OOC Info
Player: nick
Contact: nicknacked
Age Confirmation: 18+
Other Characters: n/a

IC Info
Character: Jeremy "Jerry" Pascal
Canon: Tales from the Gas Station
Canon Point: Right before book 3 ends, when he falls and hits his head on the way down, it kills him.
Age: 30
History:

Little is known about Jerry's past. What we do know is that he grew up in an obscenely wealthy family and went to a prestigious college with his brother. There's something implied to have happened that involves a missing person, though Jerry doesn't ever explain what.

Eventually, he runs away from home and somewhere along the line joins up with the Mathmetists, a cult that refuses to describe itself as such. Jerry stays with them for a time and follows along with their ideals, even tries (and fails) on multiple occasions to recruit Jack.

Early on in the series, the Mathmetists send Jerry out on a "vision quest" and complete "ascension" without him. This devastates Jerry to the point where he spends days sobbing in the storage closet of the gas station. He ends up basically living there and, eventually, becoming an employee.

CRAU: n/a

About: Jerry is a deceptive person.


On the surface, Jerry is little more than a doofus who spends all his time getting high/drunk and acting like a complete idiot. It's easy to dismiss him as a shallow pool with no depth to him, and one could hardly blame anyone coming to this conclusion within seconds of meeting him. He's loud, obnoxious, and makes the most inappropriate comments in the direst of situations. When his best friend Jack is on the verge of having a breakdown in the pantry, Jerry cuts in with something like, "I hear you dude but I just farted so let's get out of here." He comes off as someone who doesn't think anything through before he acts or speaks. Oftentimes his plan involves a reckless charge at a bad guy — especially concerning when sometimes the bad guys are some form of creepy supernatural being. Hell, he straight up slaps a god in the face.

But if we look deeper into the example above, it's actually a moment in which Jerry did think things through. Coming back to Jack and his nervous breakdown, Jerry sits quietly and listens to him ramble in a panic before he makes his comment. A comment that was a clever and strategical method of calming his friend down. When he says, "I hear you", it's his way of letting Jack know that he's listening and validating his concerns, while also ushering him out of the confines of the pantry and getting Jack to take a moment to calm down, and it works. He’s oddly attentive to those around him despite putting on airs of being a clueless idiot, and his method of helping his friends through tough times can be very subtle. As it turns out, he thinks quite often, he just happens to be an effective fast thinker. Mostly. Sometimes his plans seem incredibly stupid, but he manages to pull them off flawlessly, like being caught in the house of a killer and convincing the two men who found them that Jack — this spindly looking dude with one leg — was a brute enforcer and that Jerry was somehow their boss. He flat out shamed the men and made them feel like shit. His plans aren't always that level of batshit, though. Sometimes his fast thinking is as simple as tricking a killer into stepping on a fire ant hill to avoid getting murdered behind the gas station.

That brings us to Jerry's surprising complexity and layered way of thinking. According to Jerry, he and his former cultist friends would often discuss philosophy over pancakes. Speaking of, Jerry strictly follows a code leftover from the Mathmetists that he clearly abides by even after they leave him. He operates under the belief that humankind exists for the sole purpose of increasing happiness and decreasing suffering. A "decent" life decreases more suffering than it decreases happiness. His view of what constitutes a "bad" person is someone who increases more suffering than they do happiness. However, the Mathmetists have concluded that doing so is impossible and pointless and that the only way to decrease enough suffering in the world is to...blow it up. Literally, end the world with a bomb, and bam! No more suffering. So while this philosophy does encourage Jerry to help out even to his own detriment, it also ultimately leads him to the destruction of the world, a belief that even by the end of the third book he hasn't shown to give up on...

There's also the fact that Jerry has genuine academic intelligence. His mind is definitely weird and incomprehensible most times, but he has unexpected flashes of genius throughout the series. He quotes Immanuel Kant when trying to prove his point to Jack on why he absolutely has to do something about the weird radio telling the future and how he can't just let it go knowing that it could help people. Not to mention turning drink coolers into a big radio antenna for a radio he built himself out of a Walkman, tuning it to a frequency no other radio was able to pick up. He also manages to mathematically disprove death...at a funeral...while drunk out of his mind, all because he had trouble coping with the loss of a friend.

Speaking of friends, Jerry’s loyalty knows no limits. Literally. The best example to use as a demonstration of this fact is his loyalty to Jack. When Jack informs Jerry that they’re going to have to decapitate a celebrity, before he can even explain his reasoning (the fact that said celebrity was an impostor), Jerry immediately goes along with it and asks how they’re going to do it. Even Jack expresses surprise at how Jerry hadn’t even questioned him. After the disappearance of another close friend Jerry was convinced that she was still alive, becoming obsessed with finding her to the point where he deteriorated and stopped looking after himself altogether. He even opts to search for Jack in a murder mansion where its residents died repeatedly in horrific ways, despite the warnings from the others that they shouldn’t split up. Then there is the more blatant show of friendship like literally taking a bullet for a friend. Literally. He doesn’t hesitate to throw himself in the line of fire for Jack, and this is back when he didn't even think Jack liked him very much. Jerry is someone who hates being alone and so he makes friends with literally anyone so long as they aren't a completely irredeemable asshole — though we all know his criteria for such is skewed and questionable. A man named Travis attacked Jerry and Jack, thinking they were responsible for someone's death, and nearly killed them, yet it comes up later that when Travis apologized he forgave him and even went back to talking to him like none of it ever happened (much to Jack's dismay).

Jerry's self destructive streak is also a multifaceted thing. For one thing, he quite literally throws himself into dangerous situations without a single care in the world and zero fear of death. But considering his end goal as a Mathmetist, and his sadness over missing the mass suicide of his fellow cultists, that isn’t much of a shocker. Combine that with his obsessive need to help and play hero and you have a man who has come far too close to death far too many times with barely any reaction to the fact. But as dangerous as that is, his addictive personality is probably even worse. Jerry seems unbothered by generally everything but that’s what happens when you bottle things up and cope in unhealthy ways. Take his drinking for example, and his chain smoking, and then add constant drug use to the list. When you show up at the funeral of one of your closest friends drunk off your ass, it’s safe to call it a “problem”. But his addiction doesn’t stop at your usual vices either. The future telling radio above became an addiction on its own as Jerry would listen to it all day and night, taking notes of the things it would say and the deaths it would predict. Jack tries on numerous occasions to get Jerry to give it up but Jerry became extremely resistant. Jack tried bargaining with him as well as destroying the radio, but Jerry either lies or flat out rebuilds the damn thing. During his stint listening to the radio, he did little else, taking to staying at the former cultist compound and not even bothering to get dressed most days, or go into work, barely eating and sleeping to listen to the radio for more prophetic disasters.


Skills and Abilities:

Jerry is a “normal” human, only as far as not having any powers, unless you happen to think his insane luck is supernatural. That being said, in canon Jerry makes it apparent that he has an impressive understanding of tech-related matters from computers to anything mechanical. He also has frighteningly extensive knowledge of bombs and bomb making. He’s also shown to be fairly strong for a chain smoker, carrying game systems, food, and a small television to the gas station without a car and in one damn trip.


Why does your character need to be redeemed?

The fact of the matter is, Jerry thinks destroying mankind is the key to happiness. His philosophy on life seems almost admirable when you first hear the spiel, but knowing this about it/him, it has the potential to be incredibly dangerous, and not just because he wants to blow everything up, but the smaller actions day to day could be affected too. He weighs every situation to determine if it would increase happiness or decrease suffering, and there's no telling where that will lead at any given moment.

He also steals. A lot. From his own job. He gets lost in his vices; drinking, smoking, doing every drug you can think of, and acts recklessly as a result. That is, more reckless than usual. In fact, he drove to the funeral while drunk. There's also the fact that he would decapitate a celebrity just because his best friend says it needs to be done, asking zero questions. At some point, Jerry admits he has a "hard on for homicide" and that is...especially troubling to hear from someone like him. There's also the matter of a very easily killed man named Keifer. Now, this man basically dies if you look at him funny, and then he comes back and does it again. Point is, after Jerry's turn of accidentally murdering him...he immediately tries to cover it up.

Basically, Jerry needs to get that destroying the world stuff out of his head and stop viewing the world through a Mathmetist lens. His morals are skewed and stretched to a point where he believes he's in the right about that and he needs to know that he isn't, and that in order to do good with his life he has to...you know...not blow it up. He's frustratingly stubborn and lies compulsively, so I would like for his arc to be a sloooow burn as his way of thinking is constantly challenged in a way that he can't ignore it.

Charges:
* Conspiracy to commit genocide
* Stealing
* Reckless endangerment
* Murder
* Concealing a murder
* Drug using and distributing
* Drugging another person
* Making bombs
* Breaking and entering
* Driving while intoxicated/under the influence
* Vandalism
* Repeated cult recruitment attempts
* Public nuisance

Pick and Choose:

– What would you consider essential to their redemption?

So, he operates under a totally different reality from everyone else. He basically ran away from home when he was younger and right into the arms of a cult, so he hasn't actually had anything resembling a normal relationship...ever. His parents are a source of fear for him, as Jack points out that he had never seen Jerry look scared before until they were mentioned, and while we have zero information on them (aside from the fact that they are incredibly wealthy and powerful), it's a safe assumption that his home life was anything but normal and healthy. Then there are the Mathmetists, who took him in when he was likely very lost and confused and shaped his whole worldview. His friends at the gas station, like Jack, aren't exactly the most normal of relationships either. I think in order for Jerry to undo his damaged way of thinking he needs to be exposed to a life that isn't fraught with cultist brainwashing and really weird shit that reinforces his lifestyle. Jack is a good guy who wants what's best for Jerry, but given Jack's own warped view on reality, and the fact that he knows little about the guy before he started working on the gas station and doesn't pry, getting down to the nitty gritty of Jerry to fix his major problems isn't feasible for him at the moment. Jerry needs people to react appropriately to him and his idea of "happiness", to challenge him and make him face said challenges every day until he starts to realize he's actually pretty fucked up.

Graduation: Obviously, he would stop trying to find ways to blow up the world. Once he realizes that isn't an ideal way to eradicate suffering, and that it isn't pointless to try and raise happiness, he can ditch the genocide and actually focus on helping and making people happy. With this shift in his thought process, he would view everything differently, and try to better himself by kicking his reckless behavior.

Sample:

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