Nightmare Fuel / Paranatural

"DIE WITH US BROTHER"

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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General

• If you mouse over the banner of the site, which looks like Max's Scrapdragon, it'll look right back at you!
• If you think about it, the fact that a spirit or a ghost could be watching you at any moment means that privacy is pretty much nonexistent. Made even truer for the people who can see spirits and ghosts, and even worse for those that value their personal space, as most spirits seem to have No Sense of Personal Space.

Chapter 1: The Activity Club and the New Kid

Chapter 2: Max and the Midnight Visitor

• The Racist Whale Frog's power involves bringing reflections to life. Chapter 2, page 24 has him using it on his own reflection in PJ's eyes.

Chapter 3: Max, Isaac and the Secret Shortcut

• Page 39 of chapter 3 reveals that Max may be both possessed and a tool-wielder. Thus far, the other unknown spirit has stayed in hiding, and hasn't noticeably shown up since, either. It's just there.

Chapter 4: The Activity Club and the Ghost Train

• The pixhell hounds shed their skin as they fight. What started out as cute little faceless black cat-dog creatures soon look like the musculature system of a face with another eyeless face on the end, as seen here.
• Boss Leader tends to be...unsettling every once in a while.
• Chapter 4, page 148 gives us this wonderful little image in the last panel. It's the pixhell hounds that Isabel fused together and threw off the train. Sweet dreams, kids.
  • Wanna know what they're saying? Because it sure the hell ain't pretty!
    "DIE WITH US BROTHER"
• Eightfold is now stuck underground unable to do anything for effectively eternity. Slightly mitigated with the knowledge that she could lure smaller spirits and ghosts to the book to eat, and that she wouldn't need much energy to escape given her size and power level, but she's still encased miles underground in solid rock with an unknown level of sensory deprivation.
• Turns out Lucifer isn't Spender's only spirit, as activating Spirit Fusion almost lets out Cthumbra/ the Noctopus, a shadow spirit Spender's actively been trapping within himself. Fridge Horror sets in when its first act upon attempting release is to encase Isabel and Max in shadow tendrils, given one of its powers is to create holes out of shadows.

Chapter 5: The Activity Club and the Insidious Infiltrator

• Hijack's possession of Jeff has turned the kid into a fucking monster. He marks his presence by throwing a hitball so hard it leaves a crater in the bleachers. Said throw was directed right at Max (and Johnny directly behind him) and would've probably caved his head in if he hadn't ducked. Another throw later on, marked at Johnny specifically this time, is thrown just as fast and Johnny's only spared by Dimitri's intervention. Later on Jeff develops massive veins all over his body and another throw of his (this one aimed specifically at Johnny with the assumption that Max will dodge out of the way again) gives Max a broken arm.
• Lucifer can be a little temperamental when impatient.
• Whatever the hell the spirit possessing Spender is. The fact that we know almost nothing about it just makes it worse, along with Spender being visibly terrified of it. Being able to see its tentacle... things in the background of every scene with Lucifer does not help.
  • This is not helped by the fact that apparently, not even Spender and Lucifer know what the hell that thing is, beyond powerful and dangerous. Getting a good look at it's face...thing also doesn't help.
• Consider the hitball match from the non-spectral students' point of view: the match is down to a few key, dangerous players, the coach isn't waking up to stop it, and one kid is throwing balls hard enough to break structures. Had the match gone on long enough it seems unlikely that no one would have gotten out without at least one student getting seriously hurt.
  • Jeff's take on what happened is just as bad. He starts the day by high-fiving the new kid he admires, which gets him targeted by the roving gang of bullies that go on about "floating people". After they concede that he doesn't know anything, they leave him alone, which winds up making Jeff another target, this time to a vengeful spirit that's mad about the bullying. Said spirit uses Jeff's body to go on a rampage during a hitball match where it attempts to seriously maim its opponents and winds up succeeding in breaking an unrelated kid's arm and ripping another student's arms off. Jeff only regains consciousness after the hitball match when the spirit gets beaten out of him, just in time to see the other students blame him for what happened before getting repossessed and taken to the principal's office. The poor kid has to deal with the fallout of not only most of the student body judging him for actions he doesn't remember committing but also the realization that somehow while he was unconscious he broke the arm of the new kid he admires so much.
  • By the time the match actually ends, the bleachers have a crater in them, a kid's arms have been torn clean off and another kid is crying on the field in serious pain from a broken arm.
• Dimitri's face morphs around a punch. Both Hijack and Max are freaked out.
• The entirety of Dave's existence and presence is just eerie and at first glance very out of context for this comic. Apart from his intimidating, pale-faced physique, there is the fact that he can, on a whim, bend the very fabric of both the Spirit World and the comic panels. Adding to that comes a face that whiplashes between chipper smiles and awful, joker-like contorted grimaces and apparently the tendency to combinine aforementioned spirit world manipulation with tango-like dance. That, and his constant Slasher Smile as he goes after Hijack (a THREE YEAR OLD, CHILD-LIKE spirit) just make him stand out from the rest of the comic cast in an utterly nightmarish way.
  • Even more so now that he's revealed himself to be a Vampire.
    Hijack: But my power... I can control anyone! People, animals -
    Dave: Wow! Anyone? Any living thing? Any LIVING thing? Ho ho, well... THERE'S YOUR PROBLEM.
  • When Dave's son shows up to deal with the problem himself and revokes Dave's permission to be in the school as a way to get himself alone with the spirit, Dave has no problem invoking a similar "vampire rule" to force him to slice Hijack in half. Poor Cody can be forced to do anything his dad wants against his will purely on a whim.

Chapter 6: Stephen and the Suspension of Disbelief

• Ritz Price-Lee shows off a chilling Lack of Empathy from her first appearance. Her Establishing Character Moment is to kick a dog into a concrete pillar and to insult Stephen when he calls her out on this behavior. She justifies this action by saying that the dog deserves it not because the action is fun for her, but because the dog is poor and needs to get a job. There's also this exchange, where Ritz is perfectly willing to let a 12-year old child get ambushed by high schoolers:
  Stephen: DON'T LOOK DOWN ON ME!! I can take high schoolers no PROBLEM!
  Ritz: Oh yeah? ...How many?
  (Cue Oh, Crap! from Stephen as he realizes he's about to be ambushed)
• Stephen returns the dog to someone who appears to be its owner..only to realize from the poster he examines later and the board full of lost dog posters that all of the lost dogs are being redirected to the "owner" he gave the dog he found to, for unknown purposes, as the phone numbers to call the other lost dog owners have been taped over with the number he had dialed for giving the dog he found back.

Chapter 7: Mr. Spender and the Activity Club

• Ed's Missing Mom has been trapped somewhere where she is almost unable to sleep, and cannot be contacted in the dreamworld in order to keep something at bay before it wakes up, having been trapped not long after Ed was born, leaving him in the care of Isabel's parents and unable to even recognize her after three years. She mentions how time passes differently for her, and as far as she knows, she could've been trapped for centuries. Her dialogue also implies that her husband is in a similar scenario, and has already gone off the deep end.
  • And even then, Dr. Burger seems to be slipping, as she calls Mayview "Clayview."
• A giant, amorphous humanoid...ish figure attacks a young Mina, Mr. Spender, and infant Ed, trying to literally rip through the fabric of the Consortium. Agent Walker quickly surrounds the group with a noise-cancelling shield, protecting them just in time as the creature begins to yell, "LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME."
  • Rick's reaction to being attacked by it has some disturbing implications. It seems to trigger a brief flashback of him being attacked by a shadowy creature in the lake (most likely the spirit that's now possessing him), and the memory has him visibly terrified, freezing up and shaking in fear. He doesn't snap out of it until Ed starts crying.
• We finally get to see Spender's eyes. They are completely black. And they seem to leak a black liquid as well. His Sunglasses at Night look has been a necesity all along.
• Spender had to watch baby Ed disintegrate into sand in his arms. Judging by his expression, he's not having a good time.
• The West Hill Horror finally appears. Words f a i l e d . .

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