User blog comment:Nanepul/irrational fears./@comment-1988716-20141008234724/@comment-1988716-20141009214714

That's very perceptive of you to note that the core point to our argument is a linguistic one, that we likely have different definitions of things. I can respect that a lot.

Fear, to me, is the most natural emotion there is. It is the sign our brain makes when it wants to change the situation. It can manifest in many different ways, and it has evolved to become probably every other emotion we have (that's not to say that happiness is fear, more that evolutionarily it stems from it-- happiness is the lack of fear or any negative emotion, or at least of coming to terms with them and understanding why the negative emotions are there and being okay with that). Fear was the natural next step after survival instinct-- survival instinct gets us out of tough situations in the present, fear recognizes the patterns and gets us to assume potential tough situations in the future.

I'm someone who has spent a lot of my life in fear, as a lot of people in this mythos probably know about me. I've had a lot of time to look into it and an interest in understanding it and coming to terms with it. Writing is one of my ways of doing that, as writing is where I attempt to teach things to others, and teaching something is the most effective way to learn something.

Creepy, to me, has no easy definition. It's more colloquial than anything else. But if I had to define it, I'd say it's recognizing the surface elements of a potential tough situation without seeing any of the actual stuff that would make us scared. Creepy would be more like seeing blood and assuming it means danger is nearby, regardless of context.

To answer the actual question posed about where that line of thinking can fit into our mythos, really that's entirely up to you and I encourage you explore it. Write whatever you want. I talk big when the conversations are abstract, but when it comes down to whether or not someone should write a Fear (or write an existing Fear in a certain way), I don't want to tell people not to write. Quite the opposite. Write! Find out for yourself where things fit in our mythos!

..I mean okay to give an even more specific answer, we do have a lot of room for exploring more irrational phobias. Every Fear has this potential; we do our best to make sure, on top of the base-level emotions underlying them, each Fear has the potential for all kinds of surface-level motifs. For instance: The Wooden Girl may focus on control and abuse, but she's most frequently written with motifs of creepy dolls. That's a creepy phobia for you. EAT may focus on depersonalization and the dangers of the abstract, but it's also associated with the deepest secrets of the sea-- hive minds, fungal strings! The Intrusion, as said before, is freaking bugs. The Grotesque is often given carnival motifs, allowing for lots and lots of creepy clowns.

Phobias definitely fit into the mythos, but I just want to make it clear that the phobias aren't the point; the creepiness is just a topping for atmosphere's sake (or in some cases characterisation).

..and as a little aside: I, on the other hand, would call lots of things scary, even on the internet. I am scared of many of them, by which I mean many of them remind me what I'm scared of, which is in the end all a story can ask for. I just prefer the stories that don't seem to relish in sadistically scaring people all the time. My favourite horror stories are House of Leaves, Mulholland Drive, and Marble Hornets-- all three of which take the focus off of horror itself and put the focus on emotions. Emotions scare me, they fill me with dread and despair. Tragedies and drama tend to affect me the most.