TMA and the fourteen fears

Entities

To summarize briefly the entities (since the second part of this power point is completely focused on analizing them all), the wiki defines them as "various aspects of an amorphous force of fear that exists next to reality". Which means that these are forces separate from us that act on their own volition. In MAG 200, it's implied that they were all born from, initially, one, and that they developed along with the human minds. There are fourteen fears, which are the ones following Robert Smirke's division. It can be seen almost like colours, one bleeding into the next and being flexible on how they appear, influenced by culture and time, but still generally stagnant in their overall definition.

These are: The Buried, The Corruption, The Dark, The Desolation, The End, The Eye, The Flesh, The Hunt, The Lonely, The Slaughter, The Spiral, The Stranger, The Web. Out of all of these, only two (web and end) are suggested to be sentient.

There is also the complicated question that is "The Extinction". This Fear is one that has, supposedly, been around since 1860, but isn't strong enough yet. It was first suggested by one Adelard Dekker, in a letter to Gertrude Robinson (ex Archivist at The Magnus Insitute, now deceased). She was skeptical.

The Extinction might be considered something that is born out of "The End", and it's the fear of mass destruction, complete loss of a civilization.

It's in quite a few people's interest to stop the upcoming of the Extinction, fearing a massive change.

These Entities can communicate to the real world trought supernatural experiences, and specifically have a way of presenting trough humans and objects.

Their final objective is to be able to reach and interact freely with Earth. To do this, they need what is called a ritual.

Rituals are usually large gatherings of believers or supporters of a particular fear, that in order to bring said entity in our world proceed to a series of passages that differ in between Fears.

Artifacts represent one of the ways in which the Fears are able to connect with our mortal world, trouch object that gain powers relating to a specific fear. For semplicity sake, when I refer to "artifacts" I am talking about everything that is not human that has a connection with one of the Entities. This includes both animals and books (which will though have a special section dedicated to them.)

The existence itself of the artifact presumes, in humans, curiosity. It is not then a surprise that there are people that hope to collect or even capitalize on these mysterious, often malicious objects. One glaring example stands in Micheal Salesa, famously known artifacts dealer.

A famous collectionist can be found in Jurgen Leitner, responsible for most of the book artifacts present in the series and for their damaging effect.

Brekkon and Hope, similiar to Salesa, have a delivery service, but only few artifacts themselves.

One example of an animal can be found in the so called "Monster pig", an enurmous pig that eats humans, and has a particular taste for clowns.

Artifacts

Avatars

The interesting thing about avatars is that they were not born forcefully. It was humans who willingly decided to give themselves away to the entities. This is both canonical information and well established from the way most avatar act.

Avatars are, like artifacts, the representation of a fear, but in human form.

This mean that they encapsulate and represent everything that that fear is.

The process of becoming an avatar is not always a willing one, and it does not only happen to humans.

Usually thought, non human avatars (although it is a weird category considering how no avatars are actually human anymore) are reserved to the stranger.

Some example of avatars in the series include:

- Jonathan Sims, our own protagonist, avatar of the eye.

- Helen Distortion (so the avatar version of Helen Richardson), avatar of the spiral and ex real estate agent.

- Nikola, a mannequin avatar of the Stranger.

- Jonah Magnus, also known as Elias Bouchard, founder of the Institute and avatar of the eye.

- Daisy Tonner, avatar of the hunt, ex policeman.

- Mike Crew, avatar of the Vast.

- Oliver Banks, avatar of the end.

- Annabelle Cane, avatar of the Web.

Avatars can also be connected to multiple fears, with one being the main. This is called being "touched " by another fear, which means having traits or similarities with avatars of that fear.

Avatars are usually the ones that attempt Rituals. A ritual is a massive event in which a big group of people attempts to awaken a Fear into our world.

Thee isn't actually a sing, stated way to do a ritual, usually the attempts by doing something of massive scale that relates to the fear in question.

Fear of claustrophobia, being trapped, drowning.

Often associated with the feeling of being, well, literally buried alive, the Buried is the fear of lack of space. Not having enough room to breathe, not being able to move in cramped spaces.

The opposite of the Buried is the Vast, and the two hardly interact. There is a mention of one of their interaction in the episode 97, called "We all Ignore the Pit", that is a description from an outsider's perspective to the Buried's ritual.

In this episode, Gertrude Robinson

stops said ritual by throwing the

body of an avatar of the vast inside

the giant pit.

In the podcast, there are no

important avatars of said fear, but

there is one central artifact. Said is

the Coffin, which first appeared in

the second episode and which, if

entered, traps the subjects inside of

an infinite space where they are

constantly pushed and blocked in an

invisible small space.

This is what happens to Daisy Tonner in

season four, when she is saved by Jon

Sims.

The Buried

Fear: Mysophobia, verminophobia, bacteriophobia, trypophobia.

The Corruption is the fear of insects, of rotten things, mold and infections, decay.

It can appear also in the manifestation of unhealthy or obsessive repetitive behaviour.

One glaring example is Jane Prentiss, not only the first Corruption avatar introduced, but also the first ever.

Jane is the main villain of season 1, she's described as having a grayish and decaying skin, with holes in the flesh.

She first encounters Martin Blackwood when he goes to investigate a building that was connected to a previous statement. She, from there, follows him to his house where he is trapped for two weeks. When Martin manages to escape, he accidentally leads some of her worms with him to the Institute, where she will prepare a massive attack at the end of season one, that will leave both Jon and Timothy Stoker hurt and almost covered in scars where the worms burrowed in their skin.

The Corruption

Fear of darkness, what lies within the dark.

It can also be attributed to the cold, or to a vast sea of dark water. It's not only the fear of the absence of light, but the fear of what we can't see in that darkness.

The dark is venerated by the People's church of the Divine host, founded by Maxwell Rayner and currently being lead by Robert Montauck. In 2007, they sent Manuela Rodriguez (right hand man of Robert) to space to find two important elements of the Dark ritual. Manuela succeded but the ritual still failed.

The events of the space travel were recorded in two different statements, giving the point of view of two of the three people on the spaceship.

The Dark

Fear of loss, pain, burning and destruction.

The desolation is usually represented by a flame, or something closely related to fire (in the case of Jude Perry, candle wax).

Ironically, the Desolation also represents the loss of potential. The two main avatars known from the Desolation are Agnes Montague and Jude Perry, both born out of the Cult of the Lightless Flame, the main group connected to the Desolation. Considering the timeline, the oldest of the two is Agnes, born at the beginnings of the cult. She was the Messiah, born to guide the group to an eventual ritual. Her mother died in labour, being burned alive after offering her child to attempt to create the missionary the group was looking for. In her childhood she is sent to Hilltop Road for a long period, a house full of orphaned children closely tied to the web. In her adulthood she has a brief encounter with a man, that leads to him being completely burned. She dies in 2006.

Jude Perry is the second avatar known, who joined the cult after becoming enamoured with Agnes. After murdering several ex coworkers she finished her transformation as an avatar by dousing herself in Petrol and burning her body, leaving her with a skin similiar to molten wax.

She briefly encountered Jon and, after giving him the location of a vast avatar, she burned his hand because she "found him annoying".

She is killed by Jon in season five.

The Desolation

Fear of death.

The End is one of the oldest entities, and one of the only two (allegedly) sentient.

Its realm is death, loss, and bones.

Its main avatar is Oliver Banks, who's ability is the one of seeing in his dreams the death of people he doesn't know.

His only statement recounts a trip in a boat he took around 2018, that lead to him killing everyone on board (including himself) by moving the boat in a specific place where a satellite would fall. Being an End avatar, he survived. This story, told to Jon, is the thing that awakens him from his coma.

Georgie Baker has also been touched by the End, specifically by "Jane Doe", a corpse that went around telling people "The moment you will die will feel exactly like this one" and rendering them cathatonic. Georgie survived but due to the trauma she lost all ability to feel fear.

The End

Fear of being observed, of eyes, of people knowing your secrets/revealing them.

In tma, the eye might be identified as the most important fear, seeing as both the main character and main villain are its avatars.

The Magnus Institute is also almost literally an eye domain, with Melanie (the only employee who manages to escape) literally gouging her eyes out and becoming permanently blind to untie herself from it. Jon, with his Eye powers, can compel others to tell him what he desires, understand other languages and, in season five, literally know everything he wants. After season five, when the apocalypse happens, the Eye becomes the strongest fear, with the others being afraid to be "seen" by it and with Elias accessing infinite knowledge.

The opposite of the eye could be considered the lonely, ironic considered the romantic/friendly rappor both avatars have towards their lonely counterparts.

The Eye

Fear of being eaten, dysmorphia, being killed to become mean, having your body changed/destroyed. It's the fear that most easily connects to body insecurities.

The most prominent flesh avatar resides in Jared Hopworth, converted after reading the Boneturner's tale.

Jared is very peculiar because, in contrast with some other avatars. He neither seem to have an overarching narrative nor to be present in one short episode.

Jared actually features in several outside-story statements given the odd and various jobs he takes up.

Ultimately, he's killed by Jon.

Another flesh related element is the monster pig, an enormous pig that has taken the habit of eating people, especially clowns from the circus in town, which may indicate a dislike between Flesh and Stranger.

This is reportedly the author's favorite fear because of the gratuitous gore he can write, and the sound designer least favortie because of the impossible to replicate noises.

The Flesh

Fear of being preyed upon, being chased.

The hunt is mainly an animal fear, since humans have removed themselves from the natural food chain, but it is not singularly to them. There are in fact many humans that, put in a situation in which the are being hunted, resort to their primal instincts.

The most important hunt avatar is Daisy Tonner, previously a cop and later on Archival Assistant at the Magnus Institute, Daisy became an avatar very early in her life, and she gave in into her animalistic tendencies after joining the force, killing people with the excuse of them being avatars, and so not human.

Her last partner on the job was officer Basira Hussain, that joins her into her Archival Assistant position and with which she has a semi-romantic relationship with.

After a traumatizing experience with the Buried, Daisy changed her ways and stopped giving into the Hunt.

She became a full fledged avatar only at the end of season four, giving in in an attempt to save Basira's life, and with a final plead to find her and kill her, since she didn't want to live completely consumed by the hunt. (Basira will respect that promise and shoot Daisy, killing her).

Both Werewolves and Vampires are avatars of the Hunt.

The Hunt is also attributed to be the first fear from which all fears were born out of.

The Hunt

Fear of being disconnected, left alone, abandoned, cut off. Fear of isolation.

The Lonely is a very prominent fear in tma, mostly because of Martin Blackwood, an archival assistant groomed by Peter Lukas to become an avatar of the Lonely, and very prominent in the series for being Jon's romantic interest.

Martin later attempts to get rid of his Lonely alignment, but is not completely successful in doing so.

Very important to the Lonely is also the Lukas family.

The most important member being Peter, that becomes the new boss of The Magnus Institute when Elias gets arrested (No, you don't wanna know) and is the one to manipulate Martin.

The Lukas family owns the ship Tundra and are known to be extremely wealthy, given all the funding they provide to other entity aligned cults and groups (One of which the Institute itself).

Peter seems to be in decent relations with Simon Fairchild, avatar of the Vast.

The Vast and the lonely are probably similarly aligned, given the use of big empty spaces as a symbolization for loneliness.

Peter is killed off at the end of season four by Jon, after giving a statement on his isolated family life.

The Lonely

Fear of violence (specifically unpredictable) and war.

The slaughter shares very similar ties to violence as the Hunt, and is mostly unremarkable.

The most important character with ties to the slaughter is Melanie King, who is shot by the phantom ghost of a soldier and, not being able to get the bullet out, remains for a big part of the series partially controlled by the slaughter.

The bullet is taken out later in an emergency operation by Jon, subsequent to which Melanie starts therapy and leaves the institute to go live with her girlfriend.

They will both be seen again as cult leaders in season five, Melanie now blind, and will survive the Apocalypse.

The Slaughter

Fear of madness, of your reality not being real, of your own mind lying to you.

The Spiral is very important to the story. It's a particularly peculiar fear given the essence of its avatars. First of all, there can only be one at a time, and if a new one appears the other is murdered (or at least, that is what is shown in canon, but it could also be read as Helen getting revenge from Micheal) although it appears that the recurring avatar uses, in general, the name Distortion. Furthermore, the avatar is merely the physical representation of a place, a long winded series of doors, infinite corridors, and mirrors.

This can be used to travel or to escape at the cost of making yourself forever known to the spiral avatar.

Of course, the Spiral is also represented by other instances of madness, but the avatars themselves are always connected to the corridors.

In the course of the series there are two Spiral avatars: Micheal and Helen Distortion.

Micheal is the first, with his original last name being Shelley. Micheal worked at the institute, and was used by Gertrude Robinson to stop the spiral ritual by being given a map of the corridors. It proceeded to find the heart, where he went trough his transformation.

The second is Helen Richardson, a real estate agent that was lead by Micheal into the spiral's false reality, only to escape and end up trapped once again.

She, like Micheal, probably found the core and replaced him.

She and the corridor world are eliminated by Jon in season five.

The Spiral

Fear of losing your sense of self, of things that are not quite human or quite right, of the uncanny.

The Stranger is one of the story's central fears, having two important characters in Nikola Orsinov and the NotThem.

Nikola presents herself as a mannequin, and is the current leader of the Circus of The Other.

Before entering the circus she presented as Joseph Grimaldi, who, after being tired of his life as a magician, joined the crew, where he was molded into Nikola.

Later on, Nikola grows tired of her creator, Gregor Orsinov, and murders him, taking his last name.

The circus itself was born and created in Russia, and its goal is to bring about the Unknowing, aka to succeed in the stranger ritual.

Nikola is also attributed to the death of Danny Stoker, older brother of Archival Assistant Tim Stoker. This action will later lead to both of their deaths, as Tim will blow up the circus during the unknowing, destroying it and Nikola.

The NotThem heavily features in the second season of the podcast, when it replaces archival assistant Sasha James.

It is a very peculiar entity, that intrudes itself into the memories and photos of other, substituting the person it is trying to become.

This, though, does not usually work universally, and there is always at least one person that recognizes the change. In the case of Sasha (Or NotSasha as the NotThem is referred to in this form) Melanie King appears to be the only one who realizes what has happened.

In one of its earlier forms, NotThem was binded to a table connected to the web, which is then broken by Jon, freeing the being.

The creature is later trapped in the tunnels under the institute.

It will be killed off in season five by Jon.

The stranger appears to be opposed by the Eye, since it possesses an element of fear of the unknown. Evidently, Jon experiences animosity with almost all of the Stranger's avatars.

They seem to go relatively along with the buried, often associated with two of its avatars Brekkon and Hope.

The Stranger

Fear of heights, being insignificant, losing yourself in too much space, of the deep ocean, falling.

The two main characters connected to the Vast are Simon Fairchild (Not an actual family name, just one all people in the same group use) and Mike Crew.

Simon Fairchild is a particularly old avatar of the Vast, in apparently good rapport with Peter Lukas and, allegedly, Elias Bouchard. He's quoted several times in the series and in statements for having pushed unassuming people into the vast and he's also, once again allegedly, filthy rich.

He manages to avoid death in an encounter with Jon in season five, but he's then miserably killed off-screen by the people he tortured.

Mike Crew is introduced when Jon looks for him, after indications by Jude Perry. He apparently has been very in tune with the fears since, at age 8 he was hit by lightning. Later in life, he'll come into contact With the Spiral, the Corruption and the Flesh.

Mike enters a disagreement with Jon, that ends with him altering the other's perception and making him experience free-falling in an empty sky.

He will be later killed and buried by Daisy Tonner.

The Vast

Fear of spiders, of being manipulated and controlled.

The Web is the other sentient Fear, and one of the most powerful.

For the entire series, thanks to its avatars, it organizes a complex plan of manipulation and deceit.

It's almost always present, and often presents as its avatar Annabelle Cane.

She becomes an avatar after being subjected to an arachnophobia study, where she was forced to watch for hours videos of spider.

The Web is a very neutral entity, it values its neutrality and it's the only fear (except the end) who seems to realize how terrible an apocalypse would actually be for the fears. With no new human born and all of them eventually joining the End.

The Web is the one to organize the plan to move all the fears to a different universe trough a portal on Hilltop Road, a location famously bounded to it.

Annabelle convinces the others to make this plan work, by burning the institute and killing Elias. The plan ends with the alleged death of Martin and Jon, and the disappearance of the Fears.

The Web