Erich Schuler

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Gail did not want to have children but when her husband, David Schuler, insisted on behalf of the Jesuits (who were hoping the pregnancy would kill her) so became Erich Schuler. Erich was a socially awkward child who was often bullied in school, in part because of his notoriously crazy mother. The bullying was so bad that he became depressed and skipped school so frequently that he wound up being charged with truancy and even failing the sixth grade. To deal with the bullying he immersed himself in fantasy and video games, a coping mechanism which would later come to severely handicap his emergence into adulthood. As an adult, Erich avoids his parents (except to ask for money), and, unemployed, currently lives with his aunt Sandra Metcalf.

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Happier times

Family Discord

David Schuler was granted full custody of Erich after the divorce in 2001. Erich was 13 years old at this time. At the custody hearing, Gail was given the option of either accepting psychiatric help for paranoid schizophrenia and being able to see Erich, or not being able to see Erich at all. She chose the latter option. Gail did not see or talk to Erich again until he was 18 years old. In a Skype call, Terrance asked Gail to list the top things she regretted most in her life. Giving up her son did not make it onto this list, but not being able to have sex with Brent Spiner did.

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Full grown

Due to David's position in the Coast Guard, Erich didn't see his father for at least 6 months out of every year while growing up. When David came home, he would often take Erich away on several week long camping trips in the woods -- a tradition he now continues with other young boys in the present time. It is believed that this was the time when Erich was sexually molested by David, as evidenced in the documentation provided during the divorce court proceedings years later when Erich was given a full psychological evaluation. Because of this, Erich reportedly wet the bed until he was 13 years old and became distant with, and understandably afraid of, his father. He avoided David adamantly, and David would later try to punish Gail when Erich refused to come see him during his court granted visitation time. When Gail tried to tell David that Erich didn't want to see him, David sued Gail for custody. To twist the knife, he also sued Gail for child support, despite the fact that Gail had raised Erich until the age of 11 and was left unemployed after the divorce, having received no alimony or support from David since that time.

As a young adult, Erich swiftly moved out of David's house and went to live with Gail's sister.

Frequent Hospitalizations

In 1990 when Erich was three years old, Gail reports that he found her purse on the floor, opened her bottle of lithium and swallowed the pills. She says she witnessed him in the process of doing this and that he was so unnaturally fast that she was unable to stop it. She rushed him to the emergency room where social workers became suspicious of her story and asked her to allow child services to enter the home. For reasons Gail has not disclosed, they soon threatened to take Erich away for neglect. Gail claims that Brent Spiner made a movie during this time "exposing the child abuse industry" for her, hoping to sway public opinion about Gail being an abusive mother.

Gail would continue to run into problems with social workers over the course of her motherhood. Erich suffered from chronic asthma, and during an instance in (date) where he was taken to the emergency room after a severe asthma attack, a male social worker noticed that Gail appeared to be behaving very strangely.

“When my son was in the hospital I was kind of down....because Brent wasn't there for me.”
— Gail Chord Schuler

The social worker asked if Gail needed to talk. Asking him to keep a secret, Gail soon revealed to the social worker that she was having an affair with Brent Spiner, and that Brent hadn't called her like he normally does and that she was very upset about it. The social worker later included this statement (believing it to be a strong indicator of psychosis) on some insurance paperwork that David received, which prompted David to confront Gail about what he believed to be a real affair with the actual Brent Spiner.

As Erich grew older, he began to take after his mother and experienced may bouts of unexplained illnesses, many of them feigned on his part in order to get his mother to let him stay home from school. He wound up missing so many days of school he was charged with truancy and failed the 6th grade. Rather than become exasperated with Erich's attempts to dodge school, Gail's own histrionic personality fed on his supposed illnesses, and Gail was soon adding exotic spins to Erich's medical problems just as she did her own. Gail believed that the Jesuits were giving Erich strange viruses and even poisoning him. At one point, paranoid of airborne toxins, Gail forced Erich to wear a gas mask to church to prevent him from inhaling contaminated air from outside the house.

Life With Mom

“I homeschooled him for several years and I think my influence in him is strong.”
— Gail

Erich's principals and teachers called Gail to the school several times to speak about Erich's truancy and failing grades. Gail was angry at the Jesuits for causing her son problems at school in order to make her look like a bad mother, and threatened to go to the media about the conspiracy in the Jesuit administration at the school. She was about to write to the local news station when, on behalf of Erich, his psychiatrist told her that would be a bad idea and Gail refrained. Erich was home schooled for a time by Gail, who would later tell Terrance in a Skype call that she also played Pokemon games with him "because I just felt so bad" that he didn't have any friends.

Despite the change in environment, Erich continued to display the same level of low performance, leading him to lag further behind other students within his own age range, education wise. David later argued Erich's lack of improvement within school within the custody hearing during the divorce.

Fire Setting

One of the most infamous Erich events occurred in (date) when Erich was (age). With David away on business, Erich and Gail were home alone one night when Erich suddenly ran up to his mother and announced that there was a fire at the back door. Gail saw the fire and panicked, and had Erich out the fire for her since she was presently injured and on crutches. As soon as he did, Erich ran up to her to tell her that another had appeared, and then another, in what Gail would later describe as a terrifying "blitzkrieg of fires". She attributed the arson to a crazy attack by Loree McBride, and documented a detailed (likely exaggerated) account of how the night occurred and how she went about reporting it to the police. David came home in the days following and was told by neighbors that they had witnessed Erich setting the fires. The event almost led to divorce even earlier in the marriage when Gail and David got into an argument about whether or not Erich should be punished via belt for fire starting. David spared Erich to prevent a divorce, but Erich would later admit that he started the fires for attention.

Psychological Evaluation

At age 13, Erich and his family were brought in for full psychological evaluations to be used in court during the custody battle. The full reports are available and may be read here along with Gail's personal notes regarding the subject matter.

So far Erich has not shown any signs of mental illness, but does have a 50% chance of having inherited schizophrenia from his mother and a 25% chance of passing it on to any biological children. If Erich makes it to age 30 without having a schizophrenic breakthrough, he will likely be in the all clear, but he may still be carrying the gene.

Today

Currently, Erich is 26 years old. He is a virgin. He lives with his aunt and uncle who sometimes take him to Pokemon and Anime conventions, since without a job he can't do so himself. He enjoys cosplay, Anime, and of course video games, with a particular interest in Zelda and Pokemon. He struggles with figuring out how to somehow support himself financially through videogames and has aspirations of working for Nintendo. Rather than funneling his efforts into learning basic programming languages and independently mastering commercially available 3D art programs, creating a diverse personal portfolio whilst enrolling in valuable physics and computer engineering courses, he has chosen to attend college for far easier, more loosely related subjects such as graphic design, new media arts, and Japanese, hoping that employers will choose him based on how passionate he is about video games and forget that he has no applicable skills. Erich was told that sometimes social networking can help one earn a job, so in an effort to draw attention from his dream employer, he has a Twitter account that routinely praises Nintendo and all of its games.

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Never too old
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Employers just eat this stuff up

To further his chances of appearing attractive to employers, Erich also has a personal website in which he poses in his uncle's awkwardly oversized business suit (despite the fact that he is unemployed and there is no natural reason for him to be wearing a suit) and talks about video games. Not clearly understanding what specific skills he is trying to learn, he tries to explain what 'new media arts' is by copying the description from his student handbook, and includes an impersonal recommendation from his English teacher who insists to all potential employers out there that he is passionate. The portfolio section, as anticipated, is empty.

Erich is fully aware of his mother's presence on the Internet. Mortified, he fears that she will be the cause of him never getting a job at Nintendo.

Episode Appearances

Erich's Virginity

In April 2012, Jesuit Agent Rule 13 devised a plan to steal Erich's virginity, hoping to obtain his virgin seed so as to use his genetic material in a weapon against Gail (since Gail's coveted genes are what protect her from being killed directly by Jesuits). Dressed as Zelda, she seduced Erich, taking him out to a restaurant where she then proceeded to take off her clothes and make her moves. Meanwhile, a virgin shield was erected over the entire city, preventing anyone who did not intend to take Erich's virginity from entering. Brianna, whose intentions were sincere and pure, volunteered herself to go rescue him and take his virginity so that Rule 13 could not have it herself. Brianna defeated Rule 13 in a clothes tearing cat fight while Erich watched, then proceeded to take Erich to bed where his virginity was taken. Rule 13 was transported to the slaughterhouse as the virgin shield exploded into confetti and fireworks. As his virginity dissipated, Jesus officially married Erich and his heroic half sister Brianna.

Schizophrenia

In April 2012, Gail called Erich. In the midst of casual conversation she made an offhand comment about Erich's marriage, congratulating him on his awesome woman. The two hung up. Later, Gail received a voicemail message from her son gently insisting she call him back as soon as she could. When Gail called him back, Erich was upset about the things she had wrote about him on her website and, fearing the scrutiny of future employers, asked her to take everything down. Gail complied, but was left seething that she had been disrespected by what she believed was Erich's evil clone.

Terrance Jenkins called Gail regarding the matter. He explained that Erich was not a clone, but in fact had paranoid schizophrenia, which causes him to confuse reality with fantasy, forgetting that he was seduced by Rule 13 and was married to Brianna. He advised Gail to be patient and supportive of Erich and that when he acts out of character again to simply gently remind him that he is sick and has paranoid schizophrenia.