Opt-In Junk

[skeletonkeay]

Gerard's canon features entities based on primal fears that are capable of leaving their mark on people. This can occur through experiencing trauma related to that fear, a deep interest or even obsession with the concept, or a lifestyle otherwise characterized by what that fear represents. While these entities are not guaranteed to exist in other worlds, it is not impossible they exist in some form in yours!

Due to his association with the Eye and lifetime of expertise, Gerard is often able to detect these marks. If you would like him to be able to detect an association with one of the Fears on your character, please let me know!

Warning: contains spoilers for The Magnus Archives and discussions of various upsetting concepts. I tried to keep the spoilers as minimal as possible. Details below the cut.



THE ENTITIES

{ click names for summaries }

The Eye

Also known as "The Beholding" or "Ceaseless Watcher". The fear of being watched, stalked, followed, or exposed. Fear of a lack of privacy, fear of judgement from others. Fear of knowledge that could destroy you, and obsession with knowing. Manifests in the form of any eye, either real or symbolic. This can include drawings or photos of eyes, mirror images, camera lenses, and more. Its victims usually have experiences related to being watched intently, followed by unseen eyes, or other similar experiences. Its avatars and servants often develop a thirst for information. This is the entity with which Gerard is associated, as well as the Archivist, Jon Sims.

The Buried

Also known as "Choke" or "Too Close I Cannot Breathe". Claustrophobia, the fear of being trapped without enough space, suffocation, being buried alive or drowning, or otherwise being crushed. Manifestations are typically quite literal, in the form of cramped caves, soil, flooding, underground spaces, and tight spaces such as coffins. However, it can also manifest in the form of things like debt or other metaphorical crushing weights. Its victims often find themselves trapped and unable to move or breathe properly. Its servants often develop an obsession with digging.

The Corruption

Also known as "The Crawling Rot", "The Flesh Hive," or sometimes simply "Filth." This represents the fear of corruption of bodies and spaces via disease, rot, insects, mold, and other things evoking feelings of deep disgust. The fear of unsanitary or revolting things. While this fear is almost always extremely literal, it can sometimes also manifest as toxic love. However, this is typically in tandem with the more tangible elements. Infection, rot, trypophobia, bodily fluids, and swarming or infesting insects are all characteristic of the Corruption. Its victims tend to either let their hygiene slip or become manically obsessed with cleaning. Its servants are often carriers of contagious illnesses or carriers of parasites. Those who serve the Corruption often speak emphatically about being "loved" by their afflictions.

The Dark

An extremely old and deep fear of darkness, the unknown, and things that lurk out of sight in the darkness. Also sometimes called "Mr. Pitch" or "The Forever Blind". Often manifests as profound, endless darkness, shadowy figures, monsters that hide in shadow, deep and dark bodies of water (brackish water specifically tends to recur frequently) and blindness. Lights tend to either die out or be less effective where this entity is present. Antithetical to the Eye. Its victims tend to have childhood fears of the dark that are being played upon or simply be trapped in dark spaces. Its servants tend to avoid or sabotage light sources and seem to prefer secrets and ignorance to information and truth. The People's Church of the Divine Host is an organization specifically dedicated to worshipping the Dark.

The Desolation

Also called "The Lightless Flame," "The Blackened Earth," or "Asag." This is the fear of pain, agony, random destruction, loss, and burning. It often manifests in the form of destructive fire and things associated with it. Forest or house fires, destruction of potential, loss of loved ones, sabotage of success, and severe burn wounds are common. Its victims tend to lose the things they love most or die before realizing their potential, as well as come to harm by literal fire. Its victims tend to commit acts of senseless violence that favor targets with a lot to live for and be arsonists.

The End

Also called "Terminus" or just "Death". Represents the fear of dying, especially painfully, as well as the fear of what comes after (or lack thereof, in some cases). Its victims and its servants alike tend to be those who have had close calls or near-death experiences, if they survive at all. Despondent demeanors or lack of emotions are characteristic of those who have come into contact with it. Bones, skeletons, corpses, and graves are common imagery.

The Flesh

Also occasionally referred to as "Viscera". This is a strange Fear that is primarily born of livestock animals and their fear of butchery. However, this also has expanded into human fears such as the existential dread of just being electrified meat, gore, body horror, and other more subtle fears and discomforts with one's body or physicality in general.

The Hunt

Another fear born from that of animals, this is the fear of being prey or being chased by a relentless, violent pursuer. Manifests as predatory animals and monsters, animalistic tendencies and characteristics, and hunting of all sorts. Those exposed to the Hunt will sometimes become addicted to acting as predators and develop a need to hunt animals, people, or monsters. Servants of the Hunt cite enjoying the chase more than the kill itself, and are prone to turning on each other when prey is in short supply.

The Lonely

Also called "The Forsaken" or "The One Alone." This is the fear of isolation, either due to being separated from others by tangible barriers or social/emotional ones. The fear of having no one to reach out to, of abandonment, of being unloved or unwanted, of being cut off from society. Manifests as abandoned spaces, faceless people, isolated places such as the sea or space, and becoming lost. Its servants often find comfort in the isolation and prey on the fears of the socially anxious.

The Slaughter

Fear of random, unpredictable outbursts of violence, pain, and death. Its most common manifestation is that of war and combat. However, it can apply to any form of random or mass violence. It is different from the Hunt and the Desolation due to its lack of premeditation or targeting of a certain type of victim, respectively. Victims often become "mad with Slaughter", compelling them to manic violence.

The Spiral

Also called "It Is Not What It Is" or "The Twisting Deceit." It is the fear of madness, losing one's grip on reality, being gaslit, deception of the mind and the senses. Manifests as hallucinations or illusions and can cause victims to improperly perceive time. A common appearance is that of a door that should not be where it is and impossible spaces, as well as fractal images. Its primary avatar is a monster that absorbs the existence and appearance of certain humans, known as the Distortion.

The Stranger

Also called "I Do Not Know You". The fear of the uncanny valley, things that are almost human but not quite, perversions of the human form, and existential dread regarding identity and selfhood. Commonly manifests as mannequins, wax figures, dolls, automatons, masks, taxidermy, and clowns. Manifestations often feature circus or theatre imagery and focus on names, faces, and skin.

The Vast

Also known as the "Falling Titan" or simply "Vertigo". It is the fear of heights, falling, endlessness, and the existential dread associated with inconceivably large spaces like the open sky, the depths of the sea, and the entirety of the universe. It also addresses the fear and despair surrounding being very small in comparison with grander things so as to be pointless or infinitesimal. Can manifest with imagery of the sky, the sea, space, extreme heights, or monsters too large to wrap one's head around.

The Web

Sometimes called "The Spider" or "The Mother of Puppets". This in part the fear of spiders themselves, but also the fear of being caught in someone else's web. The fear of being manipulated by someone else or having your actions controlled, being part of someone's master plan. The more abstract elements of this fear often manifest in tandem with spider imagery, as well as other things resembling webbing such as wires or even film reels. Marionette themes are also common.

The Extinction

Also referred to as "The Future Without Us". This is a relatively new Fear that plays off of several others, but has begun to establish itself as unique as environmental issues and weapons of mass destruction become more of a pressing issue. It is the fear of apocalypse, of a mass extinction event created by human hands through violence or negligence. Manifestations typically involve spaces that are inhospitable for human life, as well as mountains of trash, explosion impact sites, radiation, pandemics, and other similar concepts.

Comments

[strigiformer]

I'd be happy for Gerard to be able to detect an association with one of the Fears on Nightshade, but I'm a little torn!

My first instinct is to say that he'd be able to sense the Eye on them. Nightshade isn't exactly traumatized by having to be mostly in hiding from the moment they came into being, but that threat of Being Found Out and exposure has been a near-constant presence in their life. They also do have a deep interest in learning and knowing, as they're an eager scientist (and a bit of a mad one).

That said, it's also very possible that they'd be more associated with the Lonely? That having to hide from most others is also a form of isolation; their focal episode involved them feeling some disconnect from their siblings and the friend they made in that episode left them behind (in order to save them, but still). They have very strong familial bonds, so that might not work as well, but very recently they did experience a potentially traumatizing situation where for a bit it seemed like they and their sister Twitch might be the only members of their family still alive. They kept it together really well, and they've never been fully alone, but I'm still a bit torn.

For now, unless you think the Lonely would fit better from what I've described, I'm personally leaning more towards the Eye?

[batteryacid]

For this guy... if it's anything, it'll be The Corruption.

Sonia Kaspbrak's husband died suddenly and then her infant son got ill, and she got extremely overprotective in the wake of those incidents. She constantly warned him against the dangers of illness and even forced the town pharmacist to give him placebo inhalers (full of camphor water). It got to the point where young Eddie, despite not having asthma, would work himself up into dyspneic episodes when he was afraid.

When It -- the monster under Derry -- decided to hunt Eddie and frighten him, It either took control of or took the form of a diseased man that Eddie thought of as a leper. His other friends said that was someone with a severe syphilis infection, but... either way. Seeing someone missing their nose and offering to give him (a twelve year old) a blowjob for money was traumatizing.

Even as an adult, Eddie is shown to have a lot of medications on hand. And as he spent more time in Derry, he found himself depending on his placebo inhaler more and more.

Gerard is welcome to sense whatever fear marks that would leave on Eddie.

[mister_morgan]

I feel like Arthur could have a lean in several directions of Fears, so I want to hear your takes! >:3c Definitely want Gerry to clock him with 'em, though!

[witheredpeonies]

Both of my characters are fucking dead, which is a big indicator for the End, but Angel also inches into Stranger 'not quite right' territory somewhat. Like, it isn't that Angel has ever died, but it's...well, piloting a corpse and pretending to human.

[jeveuxpartir]

opting in 100%, which will be handy for our current thread >:)

i feel like she's definitely got some Stranger going on (though i may be just picking up on the circus-vibes), maybe some Lonely? i'd love to hear your thoughts!

[tisnotthehouse]

Definitely opting into this, and per our discord conversation Tara's marked (in order, if Gerry can sense that level of detail) the Spiral, the Lonely, and the Web. Hopefully our guys will get to interact soon <3

[lordoftheozarks]

The hunt definitely fits Erik as he does have a beastly predator in his soul. That's the dead-ringer.

I could also see him being marked by Desolation due to traumatic parts of his past (his twin sister was killed by fire) or The Lonely because he has been betrayed by a lot of the people he trusted in the past and is more closed off as a result.

[graphomaniac]

Looking at this, I have a few ideas for Lev already, but I wanna know what you think and also whether maybe we could defer the decision until we get a bit more CR.

• the Spiral, on grounds of Lev's paranoid schizophrenia
• the Eye, firstly due to the whole ~panopticon thing: Lev/Lyubov has a lot of experience with surveillance, literal and metaphorical, and fear of judgement. Secondly, also their hunger for knowledge and curiosity and meddling with things they should really have left alone
• the Lonely, from tha long period of isolation and cultural/community disconnection in their mid-late 20s

[nothingbadeverhappensto]

FLESH FLESH FLESH FLESH

Nah but as others and myself discussed in the PH discord, Leon's likeliest to be marked by the Flesh for obvious reasons of the mutagenic effects of the T- and G- viruses as well as las plagas and their very in your face body horror, but also the way figures like Umbrella and Osmund Saddler reduce people to raw biomass to be shaped according to their will, literal cogs in the grand machine if they're fortunate, or fuel if they're not, ground into unthinking meat between the wheels of capital and politics.

There may be touches of the End in there (though it's a very flesh-flavored End, thanks to the whole zombie aspect where the fear becomes not what becomes of your mind, but what your body will do after you're gone from it), as well as a little bit of Web, thanks to how Leon keeps getting caught up in national conspiracies and also the part where he literally had a weird spaghetti crab in his spinal column hijacking his nervous system for a bit. But it's mostly FLESH.

[inaurate]

Claude has some mark of the Eye and the Web in the interest/obsession sense. In the sense of traumatic events, the Lonely (being alone in a crowd flavor), the Slaughter from war, and the Stranger from the whole Agarthans wearing the faces of dead people thing! (:


Muriel could possibly be mistaken as an avatar of the Lonely with his magical effect, and he's certainly marked by it. There's also some Slaughter trauma in there from his gladiator past.

[takethatnature]

Hoo boy Wilson is like a fear buffet. Not much in the way of the Corruption (well, he did get swarmed by gnats occasionally in the Hamlet DLC I guess, and sometimes his food rotted), the Stranger, or the Extinction (he lived through the 1918 flu pandemic, but he came out of it okay), but...

The big ones:
The Buried: During his reign on the Nightmare Throne he was bodily tied to it while "They" whispered in his ears and most of his effort went towards unsuccessfully trying to pull himself loose instead of doing anything with the cool eldritch powers theoretically available to him as the current Nightmare King. He's also been picked up and grabbed and dragged from one dimension to another by terrifying giant shadow hands several times, and been pinned down by monsters that proceeded to tear into him while he was helpless, sometimes dying from it (he particularly hates Ewecuses because of this). He's also drowned once or twice, and while that would be bad enough on its own, it's made worse by the fact that he could maybe have swum to safety if it weren't for yet more shadow hands pulling him into the depths.

The Dark/The Spiral: I'm combining these two because the eldritch entity or collection of entities that built/provided the raw materials for the world he was taken to in his canon, "Them", is basically a fusion of those. Shadows, darkness, and the unknown mixed with nightmares and insanity. Wilson was essentially an avatar for "Them" when he was on the Nightmare Throne, but only for like a week before someone else took his powers by force.
The Dark is the half that left a deeper stain; what you have to worry about if you have a mental breakdown in the Constant is more that you get attacked by shadow monsters than that you'll never be able to trust your perceptions again. There are so many shadow monsters. Furthermore, if you're in the dark and can't see, you get swiftly torn apart by an omnipresent shadow monster. Wilson's died this way many times – notably, it was his first death – and while he wasn't afraid of the dark when he lived on Earth he now generally panics if he's caught in complete darkness.

The Desolation: His basecamp burned down several times, often costing him all his collected resources except for a few that weren't very flammable. Sometimes this was from a lightning strike, as with the first time he survived long enough in Shipwrecked to see the start of hurricane season, other times it was the carelessness of others, such as when he lived in Swinesbury and the town guards lit his entire garden on fire (and technically also burned down his house, but that was less devastating since the inside has only a tenuous relationship with the outside and remained intact) while trying to attack a pickpocket/wild animal/bug-person with their torches. Sometimes it was because he got attacked by fire hounds, which explode when they die, or because the Shipwrecked volcano erupted and spewed lava and hot rocks everywhere. Also he started the occasional campfire that got out of control and burned down an entire forest, but those were specifically when he wasn't at his base. And that's just the literal fires; there's also the times when a giant monster showed up and smashed everything right when he really needed an un-smashed base to survive the harsh weather.

The End: Resurrection comes easily in the Constant, and even without having made arrangements for that, if you die you just either turn into a ghost or get stripped of your crafting recipes and sent off to a new version of the place, depending on whether you're the last one alive in the world or not. As a consequence, Wilson's died hundreds of times and he's become jaded to it, although it's still painful and a potentially serious setback, so he does try to avoid dying.

The Eye: This doesn't kick into high gear until after Wilson's canon point - there's a sinister god-adjacent moon-eyeball named Alter - but he got himself sent to the Constant in the first place because he made a deal for forbidden knowledge, and he received what he asked for. That, and They are always watching.

The Flesh: Killing living creatures and making things - meals, weapons, contraptions - out of their body parts is a key part of gameplay, and those edible enemies include anthropomorphic animal people, some of whom could have been allied with under other circumstances.

The Hunt: Every week or so the Nightmare Monarch sets a pack of hunting hounds on the Survivors, plus the Flesh stuff overlaps heavily here. And there's a family of anthro walruses who show up with blowguns and ice hounds every winter (either they also come back to life or they have an extremely strong family resemblance) and hunt the Survivors for sport. The Survivors usually hunt them back, partly because getting shot with a blowdart hurts but mostly to steal their hats.

The minor ones:

• The Lonely: On Earth he didn't really have any friends and was estranged from his family, but he was also an antisocial hermit who didn't mind it that much, and he made some friends in the Constant and on the Serena Eterna. Singleplayer Don't Starve got isolating enough to be rough though.


• The Slaughter: Overlaps with the Flesh/Hunt kill-or-be-killed eat-or-be-eaten stuff; getting attacked by a monster with no warning isn't super rare in the Constant.


• The Vast: In Come Sail Away he once fell about ninety miles into an infinite vertical space before he finally hit something and died.


• The Web: The Constant's full of spiders the size of a bulldog (they also live in colonies and the queens are much larger).

[fuelmayor]

Here's someone who's really been screwed over by the Dark and the Extinction! Also a lot of End in there because he's undead, and some Spiral that's half from canon and half from the CRAU. Speaking of which, the CRAU adds a hefty portion of Slaughter and Web.

[configuration_birdwatcher]

Bastion was marked by the Slaughter the moment they rolled off the assembly line, and there's Web in there as well because of the way the omnium would forcibly take control of individual omnics and move them around like so many strategy game units during the war when it wanted to perform a complex troop movement or prevent them from going out of bounds. Possibly also a hint of Extinction, whether because the AI leading the omnics wanted to wipe out humanity Skynet-style or because almost all the military-model omnics (mostly Bastion units) were terminated by human mandate after the omnics lost the war.

[cacophonish]

Jeff is a Spiral lad! Though his mind's clear here, back home he was kind of sort of possessed by an entity (not a demon in any traditional sense, but he'll call it that because it's what the brain defaults to on the subject of possession) that was incompatible with like.... the meatspace world and Jeff's fragile human everything.

So basically his sense of reality began to crumble (as did the entity's), and his every waking moment was a psychedelic nightmare indistinguishable from dreams / fantasy / etc. His sense of what's real and what isn't fractured and then he died and came to here with, uh, sudden clarity and silence, which is pretty overwhelming and is one reason Jeff's such a big fucking mess.

Fun fact: he misses the entity, its company, its obsessions, and the way it gave him a glimpse into unreality and all its possibilities and he kind of wants it back just as much as he fears it!

[yournewsidekick]

Oh, no question at all -- Nimona is marked head-to-to by The Lonely. She's also got a touch of The Slaughter and The Hunt, from a solid millennia of being labeled a monster, but The Lonely will always ring loudest and clearest.

[saltwaterlungs]

Darcy feels like a big cold lump of The End, with some tinging of the Vast for their oceanic associations. In their world they worked closely with local death entities, as well as being Just A Corpse Animated With Ghost Juice.

[when_a_grids_misaligned]

Moiré's durance was dominated by the Stranger and the Slaughter; those entities' fingerprints would be on a lot of changelings because Keepers are just Like That but this guy had a whole bloodsports game show host thing going on so I expect the imprint would be stronger than the changeling average. Also Buried and Spiral; Buried from the amount of time they spent locked in a tiny editing booth during their durance and Spiral because almost every changeling alive struggles with supernatural-inflected psychosis and dissociation to one degree or another, Moiré included.

[not_a_traitor]

Finally hitting this with Gaeta and laughing hysterically as I go down the list alksdfjdskaj OKAY WHERE TO START

The Big Ones
- The Slaughter and The Desolation, both threaded through with The Extinction. Pretty simple: he survived a nuclear apocalypse and four years of war that followed.
- The Web. He was entirely too trusting for his own good for a long, long time, and he paid the price for it.
- The Buried, kind of? I'm honestly not sure about this one, because it's not claustrophobia-related, but he does go into a visceral panic if he has trouble breathing due to once being on a ship with failing life support.

Lesser Ones
- The Stranger. Cylons are virtually indistinguishable from humans, and while there are a finite number of "models," one of those models hadn't become common knowledge before Gaeta's canonical death. So every now and then, he still gets a deep twitch of fear: what if I've been a Cylon this whole time, too?

[littlefairytale]

Daisy obviously reads as a Hunt Avatar first and foremost, but there's also deep marks from the Buried and the Slaughter in there that rise above the background noise of all her section 31 experience.

Ruby is primarily marked by the Web, thanks to feeling trapped in the sense that her life isn't her own and hasn't ever been, and the Lonely, in the way that someone can feel isolated even in a crowded room/when put on a pedestal, with a touch of End on the side.

Alice is frankly a mystery right now, I'll get back to you. Preliminary judgement, Lonely and/or Eye. Lonely is definitely the loudest and Eye isn't too far behind, but I almost want to say there's a touch of Desolation because of how much it seems like the life she thought she'd have was just destroyed by factors outside her control.

Gwen is loudly marked by the Web, like, in your face powerfully marked by the Web. Canon Events aka having your entire life laid out by the multiverse in a way you supposedly cannot change without destroying your universe really couldn't be more Web, plus she's had that recent experience with brainwashing. Beyond that, there's Hunt (as prey, thanks to the police manhunt for her), fading Eye (thanks to her fears around her secret identity and other secrets being revealed), and Lonely thanks to deep (if somewhat self self-imposed) social isolation.

CT would've been an Eye Avatar in another life, the sense that she's both marked by and drawn towards the Eye's methods is strong. A double agent terrified of her secrets being discovered but also drawn towards knowledge and the truth above all else, and happy to use that against people who deserve it. Besides that, there's a hefty dose of Lonely, plus a side of Vast and Slaughter.

Melanie is blank to him. Just a complete Eye deadzone. At best there's a sense of absence or metaphysical scar tissue.

Margaret has a big ol' Slaughter mark, with the End close behind and then dashes of Flesh and Corruption (of the toxic connections variety) for flavour I think.

[impostor_syndrome]

Since I'm tagging out with them on the TDM I'll do this for Purple just to have it ready. As an alien shapeshifter impersonating a human, and occasionally a murderer and only not a cannibal by technical pedantry (they've never eaten their own species), they have strong Stranger and Flesh associations in every universe. Hunt is already somewhat present by default but the element of living as both predator and prey in the food chain is amped up enough in the Lethal Company fusion/quasi-CRAU I'm currently playing around with to be a third main one.

[incomingchoppers]

Adding Radar to this before I forget again!

He's a Slaughter boy. Two-ish years in a war zone, seeing all the wounded pass through, while also getting hit by not-infrequent shellings and sniper attacks despite being part of a noncombat unit? Yup. It's also given him a preoccupation with the End, which has been magnified since he arrived on Marrow Isle; he's not afraid of death, per se -- at least not any more than the average mortal in wartime -- but it's started taking up a lot more mental real estate since he found out he died back home.

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri's brushed with a few Fears, but Slaughter's the one that's really got hooks in him -- it's the formative trauma that led to all the others (well. Corruption came free, actually, thanks Stag Beetle, but mostly).

The Tragedy (specifically, the incident where he first killed another person) left him with three long, slashed scars across his back; that seems like a strong candidate for a Mark?

("Killed another person" is headcanon, but I think it's narratively strong & supported by the text; the scars are explicit canon)

[redlightgreenlight]

As an Angel of Death/Hellhound Valdis would read clearly as very similar to an Avatar of the End, not just touched by it.

Generator Rex Spoilers EVERYWHERE

[pineapplesalmon]

OH BOY does César have some stuff! Some may not be strong enough to be scars, but I included the information in case.

The thing to know is the Providence protocol in order of how to deal with an EVO threat: Cure, Contain, Kill. If Rex can't cure the EVO, then contain the EVO. If the EVO cannot be contained, then kill it.

The Lonely: THIS ENTIRE FEAR HAPPENED TO HIM. Parents died, brother has amnesia, got shot 5 years into the future without any support. No one to reach out to, no one to love/want him anymore, and then he himself off from society by working himself to death to save everyone. And then after Rex disappeared, Rex's found family left him behind to be the only one at Black Knight's Providence, working for the enemy to prevent an EVO Genocide.

The Hunt: Look up above. He was the only one standing between EVOs and Black Knight Providence from killing EVOs to maintain control because it was the cheapest option after Rex disappeared and removed curing as an option. And the anti-EVO militias that came to be in the United States became less popular ONLY after Rex showed up, then likely started becoming popular again after Rex disappeared for 6 months.

The Spiral: César is not afraid of madness or losing his grip on reality, but others see him as that way. He's been gaslit/seen as only a mad scientist and not a loving man who believes in family, too.

The Web: César is afraid FOR others. He had to create the control collars because when Black Knight took over providence, Cure was not an option (Rex was thrown into the future) and Contain was considered too expensive. So he created a 4th option instead of killing: Control. The new Providence Protocol became Confine, Constrain, and Control. César figured out that if he could turn EVOs into mind-controlled slaves, they'd be worth too much to kill, and BOY WAS HE RIGHT. A round up happened in at least Hong Kong if not elsewhere.
César designed the collars to be temporary control (reversion immediately to normal upon them being turned off) and mellow those under the system to be slightly happy. Slightly happy = less likely to develop PTSD from memories encoding with traumatic emotions.
He once had to fear Rex getting collared, but then Rex escaped. What he DID fear for himself was Black Knight, who was a Queen of Manipulation, but he also dodged that because he just went with her stuff as part of HIS plan that he pulled off. César likes spiders, though. They did nothing wrong!!

The Extinction: :) He lived for 8 months terrified that the world would end if he didn't do everything perfectly. Literally prevented the apocalypse where the Consortium (read: 5 super rich dudes) would take the Meta-Nanites ("The God Code") to rewrite the world/universe to their liking. Also uh the whole Nanite Event DID spread nanites across the globe through an explosion, which sometimes activate and turn people/animals/plants into mutants. This happened due to interference by a big bad (Van Kleiss) who caused the nanites to replicate when César and his parents only wanted to release a small number. They did that to release the meta-nanites into the atmosphere.

[bugreport]

Ginko definitely reads as having an extremely strong association with the Dark - his body plays host to an entity of living shadow that has already eaten his name and a portion of his memories, and will over time convert him into another one of/an extension of itself. As far as his own fears, he's definitely been marked by the Lonely.

He might also read as being in some way Eye-associated? I don't know if Gerry would be able to tell, but Ginko's actually performed a role extremely reminiscent of giving statements to an archivist, repeatedly and on a regular basis for quite some time.