Age: 21
Gender: Nonbinary (they/them pronouns)
Field of Study: Creative Writing/Digital Media Studies
Physical Description: Jarrett Bergman is 5'7" tall and weighs around 140 pounds. They have white skin with a slight farmer's tan due to time spent out in the sun. They have little muscle mass, aside from some buildup in their legs due to prior experiences playing intramural soccer. They have long, light brown hair that is a mixture of wavy from the roots and curly towards the ends, and falls a half inch below their collarbone. They sometimes put their hair back in a ponytail with a hair tie or scrunchie, leaving several strands of hair out to frame their face. When unwashed, their hair takes on a greasy look and texture. They have not had a professional haircut in over two years, instead opting to fix their hair from time to time with scissors, giving their hair a haphazard, messy look.
They have several pairs of prescription glasses which they have brought with them on the ship. These include two pairs of squarish plastic frame glasses, in black and red; one pair of plastic frame glasses in black with larger, rounder frames; and one pair of prescription aviator style sunglasses with a golden wire frame. Jarrett's eyes are light brown in color, and they have slight circles under their eyes from a lack of healthy sleep. Their eyebrows are full; Jarrett has to periodically pluck their own eyebrows to keep them from looking overly bushy, particularly the space between them above their nose. Their nose is of average size, and slightly hooks downwards at the end. At the middle of their nose bridge, they have a small bump from repeated impacts of the frame of their glasses into their face during physical activities in high school. They tend to have stubble from their uneven shaving habits. Their teeth are slightly crooked, on account of not having worn their retainer since having their braces removed several years ago.
Jarrett tends to dress in casual clothing, preferring t-shirts, jeans, flannel shirts, sneakers, and neutral sweaters. They neglect their own fashion sense, partially due to a lack of awareness of the options, and partly due to their own extreme standards for themselves and their own presentation. They do not wear makeup, though several experiences having makeup applied by friends has left them curious about learning how to put it on themselves. On the day of the abduction, Jarrett was wearing an insulated blue winter jacket with a fleece lined hood, a black fleece sweater, a green pair of denim jeans, a red plaid flannel shirt, an Eraserhead graphic tee-shirt, and snow boots, along with thermal undergarments, and their red plastic frame glasses.
Background:
- Jarrett Bergman was born in Boston, Massachusetts at Mass General Hospital, to their mother, Myriam Bergman, and their father, Michael Bergman, who were both in their mid twenties. For the first year of Jarrett's life, they lived with their parents in an apartment on Beacon Hill before the family moved to an apartment in New Jersey to be closer to their mother's side of the family, in particular, Jarrett's grandmother and great grandmother. After the birth of Jarrett's brother Jacob, the family moved back to the Boston area, into the city of Cambridge, where Jarrett would spend the next fifteen and a half years of their life.
- Jarrett was taught to read and write at an early age. From their childhood to the present day they have enjoyed telling stories to friends and family. Their early years were spent creating stories using characters from the toys that they played with, usually Lego Bionicle constructible action figures. In middle school, they began to pursue writing more seriously, joining their seventh grade English teacher's Young Writer's National Novel Writing Month club and completed a draft of a short novella. Around this time in middle school, they also began a serialized science fiction story in the "super robot" category of the Mecha genre that took them over three years to complete, and was eventually completed and submitted for credit for a high school course. For a chapbook collection of poetry they earned a minor distinction in their high school Creative Writing course and they are currently pursuing a creative thesis capstone project at U of C. Jarrett's work has yet to be published in a print format.
- Their early years in elementary school were relatively unremarkable. Though Jarrett was occasionally prone to distractions and daydreaming, they maintained an above average academic performance through the fifth grade in every subject. Upon the introduction of algebra and two tracks of mathematics courses in middle school, Jarrett began to dislike math, performing worse in their math classes than in their other subjects. Overall Jarrett remains a relatively high-performing student, with a 3.65 GPA in their undergraduate studies.
- One early object of fixation for Jarrett was the family computer, an IMac which their parents did not know how to properly set-up to prevent them from accessing the wider internet. Jarrett learned to use the computer before their fifth birthday, navigating themselves to sites for Lego and online Adobe Flash games. In the following couple of years, Jarrett would familiarize themselves with YouTube by clicking recommended videos through the embedded media on an online Bionicle wiki. Jarrett would go on to spend countless hours in front of the computer screen over the course of their life, eventually taking introductory Computer Science courses in high school and teaching themselves rudimentary HTML5 and CSS in their free time in college.
- Around their fifth birthday, Jarrett received a Nintendo DS as a present, kickstarting a lifelong fascination with video games. Jarrett has often flirted with the idea of designing a game or interactive novel, going so far as to develop prototypes in programs such as Twine and Ren.py where characters can explore a room and experience memories through interacting with personal objects. They spend much of their time viewing game design content on YouTube, as well as longform essays, both written and in video form, dissecting various video games. Additionally, they collect retro game consoles along with their brother Jacob, and the two often shop at used game stores together. Their favorite video games at present are Disco Elysium, Kentucky Route Zero, Elden Ring, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, Cave Story, Yume Nikki, Paratopic, and Fortnite.
- Jarrett's passion for music began at an early age. Through school, they learned how to sing as a part of music class, and eventually how to read music and play several instruments, including the Clarinet, which Jarrett has played since the fifth grade. They also were brought close to live music by their father's job as a live sound technician at a local blues club, where they would sometimes spend the day with their brother and help with setting up the stage. Their mother often played alternative albums from the eighties and nineties around the house growing up, influencing Jarrett's tastes in music as much as their father's preferences for classic rock and hip-hop. Jarrett spends much of their free time seeking out unfamiliar albums to hear, to the point where they have had to use an online database to keep track of the thousands of recordings they have listened to.
- They have occasionally experimented with rapping at their friend's behest, committing to the internet a handful of comedic rap songs under the alias "Justice Trigga Jarrett B Thump," a product of an online Wu-Tang Clan name generator. Though they have planned in the past to record more music of a serious character, these plans have failed to materialize besides some ambient recordings and one cover song, a post-punk version of "Chinatown" by Destroyer.
- In high school, Jarrett began to take courses related to television production at the school's media lab. They found that the visual language of filmmaking was better suited in many cases than the written word to the stories that they wanted to tell. In college, they decided that they wanted to pursue the potential of working in television while attempting to be an independent filmmaker on the side, or some other form of occupation that would allow them sufficient time and energy to work on passion projects in their free moments.
- In their senior year of high school, Jarrett decided that, rather than apply to local schools, they preferred to apply across the country, believing that making as fresh of a start as possible was the best course of action if they ever wanted to become an independent adult. They decided to apply to several schools on the west coast, and after receiving a few acceptance letters decided on the University of Cascadia. This was in part due to their generous scholarship offer, as well as their location in the Pacific Northwest, the setting for one of Jarrett's favorite television shows, Twin Peaks.
- Though they had experienced discomfort with gendered expectations pushed upon them by various authority figures and society writ large at various points in their life, it was not until midway through their first year of college that Jarrett began to seriously question their personal gender identity. They experienced this primarily as a total personal disconnect with the idea of ideal gender roles or innate behavioral differences between genders, then as a realization that they did not identify with or want to live up to the expectations of their own gender assigned at birth. They presently identify as non-binary, and have expressed interest in presenting with a more feminine appearance.
- Jarrett is currently a DJ at the U of C campus radio station, KUOC, during the midnight to two AM eclectic freeform block. The name of their show is called "Eternal Summer," a weekly playlist of songs that Jarrett states lives up to a different cultural aspect or personal memory of the season every week. They currently volunteer as a DJ trainer for air clearance at the station, educating prospective members in radio protocol and board operation, and they routinely attend meetings to screen new albums and recordings submitted to the station for addition to the station's library of CDs and Vinyl records.
- Socially, Jarrett has at times struggled to maintain close friendships and to get over their own social anxieties and fears. They have a tendency to dwell on their failures in past relationships and to ruminate over how they are perceived by others. In elementary school, they drew some curiosity from their classmates for their wild flights of imagination, such as suggesting that there were cameras inside of the walls of the classroom. In second grade, they began to make close friends, with whom they would play a pretend game based on Call of Duty Zombies on the playground. As most of their friends were allergic to various foods, Jarrett began to sit at the allergy free table as well, and to avoid peanuts, nuts, and eggs. They began to feel alienated when they began in-school physical therapy for their posture, being removed periodically from class to work on various exercises to build core strength. Seeing that his son was becoming physically unfit, Michael enrolled Jarrett in an extracurricular soccer team in fourth grade, serving as the coach. Jarrett was placed on defense due to their lack of physical speed and technical ability. Jarrett's time in physical therapy ended in the fifth grade, around the time that news came to Jarrett's school that their previously K-8 program would be separated into two technically distinct school entities in the same building, a K-5 elementary school on the first floor and a 6-8 middle school on the second floor, and that, from now on, one of the other formerly K-8 schools in the district would be sending their students to this new middle school.
- This sudden influx of new students at the start of middle school provided both new opportunities and difficulties for Jarrett, socially. Through their best friend at the time, they began several friendships that would last them through most of high school, playing after school on a Minecraft server run by the building's youth rec center. They began to experience crushes on classmates, leading to several ill-fated attempts at romantic relationships. Around this time, they began to watch anime and read manga, including Attack on Titan, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and Nichijou, and to read the webcomic Homestuck, beginning a small personal mission to get as many of their friends to read the webcomic as well. Well-known by the members of their class for their odd hobbies and interests, Jarrett began to put more time and energy into concert band, where there was a loose social structure of association by instrument. In the eighth grade, Jarrett experienced further difficulties. They struggled to reconcile the fact that they had feelings for multiple people simultaneously, and began to withdraw from some of their personal relationships. They joined an intramural soccer team at school, and earned a reputation for outbursts of anger and frustration on the field. For roughly three months, they suffered from self-harm, though they took care to only harm themselves in places others would not see due to being hidden under their clothes. At the end of the year, they were asked to write a speech and to read it at graduation, one of five speakers from their class. In their speech, they quoted the song "Hoodoo" by the band Muse. Though Jarrett's parents assured them that the speech went over well, they resolved not to do any public speaking again if they could help it.
- Going from a middle school class of around eighty students to a high school class of five hundred, proved difficult for Jarrett, and contributed to the development of their social anxieties, which proved to strengthen in intensity throughout high school. In freshman year, after a botched confession of feelings to a flautist in concert band involving the production of a mixtape CD, Jarrett resolved to run away from home and disappear. They were stopped by a student from their middle school, whom Jarrett allowed to talk them down without revealing the exact terms of what they intended to do to themselves. They then decided that they needed help for their mental illness, and sought counseling at the school health center, whose resident intake social worker recommended an evaluation at the hospital up the street. This was the beginning of their treatment for depression, which lasted for three years following a brief inpatient stay at an adolescent psych ward, including the prescription of antidepressants and various forms of behavioral therapy. Since this time and following the recurrence of some of their social difficulties, Jarrett has wondered if they are an undiagnosed autistic person, or if they have an undiagnosed attention deficiency disorder, as the latter runs in their mother's side of the family (alongside their already diagnosed depression and social anxiety) and the former has seemed at times to track with aspects of their lived experience.
- These therapies proved successful for providing Jarrett with the necessary mental toolkit to overcome some of their difficulties, such as their fear of what other people thought about them, and feelings of a lack of self-worth. They began to acquire a steady friend-group in their sophomore year, comprised of several members of the school's LGBTQ community, though Jarrett themselves insisted that they were straight and cisgendered. They experienced some setbacks in their junior and senior year, when they spent several months in a toxic relationship. They attended their senior prom, and did not speak at their high school graduation. During high school they held a variety of summer jobs through the city's summer youth employment program, including a position at a local community theater, an internship at Harvard's rare book and manuscript library, a finance internship in Harvard's engineering school offices, and a membership in a city youth poetry program.
- In college, Jarrett has experienced more social success than at any prior period in their life. For one season, they were a member of the U of C marching band, playing the Clarinet. They made several friends during this period, many of whom Jarrett still spends time with. After their marching season, Jarrett began to realize many of their current feelings regarding their gender, and came out as nonbinary to all but their parents and the older generations of their extended family. Their brother Jacob is supportive of Jarrett, though the two frequently butt heads. Jacob also attends U of C, enrolling as a freshman during Jarrett's junior year. Jarrett briefly attended the Anime Club and Tabletop Gaming Club during their freshman year, but no longer is involved with either group. At present, they are the treasurer of the U of C Film Production Club. They are currently in a polyamorous relationship, and are seeing two romantic partners, one of whom is long-distance. They do not own a car, and as such use public transportation and walking exclusively to get around when they cannot get a ride from a friend or their partner. They are not currently employed.
- Though they are no longer taking prescription medication for their depression, Jarrett frequently self-medicates with cannabis products. They also occasionally enjoy a few alcoholic drinks during social occasions or at the end of a long day, though they are making an effort not to rely on alcohol for comfort or peace of mind. Jarrett has yet to try any other drugs, though they have a passing interest in taking psychedelics, often reading trip reports and other records of psychedelic experiences online to familiarize themselves with the effects of various drugs in case the opportunity presents itself.
- Due to somewhat agnostic upbringing, Jarrett does not have strong affiliations with either Judaism or Catholicism, the religions in which their father and mother were brought up, respectively. Neither Hebrew School nor Sunday School was a part of Jarrett's upbringing, and, aside from weddings, funerals and holidays, they did not interact much with either side of the family's religion. They have always felt somewhat apart from Judaism due to its rules regarding matrilineal descent of Jewish ethnic identity, but Jarrett still self-identifies as Jewish to others and when filling out forms. Their history curriculum in middle school included secular education on the core tenets and beliefs of several religions, which has left Jarrett with a sense of curiosity about approaching religion from the secular standpoint of traditions of wisdom and poetry. In High School, they briefly explored various occult philosophies, and taught themselves how to do basic Tarot card readings, though by now they have disabused themselves of the notion that these philosophies and practices are useful as any more than sets of abstract symbols around which one can approach otherwise stagnant thinking from unconsidered angles.
- Jarrett is currently registered to vote as an Independent. They politically identify themselves to parties whom they deem to be amenable as a Communist, though they are critical of their own lack of personal experience demonstrating and protesting, and the vast gaps in their knowledge of political theory. Jarrett has previously attempted to associate with left wing reading groups and organizations on campus, but has left each group out of their disappointment with a perceived lack of ambition on the part of club leadership. They often find political conversations demoralizing, and avoid them out of habit except with like-minded individuals. On their radio show, they play Public Service Announcements highlighting local food banks and donation drives in an effort to counteract their own laziness.
- Personally, Jarrett is somewhat ambivalent about their future prospects, and pessimistic about the future in general. They do not plan on applying to MFA programs in their fields of study, citing the exorbitant costs of graduate schools as their chief reason. Jarrett has always suspected that the behavioral basis of prior therapeutic approaches used in their personal psychological treatment has only served to distract them from potentially legitimate material and sociopolitical causes of their psychogenic illness. They refuse to seek help from their family, feeling shame over their inability to learn Spanish in order to speak with their father's side of the family, which is Puerto-Rican, and further shame over their lack of formal Jewish upbringing to bring them closer to their father's side of the family, which is Jewish. Recent difficulty interacting with their extended family and keeping their gender identity a secret has lead them to embark on this trip as a sort of writing retreat, and they plan to document the experience in a personal essay for one of their writing classes.
Assets: Jarrett is used to thinking outside of the box in their various creative pursuits, and can apply that habit to other situations in their daily life. They have limited experience in a leadership role and with managing the material needs of a group.
Limitations: Jarrett is mostly physically unfit, and will experience difficulty lifting anything heavier than themselves or engaging in high intensity physical activity for prolonged periods of time. Though Jarrett is presently stable with regards to their mental illnesses, they are liable to fall back into previous unhealthy patterns of behavior when pushed into overly stressful situations, and to withdraw from their chances of survival.
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