Tales from the Gas Station is a horror-comedy blog detailing the adventures of Jack Townsend, the clerk (later night-time manager) of "The shitty gas station on the edge of town."
Read it here,
or listen to Mr. Creepypasta read it here.
It also has a spinoff, Finding Vanessa, about a Private Eye searching for his niece.
This Horror-Comedy Blog contains examples of:
- Action Survivor: Just about every other member of the cast is more physically capable than Jack. Doesn't stop him from surviving multiple near-death experiences and attempts on his life, and even an encounter with an Eldritch Abomination.
- An Arm and a Leg: Due to complications and repeated injuries to his leg, eventually Jack as to get it amputated. As with most things, he's not too put off by it, except to complain about how annoying it makes the rest of his day-to-day.
- Spencer hacks off his left pinkie to draw blood to use as bait for a monster.
- Cult: The Mathematists, who believe that mankind has the twofold responsibility of reducing suffering and increasing happiness. Sounds noble, right? Well, they're actually an Apocalypse Cult, because they feel that people have focused too hard on increasing happiness without doing enough to reduce suffering. They figure they can reduce ALL suffering to 0 by exterminating mankind wholesale. No people means no people who can suffer.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Jerry. It's not just the random and nonsensical behavior he engages in that make his intelligence teeter between "moron" and "eccentric genius", it's also the fact that he rarely, has any sort of fear.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The Dark God, who looks like a humanoid tick with a mohawk, is implied to be responsible for the odd smell that permeates the station and grows the creepy, ravenous hand-plants, is actually an OK guy as far as eldritch horrors go, and his big plan was to get Kieffer Sunderland elected mayor so he'll crack down on the local logging company.
- Defiant to the End: One of the Keiffer's dying acts is to give Jack double middle fingers. This actually makes the clerk respect him.
- Eldritch Location: The town the gas station is built in is weird somehow, to the point that even a god doesn't know exactly what's wrong with it.
- Fat Bastard: Beaux Couvillion. He's described by Jack as being "4 feet tall...lying flat on his back.". He's more laughably evil due to being so moronic, angsty, and incompetent though.
- Funny Animal: One Monster of the Week installment has a herd of anthropomorphic deer goes by the gas station. The alpha even comes in to buy a bottle of water. In addition, there is the mentioned but not shown "half a pig" incident.
- Gas Station of Doom: Right there in the name.
- Good All Along: The Shapeshifter in the Christmas Episode isn't the horror, but trying to stop it. In-Universe, Ben was Sadly Mythtaken and thought the Shapeshifter was the demon it fights every 100 years.
- Hate Sink: Owen from "Happy Halloween from the Gas Station". He's a combination of every unpleasant stereotype about rich people, not to mention a huge burden on the other survivors due to his sheer self-centeredness and trigger-happy paranoia. He even winds up killing Bart, out of sheer cowardice and thus giving the Mayfly Queen a new host in the process.
- Hope Spot: Jack gets an in-universe one when he finds a harmless, but interesting, large glowing caterpillar he names Starburst. For a bit, it gives him a bit of hope that not everything weird that's happening has to be horrible, and seeing its cocoon makes him have some optimism for the future. And then one of the mutant raccoons eats it, because of course it does.
- Hunter of Monsters: Ben is one, although he isn't always the most successful.
- In-Series Nickname: Jerry was originally named after his preferred brand of cigarettes, Marlborough until Jack learned his name.
- Karma Houdini: Spencer never gets any consequences for his constant torturing of Jack.
- Loony Fan: Jack has a few, with one even attempting to kidnap him.
- Made of Plasticine: Kieffer, who died like, 3 times in the first arc, once by being accidentally stabbed in the heart by a carelessly thrown shovel.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Is the Bathroom Cowboy a ghost, or just a weirdo?
- The Men in Black: Jack is nearly on a first-name basis with his coverup agent.
- Mundane Fantastic: Feels like a combination of Not Always Right and John Dies at the End.
- Not Me This Time: The Dark God who lives under the Gas Station owns up to the hand plants, the smell, and the seemingly immortal politician, but admits to Jack he has no clue what the deal is with the rest of the weird stuff that happens around the place. He even says the place gives him the heebie-jeebies.
- Non-Indicative Name: The "mayflies" in the Halloween episode swarm in October, and Jack suggests a few other, more accurate names for them.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Beaux Couvillion. The antagonist of "Upside Down". Jack mentions that he tried to form a "Klan Club" and that he also spray-painted swastikas all over the teachers cars. He is not, however competent at all.
- Punny Name: Jack works at a gas station on the edge of town, and his name is Jack Townsend. This is likely a Pen Name, however.
- Put on a Bus: Carlos vanishes around the Christmas Episode without explanation, with only Spencer bringing up his absence. While there's an individual in Finding Vanessa that's implied to be him, no explanation is given as to why he left the Gas Station.
- Puppeteer Parasite: The Mayfly Queen in Happy Halloween from the Gas Station. She resembles a six-inch-long green centipede as big around as a golf ball with bulging green eyes.
- The Sleepless : Whatever Jack has, it prevents him from sleeping/being knocked unconscious. It also means he's going to die soon, but he doesn't know when.
- He's later confirmed to have Fatal Familial Insomnia, a rare genetic condition which causes insomnia, hallucinations, dementia, and eventual death.
- He's later confirmed to have Fatal Familial Insomnia
- The Sociopath: Spencer Middleton, who enjoyed torturing small animals and nerdy kids as a schoolboy, burnt down his own house twice, and joined the army as a BlackOps Torture Technician. When he's (surprisingly, honorably) discharged, he starts working for an Eldritch Abomination and likes tormenting Jack.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Aside from Jack's nonchalant reactions to the batshit insane shit that happens to him on a day-to-day basis, a good deal of the humor revolves around anti-climactic endings to supernatural things. Such as "Upside Down" ending with Jerry getting rid of the pentagram that Cayergan was using as a portal by simply taking a piss on it, washing away the pentagram and banishing Cayergan back to it's dimension where it belongs.
- Throwing Your Gun at the Enemy: Jack has a tendency to throw his weapons rather than use them.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
- In Upside Down, Jack and Jerry have a casual conversation while Beaux, a crazy eldritch abomination worshipper is ranting about how he plans on sacrificing them to the said entity.
- In addition, Jack handles the bipedal deer buck buying a bottle of water from the store with less surprise and more annoyance at the deer's general incompetence at human activities.
- In general, if it isn't a credible threat to his life, Jack likely isn't going to be too surprised by it. And even if it is, at most he'll treat it like a mildly interesting inconvenience.
- Workplace Horror: The series details the ongoing saga of a "shitty gas station on the edge of town" where all manner of strange happenings go down, to the point that, for example, getting kidnapped by a deranged Satanist or meeting a god of darkness doesn't warrant much more than annoyance.
- Zany Scheme: The Dark God's goal. He wants to crack down on a local logging company due to his issues with it, so he ends up creating a bunch of the same guy through making plants that grow into humans, in a bid to get the man he made up elected as a mayor so that he'd crack down on said logging company.
