I don't believe the Extinction exists (in-universe). Every "Extinction" statement is actually another entity (mostly Stranger or Spiral) that just happened to have an apocalypse-themed incident. The concrete jungle one is Stranger, the theme park is Spiral, the apartment door is Spiral, etc. I can explain every last one of these and why it makes more sense as one of the 14 and not a new Fear. The "Extinction domain" in s5 is Desolation (destruction of home, routine, and familiar things; no recourse or ability to cope; ashes of your life and world). Jon was able to pull off the Watcher's Crown 2/Magnus Archives ritual without an Extinction mark, so it's not separate enough to need to be called separately like the 14 are. At this point I don't even really care what the authorial intention was about if the Extinction is real because the text supports my theory
Sooo my friend bullied me into drawing self indulgent art of me as an avatar of the web and Gerard Keay 👁👁 I've never shipped myself with anyone before, so this is new to me
I just had the dumbest thought and I absolutely need to share it
What if people in the TMA universe treated the fears as aesthetics like people in the real world do. And there was lots of discourse about whether or not it's okay/appropriate/dangerous/whatever
Like what if someone in the TMA universe posted a ~Spiralcore~ moodboard or whatever on Tumblr and got cancelled for it. Someone has a seventy page long callout doc written about them because they said they said Slaughter avatars are hot on Twitter. Imagine the possibilities
When I was scared of the dark as a child, my dad comforted me by saying, "There's nothing in the dark, that doesn't already exist when the are lights on."
He explained that I wasn't scared when the lights were on so I didn't have any reason to be scared when they turned off. My bed was still my bed, my cupboard was the same cupboard, etc.
Now as an adult, that line chills me to my bones because I've watched and read too many horror stories. "There's nothing in the dark that wasn't already there in the light," now makes me think of the false sense of security we have just because a light is on, like a child hiding under a blanket.
you're the deer in the headlights, eyelids aching from watching, you think filling your stomach with information will make you full but you just throw up strange spirals of ink into your palm. your binoculars keep you safe but they also keep you separate
I don't care what canon says I need to organize The Fears. They may be unknowable eldritch horrors To You but I'm going to know them. There's so many ways you can organize this shit. Put them together. Split them up. "Opposing" fears can combine and clash and both. "Complimentary" fears can be complete opposites. Forget canon, you think of your own Fears and categorize those. And every single fear can present as a different Entity depending on how it shows up for you. A dozen people with the same fear can have different entities because of How they're afraid of it. We need to get insane about this. Analyze every fear you can think of and how it can fit into any given entity. It's amazing!! You can ponder so much on this. You can make so many characters with this. There's a lot of y'all who have read my mind and aren't horribly afraid to share you concepts and characters the way I am and I appreciate you all so much. Thinking about this isn't enough I need to eat it. I need to absorb this podcast into my bones. This isn't even the beginning of it there's so much you can think about and write and organize with these. I can't wait for protocol to be complete so I have all the information I need to know everything now.