Since it's October, let's discuss: What things in Sentinels do you find scary/creepy/disturbing/etc.?

As the topic says. What bits of Sentinels artwork, music, and/or lore really freak you out and/or give you nightmares (hopefully not ones you project all over the place tho)?

The artwork from Writhe’s Void Guard deck we’ve seen is certainly creepy and moreso once people see his full deck. 

The Dreamer's theme music in the video game.

Dark Watch Mister Fixer

Spite's Villain theme in the video game... a little bit less so when you see the name, but still.

The Void. The more we learn about it, the more it freaks me out.

Adam eats toast with Void jelly so it can’t be that bad…

Skinwalker Gloomweaver's theme in the video game certainly qualifies.

Yeah, seriously. It's gone from being this mysterious place that people sometimes use for a good purpose and sometimes contains weird spirit things, to being something that's sometimes a freakish afterlife, can spawn weird powerful beings in actual reality, can kill you slowly if you get even a bit of it on you when you're not prepared for it, and can indeed erode and mess up entire planets if it gets loose.

It actually kind of makes you nervous that Anthony still doesn't actually really entirely know what he's doing, particularly in the Tactics timeline.

(Like instead of it being a personal sacrifice like magic is, the Void seems to be more like "Oh BTW you can completely accidentally sacrifice everything else if you don't use it properly, no pressure or anything.")

I love how in the Infernal Relics Listening Party, Jean-Marc said even he can't stand to listen to it any more.

Spite is legit scary to me. The fact that he's a character who runs on very real Adult Fears and behaviors that are actually possible weirdly makes him more frightening than some characters which have larger carnage scope but are more fantastical.

And I know we joke about how creepy Biomancer is, but, like, he really is pretty dang creepy. (Like the connotation of the term "fleshchildren", for starters. Are they his soldiers, minions, lackeys, or even servants? No, they're his "children".) And Mass Rebirth and Carbon Adept are some of the freakiest artworks in the game, IMHO.

*shudders* the Location of Megalopolis. that place just creeps me right on out!

Mechanically there's cards that BOTH stop card plays and stop power useage, and when both pop out (possibly through some weird shenanigans of villain/hero) it just plain makes for a bad time.

Thematically it's a bustling, bright, cheery city that seems to keep it's positive disposition through all the various villainous intrusions for the day-to-day living. Massive Traffic Jams that can stop commuters, the Mono-rail chugging along up until WHOOPS! there's a part of the railway that's out! best start hoping the heros notice and save everyone here. The Police TRY, at least they're not crooked like those found in Rook City, and probably are the first to respond, but it won't take too long before they get knocked out. just being a random citizen int hat place must be TERRIFYING! and i completely understand that life must go on. But how well can one survive in a city, questioning whether this is the day some maniac with a world-ending laser finally decides to flip the switch, or if that "Parade" noone knew about is actually a cult with undead, going through the city tearing it apart. the whole place sets me on higher edge than any other environment, and i nervously glace towards that deck, wondering what sort of crap shenanigans are going to happen in this "happy and bustling city."

At least with places like Rook City, you KNOW it's going to be nasty.

Just about everything in the Tactics universe.  Most of what I learn about the heroes and villains makes me more invested in playing with/against them in the card game and seeing what happens to them in the RPG, but the Tactics setting is just awful and depressing.  The fates of Tachyon, Dr. Medico, Writhe, Chrono-Ranger, KNYFE, Akash'Darsha, Visionary, even Argent Adept to a lesser extent, and possibly Haka though it hasn't been fully revealed yet... I just don't want to have anything to do with any of it.  Not "creepy" per se, but it's the nightmare scenario and I wish C&A hadn't decided to take it in that direction.

Mark it up to young writers trying to be 'edgy' and 'dark and gritty' in comics.

Yeah, the Tactics timeline is starting to look like all the reasons I never got into Ultimate Marvel (except Ultimate Spider-Man, which seemed to still understand that comics could be fun and goofy).

While I can see your point of view, I feel like the Tactics universe is starting to get a bad rap for simply following certain plot elements to a potentially logical conclusion.

For instance, Visionary.  We're told from her inception–from her earliest bio at the start of the SotM game–that she's living on borrowed time and that the burst blood vessel in her brain will kill her.  Yes, it sucks to have a character whom readers care about die, but it's not like we weren't warned about this from our first introduction to her.  

Tachyon works similarly in my eyes–we see a character who is really broken and at the edges of her power by the end of the card game, who's left an incredibly powerful foe in her wake who has reason to hunt Tachyon down and take advantage of her relative weakness.  This one was particularly sore for me, given Tachyon's status as a lead LGBTQ hero, but within the context of the story, it makes sense… (I just kind of wish that, if it had to be a Freedom 5 member, it was Wraith or Bunker, instead…)

I won't attempt to make the argument that the Tactics timeline isn't the darker of the two paths, but every story element that's there–every death, every conflict–makes sense within the context of the overall story being told.  I do wish, however, that some of those consequences echoed deeper into the rpg…but, then again, we haven't seen what plot elements the rpg holds.

And then they blew it up.

Yeah, I'm with Warlock, the Tactics timeline sucks, but none of it's really been pulled out of anyone's backside either. Writhe gives into something that's been corrupting him all along, Argent Adept is basically just taking his already existing incorrect approach to his job up to eleven, Akash runs into the logical consequence of trying to recuperate in the earth when there's OblivAeon shards everywhere, Chrono is what happens to a lawman when his law abandons him, etc.

It also makes sense that if you make a wargame, you need a setting that lends itself to constant conflict and resource gathering.

The RPG's not exactly lacking in horrifying or creepy things, though. Like Ammit being in charge of watching the underworld? Pretty darn creepy.

Madam Mittermeyers Fantastical Festival of Connundrums and Curiosities(Yeah! First Try!)

Like, carnivals and clowns were bad enough already what with my uncle having a clown movie i wasn't warned about beforehand at a young age... Then they dialed it up even more with Zombie horses on teh carosel and all kinds of other stuff... just... No. All of my No.

Oh, I agree that the Tactics timeline certainly makes sense.  Nothing in there violates the verisimilitude of the setting. It's just not the story I want to hear.  I gave up on Game of Thrones for the same reason (I was an early adopter, read the first three books when that's all there was, so I didn't know in advance how depressing it was going to be).  I want my superheroes to be super heroes.  They can have their darker moments, and one or two dramatic deaths that push the story forward are fine (Visionary, for instance--that was coming for a long time and she never really belonged in the core universe anyway), but the direction Tactics took is incompatible with my ability to enjoy it.  It's not "wrong," it's just not for me.

Seconding this, because I avoid Game of Thrones for the same reason. Read the first book, and while it's well written and by all accounts the HBO series is well made, it's just plain not a story or a world I want to read about. I like being pretty sure the heroes are going to get through the book. 

Yeah, of the deliberately-creepy elements, Madame Mittermeier's wins, with the Dreamer a runner-up for me. A good chunk of the Southwest Sentinels/Void Guard, too, especially in their "being manipulated/possessed" elements (Judge Mental, OblivAeon Shards...); anything that messes with one's perception of reality, actual reality, or state of mind definitely twigs all the "This is a special form of EVIL" receptors I have.

Wager Master fits into that category, too; not necessarily how he generally appears, but, well, the comparison to, ahem, Mister Shmyxl...you know who I mean...and the "Whatever Happened" story (you probably know the one) where he goes evil and is thus truly terrifying...*shudder*

What he did to the Crackjaw Crew is basically a horror story out of Fair Folk lore as it is.

A rule I more often than not keep for my forays into comics and games and the like: Reality is scary and makes me feel crappy enough, I don't need that in my fiction.

This isn't directed at anything in particular in this thread(I'm quite excited for Prime War and the like), just a general thought that I have. It's not like I can't stomach a sad story or anything, I just prefer my limited free-time to make me feel good.

Megalopolis is just Rook City with its makeup on… and probably fewer Megacorps.

Mass Rebirth's art, really just Biomancer in general freaks me out! In a good way mind you. Also unrelated to Sentinels, Phantom Cosmonauts Theme from the Lazer Ryderz soundtrack.

Jean-Marc's theme for Madame Mittermeier's is a thing of dark, freaky beauty as well.

Spite terrifies me. My dad absolutely refuses to aknowledge his existence (he was reading the villain bios aloud and he skipped over spite so I said he skipped one and he denied it) and me and my family never play against him. He's even worse than the worse incarnations of the joker.

in general I'd have to say that visionary and dark visionary are more than a little scary. Either one of them could destroy the world if they felt like it.

madame mittermires freaks me out quite a bit because it's a creepy pocket dimension and no one knows where it came from or where Madame mittermire came from.

Also the "Rise with the Dawn" or whatever it's called card in citizen dawns deck is pretty damn creepy. What even is that giant head? Is it a citizen? Why is it coming out of the ground? *shudder*

Biomancer is the worst, for me. Not only because he's gross, not only because we don't know what his goals are, but because at any time, anyone you know could reveal themselves as a fleshchild by just attacking you - or, worse, keep working against you in secret while pretending to be your friend. It's all the worst bits of Miss Information turned up to maximum.

Expatriatte' s backstory is just creepy to me. As the failed messiah of a cult, she reminds me of Ricky Rodriguez. Also lets not forget that her mother's relationship with her father was effed up from day one.

This is my personal struggle, and I think it might be somewhat tied to length of story. I personally get much more of a catharsis and excitement from characters that overcome awful situations, and the deeper and darker, oftentimes(but not always) the better.

It's hard to do that in a short(or no) story format without coming off as underwhelming, as it often has too shallow of an obstacle, or doesn't get far enough out of the misery to feel "complete". This is(I think) where the tactics timeline is. Since all we've been given is these quick glimpses of where the characters are at a certain point in time, it's too easy to conclude that's the "end" of the story, and thus write it off as irrevocably terrible. I can only hope that tactics gets enough lore behind it to tell the story of where these characters go from there, as I think the characters can grow through adversity and loss.

If these games get to the point that the story can be pieced together like the SotM games did, I'm sure that the story that emerges will be good.

Freedom six absolute zero is kind of creepy.

Spite's flip side, especially in the digital game. Never did like Akira. D:

Madame Mittermeier's is definitely up there. The description of it in that episode was good SCP fuel.

Also Biomancer's incap art in the digital game. Goddang!

Sentinels has a lot if fridge horror. Especially with the visionary.

If we're going the fridge horror route, honestly the fact that Anthony could have killed himself entirely by accident just by innocently picking the wrong instrument to mess with is still pretty freaky to me.

I'm utterly shocked no one has mentioned Dark Watch Mr. Fixer yet, that enitre scenario is just creepy and WRONGon a level I've rarely seen anywhere else.

Spite definetly fits the bill as well, as people have pointed out. Now that we know more about the Seer he's jumped up the creep list. The ability to manipulate emotions given to him by the spirit of Domination. Yeah, that has some incredibly bad conotations that I know Sentinel comics probably didn't touch with a ten foot pole, but they are there.

The Gene-Bound are pretty horrific, though I've done a good job of making myself forget about what all they entailed.

Honestly, I have a pretty high tolerance for creepy. I've read the wed novel Worm by Wildblow after all, and there is stuff in that which makes all fo this pale in comparison.

Still, a lot of darkness and pain in the world of Sentinel Comics if you know where to look

FWIW, DW Fixer was mentioned in post #4.

So he was, how did I miss that?

I liked how even Christopher and Adam admitted that was a little over the top in the wrongness category, once they stopped to think about it.

I more actively like creepy stuff. I once had a friend who tried to troll me with suggesting creepy/weird songs and videos until she found out I actually liked that sort of stuff, then she just started suggesting them unironically.

Absolute Zero is terrifying to me.

He's immortal.  His powers don't really leave room for him to live or die in any normal way.  He cannot touch the world without destroying it, and he should be capable of surviving the heat death of the universe.

Forever isolated from human touch is bad enough, but AZ can't even enjoy nature or any normal living thing.  He's an abomination.

Not creepy per se, but Equity is really cool. I’ll definitely be using him as a villain in my Pathfinder campaign.

There's an astonishing number of people in the Sentinels universe who qualify as "really nice people with really wack powers".

And the talk of AZ and Fixer and the thread that was started discussing what counts as "alive" in Sentinels made me realize there's also a lot of people who qualify as literally unnatural in some way. The Sentinelsverse definitely presents regularly creepy challenges to your notion of what qualifies as "life".

Equity is both really creepy and really cool, he's more Slasher Movie than supervillain, what with his unnerving gaze and phasing and unknowable philosophy. I think he's probably my favorite mini nemesis, though Hippo is a close second.

Since were talking about mini nemeses I'd like to say that heartbreaker is terrifying. He's like spite 2.0

Heartbreaker is cool.  I like the assassin side and I feel he isn't thuggish about such things (taking out particular targets with skill, not just murdering his way to and through them.). But I could be wrong, as we don't know much more about him other than his past.

Heartbreaker is tragic. :C Tony deserved better, he was trying, dammit.

As for other nemeses... Ruin's kinda creepy looking. He's pretty powerful too, it sounds like, so you wouldn't want to run into him with your squishy mortal body, for sure. Highbrow is way creepy, and I'm sure once her brain-in-a-jar art is released, that will only get worse!

OK, after watching Sentinels Live tonight, Dark Conductor Argent Adept's under-10-hp portrait is officially going to give me nightmares. Dear heavens.

I saw your reply and was like "wait a minute! I didn't write this!" Then I realized you weren't me. I should get a better avatar.

Gloomweaver's corpse God form is creepy. And the cult of gloom is pretty scary too. But I can't say much because the cult of gloom is a letters page personality.

Oh, I can assure you, it WILL.

Some of the recent talk about creepy and freaky things in Sentinels on the podcast and Starter Kit reminded me of this thread's existence.

The fact that Baron Blade beat Highbrow by shutting her off makes her no less creepy. D:

I may be a bit late for Halloween, but I'm always up for creepy. 

Hope I doesn't come off as bragging, but it's a bit hard to creep me* out in media, at least when it comes to speculative fiction and spooky stuff. I'm a huge fan of horror, monsters and all things dark, and Sentinels plays it all in a lighthearted way (relatively speaking), so things like Biomancer's yucky antics and Gloomweavers gloomweaving end up being more fun than scary. I'll even play games in Mittermeiers Festival despite it's difficulty since I like the atmosphere so much. 

So, when something from the game creeps me out, it's serious. Let's see what counts:

-Spite: Like it was said before, he's the kind of monster that's close enough to reality that he feels worse than the planet-destroying juggernauts (super-drugs and resident evil transformation aside). But what makes it worse are the cards where he's preying on some defenseless person (including children), or the ones where's hes outright murdering people in front of others. Innocent bystander is the worst, showing how you could just be taking care of your business and then BAREHANDED BLOODY MURDER BY SERIAL KILLER (and you're next). 

Collateral Damage, and that bit on Letters Page where Spite smashes a hostage's head in front of Wraith are creepy with an extra feeling of helplessness on top. 

-Team Leader's Tachyon incapacitated art. In a super-hero story, where guys get tossed through walls getting to see a main character being defeat by something a mundane as being shot in the leg, with Tachyon even crying in pain while on the ground... That's messed up. 

-The victory screen against Iron Legacy on the video game, where you can see him crying while defeated. I really can't describe why, but this weirds me out so much. 

-About Mittermeir's Festival: Not the cards, not the music or the background screens, but that one part on the Letter's Page where they mention a guy stuck in the Festival, unable to see the passage of time or even notice something wrong while he plays the same game again and again. 

-Final Wasteland: Or, to be specific, the card "Unforgiving Wasteland". One of my weaknesses is... How can we call it? "Predator horror" maybe? That horrifying sense of being hunted by some bestial stalker and being defenseless against it. It's a bit hard to pull, since it needs more than a huge monster full of teeth. But some guy lost in the middle of a desert, surrounded by darkness and hungry eyes? That works for me.  

* Note that I'm a huge coward in every other situation. Last month scaled up a wall in fear of something small coming from the shadows... It was a baby opossum.