Maybe a weird theory but hear me out

The theory I have and that's tied into my Martin/Jon theory is that we're dealing with the echos of fears. You know how you make a copy of something and it's not quite the same? It's kind of that.

The fears were unique to the OG TMA universe. Once the Web spread them out, we're not getting the same fears, we're getting echos. Same with Martin and Jon.

I don't know that Bonzo or Mowbray are really that clear cutm like Mowbray doesn't hunt herself, she seems to like forcing other people too, which could also intersect with flesh and slaughter. And Bonzo seems to combine a bunch of things too - flesh, slaughter and stranger.

But I would love if Gwen's title ended up with her being drawn in to the TMA!Universe bleed over as it starts to happen more.

I agree there are endogenous TMP entities, and I think now the TMA ones are becoming active, and that the tape recorders are an indication of TMA!fears activity.

My thoughts are that the Fears as we saw them in TMA were fairly "mature" and had tens of, if not hundreds of thousands of years to drift into the distinct forms that we saw.

Each of what we called Fears like the Hunt and the Web and Eye were all still the same entity Fear at the end of the day. I think a good way to think of them is as Aspects of Fear.

I believe that when Fear as a whole was dragged through the Crack in Reality, the various Aspects were forced back together into essentially an undifferentiated blob. Now, in the new realities they touch, these Aspects are mutated and emerging in new blends and combinations. We may get more broad concrete Aspects like we had in TMA, but I think it is more likely that we'll see creatures, Avatars and locations that are more like the individual Domains during the Eyepocalypse. More specific fears and situations that can combine different influences without strictly being one or the other.

Here's my theory:

The OIAR is a defense mechanism, possibly one that Jon/Martin's echoes in the Fear Entity influenced into being.

The goal of it isn't to stop the fears, that's impossible: It's to chop them up, as much as possible, atomize them to the point that any coherent method of categorizing them becomes impossible. That's the point of all the different filing categories in the OIAR computer system.

At the same time, they act as 'management' for the expressions of fear that exist, ensuring that, if they can't stop the horror from happening, they can at least keep track of it and make sure it doesn't become all-consuming.

I agree that it isn't the same fears we are used to, but I suspect that the entities are the same ones from TMA just mixed up and recombined, like how The Deep combines the elements of The Burried and The Vast, or how this universe's infection based entity has elements of body transformation and The Spiral's madness.

I think you’re on to something however mr bonzo seems stranger aligned not slaughter. Not sure what mr bonzo would have to do with war or genocide.

One of my current theories that I've been formulating is that the OIAR is based upon Smirke's attempts at balance. They've been categorizing events into categories that can ultimately be very specific. This leads me to at least one of two theories on the reason: One: it breaks down the fears, more entities means less power for each of them, making balance a bit easier. Two: They're feeding an algorithm of some sort that directs how and where they send their externals to incite the right fear at the right time.

This second possible reason is derived from something that Martin said at near the end of MAG138 Spoiler (quote slightly edited to take out a bit of stammering)

They could also be feeding one of the fears, which the algorithm would be part of: 'technophobia', a fear that I believe to be, in terms of a combination of TMA fears, a combination of the Eye and Web.

Overall, the fears from TMA do seem to be present, but there seem to also be a lot more than just those fourteen, with the Deep being a fairly eminent one.

Well, the things we are dealing with seem to be derrivatives of the fears. For example, the tatoo case was very interesting, because it dealt with both self-image pfoblems and changing ones physical appearance, both things that the Boneturner was heavily associated with (the fitness studio, the flesh garden). We also have the tatoo of the ship being followed (sidenote, aweful lot of tatoos around here, especially since there seem to be "collectors" that want these tatoos, and have some themselves), which does seem like a derrivative of the vast

Another thread for TMP was that these entities might be Desires not Fears. Which, in itself, is an interesting concept.

Hmm, you know what would make sense? If these are the new fears that existed before but were subdued by the well-established ones. With the old ones gone, all the modern fears became far more prevalent.