Fear: Objective versus Subjective

Fear is a funny emotion, as no two people share the exact same triggers and thresholds.

In essence, this means that all fear is subjective in nature as it is the individual's brain that determines if something is scary or not. Some people are scared of skeletons, blood, dogs, clowns, heights, open spaces, enclosed spaces, open bodies of water, the dark, or even something as simple as an unusually long word. There is not one thing in the universe that will automatically provoke a fear response in every individual, not even the image of George W. Bush in a gimp mask, holding up a bloody knife, and wearing nothing else but a garter belt and stockings.

It is impossible to make anything scary for everyone. It is entirely possible to make something creepy for everyone by using imagery in a unique combination that creates the sensation that things are not right. In a visual medium such as a movie, this is easy to do by varying the lighting or by subtly moving bits of set dressing around between shots. Wasn't that plant taller before, and on the other side of the door? Where did the clown doll that was on the chair in the corner go?

One of the easiest ways to produce a creepy atmosphere is the sense of abandonment and rot, that a place could fall apart at any moment or is infested with various types of vermin. Another method is to have a character acting contrary to what would be expected to a given stimulus. Pinkie Pie acting unsure or sad at a circus is a little creepy if everyone else is enjoying themselves. Is she seeing through the glamour to the horror beneath? Are those clowns really demons that feed on laughter and have decided to suck her dry since she's the living embodiment of laughter? Why eat the two ounce side of rice from the other attendees when Pinkie Pie is a six pound roast ready to be carved up?

Nightmares are the hardest kind of fear to convey. They are inherently personal experiences and deal with things that evoke powerful emotions in the dreamer. Silver Spoon's dying nightmare was her mind replaying the loss she suffered a few months ago, right up to the point where Diamond Tiara knocked. It was a nightmare before it even started turning creepy with the house looking different, and yet it seemed like a normal dream. It's possible that some of you even thought that it was a sweet scene of a father and daughter having a bonding moment.

Two plus two is four. Sunshine mentions being called to the house a few months back because of a fire and an overworked stallion. Only Silver Spoon's mother is mentioned outside the dream in the previous chapter. Copper Knife was dead, had been dead for months, and his daughter was dreaming about him. This by itself is purely endearing because it is a sweet scene, one that could very well be her treasured memory of the last time she saw her father alive, and then that scarred bastard turned it into something horrible and killed her.

I am not making a sympathetic villain here. Freddy can see into your mind through your dreams, find the best way to hurt you, and then twist a perfectly normal or sweet scene into something utterly wrong. Silver Spoon was reliving that time with her father, and Freddy forced her to think of finding her mother dead after coming back inside.