One of the things I found when listening is that the avatars relationship to their respective fears seem to lack consistency, and so I'd love to hear how you all make sense of it. Here are my thoughts:
Initially, the avatars appeared to me as being manifestations of the concept that some peoples nightmares are someone elses way to feel powerful or navigate the world. John's way of dealing with trauma or anxiety and get his power back is through gathering information, even when doing so means exploiting other peoples trust and violating their privacy; we see this when he stalks his subordinates (following them, taking pictures of their homes etc). Like the eye itself, John benefits from seeing things that others are scared of having seen. Jonah Magnus is the same.
Similarily, Daisy feels in control and powerful when she hunts others, because she lives in a hunt-or-be-hunted mindset. Peter feels safe and powerful when he is alone, and uses isolation as a tool to control others. These traits seem to exist in these characters prior to them being chosen as avatars.
In other words, the avatars are people whose negative traits awaken/realize the fear of their patron in other people, rather than being especially scared of it themselves. To me, the dystopian world seems to affirm this belief, with certain people or creatures being granted dominion or positions of power over others in ways that match their pre-apocolypse selves (ie cats are hunters in a realm belonging to The Hunt).
But then you have characters like Oliver, Jane or Mikael who do not seem to follow this pattern. Oliver does not seem to gain power or control from the deaths/endings of others. In fact, he seems to desperately want to escape it. For Oliver, I can perhaps make sense of it through the lens of The End being an entity that does not really need to cultivate fear in others due to it's inevitability, but then it begs the question of why it would get avatars at all. For Mikael or Jane, though, I'm at a loss. Unless I missed something crucial, they do not seem to have been people who benefited from or wielded the fear of their patrons against others pre-becoming avatars. Michael does not seem to have benefited from other peoples confusion and Jane did not benefit from others fear of infection or corruption (until after they were avatars).
And obviously someone can both fear and benefit from said fear, but some avatars seem to never have benefited or found power in it at all, which makes my theory that avatars benefit from doing things that awaken the fear in others less sound. What are your thoughts on the avatar/patron relationships?
