#fear soup

[laughingliliums]

MAGtober 2024 Day 3 - It already sees you

POV you are a wretched thing and your about to be ceaselessly watched.

A complete list of fears under the cut for if you can't spot them all.

The Eye - Jon's open eye/the eyes behind him

The Web - the webs under Jon's arms/the six arms themselves

The Lonely - the white streaks in Jon's hair

The Strangers - the arm covered in hand prints

The Hunt - the scar on Jon's neck

The Spiral - the Spiral pattered arm

The Slaughter - the bleeding wound in Jon's shoulder

The Flesh - the two missing ribs

The Vast - the lighting pattered arm

The Dark - Jon's closed eye

The Desolation - the arm with fire exploding from the palm

The Buried - Jon's fingernails/the dirt under them

The Corruption - the worm hole covered arm

The End - the arm with jagged marks from the explosion/the hospital

[equalseleventhirds]

GASP

i was checking through the transcript for ‘doomed voyage’ bcos of......... reasons, and i realized that the thing salesa went and got on that last voyage, the thing he risked his crew to get, the thing that supposedly got him killed...

was ‘a camera with a broken lens’

is this it? is this how he is immune to the eye? was it an anti-eye artifact??

[avatarofthebeholding]

Ok I found this week’s domain SO interesting and thus spent the entire statement trying to analyze it. Here are the results of that:

4 Key Entity Influences:

1. Desolation (water)

2. Dark (water)

3. Vast (creature, above the surface)

4. Beholding (above the surface)

Quotes:

“Down in the depths, there is a cold beyond cold. An icy, liquid chill that surrounds you, embraces you, pierces every inch of your naked gooseflesh skin with its needling touch, and gets inside your bones, the marrow frozen into nothing but agony.”

“Water? Yes, you remember. The darkness around you, the forever of it all. Sometimes you forget just what it is that keeps you gripped so tight, suspended in place above nothing. But the thought comes to you quick enough when your lungs begin to burn.

“You have been drowning as long as you can remember, and to invite the impossible cold into yourself, through your lungs and into your core, will bring no end to it, no relief. So you hold on. You hold out as long as you can, ignoring the agony, straining against the pressing darkness that has consumed you, and that implores you to consume it in return.”

“Far, far above is the surface, the inky stillness of that silent barrier between water and sky, motionless as black glass, an obsidian expanse that stretches away.”

“Pick a direction, and swim until you find something. Someone. Land perhaps, or just another who is suffering as you are.”

“no light will condescend to reach down here. But still you press on, try to keep moving through the pain, through the fear that attempts to paralyse you, to lock you in place as surely as the water that presses all around. How long have you been moving now? Seconds? Years? Your lungs still burn and beg you to succumb.”

“Something moves. Something deep and old, and larger than your frostbitten imagination can conceive. “

“You can feel its titanic bulk moving past, just below you”

“You keep moving, limbs splaying in that strange pseudo-run, moving along it, and begging for this thing to end.”

“And then it is gone, passed away from you, and out into the expanse of dark and quiet cold. You cannot stay down here. The darkness hides terrible things, and your whole chest screams for air.”

“You feel dark water explode from your throat in something that is half-screaming, half-disgorging foul and icy liquid, and you take a breath. The air burns, perhaps a new feeling, or perhaps one long forgotten”

“You look around you, neck twisting violently, trying to take it all in, but the ocean that stretches away is smooth against the reddened sky, unchanging. There is nothing else. No boat to save you, no land to make your escape, not even another lost soul who shares your torments.”

“The darkness hides terrible things, but it could also hide salvation. You cannot know what is down there, but up here it is laid out in such terrible stark detail that there is nothing. You only know you are crying because the water on your face is warm enough that it feels like fire upon your cheek.”

“And beyond that, up in the sky you feel it. Looking down on you in something approaching delight, drinking in your despair and bitter dread. Enjoying your misery and terror as you cast about for something that might be hope. It disgusts you, the waves of smug satisfaction that pervade your being as it stares at you. You cannot bear for it to see you like this. It makes you want to scream, but you know your screams are exactly what it wants.”

Also, this domain’s water sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Here’s why:

“The floor was covered in water, pitch-black and utterly still.” (109)

“As soon as my foot hit the water, I fell into it completely. It was colder than anything I had ever experienced, and the torch slipped from my hand as my vision immediately went dark. I tried to orientate myself, to find which way was up, and I saw a faint pinprick of light as my torch sank away from me, down and down and down into the icy black water. I started to panic then, with the lightless deep pressing in on me, eager to take me away. I was absolutely sure that in a few moments there would be no surface left. Just dark, still water forever.” (109)

“I could still feel that dark water sticking to me, tugging at me, pleading me to fall back into it.” (109)

“I gripped the head of my foul adversary, and forced it down, into the dark pool before us. There I held it, the water so cold upon my skin the marks have yet to fade.” (140)

So YEAH. I think this episode’s domain was primarily Dark/Desolation below the water, despite the Vast creature, and primarily Vast/Eye above the surface.

[anamaleth]

ah, finally! this it it! fear soup!

[see-arcane]

Sitting and thinking about how the most powerful players in the avatar game were made powerful based on how much they wanted nothing to do with the powers that recruited them. Seriously.

Look at the ones who leapt into their Fears’ service eagerly. Peter Lukas (fog and the S e a), Simon Fairchild (stuff is big, think about that), Jude Perry (oof ouch hot wax), Manuela Dominguez (I would like not to see so much, society has moved past the need for seeing things), Jonah Magnus (being a voyeur, has to rip out his own eyes to scramble his way into immortality***), Mike Crew (big fall goes wheee), Melanie King (enjoyed being aggro) Gertrude Robinson (used it blandly, just another tool, whatever, she’s got explosives) et al. 

Not weaklings, but compared to the characters who turn out to be the real big guns? They ain’t shit.

Agnes Montague: Hates her destiny = Phoenix-level fire power

Oliver Banks: Empathetic, afraid of/disgusted by his death dreams = Semi-immortal undead psychopomp

Michael Shelley and Helen Richardson: Tricked and trapped into the Spiral with consumption as their only hope for relief = Cheshire Cat on steroids

Daisy Tonner: Ashamed and self-loathing when she gets temporarily freed of the Hunt = Snaps into full hulking monster mode the second she relapses 

Annabelle Cane: Massive arachnophobe, wants to be in control = Forcibly conscripted into serving the Web and filled with an endless nest of spiders

Martin Blackwood: Hates the concept of being alone, of others being without a friend when he can give a hand = Branded and promoted by the Lonely to rule a domain of abandoned people who he can never, ever give relief

Jonathan Sims: Everything. Literally everything about this man who, while terrified and not wanting to die, repeatedly risks himself in pursuit of trying to save others, to gain more knowledge in the hopes it will help. Please, God, let him be able to help... = The Archivist-King of a nightmare hellscape that he was the key to inflicting on the world with the horror of its screaming inhabitants funneling directly into his brain. Forever.

The more they didn’t/don’t want it, the more eagerly the Fear loads its chosen soldiers up with itself, giving gifts of power it knows they loathe. In other words, 

Eager avatars: We love you! We love this power! Keep it coming!

The Fear: hm :/

Reluctant avatars, sweating: Uh,

The Fear: You are hired :)

Reluctant avatars: We didn’t apply

The Fear: You are promoted :) :)

Reluctant avatars: No no no we’re not no thank you

The Fear: You are CEO of Fear Corp congratulations :) :) :)

Reluctant avatars: We hate this and also you

The Fear: Yes, keep that up :) :) :) :)

[generic-hufflepuff1]

Fear thing

So everyone is saying the entities are fear soup but I propose fear entity (singular) where all the fears are just one part of a much larger being.

Some are easier to place some are more difficult but here's my take on it

The Eye: is the eyes of this being, that it uses to behold the world and lives around it.

The Web: is it's brain filled with unimaginable strands that link everything and everyone in impossible to decipher patterns.

The Lonely: it's heart. Cold and dead more absent than it is present incapable of feeling any form of positive emotion

The desolation: it's lungs. Blackened and burnt beyond proper use and breathing ash choked clouds of destruction

The Vast: it's arms. They reach infinitely and unyielding, all is within its grasp and none can escape

The Buried: its legs. Used to crush victims underfoot, the full weight of the being pressing down on those poor souls, who could never escape

The Dark: it's shadow. Pitch black and merely a passing impression of the true unseen horror of the being

The Corruption: it's skin. Covered in blisters and boils and rashes. Hideous and unclean, and covered with many, many parasites crawling all over it. It's touch spreading plague and disease.

The End: it's skeleton. Not usually seen but ever present and when all else is gone it is the reminder that there is an end to everything.

The Flesh: it's stomach and intestines. Ever moving and squirming and consuming and converting all those caught in its influence.

The Hunt: it's teeth. No matter how you run they will eventually tear into you and rip apart that which makes you.

The Spiral: it's tongue. That which spreads it's lies and deceptions. It reaches into your mind and twists into your thoughts.

The Slaughter: it's scream. Without logic or meaning, filled with malice and outrage, yet maddeningly beautiful.

The Stanger: it's face. Unfamiliar and inhuman yet a near perfect mimicry of one. It has a smile plastered on yet it never reaches its eyes.

The Extinction: it's unborn young. Presently part of itself but will soon be born heralding a great and terrible future.

So yeah that's my thoughts on fear soup. Each of the 15 are different yet the same thing.

[terriblelizbians]

[id: an edit of branson reese’s “teen comix” one fear comic.

panel one: a person wearing a shirt that reads “fear soup”

panel two: close up on a different shirt that reads “smirke was wrong but also apparently we’re still using his distinctions as more than just ways to describe different aspects of a broader experience”

panel three: the first person again, but now their shirt reads “14 fear”]

i think it can be useful to describe things like “this domain has aspects of the corruption and the vast” etc but “oh if i destroy this domain the buried will probably swoop in and fill the space” is pushing it imo. that’s just a little too literal for me! embrace the soup jonny!

[solely-ashes]

So this is a domain of the Stranger because of Dr. Jane Doe? If feels that way because of the over cliche of her descriptions of the horrors (the pit? C'mon) and the whole thing with the masks and the anti doctors and naming fake medical jargon.

It does feel like a combination of a bunch of them tho. Flesh for some patients, spiral for others, and overall feeling of corruption.

Maybe it is all of them but partially ruled by the Stranger creating a hospital of terrors theater out of all of them together.