#so... idle musings i guess. someone more versed in horror as a genre would probably know better than I

[in-fair-verona-we-set-our-scene]

So now that I think of it, I've been sort of assuming that like... if your average slasher serial killer or even just your more general thriller/horror movie killer were in the TMA universe, they'd end up a Fear Avatar or at least Fear-touched. Which makes sense since they're inflicting Fear, usually quite theatrically and with a theme, on to people who are then scared and traumatized.

But with a bit more thought, I'm not so sure.

Obviously the more supernatural killers could be Fear Avatars or manifestations. Demons, vengeful ghosts, witches, monsters, gods. Killers formed by intense trauma might also become a kind of Avatar maybe, especially if they become mythologized by observers. But for horror villains that are just... kinda fucked up human people, I don't know if they could draw the Fears to empower them. It would really depend on the individual.

Because being a Fear Avatar seems to require a certain amount of fear itself. Nikolai steals people's skin, their "identity" and names, clearly hungry for some kind of identity. Jude was terrified of losing Agnes. Mike chose the Vast out of necessity so probably was somewhat scared when he jumped, but he was just scared of the Spiral more. Oliver was scared of the nihilism of the End. Simon is constantly acting as if he IS important for all he crows about the existential meaninglessness of life. I could go on, but you get the point here.

Like, the term "awe" comes from "awful" which originally was used for things that were so great and terrible they inspired fear as much as reverence, which is a pretty good summary of how people worship the Fears. The fear is a part of the worship. And Fears are stated to feed on their Avatars just as much as their victims. To become an Avatar, you need to have that kind of terror deep in your heart in order to start paying it forward, or else the Fears won't even see you. While some horror villains fall into this formula, a lot of them don't!

No, in a great many horror movies I'd bet it likely be the survivors that were more likely to become Fear Avatars. People who have been so deeply, deeply touched by that kind of fear as to have it change them on a fundamental level, and in a traditional slasher formula frequently turn that violence on their attacker to survive.