Jerkmen Blog

Ok, so I'll start at the beginning:I made the first drawing of these guys and their story back in 2021 when I was not even a teenager, so looking back it's a bit rough (especially how I drew Damien) but it was the process and I'm glad I have them at all, so here's the first ever drawings.

Image comments: Ok...so Damien looks white and no I didn't intend him to be white I just couldn't draw black people at all. Also look at that baby ponytail Nick has (fun fact, I never directly intended for it to get bigger, It just naturally morphed)

Story: So at this time I had just finished Supernatural for the first time and also found out I'm Bisexual, so I really wanted to make a story queer ghost hunters, but then I psyched myself out and told myself "jeez, not everything has the be gay!" So I made Nick and Damien just friends for quite a while.

At this point I had the basic ideas for the characters locked in: Nick would be very into ghost hunting, even before meeting Damien. He is very upbeat, maybe even spastic because he drinks a lot of caffeine because he doesn't like sleeping as it waists time and he always wants to be doing stuff.

Damien is the son of the local pastor and is very christian himself. He also has just come into powers of mediumship (in this phase he could only see ghosts, not feel, smell or hear.)

He also is meant to be of mixed race (his mother was Mexican and his father is African American.)

At the time, the two met when Nick was exploring the church's graveyard and Damien caught him after finishing up working on stuff before going to head home. He gets mad at Nick and then sees a ghost and then they end up having to be friends in a sort of symbiotic way, Nick teaches Damien about ghosts and his powers, but Damien helps Nick hunt ghosts.

Yeah so I didn't keep this start.

Image Comments: so the vibe hasn't changed much, (hoowee, not cool with the whitewashing of my own character, little me!) Also, can you tell I was in the Sans au community at this time?

Image Comments: This is when I first locked in some more characteristics of Damien. He loves kids and runs the local junior youth group thing (idk I wasn't raised christian, sorry) I also decided that he was homeschooled by his dad. After they lost his mom, his father had been very protective of Damien.

Image Comments: I had just learned about shape language, so I was trying that out, I didn't quite have the hang of it yet, but I was getting closer. Also during this time, I gave Damien a character trait that I now recognize as kinda white idealizing I guess (I don't know the right word but like giving POC characters white traits for aesthetic reasons and nothing else's) I had believed that Damien obsessively straightened his hair, I tried to push a few reasons but they weren't good reasons and weren't needed for the story, so now I believe him keeping his natural hair is more important (even if I definitely need practice at drawing it accurately.)

With that, the outfits here are basically the same in my finished version except little stuff like color and shape stuff.

Image Comments: ok so this one is cute! I was definitely still in the straight hair Damien phase, but besides that, they are such cuties. I imagine only a few years after this, Nick and his family found out he liked boys because he gets in trouble for chasing a boy and trying to kiss him on the playground. Woops.

Image Comments: so... The everything doesn't have to be gay thing didn't stick long. Both Nick and Damien's sexual became important to the story, it including hardships with sexuality in the church. Oh yeah, Nick is very openly gay with a very supportive family, but Damien is Bisexual, but scared to explore it because of how he expects his father and the church to react.

Image Comments: just a little outfit exploration which mostly fits heir characters, even now. Also, the comic one is the reference to Supernatural that I added to the story. Supernatural in their world is a comic series and Nick is a huge geek for it. He also has a huge crush on Dean Winchester.

The story as of now: Damien meets Nick after he has stayed super late at the library, reading books on ghost stuff (lol) and Damien is upset he is being kept and tells him to leave. As they are walking to the door, Damien sees the ghost of the recently departed head librarian. Damien gets more pissed, thinking Nick is pranking him (not helped by the fact Nick just gets super excited when he finds out Damien is seeing a ghost.) Damian kicks him out and spends the next few days trying to figure out how Nick did it and after he sees the ghost again, he desides it somehow must be real, so he goes back to Nick and he agrees to help him learn about his new powers in exchange for Damien's help in ghost hunting. Damien's powers now work that depending on how powerful the particular ghost is related to what senses he can feel them with (most ghosts he can only see, but some he can hear, and less he can feel, and so on.) From there it becomes an episodic narrative for a while with larger story bits sprinkled in. During this the viewer discovers that Damien has a girlfriend, he talks about her but she is rarely seen. It's is kinda played as a bit a few times then just kinda weird, but they are given just enough to understand that she is really there. Nick even sees her once (kinda.) Then, near the end, a big fight happens as Damien struggles with a small kiss Nick and him shared with his girlfriend. During that fight it is found out that Damien's girlfriend is and has always been a ghost, specifically a egregore. She is incredibly powerful after being the person that Damien and others vent to, absorbing their bad feelings and advising them to do things to worsen their mental health. Damien could hear, see, feel, smell, taste (I don't think they ever like even kissed like on the mouth though, they are like 14 during a lot of the story.) She even made herself visible to Nick and Damien's dad, like that's crazy because they ain't mediums. I don't want to spoil it in case I do write this, but they end up beating her and all ends up good.