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ataraxion
P L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Contact Information: See here.
Characters Played at Ataraxion: Currently, none; formerly, Dirk Strider
C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: John "Cheese"
Canon: John Dies at the End
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: Epilogue of "This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It"
Number: 012 or RNG if taken
Setting:
History:
Personality:
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
Inventory:
Appearance:
Age: 25 years old.
AU Clarification: N/A
S A M P L E S
Log Sample:
Comms Sample:
Contact Information: See here.
Characters Played at Ataraxion: Currently, none; formerly, Dirk Strider
C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: John "Cheese"
Canon: John Dies at the End
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: Epilogue of "This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It"
Number: 012 or RNG if taken
Setting:
The series centers on a couple hell-raising incidents that take place in an undisclosed town in the Midwestern United States on our very own Earth somewhere from 2000-ish to present-day. Other incidents include what can be described as serious business road trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, and a trip to a parallel earth that John dubbed as "Shit Narnia". There's also an instance when John and Dave play basketball in what appears to be an unnamed post-apocalyptic parallel earth for a few hours, only to find that nearly no time has passed on their own home earth.
History:
There are a few very important things to get out of the way before presenting to you the history section. First and foremost, please understand that this entire application is full of spoilers, and that I highly recommend the book even though I literally haven't read one for the sake of entertainment in years because I've all but denounced the reading hobby. For what it's worth, I'm preemptively writing this as a disclaimer to absolve any blame for ruining the book because there are things in this app that, once said, cannot be taken back and might possibly destroy the entire book-reading experience. It's for this reason that I've written a sort of preface summarizing the actual history before presenting it here.
I also think it's important to know that the story is told mainly from David Wong's point of view, and he is an unreliable narrator. It turns out that John is just as unreliable a narrator as Dave is, so what you're basically getting is unreliable narration within unreliable narration. If that makes any sense.
Also, just this one spoiler--John is basically alive and well in a living (as opposed to undead) capacity by the epilogue of "John Dies at the End"; however, the same can't quite be said for him in Chapter 3: Grilling with Morgan Freeman. Seriously, this is something that makes as much sense as it possibly can in the book.
Now, the short and uninteresting version of the whole series is that a drug took John and Dave (no, it's not the other way around). After that, they could see things. Dark things, like the sort of creeping in the corner of your eye that disappears when you look right at it and know that something was and still is there. This might've completely screwed their lives up if only they weren't so messed up to begin with. Each book covers an incident that's somehow related to seeing the things that they see.
Okay, you probably want more detail than that.
For a start, John and Dave met in Mr. Gertz's computer class and have been friends ever since. That was over a decade ago or something.
The whole seeing things deal started in April a few years ago, at this after-party shindig with a Jamaican guy named Robert Marley. He busts out a needle of pitch black stuff he calls 'soy sauce', John and some other people take it, and some people die. John doesn't necessarily die right away, but the things that happen to him afterward aren't exactly chronological.
He somehow winds up in his apartment, calling Dave a bunch of times and fighting a small monster. There's no saying exactly how many times John's called Dave, how many calls Dave's answered, or whether anything John's said is coherent. In spite of a combination of John's pleas for help and warnings not to come, Dave shows up at John's apartment anyway. John tackles him, warns about the danger lurking inside, and dashes madly out the door.
Thinking that John's having a seriously bad trip, Dave insists on taking John to the hospital. They never get there and instead go to a Denny's restaurant, where Dave gets another one of John's earlier phone calls as they're sitting across from one another in a booth. After that weirdness, Dave decides that they have to get to work, and John falls asleep sometime during the ride.
After a detour to return Molly the dog to her owners and work complications including John not waking up, a phone call to a priest, and Dave getting stabbed with remnant soy sauce in a syringe from John's jacket pocket, Detective Lawrence Appleton takes John and Dave to the police station for questioning. During the interrogation, John dies, and chaos ensues. Dave gets another phone call from John, who's calling from an ambulance, asking if he's died, and saying there isn't much time to explain. He urges Dave to leave the police station and head to Robert's trailer home, continuing to instruct him from a bratwurst after Dave's phone dies.
Dave might've burned to death in Robert's trailer if Molly hadn't driven through it in time. Actually, it's John who's driving because he's sharing Molly's body. He explains that they need to get to the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas where an evil-invested guy named Shitload is heading to unleash a literal Hell on earth. But before Dave and Molly-John could make the trip, Shitload finds and captures them. The two wake in a beer truck with three other after-party soy sauce survivors.
They don't arrive in Las Vegas right away because Shitload pulls over to reveal his big bad plans or something. The group discovers that John had overnight FedEx'd a distracting package to their stopover, which buys enough time for Detective Appleton to rescue the soy sauce group. The detective is taking them to the Luxor when his eyeballs explode, and Shitload-like parasites try to infest everyone in the car. Dave shoots and kills one of their infested companions before the group presses onward by stealing a married couple's car and driving to Luxor Hotel.
Once the group arrives at their destination, they sneak into Dr. Marconi's occult conference by going with John's plan to dress up as Elton John, the band. But before they could get past security, Shitload lets himself in, and Hell literally breaks loose. John battles wig monsters with a folding chair and later invents new verses to Camel Holocaust to keep them at bay while Dr. Marconi blesses a fountain of previously holy water. Unfortunately, a wig monster kills another one of the soy sauce friends, and many people tear off their limbs and disappear in the mayhem. Molly wins a quarter million dollars on the slots, and the remaining soy saucers return to Undisclosed.
For the next six months, John carries out the last wishes of the fallen soy sauce alliance. During that time, he catches Dave up with anything taking place after the Las Vegas incident, which Dave has forgotten about completely at least four times. After that, John begins seeing less of Dave, who tries to live a normal life and pretends not to see things. But John sees things and knows that Dave does, too. Because he feels they should be using their abilities, John does whatever he could to force his way into Dave's life. It works, and it isn't long before they become paranormal investigators and develop a fan following.
Nearly a year after the Las Vegas incident, John's uncle Drake who's in the police force contacts him about an unusual case wherein Molly the dog has killed a weather reporter and is literally floating at the crime scene. John and Dave arrive to meet and interrogate Molly's new owner, Krissy. After feeding Molly a TestaMint, she explodes. After investigating a strange sportscast, John and Dave discover that the local sports reporter Danny Wexler is possessed by a dark entity. His fiancee Krissy joins them in a car chase with a man made of cockroaches, and they end up at an abandoned mall. There, they go through a video game-inspired chase and have a stand-off with Wexler. They survive, Wexler and Krissy get married and move away, and Krissy sends Dave a good luck charm.
The following summer, John goes to Dave's house to curse at whoever's watching Dave from his television. Even though John rubs his balls against the screen, the watcher doesn't go away.
After another six months or so, John calls Dave with the case of a missing girl named Amy Sullivan. In keeping with a promise to her deceased brother, John's been watching over her and got a call from Uncle Drake asking him to investigate her unusual disappearance. At the crime scene, John finds Molly the dog, a lamp-fucking jellyfish, and what appears to be a bag of fat with "44.42 kg" written on it. When Dave arrives, they find that Amy has webcams situated in different parts of her house, possibly for security purposes. John's looking for the webcam stills when Dave convinces him to beat up the jellyfish for answers. Then Dave steps out, telling John that he needs to check on his brownies. John continues waling on the jellyfish.
When Dave gets back, John's waiting outside by his Cadillac. Both the jellyfish and bag of fat are nowhere to be found, but Amy's back and seems perfectly hale and healthy. She explains that she'd lost time again, that sometimes she disappears at midnight for varying lengths of time only to reappear in different places and positions without recollection of whatever's happened for the duration of time that's passed. When she refuses to elaborate any further, John convinces her to open up by adding water to a substance that's mistakable for hair gel but gradually transforms into a sharp-toothed monster. After that, Amy reveals the materials that her brother has produced under the influence of the soy sauce. But she denies seeing a jellyfish-looking thing or bag of butcher trimmings. She also declines their offers to help her sift through her webcam stills or stay and stake out for the night.
After checking up on Amy the next morning, John calls Dave to arrange a meeting at "the safe house", a.k.a the Denny's restaurant they always go to. There, he shows Dave a chat transcript that Amy printed out for them. It appears to be a stakeout, Amy and her online friends staying up until the time that she'd normally disappear. During the chat, Amy had taken her dog outside when her friends slowly began to spontaneously join in coordinated praises to Korrok. Then John tells Dave to stake out at Amy's house while he works at the nearby Drain Rooter plant.
John performs his own investigation of suspicious activity before heading to work at the Drain Rooter site. There's a confrontation in which he tells armed guards that he doesn't understand English and begins yelling in Spanish when pretending to have a seizure. Then he supposedly dick-whips the guards before riding away on a stolen horse before checking out a trail of freshly-made truck tracks in snow. Other stuff, involving plant workers armed with submachine guns, a heavy military truck, and what looks like a gorilla riding a giant crab, happens and eventually leads John to the same abandoned mall they'd chased Wexler to over a year ago. Before he could make any more amazing discoveries, he realizes that he's got to get to work.
While working, John explores a couple places cordoned off with yellow police tape. It appears that the gorilla-crab from earlier that was taken to the abandoned mall may have escaped from a hidden room in the Drain Rooter plant. It's hidden in the sense that there may have been a ghost door, one that probably couldn't be seen without soy sauce. Everything seems to link back to the abandoned Undisclosed mall--Robert Marley used to live there, the showdown with Wexler took place there, and now this. When John goes out for his lunch break with the roofing crew that he's working with, he notices Dave, Amy, and Molly out in his truck. He pays them a visit, taking Dave aside to discuss plans to sneak back into the plant by using a ghost door in the abandoned mall.
Later, John and Dave take the soy sauce and get geared up for action. They're pumped to blow Hell out of the water and plan on going down with it, but Amy insists on going with them. John shaves off one side of Molly's fur while Dave turns a super-soaker into a flamethrower. Most importantly, they create a bomb disguised as a doggie treat that Molly promptly eats. They consider chainsawing her open to get it out when Amy convinces them to feed Molly burritos so that she'll just shit it out instead. The group then heads on its merry way to the abandoned mall.
Once again, Dave warns Amy to get out while she can, but they get attacked by monsters while heading through the ghost door. The door closes, cutting Amy off from the group and fueling John and Dave's motivations to take all of Hell down. After a trip through a large room where they're chainsawing, flamethrowing, and shooting at faceless guys in clean-suits, a pale alien guy named Robert North leads them to a black column that transports them to another dimension that John dubs "Shit Narnia". It appears that the residents of Shit Narnia have been awaiting John, Dave, and Molly's arrival; the three are treated as honored guests.
Their host explains that Shit Narnia is a parallel earth that splits off in the earth year 1864, when a genius beastiologist survives the Civil War and later goes on to create an all-knowing sentient computer. Their world becomes all but completely submissive to the beast-computer entity known as Korrok, and the residents deem David Wong worthy enough to become one with Korrok and absorbed into his knowledge. John and Dave reject this special honor and try to fight back when their host infests Amy with Shitload-type creatures. Robert North rescues them after Molly shits the bomb out and the place is going to blow when he shoots Amy and returns her newly-killed body to Shit Narnia. Before Dave could kill North, he turns into a jellyfish.
John and Dave start walking from Amy's house back to the abandoned mall where Dave left his truck, but some Fred Derse-like dude picks them up and brings them to Dave's house, where Amy is waiting by his toolshed. They unravel the tarp on what appears to be a dead body, revealing a dead David Wong. While Dave sits in shock and realizes that he's a monster-replica, John pulls Amy aside to remind her that monster-Dave has been with them this whole time and hasn't done anything bad to her. He instructs her to hide Dave's meds and prevent him from committing suicide. The two eventually become engaged.
In summer, while peeing off a water tower a couple years later, John and Dave obtain a sealed green suitcase-like box from an armored vehicle driven by G.I. Joe figurines. Like most paranormal trophies obtained from their conquests, they hide it in Dave's toolshed. The following November, John gets a call from Dave about a squirrel-sized insect-like creature in his house. John heads over, realizes there's a cop over, and has a talk with Franky the Cop to explain Dave's behavior in non-crazy terms. He describes Dave as a pathetic loser struggling with weight, financial problems, alcohol, and erectile dysfunction. By the time John gets to the part about Dave's girlfriend being away in college and having only one hand due to an accident, Franky attempts to excuse himself when a spider crawls into his mouth.
As they drive Franky to the hospital in his own police car, Dave freaks out about how he'd initially woke up in bed with the spider. After reaching the emergency room, John and Dave sneak away on foot when they notice a bunch of police cars heading back the way they'd just come from. They return to the hospital and find that chaos has erupted. The police are securing the area when a SWAT team rolls in to attack Franky the Cop, whose body is now controlled by the spider that had crawled into his mouth. John and Dave black out when Franky releases a brain-melting sound as the SWAT team attempts to neutralize him. They wake up in time to watch the hospital getting quarantined, and escape through a nearby ghost door that randomly teleports them to one of several other such doors around Undisclosed.
They're at John's house when Amy calls to check up on Dave. The hospital quarantine incident from hours earlier has made national news, and Amy's worried sick that John and Dave are somehow involved, which she's right about. Before Dave could return home, John asks him if that's a good idea and reminds him that it's nearly time for his mandated therapist appointment. Cops drop by John's or Dave's for the next few hours, and then John gives Dave a call to point out shadow men on the television reports and to suggest that they stake out at Dave's place in case Franky returns.
Once he hangs up, John gets looking for Franky, who might be infested with a breeder-type monster that could rapidly reproduce in a short period of time. John first searches all five donut places in Undisclosed before realizing he's hungry and heading to Waffle House. Reinvigorated, he heads to a party at Munch's trailer, where there happens to be a police scanner because Munch is a volunteer firefighter and one of the three bassists in John's band. After thinking he can speak Japanese while hitting on a Japanese chick who starts calling him by the wrong name, John hears a report about stolen turkeys on the police scanner. He loads into his Caddie and is heading to the turkey factory when he hits into Franky.
John chases Franky into the turkey factory, where he winds up fighting a spider that begins fusing with turkeys to transform into a giant turkey Voltron. The turkey collective gives chase when John tries to flee, beating him in the face and forcing him to drive off an overpass. The car makes impact, and John worries briefly about Franky and Dave before blacking out. He wakes up before nearly drowning in whatever stagnant body of water his car had plowed into. The police arrive to pull John from the water and detain him. Franky has already struck by the time John reaches Dave's place. John chainsaws through Franky's neck, but the Franky-spiderhead makes a run for it.
John recognizes the FBI Detective Lance Falconer, who conveniently arrives to find Dave in his driveway, covering himself with Franky's severed head. Falconer pulls a gun on them and leads them inside for questioning. They explain about Franky, the spiders, and the hospital, but Falconer refuses to believe them. While Dave distracts Falconer with a tour of his bizarre toolshed, John burns down Dave's house. It isn't long before firefighters, Center for Disease Control space suit guys, the National Guard, Channel 5 news reporters, more feds, and gawking neighbors gather at the scene, and the vicious outbreak of spiders attacks anyone it can.
The two escape in John's Caddie and reach a burrito stand. When Falconer threatens to shoot them, they go back and forth through ghost doors. From burrito stand, to Walmart dressing room, burrito stand again, liquor store, and the burrito stand where Falconer demands to know how they're doing that. They stop to explain before Molly bites Falconer in the crotch, and John and Dave arrive in the cornfield outside of Undisclosed.
They make it to a nearby strip mall with a Best Buy where five big screen televisions are tuned to the news. Amy calls Dave to let him know that she'd been on her way to Dave's this morning, but their call drops, and she texts to ask what's happening before sending an image of his burning house. Thinking that Amy's currently at his house, Dave decides to return and rescue her. He and John swipe a dirt bike and drive back to the ghost door in the cornfield. Unfortunately, John falls off the back of the bike and doesn't manage to catch up before Dave disappears into the Porta-Potty ghost door. There are muffled gunshots coming from inside before John finally reaches it and gets in. It fails, and John tries again ten more times before noticing blood splattered on the inside of the door.
Is it… Dave's?
After smoking and swearing to make those fuckers pay, John returns the dirt bike to the strip mall, where Amy flags him down. He relays to her the tale of Dave rushing valiantly to her rescue before they each simultaneously realize that Dave isn't with either of them. John brings Amy out to the Porta-Potty and shows her that the ghost door doesn't work. Amy cries. They return to the strip mall and sit at a Cinnabon while John tries to call up people he knows. He manages to reach Munch, who says they could go to his parents' farm with him. But they get there, and Munch's dad shoos them away, so they wind up crashing at Amy's dorm.
Ever since seeing the blood splattered inside the Porta-Potty, John's been thinking in circles about what to do now that Dave might possibly be dead. He starts losing his shit and tries not to fall into a cycle of panic with Amy but can't seem to get over himself. He eats pizza, gets drunk, starts getting really loud and seemingly charged about saving Dave. But he continues to break down after that, leaving Amy's dorm and settling at a nearby motel. He starts getting frustrated with Amy for calling him like every five seconds to tell him to do--what exactly is he supposed to do for Dave right now? He could be dead! So John drinks himself into a stupor.
Days go by, and John gets smashed, completely losing track of himself. His head is pounding, he doesn't know where he is, and he winds up taking someone's size 18 Nikes when he can't find his own shoes. Maybe he and the owner could trade back, and hopefully he wouldn't mind them being a little more broken in. He stares at a wall for a really long time as his brain reboots, and then he realizes that he's got to head out before Amy does anything crazy. John tries to meet Amy at a bus stop but discovers that she isn't there. Instead there are four windowless black vans and a bunch of guys in black space suits on the prowl. John surrenders, claiming to be infected and allowing them to take him away.
He's taken to a small partitioned part of the gymnasium of the Ffirth Asylum in Undisclosed. To his relief, Amy is nowhere to be found. John meets Dave's therapist, Dr. Tennet, and immediately realizes that this isn't a government operation. He demands to know who Tennet is and then manages to fall asleep and forget where he is and what's going on. A couple spacemen yell at him and drag him away to a partitioned area where Detective Falconer later meets up with him. They come up with a plan, John starts a fire, and the two manage to escape. Falconer explains that an organization called REPER has taken over the quarantine operations and has cut off all communication between Undisclosed and the rest of the world. Everything that the world knows about the situation is filtered through REPER, which means that everyone in Undisclosed is in terrible danger.
The two head to Dave's house to get the soy sauce. John has Falconer randomly choose a place to start digging for the canister. Sure enough, it appears, and John warns Falconer to GTFO if it looks like his trip is going bad. A monster lunges out to attack Falconer when the soy sauce stabs itself into John's finger, and time stops. John has an out-of-body experience, focuses on getting back to himself, and then notices that everything around him is frozen at the exact moment that the soy sauce hit his system. He decides that Falconer won't survive the attack without intervention, and then quickly finds that he's unable to move or affect his frozen surroundings in any way.
After minutes or hours of babysitting Falconer, John gets bored and decides to check out the hospital quarantine since he's not exactly sure what else to do. Along the way, he discovers that even time-frozen cigarette smoke has materialized into a solid form, and that sound waves cannot travel without time. He starts feeling crazy hearing his own blood sliding through his veins and his digestion gurgling. Then he reaches the hospital turned POW camp surrounded by two high maximum security fences with razor wire at the top and secured by robotic sentry guns. Using a really tall tree and the smoke from a bonfire in the hospital compound, John gets into the hospital quarantine.
He assesses it and decides they've got it better in here than beyond the walls when he notices that there are skulls and bones in the bonfire. He moves on when he sees that none of the people in the yard are Dave, and it isn't long until he sees Dave paused in the middle of tying his shoe beside the hospital's main entrance. Unsure that frozen-Dave can hear him, John assures Dave that he's coming to the rescue. On his way back to where he left Falconer, John sees walking shadows. The shadow people, unbound by time, are probably coming to get him. He runs, and feels like he took a bullet before realizing that he'd cut himself on a moth frozen in midair.
Once he's back in Dave's yard, it takes John a while to figure out that he could restrain the monster with his clothes. Time resumes, the flailing monster rolls off Falconer's back and falls into the grass, and John stands over it in black jockey shorts. "Yeah! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck yoooooooouuuuu!!!" Falconer dispatches the monster, and the two load into Falconer's Porsche so they could retrieve the green box from John's Caddie. Back when John had set Dave's place on fire, Dave had moved it from the toolshed to John's car, which was left near the burrito stand and had probably been impounded since then. Falconer clicks on the headlights to reveal a door-sized human-headed spider blocking their exit from the garage.
John and Falconer manage to escape the garage when giant zombie-spiders start attacking them in the streets. A bunch of cowboy locals rescue the two before turning on them, demanding that they either pull out a tooth or piece of tongue to prove that they're not zombies. Falconer refuses, and John reveals the famous detective's identity. Impressed, the locals decide to work with him. Determined to save Dave, John decides to separate from Falconer and retrieve his Caddie.
He finds his car atop a flatbed tow truck and secures the green mystery box. So he jacks the truck and makes a first trip to the quarantine, learning that it's even more impenetrable than it'd been when time stopped. After getting some sleep, John makes his second trip and discovers that the local cowboy militia is securing the quarantine to make sure that it holds until the air force blows the shit out of it in 2 hours, 35 minutes.
Still unable to convince the cowboys that there are innocent people, like his friend Dave, trapped in the quarantine, John tries to figure out how to get Dave out of there. He manages to work the ramp mechanism so he could get his car off the flatbed. John fastens his seatbelt and ramps the tow truck, successfully clearing the first quarantine-securing fence but not as cleanly passing the second one. The Caddie bounces through the bonfire, and John yells at Dave to make sure that he's still Dave. John and Dave pile into the car and attempt to drive through the least secure part of the quarantine fence, which is facing the woods. John crashes the car into a barrier that he and Dave had forgotten about.
Taking the green box from the trunk, the two leave the car and dash past the deactivated robot sentry guns and through the woods as cowboy militia guys try to kill them. They run into another ghost door and end up outside the Ffirth Asylum. The two find a nearby RV filled with all sorts of gun ammunition, and John reloads the customized shotgun that he'd taken from his Caddie. They find evidence that Amy might've been there, and Dave starts yelling into a basement window when the local cowboy mob starts trying to kill them. Again. John and Dave run to the front door of the asylum and force their way in.
After winding through a number of long, dark hallways, John and Dave are united with Amy in what appears to be a REPER computer control room. Amy reveals that she'd disabled the robot sentry guns and done other useful things like find out that the feds have decided to blow Undisclosed off the face of the earth. She pulls up a network news site featuring a video of Tennet making a long-winded bullshit statement detailing unsuccessful attempts at curing a highly contagious infestation, resulting in a decision to wipe out the entire city of Undisclosed.
The three make their way out of the building and have Amy open the green mystery box to reveal their secret weapon. After finding out that the cornfield Porta-Potty was junked, a battle with a car-throwing alien, taking a connecting ghost door and summoning an angry buffalo, the group finally goes through another ghost door that leads them straight to the water tower, planting them right in front of Tennet at REPER's newly established HQ. There, the group has a moral debate with Tennet before the odds all turn to their favor with Falconer's reappearance and the Undisclosed resident-cowboy militia's coordinated efforts. They stand in the formation of a universal symbol to prove that they're still human instead of shambling zombies, which signals the air force not to bomb Undisclosed. Then they drive REPER back and have a showdown with spiders and Tennet. Molly saves the day.
Shortly afterward, they have a funeral for their biggest loss.
In the end, John calls December 22 as Christmas-eve-eve-eve. They celebrate having saved Undisclosed and possibly the rest of the world as we know it.
I also think it's important to know that the story is told mainly from David Wong's point of view, and he is an unreliable narrator. It turns out that John is just as unreliable a narrator as Dave is, so what you're basically getting is unreliable narration within unreliable narration. If that makes any sense.
Also, just this one spoiler--John is basically alive and well in a living (as opposed to undead) capacity by the epilogue of "John Dies at the End"; however, the same can't quite be said for him in Chapter 3: Grilling with Morgan Freeman. Seriously, this is something that makes as much sense as it possibly can in the book.
Now, the short and uninteresting version of the whole series is that a drug took John and Dave (no, it's not the other way around). After that, they could see things. Dark things, like the sort of creeping in the corner of your eye that disappears when you look right at it and know that something was and still is there. This might've completely screwed their lives up if only they weren't so messed up to begin with. Each book covers an incident that's somehow related to seeing the things that they see.
Okay, you probably want more detail than that.
For a start, John and Dave met in Mr. Gertz's computer class and have been friends ever since. That was over a decade ago or something.
The whole seeing things deal started in April a few years ago, at this after-party shindig with a Jamaican guy named Robert Marley. He busts out a needle of pitch black stuff he calls 'soy sauce', John and some other people take it, and some people die. John doesn't necessarily die right away, but the things that happen to him afterward aren't exactly chronological.
He somehow winds up in his apartment, calling Dave a bunch of times and fighting a small monster. There's no saying exactly how many times John's called Dave, how many calls Dave's answered, or whether anything John's said is coherent. In spite of a combination of John's pleas for help and warnings not to come, Dave shows up at John's apartment anyway. John tackles him, warns about the danger lurking inside, and dashes madly out the door.
Thinking that John's having a seriously bad trip, Dave insists on taking John to the hospital. They never get there and instead go to a Denny's restaurant, where Dave gets another one of John's earlier phone calls as they're sitting across from one another in a booth. After that weirdness, Dave decides that they have to get to work, and John falls asleep sometime during the ride.
After a detour to return Molly the dog to her owners and work complications including John not waking up, a phone call to a priest, and Dave getting stabbed with remnant soy sauce in a syringe from John's jacket pocket, Detective Lawrence Appleton takes John and Dave to the police station for questioning. During the interrogation, John dies, and chaos ensues. Dave gets another phone call from John, who's calling from an ambulance, asking if he's died, and saying there isn't much time to explain. He urges Dave to leave the police station and head to Robert's trailer home, continuing to instruct him from a bratwurst after Dave's phone dies.
Dave might've burned to death in Robert's trailer if Molly hadn't driven through it in time. Actually, it's John who's driving because he's sharing Molly's body. He explains that they need to get to the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas where an evil-invested guy named Shitload is heading to unleash a literal Hell on earth. But before Dave and Molly-John could make the trip, Shitload finds and captures them. The two wake in a beer truck with three other after-party soy sauce survivors.
They don't arrive in Las Vegas right away because Shitload pulls over to reveal his big bad plans or something. The group discovers that John had overnight FedEx'd a distracting package to their stopover, which buys enough time for Detective Appleton to rescue the soy sauce group. The detective is taking them to the Luxor when his eyeballs explode, and Shitload-like parasites try to infest everyone in the car. Dave shoots and kills one of their infested companions before the group presses onward by stealing a married couple's car and driving to Luxor Hotel.
Once the group arrives at their destination, they sneak into Dr. Marconi's occult conference by going with John's plan to dress up as Elton John, the band. But before they could get past security, Shitload lets himself in, and Hell literally breaks loose. John battles wig monsters with a folding chair and later invents new verses to Camel Holocaust to keep them at bay while Dr. Marconi blesses a fountain of previously holy water. Unfortunately, a wig monster kills another one of the soy sauce friends, and many people tear off their limbs and disappear in the mayhem. Molly wins a quarter million dollars on the slots, and the remaining soy saucers return to Undisclosed.
For the next six months, John carries out the last wishes of the fallen soy sauce alliance. During that time, he catches Dave up with anything taking place after the Las Vegas incident, which Dave has forgotten about completely at least four times. After that, John begins seeing less of Dave, who tries to live a normal life and pretends not to see things. But John sees things and knows that Dave does, too. Because he feels they should be using their abilities, John does whatever he could to force his way into Dave's life. It works, and it isn't long before they become paranormal investigators and develop a fan following.
Nearly a year after the Las Vegas incident, John's uncle Drake who's in the police force contacts him about an unusual case wherein Molly the dog has killed a weather reporter and is literally floating at the crime scene. John and Dave arrive to meet and interrogate Molly's new owner, Krissy. After feeding Molly a TestaMint, she explodes. After investigating a strange sportscast, John and Dave discover that the local sports reporter Danny Wexler is possessed by a dark entity. His fiancee Krissy joins them in a car chase with a man made of cockroaches, and they end up at an abandoned mall. There, they go through a video game-inspired chase and have a stand-off with Wexler. They survive, Wexler and Krissy get married and move away, and Krissy sends Dave a good luck charm.
The following summer, John goes to Dave's house to curse at whoever's watching Dave from his television. Even though John rubs his balls against the screen, the watcher doesn't go away.
After another six months or so, John calls Dave with the case of a missing girl named Amy Sullivan. In keeping with a promise to her deceased brother, John's been watching over her and got a call from Uncle Drake asking him to investigate her unusual disappearance. At the crime scene, John finds Molly the dog, a lamp-fucking jellyfish, and what appears to be a bag of fat with "44.42 kg" written on it. When Dave arrives, they find that Amy has webcams situated in different parts of her house, possibly for security purposes. John's looking for the webcam stills when Dave convinces him to beat up the jellyfish for answers. Then Dave steps out, telling John that he needs to check on his brownies. John continues waling on the jellyfish.
When Dave gets back, John's waiting outside by his Cadillac. Both the jellyfish and bag of fat are nowhere to be found, but Amy's back and seems perfectly hale and healthy. She explains that she'd lost time again, that sometimes she disappears at midnight for varying lengths of time only to reappear in different places and positions without recollection of whatever's happened for the duration of time that's passed. When she refuses to elaborate any further, John convinces her to open up by adding water to a substance that's mistakable for hair gel but gradually transforms into a sharp-toothed monster. After that, Amy reveals the materials that her brother has produced under the influence of the soy sauce. But she denies seeing a jellyfish-looking thing or bag of butcher trimmings. She also declines their offers to help her sift through her webcam stills or stay and stake out for the night.
After checking up on Amy the next morning, John calls Dave to arrange a meeting at "the safe house", a.k.a the Denny's restaurant they always go to. There, he shows Dave a chat transcript that Amy printed out for them. It appears to be a stakeout, Amy and her online friends staying up until the time that she'd normally disappear. During the chat, Amy had taken her dog outside when her friends slowly began to spontaneously join in coordinated praises to Korrok. Then John tells Dave to stake out at Amy's house while he works at the nearby Drain Rooter plant.
John performs his own investigation of suspicious activity before heading to work at the Drain Rooter site. There's a confrontation in which he tells armed guards that he doesn't understand English and begins yelling in Spanish when pretending to have a seizure. Then he supposedly dick-whips the guards before riding away on a stolen horse before checking out a trail of freshly-made truck tracks in snow. Other stuff, involving plant workers armed with submachine guns, a heavy military truck, and what looks like a gorilla riding a giant crab, happens and eventually leads John to the same abandoned mall they'd chased Wexler to over a year ago. Before he could make any more amazing discoveries, he realizes that he's got to get to work.
While working, John explores a couple places cordoned off with yellow police tape. It appears that the gorilla-crab from earlier that was taken to the abandoned mall may have escaped from a hidden room in the Drain Rooter plant. It's hidden in the sense that there may have been a ghost door, one that probably couldn't be seen without soy sauce. Everything seems to link back to the abandoned Undisclosed mall--Robert Marley used to live there, the showdown with Wexler took place there, and now this. When John goes out for his lunch break with the roofing crew that he's working with, he notices Dave, Amy, and Molly out in his truck. He pays them a visit, taking Dave aside to discuss plans to sneak back into the plant by using a ghost door in the abandoned mall.
Later, John and Dave take the soy sauce and get geared up for action. They're pumped to blow Hell out of the water and plan on going down with it, but Amy insists on going with them. John shaves off one side of Molly's fur while Dave turns a super-soaker into a flamethrower. Most importantly, they create a bomb disguised as a doggie treat that Molly promptly eats. They consider chainsawing her open to get it out when Amy convinces them to feed Molly burritos so that she'll just shit it out instead. The group then heads on its merry way to the abandoned mall.
Once again, Dave warns Amy to get out while she can, but they get attacked by monsters while heading through the ghost door. The door closes, cutting Amy off from the group and fueling John and Dave's motivations to take all of Hell down. After a trip through a large room where they're chainsawing, flamethrowing, and shooting at faceless guys in clean-suits, a pale alien guy named Robert North leads them to a black column that transports them to another dimension that John dubs "Shit Narnia". It appears that the residents of Shit Narnia have been awaiting John, Dave, and Molly's arrival; the three are treated as honored guests.
Their host explains that Shit Narnia is a parallel earth that splits off in the earth year 1864, when a genius beastiologist survives the Civil War and later goes on to create an all-knowing sentient computer. Their world becomes all but completely submissive to the beast-computer entity known as Korrok, and the residents deem David Wong worthy enough to become one with Korrok and absorbed into his knowledge. John and Dave reject this special honor and try to fight back when their host infests Amy with Shitload-type creatures. Robert North rescues them after Molly shits the bomb out and the place is going to blow when he shoots Amy and returns her newly-killed body to Shit Narnia. Before Dave could kill North, he turns into a jellyfish.
John and Dave start walking from Amy's house back to the abandoned mall where Dave left his truck, but some Fred Derse-like dude picks them up and brings them to Dave's house, where Amy is waiting by his toolshed. They unravel the tarp on what appears to be a dead body, revealing a dead David Wong. While Dave sits in shock and realizes that he's a monster-replica, John pulls Amy aside to remind her that monster-Dave has been with them this whole time and hasn't done anything bad to her. He instructs her to hide Dave's meds and prevent him from committing suicide. The two eventually become engaged.
In summer, while peeing off a water tower a couple years later, John and Dave obtain a sealed green suitcase-like box from an armored vehicle driven by G.I. Joe figurines. Like most paranormal trophies obtained from their conquests, they hide it in Dave's toolshed. The following November, John gets a call from Dave about a squirrel-sized insect-like creature in his house. John heads over, realizes there's a cop over, and has a talk with Franky the Cop to explain Dave's behavior in non-crazy terms. He describes Dave as a pathetic loser struggling with weight, financial problems, alcohol, and erectile dysfunction. By the time John gets to the part about Dave's girlfriend being away in college and having only one hand due to an accident, Franky attempts to excuse himself when a spider crawls into his mouth.
As they drive Franky to the hospital in his own police car, Dave freaks out about how he'd initially woke up in bed with the spider. After reaching the emergency room, John and Dave sneak away on foot when they notice a bunch of police cars heading back the way they'd just come from. They return to the hospital and find that chaos has erupted. The police are securing the area when a SWAT team rolls in to attack Franky the Cop, whose body is now controlled by the spider that had crawled into his mouth. John and Dave black out when Franky releases a brain-melting sound as the SWAT team attempts to neutralize him. They wake up in time to watch the hospital getting quarantined, and escape through a nearby ghost door that randomly teleports them to one of several other such doors around Undisclosed.
They're at John's house when Amy calls to check up on Dave. The hospital quarantine incident from hours earlier has made national news, and Amy's worried sick that John and Dave are somehow involved, which she's right about. Before Dave could return home, John asks him if that's a good idea and reminds him that it's nearly time for his mandated therapist appointment. Cops drop by John's or Dave's for the next few hours, and then John gives Dave a call to point out shadow men on the television reports and to suggest that they stake out at Dave's place in case Franky returns.
Once he hangs up, John gets looking for Franky, who might be infested with a breeder-type monster that could rapidly reproduce in a short period of time. John first searches all five donut places in Undisclosed before realizing he's hungry and heading to Waffle House. Reinvigorated, he heads to a party at Munch's trailer, where there happens to be a police scanner because Munch is a volunteer firefighter and one of the three bassists in John's band. After thinking he can speak Japanese while hitting on a Japanese chick who starts calling him by the wrong name, John hears a report about stolen turkeys on the police scanner. He loads into his Caddie and is heading to the turkey factory when he hits into Franky.
John chases Franky into the turkey factory, where he winds up fighting a spider that begins fusing with turkeys to transform into a giant turkey Voltron. The turkey collective gives chase when John tries to flee, beating him in the face and forcing him to drive off an overpass. The car makes impact, and John worries briefly about Franky and Dave before blacking out. He wakes up before nearly drowning in whatever stagnant body of water his car had plowed into. The police arrive to pull John from the water and detain him. Franky has already struck by the time John reaches Dave's place. John chainsaws through Franky's neck, but the Franky-spiderhead makes a run for it.
John recognizes the FBI Detective Lance Falconer, who conveniently arrives to find Dave in his driveway, covering himself with Franky's severed head. Falconer pulls a gun on them and leads them inside for questioning. They explain about Franky, the spiders, and the hospital, but Falconer refuses to believe them. While Dave distracts Falconer with a tour of his bizarre toolshed, John burns down Dave's house. It isn't long before firefighters, Center for Disease Control space suit guys, the National Guard, Channel 5 news reporters, more feds, and gawking neighbors gather at the scene, and the vicious outbreak of spiders attacks anyone it can.
The two escape in John's Caddie and reach a burrito stand. When Falconer threatens to shoot them, they go back and forth through ghost doors. From burrito stand, to Walmart dressing room, burrito stand again, liquor store, and the burrito stand where Falconer demands to know how they're doing that. They stop to explain before Molly bites Falconer in the crotch, and John and Dave arrive in the cornfield outside of Undisclosed.
They make it to a nearby strip mall with a Best Buy where five big screen televisions are tuned to the news. Amy calls Dave to let him know that she'd been on her way to Dave's this morning, but their call drops, and she texts to ask what's happening before sending an image of his burning house. Thinking that Amy's currently at his house, Dave decides to return and rescue her. He and John swipe a dirt bike and drive back to the ghost door in the cornfield. Unfortunately, John falls off the back of the bike and doesn't manage to catch up before Dave disappears into the Porta-Potty ghost door. There are muffled gunshots coming from inside before John finally reaches it and gets in. It fails, and John tries again ten more times before noticing blood splattered on the inside of the door.
Is it… Dave's?
After smoking and swearing to make those fuckers pay, John returns the dirt bike to the strip mall, where Amy flags him down. He relays to her the tale of Dave rushing valiantly to her rescue before they each simultaneously realize that Dave isn't with either of them. John brings Amy out to the Porta-Potty and shows her that the ghost door doesn't work. Amy cries. They return to the strip mall and sit at a Cinnabon while John tries to call up people he knows. He manages to reach Munch, who says they could go to his parents' farm with him. But they get there, and Munch's dad shoos them away, so they wind up crashing at Amy's dorm.
Ever since seeing the blood splattered inside the Porta-Potty, John's been thinking in circles about what to do now that Dave might possibly be dead. He starts losing his shit and tries not to fall into a cycle of panic with Amy but can't seem to get over himself. He eats pizza, gets drunk, starts getting really loud and seemingly charged about saving Dave. But he continues to break down after that, leaving Amy's dorm and settling at a nearby motel. He starts getting frustrated with Amy for calling him like every five seconds to tell him to do--what exactly is he supposed to do for Dave right now? He could be dead! So John drinks himself into a stupor.
Days go by, and John gets smashed, completely losing track of himself. His head is pounding, he doesn't know where he is, and he winds up taking someone's size 18 Nikes when he can't find his own shoes. Maybe he and the owner could trade back, and hopefully he wouldn't mind them being a little more broken in. He stares at a wall for a really long time as his brain reboots, and then he realizes that he's got to head out before Amy does anything crazy. John tries to meet Amy at a bus stop but discovers that she isn't there. Instead there are four windowless black vans and a bunch of guys in black space suits on the prowl. John surrenders, claiming to be infected and allowing them to take him away.
He's taken to a small partitioned part of the gymnasium of the Ffirth Asylum in Undisclosed. To his relief, Amy is nowhere to be found. John meets Dave's therapist, Dr. Tennet, and immediately realizes that this isn't a government operation. He demands to know who Tennet is and then manages to fall asleep and forget where he is and what's going on. A couple spacemen yell at him and drag him away to a partitioned area where Detective Falconer later meets up with him. They come up with a plan, John starts a fire, and the two manage to escape. Falconer explains that an organization called REPER has taken over the quarantine operations and has cut off all communication between Undisclosed and the rest of the world. Everything that the world knows about the situation is filtered through REPER, which means that everyone in Undisclosed is in terrible danger.
The two head to Dave's house to get the soy sauce. John has Falconer randomly choose a place to start digging for the canister. Sure enough, it appears, and John warns Falconer to GTFO if it looks like his trip is going bad. A monster lunges out to attack Falconer when the soy sauce stabs itself into John's finger, and time stops. John has an out-of-body experience, focuses on getting back to himself, and then notices that everything around him is frozen at the exact moment that the soy sauce hit his system. He decides that Falconer won't survive the attack without intervention, and then quickly finds that he's unable to move or affect his frozen surroundings in any way.
After minutes or hours of babysitting Falconer, John gets bored and decides to check out the hospital quarantine since he's not exactly sure what else to do. Along the way, he discovers that even time-frozen cigarette smoke has materialized into a solid form, and that sound waves cannot travel without time. He starts feeling crazy hearing his own blood sliding through his veins and his digestion gurgling. Then he reaches the hospital turned POW camp surrounded by two high maximum security fences with razor wire at the top and secured by robotic sentry guns. Using a really tall tree and the smoke from a bonfire in the hospital compound, John gets into the hospital quarantine.
He assesses it and decides they've got it better in here than beyond the walls when he notices that there are skulls and bones in the bonfire. He moves on when he sees that none of the people in the yard are Dave, and it isn't long until he sees Dave paused in the middle of tying his shoe beside the hospital's main entrance. Unsure that frozen-Dave can hear him, John assures Dave that he's coming to the rescue. On his way back to where he left Falconer, John sees walking shadows. The shadow people, unbound by time, are probably coming to get him. He runs, and feels like he took a bullet before realizing that he'd cut himself on a moth frozen in midair.
Once he's back in Dave's yard, it takes John a while to figure out that he could restrain the monster with his clothes. Time resumes, the flailing monster rolls off Falconer's back and falls into the grass, and John stands over it in black jockey shorts. "Yeah! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck yoooooooouuuuu!!!" Falconer dispatches the monster, and the two load into Falconer's Porsche so they could retrieve the green box from John's Caddie. Back when John had set Dave's place on fire, Dave had moved it from the toolshed to John's car, which was left near the burrito stand and had probably been impounded since then. Falconer clicks on the headlights to reveal a door-sized human-headed spider blocking their exit from the garage.
John and Falconer manage to escape the garage when giant zombie-spiders start attacking them in the streets. A bunch of cowboy locals rescue the two before turning on them, demanding that they either pull out a tooth or piece of tongue to prove that they're not zombies. Falconer refuses, and John reveals the famous detective's identity. Impressed, the locals decide to work with him. Determined to save Dave, John decides to separate from Falconer and retrieve his Caddie.
He finds his car atop a flatbed tow truck and secures the green mystery box. So he jacks the truck and makes a first trip to the quarantine, learning that it's even more impenetrable than it'd been when time stopped. After getting some sleep, John makes his second trip and discovers that the local cowboy militia is securing the quarantine to make sure that it holds until the air force blows the shit out of it in 2 hours, 35 minutes.
Still unable to convince the cowboys that there are innocent people, like his friend Dave, trapped in the quarantine, John tries to figure out how to get Dave out of there. He manages to work the ramp mechanism so he could get his car off the flatbed. John fastens his seatbelt and ramps the tow truck, successfully clearing the first quarantine-securing fence but not as cleanly passing the second one. The Caddie bounces through the bonfire, and John yells at Dave to make sure that he's still Dave. John and Dave pile into the car and attempt to drive through the least secure part of the quarantine fence, which is facing the woods. John crashes the car into a barrier that he and Dave had forgotten about.
Taking the green box from the trunk, the two leave the car and dash past the deactivated robot sentry guns and through the woods as cowboy militia guys try to kill them. They run into another ghost door and end up outside the Ffirth Asylum. The two find a nearby RV filled with all sorts of gun ammunition, and John reloads the customized shotgun that he'd taken from his Caddie. They find evidence that Amy might've been there, and Dave starts yelling into a basement window when the local cowboy mob starts trying to kill them. Again. John and Dave run to the front door of the asylum and force their way in.
After winding through a number of long, dark hallways, John and Dave are united with Amy in what appears to be a REPER computer control room. Amy reveals that she'd disabled the robot sentry guns and done other useful things like find out that the feds have decided to blow Undisclosed off the face of the earth. She pulls up a network news site featuring a video of Tennet making a long-winded bullshit statement detailing unsuccessful attempts at curing a highly contagious infestation, resulting in a decision to wipe out the entire city of Undisclosed.
The three make their way out of the building and have Amy open the green mystery box to reveal their secret weapon. After finding out that the cornfield Porta-Potty was junked, a battle with a car-throwing alien, taking a connecting ghost door and summoning an angry buffalo, the group finally goes through another ghost door that leads them straight to the water tower, planting them right in front of Tennet at REPER's newly established HQ. There, the group has a moral debate with Tennet before the odds all turn to their favor with Falconer's reappearance and the Undisclosed resident-cowboy militia's coordinated efforts. They stand in the formation of a universal symbol to prove that they're still human instead of shambling zombies, which signals the air force not to bomb Undisclosed. Then they drive REPER back and have a showdown with spiders and Tennet. Molly saves the day.
Shortly afterward, they have a funeral for their biggest loss.
In the end, John calls December 22 as Christmas-eve-eve-eve. They celebrate having saved Undisclosed and possibly the rest of the world as we know it.
Personality:
John "Cheese" is Dave's long-time best friend. His last name is in quotes because it's never actually specified in the book, and because his character is based on that of the Cracked.Com persona of the exact same name. It's also said that John is not his real name.
Anyway, John is the quintessential college dropout who takes on an assortment of odd jobs to get by. He's the guitarist and singer in a band called "Three Armed Sally", which was renamed a couple times and pretty much sounds like shit. John is a dubious storyteller with a severe tendency to exaggerate, if not completely fabricate, boasts of personal achievement and sexuality for dramatic effect. He maintains a weblog dedicated to his and Dave's expertise in the paranormal. He doesn't really get attached to material things and gives Dave lots of random shit that he gets. Also, he and Dave do lots of video gaming, preferably of the sports or shooter variety.
Just to give you an idea of what John was like growing up, he was kicked out from a computer class for drawing ASCII vaginas. He was also kicked out of art class for turning in exceptionally detailed nudes depicting himself with six inches added to his penis. He made a Bunsen burner explode in chemistry class and got suspended but would've been expelled if school officials could've proved it was intentional. He broke his wrist when he fell off a friend's van after attempting to ride it like a surfboard. There are burn scars on the back of his thighs from what he claims is a mishap with homemade fireworks but might've been the result of trying to make a jet pack. Lastly, John has this birthday tradition of pissing off a water tower; it's something he's been doing ever since he was five.
Despite his penchant for mischief-making, John is actually ideal hero material and a morally upstanding guy. He doesn't seek out, get into, or cause trouble out of malice. It's just that he needs some spice or variety to shake or break up routine and the daily grind. As such, he avoids work, parties hard, and is always drunk or high or both. As it turns out, the effects of soy sauce provide the exact kick or dose of weirdness and adventure that John needs, and presents him with an opportunity to protect the people he cares for, if not to save the entire world. Instead of working at stable full-time jobs, he now survives on income from working as a DJ and various physical labor temp projects.
John is generally an eccentric guy who demonstrates amazing wit or intelligence that coincides with or can be attributed to dumb luck and unbelievably serendipitous fortuity. He lives life loudly and proudly, often seeking out adventure, excitement, and attention at every possible opportunity. If he isn't heedlessly charging into danger, he comes up with plans that have little to no basis in reality. Unsurprisingly, his plans typically manage to work out. And because he's best friends with Dave, John drags Dave into everything he does, sharing the limelight and drawing Dave into his happy manchild world of fun.
Both John and Dave seem to recognize and accept that they need each other for stability and balance in their lives. Although John has a way of ignoring Dave's feelings of stress, discomfort, and unease with being involved in his shenanigans, he never messes around with Dave in a way that truly makes him angry. Each of them lifts the other up when he's down, or holds the other back from doing anything potentially devastating. But in the process they enable each other's irresponsibility by being there for one another and cleaning up each other's messes instead of allowing each other to deal with the consequences of his own actions.
In spite of John's idiosyncratic and upbeat nature, John is a caring and respectful guy who can be both serious and sensible. He gets frustrated and depressed when he doesn't know how to handle a situation, and his solution then is pretty much to ride things out. Get sloshed, forget where he is or what he's doing. And once that's over, he tries to get back on his feet because there are still people to care about and people to save, even if they aren't necessarily Dave.
Anyway, John is the quintessential college dropout who takes on an assortment of odd jobs to get by. He's the guitarist and singer in a band called "Three Armed Sally", which was renamed a couple times and pretty much sounds like shit. John is a dubious storyteller with a severe tendency to exaggerate, if not completely fabricate, boasts of personal achievement and sexuality for dramatic effect. He maintains a weblog dedicated to his and Dave's expertise in the paranormal. He doesn't really get attached to material things and gives Dave lots of random shit that he gets. Also, he and Dave do lots of video gaming, preferably of the sports or shooter variety.
Just to give you an idea of what John was like growing up, he was kicked out from a computer class for drawing ASCII vaginas. He was also kicked out of art class for turning in exceptionally detailed nudes depicting himself with six inches added to his penis. He made a Bunsen burner explode in chemistry class and got suspended but would've been expelled if school officials could've proved it was intentional. He broke his wrist when he fell off a friend's van after attempting to ride it like a surfboard. There are burn scars on the back of his thighs from what he claims is a mishap with homemade fireworks but might've been the result of trying to make a jet pack. Lastly, John has this birthday tradition of pissing off a water tower; it's something he's been doing ever since he was five.
Despite his penchant for mischief-making, John is actually ideal hero material and a morally upstanding guy. He doesn't seek out, get into, or cause trouble out of malice. It's just that he needs some spice or variety to shake or break up routine and the daily grind. As such, he avoids work, parties hard, and is always drunk or high or both. As it turns out, the effects of soy sauce provide the exact kick or dose of weirdness and adventure that John needs, and presents him with an opportunity to protect the people he cares for, if not to save the entire world. Instead of working at stable full-time jobs, he now survives on income from working as a DJ and various physical labor temp projects.
John is generally an eccentric guy who demonstrates amazing wit or intelligence that coincides with or can be attributed to dumb luck and unbelievably serendipitous fortuity. He lives life loudly and proudly, often seeking out adventure, excitement, and attention at every possible opportunity. If he isn't heedlessly charging into danger, he comes up with plans that have little to no basis in reality. Unsurprisingly, his plans typically manage to work out. And because he's best friends with Dave, John drags Dave into everything he does, sharing the limelight and drawing Dave into his happy manchild world of fun.
Both John and Dave seem to recognize and accept that they need each other for stability and balance in their lives. Although John has a way of ignoring Dave's feelings of stress, discomfort, and unease with being involved in his shenanigans, he never messes around with Dave in a way that truly makes him angry. Each of them lifts the other up when he's down, or holds the other back from doing anything potentially devastating. But in the process they enable each other's irresponsibility by being there for one another and cleaning up each other's messes instead of allowing each other to deal with the consequences of his own actions.
In spite of John's idiosyncratic and upbeat nature, John is a caring and respectful guy who can be both serious and sensible. He gets frustrated and depressed when he doesn't know how to handle a situation, and his solution then is pretty much to ride things out. Get sloshed, forget where he is or what he's doing. And once that's over, he tries to get back on his feet because there are still people to care about and people to save, even if they aren't necessarily Dave.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
SOY SAUCE "The side effects don't last that long. The effects will last the rest of my life, I think."--David Wong
The soy sauce is a sentient drug that takes whatever form is necessary and efficient for its use. It only comes in a used motor oil-like pitch black color, can take fluid or pill form, and is known to bite or stab its way into one's system. Immediate side effects may include but are not limited to out-of-body experiences, imperceptible knowledgeability and intelligence, both time and interdimensional travel, invisibility, and time pausing or stopping. Lifelong effects include seeing and hearing supernatural beings, creatures, and instances that are normally invisible to other people. Onlysix five people are known to have survived the soy sauce, but two were killed during the Las Vegas incident (see history), and one has been all but removed completely from existence.
GENERAL (NON-SOY SAUCE) DRUG USAGE
John has no qualms about taking hazardous, illicit, potentially fatal, or highly questionable substances. He's learned to inform Dave if he does any of the above, or else Dave will beat him to death and then follow him into the afterlife to beat him some more. He is a casual (alcohol) drinker and (tobacco) smoker.
MANCHILD-ISM
John's life of extended childhood results in drug use (see above) and eccentric or stupid behavior that can be either a strength or weakness.
MEDIA KNOWLEDGE AND GENRE SAVY-NESS
John used to work at Wally's video store with Dave and may recognize a number of pop culture icons and actors/actresses.
The soy sauce is a sentient drug that takes whatever form is necessary and efficient for its use. It only comes in a used motor oil-like pitch black color, can take fluid or pill form, and is known to bite or stab its way into one's system. Immediate side effects may include but are not limited to out-of-body experiences, imperceptible knowledgeability and intelligence, both time and interdimensional travel, invisibility, and time pausing or stopping. Lifelong effects include seeing and hearing supernatural beings, creatures, and instances that are normally invisible to other people. Only
GENERAL (NON-SOY SAUCE) DRUG USAGE
John has no qualms about taking hazardous, illicit, potentially fatal, or highly questionable substances. He's learned to inform Dave if he does any of the above, or else Dave will beat him to death and then follow him into the afterlife to beat him some more. He is a casual (alcohol) drinker and (tobacco) smoker.
MANCHILD-ISM
John's life of extended childhood results in drug use (see above) and eccentric or stupid behavior that can be either a strength or weakness.
MEDIA KNOWLEDGE AND GENRE SAVY-NESS
John used to work at Wally's video store with Dave and may recognize a number of pop culture icons and actors/actresses.
Inventory:
1 silver canister of soy sauce
1 license plate that says 'CRKHTLR'
1 cigarette rolling kit
2 rolls of endless TestaMints
1 battery operated boom box (batteries not included)
1 license plate that says 'CRKHTLR'
1 cigarette rolling kit
2 rolls of endless TestaMints
1 battery operated boom box (batteries not included)
Appearance:
John is a tall, dark-haired Caucasian in his mid-twenties. His eye color is unspecified. His hair is usually long and pulled back into a ponytail unless he cuts his hair short thinking aliens won't recognize him as the same guy afterward. His PB is Rob Mayes, who is cast as John in the JDatE movie that will be released to the general public in 2013.
Age: 25 years old.
AU Clarification: N/A
S A M P L E S
Log Sample:
As he comes to, the first thing John realizes is that he's immersed in some kind of fluid. The next thing is that he's not dreaming anymore, that his surroundings are real. And he almost worries that he can't breathe before registering the tube in his mouth, jammed down his throat. Okay, no worries here, he's got air. The blue liquid around him starts draining, and the breathing tube yanks itself away with a quick snap.
Unsurprisingly, he's naked. People are always naked when they find themselves in these situations. Things would've been much more dire and terrifying if he'd been fully decked out in a tuxedo suit cut out at the ass.
What is surprising is how bright everything is. John falls out of the pod. Forcing himself to get over the disorientation, he notices an incredibly movie-like quality to his surroundings. Surely he's just hatched from an alien egg. Or maybe he's been processed, refreshed, and brainwashed to become one of them. Fuck, he doesn't want to be one of Them with a capital 'T'. He starts wiping up and notices a number tattooed to his arm.
If he was going to get a tattoo, it wasn't going to be something lame like that.
Oh no, the aliens have mistaken him for a cow! Fuck, he hates when things like this happen. Time to find whoever's in charge here. He's got to clear up this misunderstanding.
Unsurprisingly, he's naked. People are always naked when they find themselves in these situations. Things would've been much more dire and terrifying if he'd been fully decked out in a tuxedo suit cut out at the ass.
What is surprising is how bright everything is. John falls out of the pod. Forcing himself to get over the disorientation, he notices an incredibly movie-like quality to his surroundings. Surely he's just hatched from an alien egg. Or maybe he's been processed, refreshed, and brainwashed to become one of them. Fuck, he doesn't want to be one of Them with a capital 'T'. He starts wiping up and notices a number tattooed to his arm.
If he was going to get a tattoo, it wasn't going to be something lame like that.
Oh no, the aliens have mistaken him for a cow! Fuck, he hates when things like this happen. Time to find whoever's in charge here. He's got to clear up this misunderstanding.
Comms Sample:
Does anyone know where this spaceship is heading? I'm just kind of curious and all since it doesn't look we we could just get off wherever we want to. It's just something worth knowing. Thanks.
PS: Hey, Dave. I ran into the Indonesian mobster you stole a pound of weed from. He's challenging you to a mudwrestling match, and the winner gets a Russian mail-order bride. Call me.
PPS: Is there any way to set up a voicemail on these things?
PS: Hey, Dave. I ran into the Indonesian mobster you stole a pound of weed from. He's challenging you to a mudwrestling match, and the winner gets a Russian mail-order bride. Call me.
PPS: Is there any way to set up a voicemail on these things?