The Fear Mythos

File:Fears Scaled 4406.jpg

Fear is here. Fear them.

It started with the Slender Man. The tall, faceless businessman was terrifying in his own right, but then others appeared. They weren't members of the Slender Man's own race (if he had a race), but they were similar in what they inspired: fear.

The members of this new wave of abominations were based on fear. They were the embodiments of particular fears and sometimes targeted those who had those fears.

The Fear Mythos is a collaborative writing community project spanning dozens of blogs and featuring a good number of antagonists.

The premise is simple: there are these monsters called "Fears," original creatures (with two exceptions taken from the public domain of creepypasta) that are, for lack of a better term, the embodiments of fears. Hence the name. The Fear Mythos deals with blogs, video logs, creepypasta, and whatever else there exists that regard to these disturbing beings. No canon or continuity required; writers get complete freedom.

A current list of all current blogs can be found here and vlogs here, while a list of Fears (and descriptions) can be found on the characters page. A blog dedicated to Fear-based creepypasta can be found here. A Wiki has been made, and can be found here.

For individual stories within the Mythos, see The Fear Mythos Stories.

For the epic novel about the Fear Mythos during 2011's Rapture, see OH GOD THE RAPTURE IS BURNING.

A man in a gas mask. A man without a face. A face without a man. A shadow of your former self. A boy in isolation. A girl who pulls the strings. A man who is a dog. A dog made of men. A man who has our pasts. A blur in our perception. A convocation of birds. A thing with ill will. A judge in the sun. A beast below.

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General tropes for the Fear Mythos

• The Adjectival Man: The Slender Man, the Dying Man, the Blind Man, and the Smiling Man. The Wooden Girl and the Cold Boy are variations of the format.
• Alien Geometries: The Empty City.
• Apocalyptic Blog: What did you expect?
• Arc Number: 417
  • 444 in Still Remains Within. Maybe.
• Backstory: Oh god, is there ever. Here's one.
  • Jordan Eats seems pretty dedicated to giving the most it can. Progression Enhanced is a prominent one. Then there's Fish, Man! and The Topography of Thought. And this is just so far.
  • Topography Genera Center East topped that, as Jordan Eats Normally Now, itself, is one part of its backstory.
• Being Watched: By at least fifteen creatures!
• The Blank: Slender Man.
• Body Horror: The Birth of the Manufactured Newborn: It claws its way out of a man's chest! And of course, the Convocation can build nests inside of people...
• Breather Episode: The blogs that try to be realistic tend to do these.
• Cosmic Horror Story: Though some are more cosmic horror-y then others.
• The Danza: Jordan and Nathan in Jordan Eats.
  • And Seann from Cryptid 417
• Daylight Horror: Happens a lot. A great lot.
• Eldritch Abomination: Of course.
• Eldritch Location: The Empty City.
• Eye Scream: A common theme throughout the Mythos, from The Jeannette Experience where Jeanette's eye was burned out to Closest to the Sun where it's implied Achromatic Morality cut out her own eyes.
  • You mention Eye Scream in the Fear Mythos and not also mention Nathan's pencil-to-eye scenario from Jordan Eats Normally Now? ...it's also under the subfolder of Jordan Eats Normally Now.
• Four Is Death: Comes up a fair bit in the arc-numbers. Four-seventeen, in Eccentrically Bored. Three fours in Still Remains Within. Even lampshaded in brighter than a spoon when Tav hides something in PO Box 444.
  • In Nothing To Fear four songs were posted, all possibly related to concepts of fears. All at 4:17
    • And, each post was numbered in a different language, the fourth one being Japanese, in which four and death are the same word.
• Genre Blindness: Occurs a lot, though it's often subverted.
• Genre Savvy: See above.
• Hive Mind: EAT and the Convocation.
• Humanoid Abomination: The Slender Man, Cold Boy, Dying Man, Plague Doctor, Nightlanders, Wooden Girl, arguably the Rake.
• I Have Many Names: Per The Archive, ALL the Fears have many names.
  • Per OH GOD THE RAPTURE IS BURNING, you can add a whole number of sets of names to every Fear.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: A fair bit.
• Malevolent Masked Men: The Plague Doctor. The Archangel's favored form also counts.
• Meaningful Background Event: If Slendy is in it, you're gonna have this. Occurs even with other Fears.
  • Watch this entry of Cryptid 417. Pause at 2:11. Uh-oh.
• Meta Fiction: The blog with the series bible, The Fear Mythos, is now quite the example of this.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Many of the other blogs play it straight quite a lot.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Sam, of Jordan Eats. For that matter, The Camper, in general. And, of course, the Slender Man.
• The Puppet Masters: The Wooden Girl controls her victims. Also, the Archangel turns out to be the afterlife, and enslaves all those who have died.
• Rule of Scary: Yeah.
• Sanity Slippage: Quite a few characters. Martin from Ontological seems to be heading this way.
  • Garth from Moonlit Whispers hit this towards the end and just kept slipping further.
  • And the Billy from Perchance to Dream. In fact, the Rake tends to do this to people.
• Shout-Out: Just about everything to do with EAT is in some way a shout-out.
  • Regarding Jordan Eats, the story, Jordan really seems to like that Marble Hornets, doesn't he?
  • In Out of the Spent and Unconsidered Earth, the word City is always in blue, just like a certain House.
• Unreliable Narrator: The narrator to Out of the Spent and Unconsidered Earth certainly turns out to be.
• Wham! Episode: Oh, there have been plenty throughout the blogs so far.

Tropes for Eccentrically Bored / Hidden in the Trees

• And I Must Scream: The ultimate fate of everyone is to be enslaved by the Archangel after death, trapped in a body that moves in accordance with another's will for all eternity. The Archangel is the afterlife after all...
• Arc Words: "His face" and "we are the pieces."
  • embrace the archangel.
• Downer Ending: The ending of Eccentrically Bored
• Eyeless Face: The Blind Man.
• Face Heel Turn: Joey Steward, the protagonist.
• Fantastic Drug: The mysterious pills that Joey took for a while in Eccentrically Bored
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: The Archangel has no body of its own, and must interact with our world by using the bodies of the dead. Its favored form seems to be a man in a gas mask and hoodie.
• Fridge Horror: In a mythos full of nasty monsters that can kill you in all sorts of interesting ways, the Blind Man seems rather tame. He doesn't even kill his victims, he just wanders around libraries, collecting childhoods... then the idea of losing your entire childhood sinks in...
• Only Known by Their Nickname: The Archangel's messages seem to imply that this is the case for all the Fears, and that the names humans have given them are no their true names. For example, the Archangel only ever refers to Slender Man as "STRANGER."
• Prophetic Name: Joey Steward. A Steward is a kind of household servant, and the blog ends with Joey becoming a proxy to Slender Man. To signify this change, he even drops his first name and just calls himself "Steward"
• Redemption Equals Death: The ending to Hidden in the Trees
• Villain Protagonist: Hidden in the Trees stars a character who underwent a particularly brutal Face Heel Turn in the previous blog: Steward from Eccentrically Bored.

Tropes for Jordan Eats Normally Now

• Arc Words: Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. And No one runs faster than you eat.
• Chekhov's Gun: The door that wasn't there in this entry later comes back to haunt Jordan in this one.
• Combat Tentacles: EAT has them.
• En Route Sum-Up: It's almost silly sometimes.
• Eye Scream: Sam to Nathan.
• Face Revealing Turn: So here's a dead girl, so let's look awa--fffffffff.
• I Did What I Had to Do: "I'm sorry I hurt your back earlier, but I did what I had to do."
• Idiot Ball: Jordan. Lampshaded once, early on, but it got to the point that he had to respond to all the claims of how oblivious he acts. Justified in that he's developing an obsession.
• Murder Water: EAT.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Sam only calls Jordan "DJay." Justified in that she never learned his first name in the Progression Enhanced entries. Becomes possible Fridge Brilliance when you realize that EAT does know Jordan's name, yet for the sake of keeping a good disguise, made Sam pretend she didn't.
• Stock Footage: Sam used Futurama as this once.

Tropes for brighter than a spoon

• Arc Words: "His eyes are closed, his mouth is open, and his arms are outstretched." And "the quiet claims us all."
• Bittersweet Ending: Tav and Agnes are running, but happy. Still, Tav doesn't know how much of his memory is real or Slender-induced.
• Creepy Child: The Cold Boy.
• Cuckoos Nest: Happens to Tav.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: Well, what do you expect from something called the Cold Boy?
• Future Me Scares Me: Or perhaps Alternate Version Me Scares Me.
• Ghostly Chill: In Agnes' flashback.
• Government Agency of Fiction: The SMSC.
• An Ice Person: The Cold Boy.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: The Cold Boy loves these.
• Lost in the Maize: The setting to a Wham! Episode.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Lampshaded in this entry of brighter than a spoon.
• Ominous Fog
• The Stars Are Going Out: Here. Or were they? Perhaps it was just the Slender Man messing with him.
• Theme Naming: All the agents of the SMSC are named after David Bowie songs. The Slender Man is referred to as "The Thin White Duke."
• Title Drop: This entry.

Tropes for Still Remains Within / The Shower Scene / Already Heard

• Body and Host
• Body Surf: What the Dying Man seems to do.
• Government Agency of Fiction: The main character of SRW, Peter Rivers, belongs to one. Until they kick him out.
• McGuffin: The pocketwatch.
• Title Drop: This entry of Still Remains Within.

Tropes for Ontological

• Fake Memories: And stolen from the "real" Martin, too.
• Living Shadow: The Nightlanders.
• Meaningful Name: There's a reason his name is Martin Behaim.
• Ontological Mystery: The whole point.
• Platonic Cave: A major theme of the blog (the companion blog is even called "the allegory of the cave").
• Sanity Slippage
• Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: The basic premise is the main character, Martin, is stuck in one of these (though it has plenty of food and water and a working laptop).
• Tomato in the Mirror: "Martin" was never really Martin. He was always a Nightlander.
• You Wake Up in a Room: This happens to Martin in the first post

Tropes for The Jeanette Experience

• Action Girl: Jeanette
• Anachronic Order: The beginning of the blog is straightforward, but then it skips from January to June. Jeanette slowly gives the posts from what happened between those months while also providing information about what she's doing now.
• Canon Immigrant: The blog started independent of the Fear Mythos, but has recently been integrated into the world.
• Chess Motifs: Penny Balisong is fond of these.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Jeanette is fond of these.
• Eye Scream: Vanessa has her eyes burned out of their sockets by the Smiling Man and later Jeanette's right eye is destroyed by him as well.
• Eyepatch of Power: Jeanette ends up wearing one due to the Smiling Man.
• Gone Horribly Right: The Smiling Man was brought about by a conscious attempt to make something like the Slender Man. It works a bit too well as far as some of its creators are concerned.
• Ironic Echo: "As Long As I Am Alive"
• Lemony Narrator: Jeanette occasionally makes fun of her younger self's writing (calling it "too teenagery"). Keep in mind that this is her younger self by half a year.
• Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Penny Balisong
• One of Us: Jeanette often makes note of specific tropes in relation to herself and her situation.
• Lady Swearsalot: Guess.
• Slasher Smile: The Smiling Man. In fact, it's wider than his face.
• Tarot Motifs: Jeanette is referred to as the Queen of Swords more than once. There's also the Jack of Thorns. Also the Queen of Cups and all of Penny Balisong's entries.

Tropes for the other blogs in the Mythos

• Anachronic Order: The Ripeness is All is a story told in conversations. It begins with the last conversation and then goes to the first.
• The Bartender: This EAT creepypasta has your stereotypical one, even so far as being called Moe.
• Creepypasta: The whole basis of Faces, Strange and Secret is to have creepypastas for the Mythos.
• Driven to Suicide: Mike, the protagonist of The Eyes of God. The Archangel showed him everything.
• Bedlam House: Used by name in the show-within-a-show in Debasing the Beef Canoe.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: The Black Dog.
• Kill'Em All: Happens in the show-within-a-show in Debasing the Beef Canoe.
• Marionette Motion: In Debasing the Beef Canoe, this happens at the end of the show-within-a-show when the Wooden Girl kills everyone and controls their corpses like puppets.
• Scary Scarecrows: Subverted in this story. The scarecrow isn't evil - the birds are.