January 2026

People will be like "what if there's this New Fear that was missed by Smirkes fourteen?" the whole point is that the fears can't be categorized. The whole point is Smirke's fourteen is a very flimsy way of categorizing something that can never be separated. The final ritual that started the end of the world worked because the fears were treated as one. Inventing a new microlabel for a *very specific* kind of fear is pointless, because you can just keep dividing and slicing it into smaller and smaller pieces until you won't even know what you're talking about. The fears bleed into each other!! Every time you divide the fears based on a single difference, there will be another similarity that joins them back together!!

I think what made people feel the need to create "new" fear categories that the Smirke's fourteen "missed" was the fact that they themselves narrowed the original categories down to just a few (mostly aesthetic) traits. "I came up with a New and Completely Separate fear that doesn't fit in Smirke's fourteen" open your mindddd Smirke's categorization is just a collection of colorful umbrella terms you can fit whatever you want under there

Additionally the categories aren't even able to exist in a manner that completely separates one fear from another. They not only can but NEED to be mixed

I'm basically directly quoting canon here but the Fears really do oppose each other in the same way colours oppose each other. Smirke was really out there saying "red and green are sworn enemies" with absolute certainty