S053 - Lang, Jacob

[Deamon]

Name: Jacob Lang
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Grade: 12
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Collectible card games, internet trolling, practical jokes, video editing

Appearance: At a height of 5'4", Jacob presents far from an imposing figure, especially when one takes into account his scrawny physique. This disarming look is accentuated by his round, babyish face framed by tousled blond hair. His pale blue eyes and short, flat nose sit above a wide mouth that is near constantly smiling. His skin is pale and burns easily, making it difficult for him to spend much time outside in the summer without a hat and copious amounts of sunscreen. If one were to look at his hands they would notice that his long fingers bear the tell-tale signs of a nail-biting habit.

As far as outfits go, most of Jacob's clothing consists of hand-me-downs from his older brothers, giving him little choice in regards to having any sort of personal style, especially since the difference in size has resulted in him wearing clothes that his brothers wore when they were much younger than he is. On the day of the abduction he was wearing a black puffer jacket with a red scarf, red earmuffs and red gloves with a red sweater underneath. The theme of black and red is broken from below by a pair of blue jeans and light grey sneakers with charcoal tread.

Biography: Born on December 21st, 2004 as the youngest of five brothers, Jacob has had to fight for every scrap of attention that he received. His parents, Kyle and Lauren, both work fairly unimpressive office jobs, and especially in recent years have had to devote a lot of their time to taking on extra work in order to maintain a middle class lifestyle for their large family, which at present consists of the two parents, Robert (26), Evan (23), Andrew (22), Bryce (20) and Jacob. They are particularly anxious about their finances, as the cost of sending their boys to college has become a significant strain on their income. This is especially true for Lauren, whose career has been set back quite a bit by her decision to be a stay at home mom for several years, until the older of their sons were able to relieve some of the burden by helping around the house.

Lauren returned to the workplace around the time when Jacob first started school, as the short distance between the place and their home allowed Jacob the ability to walk to and from school with his brothers without too much hassle. The loss of his mother's attention was particularly hard on Jacob, and the situation became exacerbated as he soon realized that he didn't seem to have any sort of skill or other praiseworthy characteristic that set him apart from his brothers, who were all fairly talented in their own ways, whether in art, sports, or academics. In order to grab his family's attention, Jacob began to reply to questions about how his day went with exaggerated and fantastical stories, which, to his delight, was found hilarious by the other members of his household. Excited by the success of his gimmick, he began to answer any question he could with similarly ridiculous fabrications. His family of course found this much less amusing, but so long as the truth could easily be teased out of him they felt little need to forcefully put an end to his hobby.

This behaviour soon spread to his school life, as he became something of a class clown, his antics soon becoming a frequent source of amusement to his classmates. Encouraged, he began to engage in this behaviour more and more, his technique becoming more sophisticated as he began to insert bits of truth into his stories, making his teachers' job of disentangling which parts were real more and more difficult. After a few years of practice, he had become able to tell the most outrageous of lies with a completely straight face, as well as convincingly fake emotional outbursts which didn't match what he was actually feeling. While his family had become more than a little exasperated with his behaviour at this point, the tendency had by then turned from an intentional attempt at comedy into a habit that his all-too-busy family learned to work around rather than expend effort forcing it to end, despite the occasional complaints they received from his teachers. It was during this time that he also developed his lifelong love of practical jokes, aided by an old joke book that he received from one of his brothers as a Christmas gift.

By the time he reached middle school, the routine had begun to become stale amongst his classmates, stripping Jacob of the recognition he craved. Desperate to recapture their amusement, he began to lie more and more, eventually running out of tall tales and often having to resort to more banal falsehoods. This did little to enhance the comedy value of his routine, and instead began to have the opposite effect on his popularity. After realizing that this strategy was no longer working, he attempted to walk back on it, only to find out that the damage had already been done. His reputation as a liar had ensured that nobody would believe him even when he was telling the truth, and the habit of reflexively lying was difficult to break, further worsening his ability to improve his reputation. Depressed and frustrated, he began to instead double down on his dishonesty, reasoning that there was no point trying to improve his behaviour if people were still going to see him as a liar no matter what. Several sets of detentions and one serious suspension threat shook him into being more careful what he says to authority figures at school. Serious academic consequences would only emphasize to his family how much less accomplished he was than his brothers, whose achievements continued to attract most of his parents' limited attention. While some might become resentful at the situation, Jacob instead blamed himself for not being good enough to receive the praise that he so badly wanted.

Over the years Jacob tried his hand at many different artistic pursuits, from drawing, to sculpture and to music, though was extremely disappointed that he never seemed to be able to make anything as good as his brothers had done. After some time of dabbling, he eventually gave up on most of those hobbies, though he continued to make cartoonish sketches of people he knew in a little artist's notebook. He never ended up showing these to anyone else, reasoning that they were too rough and simple to be worth anyone's attention.

It was during middle school that he discovered a hobby which over the years ended up occupying a significant amount of his time and energy - collectible card games, particularly Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh!. He has inherited a sizable collection from Robert, who abandoned the hobby to focus on trying to get into medical school, and has made significant upgrades to it with the money he has received from relatives on Christmas and his birthday. Jacob loves the feeling of the pieces of a carefully set-up strategy falling into place and always gets a kick out of seeing the shock on his opponent's face when he pulls a win seemingly out of nowhere. Due to his behaviour he has developed a reputation at the local card store where he plays as a slippery opponent, and whenever he enters any sort of local tournament or competitive event, he is aware that the judges are constantly watching him like a hawk to ensure that he doesn't cheat.

The social blank slate inherent in the start of high school was a unique opportunity to turn things around, but in the end it was one that he ultimately squandered. He soon developed a similarly negative reputation to the one he had in middle school, though the larger number of students to interact with has resulted in a little more freedom for him, as he was able to move between various social circles and friend groups before each one would inevitably get tired of his behaviour. He currently manages to hang out with a few students who seem to share his sense of humour and sometimes assist him with his more elaborate pranks. Still, despite being on good terms with them for now, at the back of his mind he recognizes that they too will reach the ends of their tethers and abandon him like all the others before them.

His grades, while not bad, are unremarkable, and he shows no special affinity for any particular subject. As the school year has progressed, he still has little idea what he wants to do for college. The combined stress of his turbulent social life and his academic uncertainty has lead him to pick up the nail-biting habit that he thought he had grown out of years before, but though he finds the resurgence of the habit mildly disappointing he doesn't feel strongly enough about it to put effort into putting an end to it. When the anxiety of planning for his future gets bad enough, he sometimes fantasizes about withdrawing from society and spending his time unemployed and on the computer, though when in a calmer state of mind he readily accepts that such an outcome is not really an option.

With all his brothers having moved out of the house, the attention has become focused on Jacob once more. His parents are very aware that something is deeply awry with their son, but have little idea what to do to address it. Jacob deliberately keeps them in the dark about his social difficulties and maintains a constant facade of carefree cheerfulness, and though his family knows him well enough to figure out that things are not nearly as good as he wants them to think, they have little way of arriving at the truth without his cooperation. Both Kyle and Lauren blame themselves for their son's condition, which further tears them up inside as they wrestle with this seemingly intractable problem and spend their days gently prodding their son to be truthful with them, without success. Jacob himself recognizes that his parents are unhappy about his situation in life and tries to alleviate the problem by continually telling them what he thinks will make them feel better to hear, which ironically hurts them far more than an authentic conversation would. His relationship with his brothers is similarly distant, though when he is feeling particularly lonely, he calls up Robert with the excuse of wanting to chat about card games. Robert, like Jacob's parents, recognizes that his brother's life is not going as well as he wants everyone to think, and indulges him despite not having played either of Jacob's favourite games for several years.

As a coping strategy to deal with the constant negative feedback from his peers, Jacob has come to enjoy the feeling of watching people get angry. He finds it extremely funny to observe someone believe one of his lies, only to eventually realize that they've been had. On the internet, he has found particular talent in sowing discord and strife, spending a great deal of time posting on 4chan and Reddit, both anonymously as well as under a variety of handles. Just like with the combos he sets up at the card table, he takes satisfaction in setting up situations where all he has to do is sit back and watch the sparks fly. In some of his more grandiose moments he imagines himself a sort of agent of chaos, who shakes things up in a dull world, though he would never repeat that to anybody else as he expects anyone else who heard such a thing to find the idea laughable at best.

He has also recently taken to spending time with a pirated installation of Sony Vegas, which he uses to put together bizarre avant-garde artistic videos containing popular cartoon characters juxtaposed with shocking imagery. To his disappointment, nobody seems to have discovered his work yet, aside from occasional comments by confused viewers who stumbled upon his videos by accident. While their reactions amuse him, he is nevertheless disappointed by the lack of recognition that his work has received. He understands that the chances of any particular channel receiving the level of attention that he desires is astronomically low, but he still continues to make videos out of the hope that somebody out there will one day appreciate his work.

He recognizes that at this point his constant attempts at deception are a significant negative influence on his life and happiness, but he really doesn't know how to stop. He has become so accustomed to lying that in many cases it has become an automatic response to questioning, rather than a conscious choice. Though he sometimes wishes he had close friends, he has become extremely cynical about the possibility of creating a genuine connection with another person. At the beginning of senior year, a falling out with several of his friends caused his mood to plummet to an all time low. At his parents' prompting, he agreed to speak to a counsellor, but his inability to be honest about his feelings resulted in little progress being made, and Jacob has since declined to return for another session. He currently doesn't see any area of study or career path that would interest him after finishing high school, and underneath his constantly shifting stories concerning his plans for what he is going to do after graduation lies an extremely bleak outlook regarding his future.

Advantages: Telling lies comes extremely easily to Jacob, and to those unfamiliar with his reputation his deceptions can come off as extremely convincing. He is experienced with prodding people into anger and could potentially cause someone to make a foolish or disadvantageous decision while in an emotional state. He also has a head for strategy which could be used to plan ahead and figure out a course of action that would better ensure his survival.
Disadvantages: Jacob is known by his peers to be a frequent liar, and as such it is likely that those he encounters will have difficulty believing him, even when he tells the truth. Having such a reputation would definitely make it difficult to find allies, and even worse, his tendency towards provoking others has a chance of making him some unnecessary enemies, or even starting a physical confrontation that is unlikely to go in his favour. He is also smaller and weaker than most of his classmates and would be easily overpowered in hand to hand combat.

Designated Number: Student No. 053

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Designated Weapon: Ballistic knife

Conclusion: Well this kid was definitely on his way to becoming a school shooter. Y'all can thank us later. - Josie Knight