ENTRY 11: FEAR OF ABDUCTION
And now another FEAR OF A THING! Why aren't I doing these as one page, like the insects yesterday? Basically because the Fears I like enough to review are all weird and cool enough that they deserve their own individual reviews, I mean, look at that! What the heck man!!! This entity embodying abduction-related nightmares manifests as a giant grey alien head and neck, probably the first time this exact type of alien has been depicted in Magic the Gathering, gazing serenely over the empty bed in the middle of a bedroom that may or may not also be entirely a part of the entity. And this time, the collected human souls are represented by little white heads dangling from strands inside the alien's huge black eyes, easily taken for shines or reflections at a distance. This might be one of the creepiest visuals I've seen from this game in a while, kind of like an illustration Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark would have used if it also touched on alien abductions.
Some might think this entity is drawing its form more from our "modern culture" than other Magic The Gathering beings, much like the dentistry imagery of the first Fear we looked at, but whether or not "greys" literally exist in Magic's continuity, there's an old theory that they're just a universal way our subconscious simplifies the human form, a theory some feel is supported by the fact that two large, black circles on a white or grey surface is evidently enough for a human infant to recognize as "a face." Whether there's much veracity to this or it's new-age quack psychology is debatable, because it certainly makes a lot of sense on paper, and yet, nothing quite like the alien greys can be found in human culture prior to the earliest UFO Abduction stories in only the 70's. It's still a theory I really like as a worldbuilding concept, though, and that maybe similar abduction nightmares could independently evolve in any universe or multiverse with humans and humanoids in it.
There's even something unwholesome about the symmetry of those two little identical nightstands, each with the same little green lamp, and then you have two chairs floating around weightlessly and two tall wooden cabinets adorned with the same flapping fabric curtains. There's also symbolic imagery throughout this illustration we'll talk about later.
The fact that this is a white card is really cool, too. White has increasingly had its own share of scary freaky entities over the last few years, as the designers and writers evolved beyond the notion that it's necessarily "good" magic. It's simply associated with law, order and civilization, is the thing, which obviously extends to a whole lot of not so good, not so pleasant things.
I would have almost expected "alien abduction" to be filed under blue, which has themes revolving around the mind, science, and control of others. If you're new to this setting and you just thought that sounds like it overlaps into white's themes, yes! But also...no! Each color has some overlap and middle ground with another, forming more of a smooth spectrum of themes that manifest in different ways. Blue is about control, but it's a more "renegade" kind of control; a blue-mana villain would be like a mad scientist wielding messed up alchemy and magic to create enslaved mutants. White is about law and order, but it's more at the conformist and societal level, so a white villain is more like a fanatical religious leader or a corrupt emperor in charge of a whole army that believes they're all doing what's right.
So, when you're abducted by aliens, what's happening exactly? It seems like we're being subjected to weird and deranged experiments from our perspective, but if this is just what those aliens do, then that's just a part of their society; it's something they believe they have the right to impose on what they probably consider to be lesser beings. Heck, in terms of both Magic the Gathering logic and real world history...that's as "white" as British colonialism!
