What do you think of the fears writting? I'm relistening to TMA and just emded season four, and one thing that bothered me most on this second listen are them and the statements. There are some decisions taken that I just don't understand, and the underuse of some of the fears is annoying. I know you focus more on characters and relationships but I would like to read your thoughts on this.
I don’t really have any strong opinions on the Fears, so I’m going to go through some of them and figure it out in the process. Excuse me if I miss something mentioned in canon; I’m basing this on what I can personally remember.
Let’s start with The Eye. It’s mainly presented as the fear of being watched, of someone or something observing you from the shadows. Since it’s the main focus of our story, I feel like it got covered pretty well.
I do wish that there had been more of the knowing aspect of it. It’s not only the fear of being watched, but also the fear of being under constant scrutiny. Of having each and every little thing you do laid out bare for the world to see. Of being exposed and unable to hide from the judgment. Most of the eye-centric statements only cover the watching part, with the eye symbolism and all.
Moving on to The Web. It’s said to be mainly arachnophobia and the fear of not being in control of your own actions. Leaning more into the manipulation part, The Web seems to focus more on the physical aspect of that manipulation, omitting the mental one.
There’s plenty of statements involving manipulation of the body, but none that I can think of which involve manipulation of the mind. It was present in The Web leading Jon throughout his entire life, sure, but the statements involving it focus too much on spiders and puppetry in my opinion. The scary part of manipulation is realizing you’ve been oblivious to it.
Next one is The Lonely, and this is where I’m gonna get kinda mean. This Fear seems to be not one of loneliness as the name would suggest, but instead it involves mainly just being alone with some additions. It’s made to be a very personal fear, unique to each victim.
While fear of loneliness is a perfectly human thing, connected with us being social creatures, the canon makes it more into the fear of being alone and forgotten (plus fog for the aesthetics). While such a perception of it makes perfect sense, it seems almost too little to make it into a full-fledged Fear (as in a Force with Rituals and stuff). The whole thing with Lonely as canon describes it is that it would work just as well as an aspect of the other fears, like The Stranger or The Vast. Fears bleed into eachother, I know, but a lot of The Lonely-centric episodes are veeery similar. It feels like The Lonely wasn’t supposed to be a major part of the podcast at first, and was made into this “complex” thing just so Martin could be tossed into it. (From what I gather, he was written as a Web avatar but the writers changed their minds along the way).
In my opinion the canon covers it too much. The Lonely statements all feel more or less similar, it’s just the flavor of it that differs but the basis is the same. It’s not that it’s not written well, it just feels dragged out somehow. And no, I’m not talking about similarity as in the symbols the Fears are associated with; I’m saying the entire structure of those statements describes essentially the same thing, just different variations.
There’s also a big problem with the previously mentioned three becoming the narrative’s darlings in the later seasons, causing all the other fears to be pushed aside and only truly be present in the form of their corresponding avatars or the statements beamed into Jon’s mind without any significance to them. LAAAME!!
Now for The Dark. It’s supposedly the antithesis of The Eye, covering not only the fear of not being able to see, but also the fear of not knowing what lies in the darkness. Going with the antithesis thing, I wish there were more about it being the fear of being deprived of information, of being in the dark(haha). This also fits in with The Stranger, but still.
I kiiinda have a problem with The Distortion. It’s a fear of not being able to trust your own senses, of not being able to trust your surroundings. The canon focuses more on the aesthetics, with the actual essence of the fear being rarely present. I can only recall father Edwin Burrows’s statement as really doing it justice, but other than that the manipulation aspect is only ever revealed by Helen in conversation with Jon in s5. Also the whole “I want to be your friend” “I want to help” thing with earlyMichael.
I also have some issues with The Desolation’s portrayal. Gerry calls it “the fear of pain, fear of loss, fear of unthinking or cruel destruction.” The Desolation statements mostly involve the “oooo spooky fire!!” part. The loss it involves is more of an undertone to the “terrible fire” part.
To sum up, in my opinion a lot of the Fears just explore the aesthetic which they’ve been assigned - spider webs, eye imagery, fog, fire, sky, yellow door etc.
I understand that it is difficult to add character to a literal feeling, and that those associations make the Fears more recognizable, but sometimes it feels like the writers made those themes and just ran with them. I am also aware of the amount of detail that had to be fit into the podcast, and the fact it all needed to work together as a whole. But I’m still a bit bitter thinking of all the wasted potential.