redstringtheories | You Are What You Eat Meme

THE ENTITIES

A meme for brainstorming how your character feeds their patron Entity in the world of Apocalypse How. Or for thinking about how they might feed a patron. Feeding a patron is a unique experience for anyone tied to an Entity. Some people may have similar ways to evoke the fear their patron wants, while others may have wholly unique methods. Some of the examples below may overlap, but that's okay! The Entities are more of a spectrum of colors, bleeding into each other at the edges. Two people with different patrons might feed those patrons in similar ways.

Post below with your character's name and their patron in the subject line. Discuss some ways they might feed. Offer ideas for other folks on their characters!

THE BURIED

Associated fears include claustrophobia, suffocating, drowning, being buried alive, being stifled or crushed in non-literal ways (e.g., poverty or debt). Some potential ways a character might feed the Buried include:

Physically trapping people.
Sending them fake bills/making them feel financially burdened.
Being physically or emotionally controlling.
Pretending to drown someone.
Injuring someone to the point that they are cannot physically move.

THE CORRUPTION

Associated fears include rot/decay, disease, filth, germs, and insects (particularly infestations), obsessive or unhealthy love and relationships, as well as xenophobia and political corruption. Some potential ways a character might feed the Corruption include:

Creating a gross environment.
Forcing emotionally draining unhealthy relationships on others.
Creating a toxic work environment.
Being an emotional vampire, constantly sucking the joy out of every conversation.
Unleashing insects on people.
Stoking conspiracy theories about corruption in the resident authority, or making efforts to actually cause it, such as by bribing politicians to do terrible things or enact purposefully hateful/bad policies.

THE DARK

Associated fears include a fear of the dark itself, as well as what might be hiding in it and what lies beyond what we cannot see, not having enough information or being kept 'in the dark.' Some potential ways a character might feed the Dark include:

Cutting off someone's sense of sight.
Being a conspiracy theorist, making people feel like they're being misinformed/not informed.
Removing someone's access to light, such as by causing power outages.
Stoking fears about the unknown/what may be out in the dark, such as by creating frightening sounds/effects where someone can't see the source.

THE DESOLATION

Associated fears include pain, loss, fire/burning, and especially the senseless/mindless destruction of something, destroying people or things that have unrealized potential or something to look forward to. Some potential ways a character might feed the Desolation include:

Deliberately setting fires (small or large).
Taking and destroying precious items.
Making and breaking relationships, causing emotional chaos and turmoil.
Killing people or small animals, particularly those with close connections.
Creating an environment that inspires fear of explosive anger and associated violence or emotional trauma.

THE END

Associated fears include death and dying, the demise of the self and decay into nothingness, with a strong focus on the inevitability of death. Some potential ways a character might feed the End include:

Making someone afraid that they're going to die imminently.
Describing the physical process of death to wig someone out.
Inspiring existential dread in people.

THE EXTINCTION

Associated fears include the fear of catastrophic change, destruction of nature, destruction of human skin and tissue, the destruction of humanity itself and its replacement by something different. It is especially linked to humanity's own contribution to the eventuality of these things. Some potential ways a character might feed the Extinction include:

Fearmongering about a variety of potential apocalypses, possibly offering fixes, knowing full well they won't work. I.e., being a televangelist.
Creating existential dread about how life is eventually going to end, and what horrible things may come after (e.g., doomsday prophesizing via social media, designing posts to go viral).
Creating existential dread about the possibility of other life/extra-terrestrials will end life on Earth (e.g., posing as aliens contacting someone online).
Contributing to causes that people fear will bring about catastrophic change (e.g., supporting Big Oil and encouraging others to do so).

THE EYE

Associated fears include having secrets exposed, being watched, being known, or being followed, knowing too much and finding the one piece of knowledge that may destroy you or someone you know. Some potential ways a character might feed the Eye include:

Watching/stalking people to the point they feel threatened.
Blackmailing/extorting others with vital pieces of information they want to keep hidden.
Publishing people's secrets or otherwise outing them in some way, possibly on the internet (e.g., encouraging a doxxing campaign or filming people and posting them online).
Forcing people to tell you things they don't want to, either through emotional or physical coercion.

THE FLESH

Associated fears include the sense (or fear) of one's body being animated meat and bones, mutilation of the flesh or having your body changed or destroyed, insecurity and self-hatred connected to one's body image. Some potential ways a character might feed the Flesh include:

Cyber or real-life bullying about someone's body type.
Engaging in cannibalism or forcing others to do so, informing them after of what they're doing.
Mutilating people, physically violating their flesh in some way.
Creating unsettling displays that may include human flesh or evoke them and putting them into public view.
Systematic killing and dissection of animals/animal experimentation.

THE HUNT

Associated fears include being chased or hunted, obsession with pursuing a goal, chasing after something that can never be reached, and destroying yourself and everything you know and love in the process. The Hunt can be associated with pack-mentality and the fear of being othered and targeted by an in-group you were once a part of. Some potential ways a character might feed the Hunt include:

Hunting/chasing people, making them fear that they are being hunted/chased.
Developing a toxic culture within social groups with the expectation that anyone who goes against the group will be ousted and punished. This can be done in-person or online.
Creating an unattainable goal/objective and forcing others to engage in the pursuit of it (e.g., creating a program/app that is designed to drain someone's financial resources by getting them addicted and requiring in-app purchases).

THE LONELY

Associated fears include being cut off from other people, being isolated in some way, or being alone (physically or metaphorically), being unnoticed or unacknowledged for one's accomplishments, losing one's memories and, as a result, one's friends, family, and self. Some potential ways a character might feed the Lonely include:

Inducing memory loss.
Physically and/or emotionally isolating someone for long periods of time.
Downplaying someone's accomplishments, belittling them, and generally making them feel like their actions and efforts are of little consequence.
Manipulating people to encourage them to cut ties with others/remove their other relationships.

THE SLAUGHTER

Associated fears include random or unmotivated - but unavoidable - violence or pain, violence you know is coming but don't know exactly when or how to prevent. Some potential ways a character might feed the Slaughter include:

Causing unprovoked physical violence, either directly or by inducing others toward it (e.g., starting a violent barfight and doing whatever you can to escalate it).
Fearmongering about war and its inevitability.
Stoking existing fears about violence that may come to people's loved ones and encouragement toward violent acts or acts that may provoke violence.

THE SPRIAL

Associated fears include madness, of the world you know being wrong or your perception of it being wrong, being lied to or deceived, either by other people or by yourself. Some potential ways a character might feed the Spiral include:

Inducing a sense of unreality in a person, whether by drugs or other means, stoking their fear that what they're experiencing isn't real (i.e., gaslighting people).
Being an online conspiracy theorist, stoking people's fears about everything, from the veracity of the moon landing to the idea that the Earth is round.
Causing people to fear others and what they might be saying about them, if they can trust the people they've come to know. Can we really KNOW anyone else?

THE STRANGER

Associated fears include the Uncanny Valley, the unknown, the unfamiliar or the not quite familiar, beings that are almost but not exactly human, things that are not quite right, losing oneself and one's identity, and of being replaceable. Some potential ways a character might feed the Stranger include:

Taking familiar objects and turning them into something grotesque or not quite right, designing unsettling things and unleashing them on the unsuspecting populace to wig them out.
Acting in a mechanical or otherwise inhuman way that triggers people's anxiety due to the uncertainty inherent in such an interaction.
Catfish, posing as other people on the Internet, and acting in unusual or uncanny ways.
Altering one's appearance to appear uncanny, rigid, and/or unnatural in some manner. On a slightly lighter note, one could get some very minor juice by, say, posing as a store mannequin, and then pranking people by moving and momentarily freaking them out. This would not amount to much fear, but it could be a first taster to get someone hooked.

THE VAST

Associated fears include heights, falling, and wide open spaces (such as space, the sea, or the sky) and/or losing oneself in that space, ones own insignificance in the face of an enormous universe, the forces of nature, and/or society and humanity, as a whole. Some potential ways a character might feed the Vast include:

Pushing/throwing someone from a height.
Inspiring existential dread by describing in detail just how small someone is relative to the Earth, or even to the universe at large.
Inspiring existential dread by reminding someone that their contributions do not matter to society in the grand scheme of things and that they are simply late capitalism cog that has no true agency.
Fearmongering about the power of nature and how puny humans are in the face of it.

THE WEB

Associated fears include spiders, being manipulated (with or without your knowledge, but especially without), being trapped by something or someone, and addiction. Some potential ways a character might feed the Vast include:

Unleashing spiders on someone.
Manipulating someone into a bad situation and doing nothing to help them out of it.
Mind-controlling or otherwise coercing someone to do something they might not want to do.
Being emotionally and/or physically controlling in a relationship.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Character: Aelwyn Abernant
Patron: The Desolation
Do They Actively Feed Their Patron?: She Sure Does. So far she's mostly been sticking to torturing monsters, but she can't actually live without her magic since it's so fundamental to her identity and self esteem so like.
How They Might Feed: So, Aelwyn's trying to find a middle ground right now where she can feed without actually killing anyone important or undeserving and becoming a threat, but as these things go she will probably eventually expand into more dangerous territory. I'll split this into three tiers in order of how dangerous they are.

Lite:
-Random property damage such as damaging cars or buildings. Things that are expensive, specifically. She won't ruin them but she will crack expensive windows or key a car door on a ferrari.
-Spilling people's cups of coffee onto their lap and burning them.
-Ringing fire alarms and creating illusions of fire in beloved locations.

Moderate (Still in the realm of holding back and keeping to a moral standard but like... not by a lot):
-Targetting rich elitist academics and ruining their futures.
-Intentionally fucking with other people's relationships by flirting with or seducing one of them. (Generally the girl.)
-Catfishing people and stealing their bank details, stealing a considerable amount of money from them. If they want an in person meeting, she'll send one of her elementals disguised as the girl she's been using to catfish and leave some nasty scars.
-Killing or torturing monsters in more excessive ways than necessary.
-Terrorizing the thugs on the docks with threats of extreme violence if they come near her or her friends again.

Extreme (Unrestrained despair feeding. Off-limits... for now):
-Killing people, particularly famous people who are convinced they're untouchable and (optionally) have legions of fans to defend them.
-Actually burning beloved locations down. Particularly universities and elite high schools. She is full of hate and that hate is only growing.
-Developing magic to remotely access people's bank accounts and gradually rob them of everything without any way to trace it back to her.
Open to Other Feeding Suggestions: Yep!

Damn Aelwyn!

yeah she's got these on a list too is the thing...

You Are What You Eat Meme

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