I'm aware that this is going to be too niche for anyone besides me to actually appreciate but it's taking up too much space in my brain so I'm just going to put it out here to stop thinking about it so much xD

Mild spoilers for the horror podcast The Magnus Archives up to S2-3. If you don't care then feel free to proceed but if horror is AT ALL your thing I highly recommend you go listen to the podcast <3 In any case I think the Fears are genius and am definitely borrowing from the imagery/classification here to make More Interesting Boggarts at the very least (because in most cases loved one dead is a bit too bland for me xD)

The Fears

Show

In the Magnusverse all of our fears fall into fourteen broad categories:

The Buried | Also called The Centre, Choke, Too Close I Cannot Breathe, Forever Deep Below Creation. Fear of being overwhelmed by things pressing in around you; claustrophobia, drowning, being buried alive, debt; everything is crashing down around you and you can't move.

The Corruption | Also called Filth, The Crawling Rot, Flesh Hive. Fear of corruption, disease, rot, decay; things that squirm and infest and disgust; unhealthy relationships and illness; everything is breaking down and will only get worse with time.

The Dark | Also called Mr. Pitch, The Forever Blind. Fear of the unknown, things lurking in the dark, of what lies beyond what we can see.

The Desolation | Also called The Lightless Flame, The Torturing Flame, The Devastation, The Blackened Earth, The Ravening Burn, Asag. Fear of losing what is dear to a senseless and unfeeling destruction; wildfire and natural disaster; unforeseeable tragedy and loss of potential; whatever you love will be lost and there is neither a cause to be understood nor any preventative steps to be taken.

The End | Also called Death, Terminus, The Coming End That Waits For All And Cannot Be Ignored. Fear of death, uncaring and unstoppable; inevitable mortality; the idea that even horrific deaths are mundane on a cosmic scale.

The Eye | Also called Beholding, The Ceaseless Watcher, It Knows You. Fear of being watched, exposed, followed, judged; an uncaring pursuit of knowledge; the need to watch and understand even if those discoveries may hurt you; nothing is secret, nothing is yours.

The Flesh | Also called Viscera. Fear of being reduced to only the sum of one's parts; body horror, cannibalism, uncontrollable consumption; you are nothing more than electrified meat and bones and any thought that this is not the case is mere pretension.

The Hunt | Also called The Everchase. Fear of being preyed upon, being targeted, chased, hunted; being othered from your inner circle and becoming social 'prey'; the drive to hunt to prevent yourself from becoming hunted.

The Lonely Also called Forsaken, The One Alone. Fear of isolation, disconnection; being neglected or abandoned; oppressive silence; being surrounded by people without faces or voices; eventually you aren't sure if you're alone because everyone left you or if you left everyone.

The Slaughter | Fear of violence; unpredictable and unmotivated; war, soldiers, the death of innocents, maiming, torture;

The Spiral | Also called Es Mentiras (It Is Lies), The Twisting Deceit, It Is Not What It Is. Fear of madness, lying, deceit; being unable to trust your senses; gaslighting, mental illness, emotional abuse and manipulation; labyrinths, fractals, spirals, stairs to nowhere; you're lost in a maze of things that don't make sense and you don't know if the maze is real or only in your mind.

The Stranger | Also called I Do Not Know You. Fear of the uncanny, the unfamiliar; strangers and foreigners; mannequins, clowns, automatons, masks, taxidermy; the creeping sense that something you can't place is not right.

The Vast | Also called The Falling Titan. Fear of the large and unknowable; being lost in something huge; the open sky, deep water, the void of space; fear of heights, falling, veritgo; you are insignificant and your loss will mean nothing here.

The Web | Also called The Spider, The Great Spider, Mother of Puppets, The Spinner of Schemes, The Hidden Machination. Fear of manipulation, being controlled or puppeted; addiction, compulsion; you are caught in a web but are unable to even see the threads that hold you.

We see characters in the show that have become "avatars" of the various fears by leaning into them and 'feeding' them (mostly by causing those fears to be inflicted on other people), and of course we see characters who are victims of the various fears. So I'm picking a few of my characters and giving them an Avatar assignment - which one they would align themselves with if they had to - and a Fear assignment, eg which would be their own personal hell.

These are just the characters where obvious answers leapt out, not going to do everyone...

Alfred as an avatar: The Hunt. Not in the "hunt something down and kill it" sense but in the "a few more steps, a few more miles, a few more trips abroad, then I'll stop - I'm really close to finding it, I can feel it - no it does not matter what it is, only that I find it." There's an episode which deals with historical explorers caught in this timeless cycle of exploration and it was very Alfred-y <3

Alfred's fear: the Vast, specifically drowning/being adrift at sea and having lost sight of your vessel (not so much the sky/heights version). Also the idea that something huge and monstrous and unknown is lurking below the water. He has some hangups after being shipwrecked and then fighting a kraken.

Meanwhile, Oz as an avatar: The Vast. It would stoke his ego being part of something big and I don't think he'd be bothered by the idea of finding people who are afraid of heights and occasionally pushing them off tall buildings. Like he'd definitely have a sense of superiority/mild euphoria exposing people to situations that would induce vertigo and not experiencing it himself.

Oz's fear: the Flesh. Being reduced to just the ugly parts of himself, with no sense of purpose/importance that extends beyond that.

Ford as an avatar of the Lonely. Not on purpose but I could see him being really hurt by other people and then feeling like it would be better for him to have distance, and then extrapolating that to 'it would be better for everyone to have a little distance so they aren't hurt' and then you've just got everyone wandering in a blank abyss because then at least there's no heartache.

Ford's biggest fear is the Spiral and that's well-explored in his posts actually, he has multiple boggart manifestations related to the idea of not being able to trust what you see/hear/feel/think.

Xav as an avatar of the Stranger because he would feel quite at home surrounded by things pretending to be people. Meanwhile I think his fear would be the Eye as they're sort of antithetical; the Eye is too discerning and judgemental.

Ben's fear: the Web. He's not keen on manipulation or feeling like he's not in control of the future (and lol, he's been in that situation a lot since I've played him). He's also seen Art struggling with addiction and being in that position himself would be terrible for him. IDK what Ben would do as an avatar.

Is it cheating to call Victor an avatar of The End? xD He's not now but I imagine after he transitions to post-life he'll be leaning that way a lot more strongly. Meanwhile his fear is probably The Stranger because he's got Eye-tendencies to categorize/understand/classify things right now and the uncanny would unnerve him. There's also a loss-of-identity element of the Stranger in extreme situations which would be pretty awful for him.

If you got this far thanks for reading! Like I said I know this is very niche but feel free to play along if you're inspired, using my list of the fears above or your thoughts about the podcast if you've listened to any. <3

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   Greta Gillenwater

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Zelda as an Avatar: the Eye. Not in the observation sense, but in puzzle-solving - Zelda loves to figure things and people out, and digging for secrets and reasons, figuring out the way people work.

Zelda's fear is The Lonely. She's most afraid of being abandoned, of people forgetting about her — but also afraid of being misunderstood, and that she never will be understood. (This is also a flip of her as an Avatar, where she would be driven by the need to understand at all costs.)

  

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AMAZING set by MJ

Elliot as an avatar: The End. This isn't that far from his actual characterization; death is coming and you can't stop it, and the information Elliot gives you will never entirely help you. He'd probably still feel bad about this, but absolutely The End. (For listeners - I'm not done w/ MAG yet so idk if he was an avatar or not but yes, that one season 1 statement-giver w/ the dreams.)

Elliot's fear: the Flesh. What is the point of all this, of his visions, if we're all really just meat? (I could also make a case for the Spiral tbh but I lean Meat.)

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   Juliana Ainsworth

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avs by Bee!

Elliot as an avatar: The End. This isn't that far from his actual characterization; death is coming and you can't stop it, and the information Elliot gives you will never entirely help you. He'd probably still feel bad about this, but absolutely The End. (For listeners - I'm not done w/ MAG yet so idk if he was an avatar or not but yes, that one season 1 statement-giver w/ the dreams.)

Alright as soon as you said "The End" I was like "omg Elliot and Oliver Banks really are the same character in different universes tho" lol. Oliver Banks being the statement giver with the dreams xD

The following 1 user Likes Juliana Ainsworth's post:1 user Likes Juliana Ainsworth's post
   Elliot Carmichael

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

In other news I've decided Juliana is an avatar of the Eye (no big surprise lol) and Victor's true fear is actually the Corruption.

The following 1 user Likes Juliana Ainsworth's post:1 user Likes Juliana Ainsworth's post
   Madeleine Backus

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

I understand this so much more now!


Adrestia - The Hunt, she would definitely lean into it, but would be completely terrified of it if the shoe was on the other foot.

Bernard is an avatar of The End


Luna - the spiral - between the fact that her mental illness manifests as a circular path through hell...it's rather uncanny.

  

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