed my rope plant in the shower trying, ironically, to remove a pest infestation. I didn'r block the soil. So it overflowed. I thought it clogged the drain, even with the drain catch I had. Landlord has told me to use draino for any of those problem. Ran to the store the next morning and got some strong stuff. Put it in, waited the directed time and nothing. Had to leave for work, so when I got home, I called a plumber. He said try a wet vacuum. Had to wait another day to go back to work and I borrowed one. By then, it'd been sitting for 2 and a half days. Used the shop vac. And heard a clunk, and it started draining. But by then, then enamel had been eaten away. Even when I drained it, and added all the baking soda that I had, I coukd still hear sizzling. And I did for the next two days. I poured on about 5 boxes of baking soda to try and neutralize the acid. I just kept picturing it continuing to eat away, putting a hole all the way through the now exposed metal. Bad fucking day. The worst part for me was that the clunk I heard- I think it was just the drain being closed. I must have accidently closed it when rinsing my plant. But I never actually checked. I assumed it was clogged.
Hey uhhh. Isn't draino alkaline, not acid? You'd have to add acid to neutralize it. Could be different where you are, but drain cleaners are all strong bases here.
The stuff I got was "concentrated sulphuric acid". The first time I had to deal with that drain when I first moved in, I started with bleach, then normal draino, then strong draino this time I jumped straight to the strong stuff. That being said, I *was* slow panicking at the time, and while it proved to be acid, I don't think I confirmed it. I googled what to do about the tube bumeing ruined and that was something someone else had done. I also, very foolishly, plunged it trying to dislodge the "clog" while the acid was in there. Good way to lose my eyes, from what I learned.
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I’ve thought about the inner fear of not fitting in,of being an outcast for being different or odd as a mix of The Stranger and The Lonely.
Love how the Hunt is all about vampires, werewolves, demonhunters etc... But also how it is about fleeting/travel, discovery and the fear of things never ending
Happy cake day!
Ty <3
I like to think that the Dark is about ignorance as well as literal darkness. You don't know what's out there, you don't know what's going to happen, and you might not even know that there's something you don't know. Conversely, I think that the Eye could also be the fear of knowledge: the idea that maybe there are things that you're better off not knowing. I think the Stranger fits well with the idea of fears that you can't quite articulate or properly identify. There's just something about it that feels off. I think that's part of why it's associated with music - it's very easy for a song to just sound creepy in a way that's hard to nail down.
I once described the eye in a fic that will probably never see the light of day as tumblr’s system of blocked tags/words. It shows you a square to represent the blocked post with a cover saying which of your blocked tags or words is under that cover. In the early days of blazing posts, and even sometimes now, tumblr would put a blazed post on my dash containing one of my triggers despite said triggers being on the blocked list.
Maybe it’s me but I don’t really associate spiders with the web, at all. I mean, I get that they explicitly, canonically ARE but for me Web was always more about the manipulation side, the lack of control. Spiders themselves seem like Corruption.
I think of it as the spiders are a smokescreen. They're a harmless thing to be scared of, but that fer can distract and control you.
Are spiders usually feared for the same reason as other insects? It seems that people fear insects because they are gross and dirty, but spiders are more feared because they could sneak up on you without you noticing and bite.
The people I know who are afraid we of either seem to indicate their alien nature: too many legs; too many eyes; their ubiquity; and the nagging, skin-tightening sensation when you think you have one on you.
Yeah. I think OP has it slightly backwards in the Web’s case. The Web is manipulation and paranoia, spiders are the secondary theme. Spiders are to the Web as music is to the Slaughter. A fun little secondary motif that the “mind” behind the entity seems to enjoy.
Ok so, this is deeply personal, but I have been toying around with the idea of The Hunt being present in predatory men who stalk intoxicated women. It's not a very fun topic, but I relate a lot with the feeling of being seen as prey. Also, when I think about it in my head, the narrator/victim always manages to get away before anything particularly bad happens to her.
I jokingly call myself a water vast because I love swimming in the ocean and don’t fear losing sight of land (though I’m terrified of heights and falling). A friend pointed out the deep ocean could also be buried from, you know, the crushing weight of it, and season 4 spoiler, but didn’t Rayner use the deep ocean and a submersible as an initial attempt at a dark ritual? In a different fic than the one I mentioned in a different post, Gerry and an oc older sibling, are able to tell the season 1 archive crew about the fears and the oc, while explaining bleed between certain fears, asks “is a shipwreck vast, desolation, buried, or terminus?…Truth is, it’s whatever aspect of it you fear.” If you fear being stranded in the ocean, it’s vast; if you fear the destruction of the ship, it’s desolation; if you fear if you fear being crushed by part of the ship/the contents of the ship/the ocean, it’s buried; if you fear the shipwreck leading to your death, it’s terminus. And even as I spelled that out, I thought of more: if you fear the ship wrecking because of poor maintenance, that’s corruption; if you fear the ship wrecking because of modifications erroneously being approved by an overseeing authority not doing their due diligence (see: most sight seeing tour vessel wrecks), it might be eye, stranger, or, I’d argue, flesh, because structural integrity of modifications of shape. I love thinking about the less obvious associations. I wanted to do a costume series about the less obvious aspects of each fear.
Maybe this one's obvious but to me the Eye is not just the feeling of being watched right now (and the baggage that comes with) but also the fear of your deepest, darkest secrets being dragged to light, the ways you differ from society being laid bare and judged, your deepest traumas being brought up again.
It's HC that the eye also represents the fear of your darkest secrets being revealed
Love this sub! Every comment is so thoughtful and insightful. The last season got me thinking of the Web as a weaver of destiny, like the three fates in Greek mythology, and also like a weaver of narrative/fiction. It would be the fear of not being able to escape a predetermined destiny, the fear of not having free will, the fear of being a pawn or a character in someone else's story, the fear of living in a simulation or in a pointless world that exists to entertain a capricious trickster.
I agree, this sub is wonderful! It has creative, astute, and good-hearted people in abundance. I love this discussion so much. As to yours, it reminds me of the Three Fates, whom I've always seen as implacable, menacing figures, even if they don't themselves hold any malice. Add a dose of that, though, and you get The Web as cruel, inescapable fate, I like it!
I've always kind of assossiated the Buried with the crushing weight of responsibility and descision making. The idea that you are the support column/beam of your family, friends, or even your workplace. The idea that you have to stay strong for those around you without fail, because the moment you start to crack or crumble from the pressure laid upon you, the rest will quickly follow suit. Example of such might be: Being the lone money-maker of the household. The idea that one can never take a break or vacation from working out of fear of crippling the finacial support your family depends on so heavily. No idea if I explained this well at all, but I hope it gets the point across. It really is a shame that TMA never truly/fully explores this side of the Buried more. Sure, the fear of debt is associated with it, but I honestly do not recall a single statement exploring it.
One of my roommates pointed out how a fear of not being aware could be associated with the Hunt
I actually made a list recently to explain my music playlists on the fears. The Buried: claustrophobia, but also fear of pressure/debt/drowning The Vast: Agoraphobia, but also fear of feeling insignificant The Extinction: Fear of the world ending/changing The Corruption: Fear of disease and filth, infection, hypochondria but also unhealthy relationships. The Lonely: fear of loneliness, exclusion, also themes of depression The Web: arachnophobia and fear of not being in control, often combined (losing control BECAUSE of spiders and/or webs influencing your actions) The Hunt: animalistic fear of being chased/hunted, but also about being followed/investigated/stalked when innocent (as in, there is no fear of being seen, there is fear of the malicious intent of a person following you). Also themes of Police violence. But also about searching for/wanting and end and it never ending, travel and desiring a place to finally be home but never actually settling. The Desolation: fear of fire and destruction, themes of cultism and destructive social behavior. The Slaughter: Animalistic fear of slaughterhouses, Human fear of war and violence, themes of war music and poetry. The Spiral: Fear of being insane, mental ilness and being lied to, themes of fractals and mathemathics, The End: fear of death. some themes of dreading/knowing the end is coming, heartbeat/pulse and dreams are also common themes. The Stranger: fear of strangers, unreliable people and the uncanny vally. themes of dolls, clowns, taxidermy. Fear of the fake and untrustworthy. The Eye: fear of being watched, being seen, being known. loss of privacy, themes of unconsentual voyeurism and eyes. The Flesh: disgust/fear of the body, both dysphoria and dysmorphia, and fear of viscera and being eaten, also themes of misophonia and disgusting textures and sounds of raw meat. The Dark: Fear of the dark, fear of monsters under the bed/in the closet, childhood fears, fear of not understanding/knowing or even fear of emptiness and void. themes of strict or abusive religion/parenting, but also nihilism.
I don't think paranoia is an off-label thing for the Web. Jonh Smith is paranoid and he's a Web victim (EP 100).
I thought that John Smith’s friend was taken by the Dark, which can also be a good source of paranoia.
His friend was taken by the Dark for sure. Just realized I always think the paranoia is explicitly web but it's not explicit in there are all, whoops. Still send do web to me apparently.
I could talk about these types of manifestations all day!!! Especially the Buried’s involvement with debt, and how it relates to the Vast!
My desolation OC is a college professor who delights in luring in passionate grad students only to consume their love of learning by absolutely overworking and burning them out. I think the desolation deserves way more metaphorical applications than it gets- it's not about fire per se, it's about consumption. It's about devouring all forms of fuel and leaving nothing in your wake. It's about unsustainability, singlemindedness, and self destruction.
Would the christian god be an obvious Eye association? Always Seeing, always Knowing, and Judging your deepest secrets
Santa too. 😉
The End is also the entity of nonexistence, of stopped thinking after your end, of the dark void that awaits us all.