User blog comment:Arcane Spork/Hierarchy of Fears/@comment-1988716-20140119053404

I honestly don't think The Plague Doctor or The Nightlanders have been developed whatsoever by anyone besides myself. Plaguey was developed by Squeek in Pulling Off Masks, but that's about the full extent.

I'm questioning EAT and The Dying Man's appearances at the top of all these lists of developed Fears, though. They're both Fears who have changed very little since their first appearances in the mythos, compared to The Eye, The Red Cap, or The Black Dog who have all undergone significant rewrites and drastically different interpretations. Like, does anyone here know what The Eye used to be? What about what it now is? Can anyone tell me whether The Black Dog's body horror interpretation came first or last? I'll give you a hint: It's both. Its history is that complicated. But, say, The Dying Man is and always was a bodysnatcher whose personality depends on the writer. That has literally never ever changed. Even the idea that The Dying Man used to be one single Fear but split up into the Shards, that was present from the start. What is the definition of "development" here? And EAT, I am the only writer who actually develops EAT, and I'm the same writer who came up with the Fear. In an open source mythos like ours, that's really not a good thing. The actual vanilla Fear of what EAT is has remained the same ever since I joined. It's just my personal interpretations that change. So alright, I can undertand this one at least being a Middle Fear in terms of development.

I guess my main question is how are we classifying "development?" Is it based on the vanilla Fears or are we cherry-picking interpretations? I mean, if you want to get technical-- and I am being completely frank here-- new Fears get exponentially more development from a general standpoint compared to older Fears. The older Fears are pretty shallow and flat when seen as characters, and they always have been. And this has a logic to it-- people for some reason don't want new Fears so the new Fears have to be really well-developed in order to be accepted, but we don't hold the older Fears to the same standard.

Now, after having just reread your post, I suppose you most likely meant this is all based on how powerful a Fear is generally written to be, and that I am just drunk and misinterpreting things. In which case, fair enough, put EAT at the bottom (wait, wouldn't "the opposite of EAT" be an EAT that starts off really powerful but becomes really weak?), but The Manufactured Newborn? Seriously? xD The Manufactured Newborn takes over planets and makes them a part of itself. Kinda like EAT, actually. .......actually wow yeah they're both progressive Fears that start off mundane but grow into planet-eating abominations. Huh. So that would theoretically also start off really powerful but become really weak, if you're going with exact opposites of power dynamics.

.....god, all of this seriously depends on what interpretation you're pulling from. xD I'm glad you're still treating The Deep properly, though. And actually most of your Fear listings are pretty on-the-dot. But there are some Fears that are just tricky to figure out. I need more clarification.