The Cold Boy Thoughts

The Cold Boy is a boy who is cold. He's the Fear representation of isolation, and he goes after people who are currently isolating themselves. He makes sure they're as cold and isolated as possible. I have trouble writing about him.

Honestly, I just.. don't get how a little boy who's always too cold is supposed to represent the fear of isolation. Now, The Wooden Girl represents the fear of abuse and control, as she's a marionette, and marionettes are obviously something you control. The slender man is the fear of strangers and, arguably, trees. The slender man is a faceless man in a business suit; you can't get more "stranger" than that. The Archangel-- okay, I have problems with The Archangel, as it is, but I'll get to him later. The Blind Man is an old blind man representing the fear of.. memory loss. And old guys lose their memory a lot, I guess! I'll get to him later as well. EAT is.. a lot of things, and I'm still working on her, but it can be seen as the fear of drowning in your obsessions, and EAT is water, so.. yeah. The Dying Man, I actually fully get him, as vague as he is. He represents a very vague concept, the fear of death, the fear of being abused, the.. well, there's some overlap with The Wooden Girl, but this is a different facet of being abused. The Wooden Girl is the fear of the abuser; The Dying Man is the abused's fear of themselves.

My point is that some Fears are easier to write than others because they represent their concept very well. A little boy who's always too cold seems more to me like a fear of commitment, a fear of strange little boys on the street.

I had an idea last night, actually, for an interpretation of The Cold Boy. Basically, mix him with The Quiet. No more cold little boy, instead give a foreboding sense of sheer nothing. And you just know that, with this nothing, there will be complete isolation. Maybe have a nursery rhyme motif of foreshadowing the oncoming storm of nothing.

Old King Cole was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he.
So he called for his pipe,
And he called for his bowl,
And he called for his fiddlers three.


Now yes, that isn't exactly foreshadowing pure nothingness, but it'd be symbolic. This is the fear of isolation, not the fear of nothing. The fear of isolation would be represented by absolute nothing. And then all you'd need to do is shift the focus from "EVERYTHING TO NOTHING" to "Concentrated bursts of nothing that will eat individual people up and isolate them from everything."

Hell, The Empty City could easily cover this.