Web Video / Deagle Nation

"Not just a gun, but a way of life"

Taahaaaa! Press 1 gamers!

—Jace "The Commander" Connors, frequently

Deagle Nation is an elaborate web series created by Jan Rankowski. The series follows the exploits of Jace Connors, an out-of-work, highly delusional dudebro, and his band of similarly deranged comrades. Together, they found Deagle Nation, a gang allegedly dedicated to the ideals of gaming and the marine lifestyle. Needless to say, Jace's many attempts at looking cool repeatedly fail, often going catastrophically wrong and making him look ridiculous. It is a postmodern, self-aware indie satire like Trailer Park Boys or Jesus Chatline.

Noted for its convincing realism and its manic sense of humor, Deagle Nation's portrayal of its frequently contemptible lead characters has been cited as being highly reminiscent of past web series such as True Capitalist Radio. To say that Deagle Nation is absurd doesn't even began to describe the sheer insanity it frequently conveys, from Jace's long-winded rants about the Muslim forces conspiring against him to Tyce's exaltation of sekletons, Gail's bizarre religious convictions, and Eli's... and Eli.

For most of the time it ran, Deagle Nation was widely believed to have been genuine in its portrayal of its eccentric characters and their lifestyles. Following a revelation on Jace's true identity, it came to pass that everything that had transpired during the series was staged for the purpose of satire.

Although a lot of Deagle Nation content has been lost over the years, many streams and videos are available on an archive channel known as the Deagle Nation War Library. Be warned though: the humor in Deagle Nation is consistently crass, dark, strange, and audacious. It's definitely something you shouldn't be watching at your workplace.

On August 18th 2015, Rankowski announced via Jace's Twitter that Deagle Nation was over. A return was attempted in the summer of 2016, with a new actor for Jace and featuring Rankowski as an over the top "soccer dad," but it got very little attention and has since been deleted from Rankowski's youtube channel.

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"Press 1 for tropes, gamers!"

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• Aloof Big Brother: Jace's older brother Rob has never been seen or heard, but from what we know about him, he's probably the most sane and normal member of the Connors clan. Unlike most other examples, Jace apparently does keep in contact with his brother on a somewhat regular basis and appears to have a good relationship with him, though we the audience have never seen him.
• Alternate Reality Game: Following Deagle Nation in full involved content on Tumblr, Twitter, the Deagle Nation website, message boards, YouTube videos, and livestreams on various streaming sites (some of them lost forever after the original transmission). Jace would also play online games while in-character, and not just during livestreams. He even maintained the Jace persona during private phone calls.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Jace believes this to be the case with Muslims.
• Ambiguously Gay: Among other things, Jace has "how to tell if your gay" in his Google search history.
• Armored Closet Gay: Possibly Jace. He's very homophobic, but, as mentioned above, "how to tell if your gay" could be seen in his Google search history. Or, depending on your view, it is a satire about physically insecure people.
• Audience Participation:
  • Press 1!
  • Fact Zone.
• Author Avatar: Jack Stryker is one for Jace. If you doubt this at all, Stryker is often accidentally referred to as "Jace."
• Badass Driver: What Jace wants you to believe he is. ''STREET RACING GOD!''
• Cheat Code: Jace is very fond of using cheats, especially in The Sims 3. He often abuses cheat codes to the point that his games experience extreme lag and glitches (a famous example being Soap the "wolf" randomly acquiring a boat and driving it away from Jace's burning house in The Sims 3. Ironically, Jace claims to not believe in cheating at video games, as he deems it "unrealistic."
• Combat Parkour: Jace believes that parkour is a legitimate martial arts discipline that is actually practiced by the armed forces.
• Comically Missing the Point: Jace's brother persuaded him to start doing longplays instead of livestreams, removing most of the risks in Jace interacting with a live audience, as part of Robert Connors's ongoing efforts to protect Jace Connors from his own behavior. This was rendered futile by Jace choosing to do the longplays live.
• Continuity Nod: "You will 9/11" was a troll message that caused a strong reaction in Jace. During the 9/11 2014 Awareness Livestream, Jace's Skype name was YouWont911. There are many continuity nods throughout the series.
• Cool Car: The Race War Van, or in Jace's words: A highly armed and/or dangerous vehicle of HATE! Jace's mom's Prius was this, and he even streamed while inside his car AND DRIVING once, before he crashed it out-of-game and had to get a new car, a Toyota Corolla being Rankowski's new car.
• Cool Shades: Most members of Deagle Nation wear sunglasses a lot, though the actual coolness factor is questionable at best. This is a satire about identity and hiding your true self to appear cool.
• Creator Breakdown: A few in-universe examples. Jace has had several breakdowns while streaming. The two most well-known would probably be the time he broke down crying after killing his dad in The Sims 3, and the time he wet himself after trying to do push-ups. Both were later revealed to be carefully stage-managed like the rest of the series as of July 31, 2016.
• A Day in the Limelight: Christ Zone is one for Gail. Her appearances previously had mainly been when she would interrupt Jace's streams to yell at him about something or other. During the Christ Zone stream, she co-hosted with him.
• Disappeared Dad: Jace has one. Jace usually only refers to his dad as "Richard," rather than "Dad," and once created him in The Sims 3 to kill him, and then broke down crying when he did so.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Jace's older videos are very different from what he eventually became. Originally, he was a lot calmer, did not do livestreams, and spoke in a far less whiny voice. Jankowski later stated that Season 1 was more setting up the stage for events to get crazier after a believable back story was established, like in Season 1 of Breaking Bad.
• Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: When the video "Brianna Wu tried to assassinate me via street racing" was featured on The Internet Ruined My Life, part of Jace's freakout was subtitled "[unintelligible]".
• Face–Heel Turn: Tyce, at least twice. The second one seemed to be permanent.
• For Want Of A Nail: Jace leaving the in-game stove on in his The Sims 3 stream, causing his Sim's mansion to burn down and leading the Sim to live a life of escalating misery.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The Thanksgiving stream ends with Jace, his paranoia intensified by a bad drug trip, thinking that his webcam is a spy camera and threatening to kidnap and torture the audience.
• The Fundamentalist: Jace's mother, Gail, is one.
• The Ghost:
  • Tyce's Dad.
  • Jace's dad and older brother.
  • Gail's pastor, who preaches from the "Forgotten Bible," conducts sermons from his home, and occasionally participates in her interventions for Jace. He's known only as "Pastor Faggot."
• Greater-Scope Villain: Then-President Obeme... er, Barack Obama. Jace parrots the ultra-right conspiracy theories about Obama being a secret Muslim attempting to undermine the United States. Tyce also thinks Obeme is behind the systematic oppression of skelentins.
• Hero with an F in Good: Jace sincerely wants to be a good guy. He just has some very delusional ideas about what a good guy is and what they can or can't do.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In The Sims 3, Jace's gamer mansion has a 20 foot high wall around it to keep the "Team Gamerfood terrorists" out. This comes back to bite him in the ass when, after the house catches on fire, the firemen can't put the fire out because of the wall.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • Most of Jace's schemes, such as the MICIS saga, in which a single article about Afghan army officers going AWOL led to him infesting Eli's cottage with (possibly Islamic and/or gay) mice.
  • Tyce is even worse - in one case, he filled Jace's bathtub with Matchbox cars solely because SummerSlam was on.
• Insistent Terminology: In The Sims 3, Soap is Jack Stryker's wolf. He's NOT a dog.
• Kafka Komedy: Anytime Jace plays The Sims 3, expect the life of his Author Avatar Jack Stryker to get even worse. Jack burns down his own house, loses everything he has, his girlfriend Meryl leaves him for a life of luxury with John Cena, his dog wolf hates him and becomes a stray, he loses all his friends, his birthday party is attended by one guy who only showed up to laugh at him and eat a piece of his cake, and when Jace tries to make him kill himself, Death revives him because his misery entertained him and everyone around him. This causes Jace to Rage Quit and uninstall the game.
• Kayfabe: Even though it's no longer a secret that Jace isn't real, Jan continues to post videos and blog entries as him. Some of the fans play along. Some sites, such as the Kiwi Farms, even go as far as to hide any evidence that it was ever faked, to preserve the illusion. Appropriately, Jace, and to a lesser degree Tyce, are big wrestling fans.
• Le Parkour: Jace is obsessed with parkour.
• Loony Fan: Jace is one of John Cena. Sometimes it even seems to border on a Celeb Crush. Much to Jace's chagrin, his Author Avatar once slept in the same bed as Cena in The Sims 3.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: In Weekly Livestream 19, Jace attempts to achieve immortality for Stryker in The Sims 3; the live audience in chat seemed to reach a consensus that this would cause Jace to stay in his Stryker fantasy permanently. The resulting chant of "Wake up, Jace" appeared to genuinely mess with Jace's head.
• Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: This video can only be explained either by drug influence or a psychotic episode.
• Miles Gloriosus: Jace vastly overstates his personal skills. That's to say nothing of how he views himself as being a marine.
• Mistaken for Gay:
  • In the Cottage Livestream, Eli began to suspect Jace was gay. Jace put up a web poll asking "Is Jace gay?" The result was a landslide yes, causing him to Rage Quit the stream.
  • During the Christ Zone stream, Gail takes Jace's statement that Tyce is gay (meaning "stupid," in this case) literally.
• Never My Fault: Jack Stryker's house in The Sims 3 burns down because of terrorists hacking Jace's game, and certainly not because Jace left the in-game stove on while doing something else.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Colby suffered one off-camera at the hands of Tyce and a guy named Brandon, and ended up with a dislocated shoulder. Tyce suffered one on-camera at the hands of Jace and Eli.
• Noble Wolf: Soap the Parkour Wolf, a character in Jace's self-insert novel Tyberius Rising.
• Only Sane Man:
  • Possibly Colby, who at least had the sense to get out of Deagle Nation when things started getting really crazy.
  • Regular caller Matt AKA FlyAwayN0w, who attempted to force logic upon Jace's delusions with near-infinite patience.
  • Jace's brother, Rob, seems to be this trope as well judging from what we can understand of him based upon what Jace has told us.
• Parental Incest: During Christ Zone, Jace accidentally stumbles on incest porn when he enters "screw mom" into Google.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: All of the boys show some degree of enjoyment for "ghetto" culture and mannerisms, and Jace and Tyce both rap. Ironically, Tyce displays the most of this despite being heavily racist against black people.
• Rage Quit: Happens with almost every game Jace plays, but especially likely with The Sims 3.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • The infamous car accident video was filmed after Jan legitimately did get into a car wreck.
  • Jace's stay in Jesus Camp (which resulted in about a month of inactivity) was due to the creators getting bored with doing the bit and taking a break.
  • The current (as of May, 2015) lack of content is said to be due to Jan experiencing medical difficulties relating to the aforementioned car wreck.
• Running Gag:
  • Jace vomiting at inopportune moments.
  • Jace and Eli both keep mentioning Judge Judy.
  • Jace mangling the title of Five Nights at Freddy's.
  • Tyce mentioning skeletons or how the media dislikes them.
• Red Pill, Blue Pill: The Kiwi Farms chose to take a Blue Pill approach to the revelation that Deagle Nation was staged - all discussion of the staging was moved to a hidden forum, Jan Rankowski's name was changed via autocensor to [REDACTED], and they currently claim that Rankowski was an SJW anti-gaming activist looking to smear Jace Connors' good name.
• Season Finale: The climax of Tupacalypse played out (suspiciously) like this. Jace is trying to pick up Eli from the airport when he's cornered at the Weed Cottage by Tyce.
• Security Blanket: Jace's John Cena action figure acts as one sometimes. A notable example would be when he puts the figure in his shirt pocket while playing Five Nights at Freddy's and speaks in character as Cena to tell himself that there's nothing to be afraid of. His airsoft "deagle" also acts as a security blanket of sorts. Jace will brandish it when he feels threatened.
• Shout-Out: Some shout-outs to other "lolcows" (eccentric individuals noted for bizarre, entertaining behavior) exist, as their lives and internet presence seem to be a partial inspiration for Deagle Nation:
  • Eli drinking his own semen to "recycle" it is a reference to Sonichu creator Christian Weston Chandler.
  • Jace's mannerisms bear some similarities to DarkSydePhil. As mentioned above, Jace even admits to being a fan of Phil's.
• Sinister Scythe: Attempted with Jace's homemade ''tactical scythe,'' a bread knife taped to the end of a stick that Jace used to take down a few milk cartons.
• The Starscream: Tyce constantly turns on Jace in an effort to become the leader of Deagle Nation. His treachery is usually ferreted out quickly, though not fast enough to contain the damage.
• Token Evil Teammate: Tyce. While Jace had a very warped understanding of what a hero does, Tyce was never interested in anything other than petty crime and substance abuse.
• Token Good Teammate: Colby. He never appeared to be anything besides a dumb stoner, and became a fan favorite after he got really upset watching Tyce mistreat some live mice.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Jace often eats during his livestreams, but the most commonly-seen food is Cheez-Its. He is also fond of Mountain Dew and Monster Energy drinks, and once combined the two in a blender to create a "gamer cocktail" (much of which ended up on his floor).
• Vomit Discretion Shot: Jace has an undisclosed medical issue which causes him to frequently vomit during livestreams. However, he always manages to do it off-camera.
• Western Terrorists: With a twist, because they're still Muslims. Jace believes the Steam griefing group Team Gamerfood to be a Domestic and Islamic trolling cult.
• Wham Episode:
  • Nobody, absolutely nobody, believed Eli was really going to Israel in search of Tupac. Then he uploaded a video of himself walking the streets of Tel Aviv.
  • Tyce and Jace decided to have a real fight and no one expected it to happen. It did. Tyce got up in a ridiculous costume including a skeleton mask, a trench coat, two katanas, two sais, and couldn't actually draw any of his weapons before being tackled by Jace and Eli. They beat him with a pair of practice nunchukus and a skateboard respectively and stole $46 from his pocket.
• Would Hurt a Child: A known Team Gamerfood troll uploaded a (now deleted) video of two children, probably somewhere in the 8-12 age range, doing parkour. Jace took the video as a personal insult against himself and/or the entire discipline of parkour and/or the US armed forces, and threatened to "take [those kids] out with front push kicks and guillotine chokes."
• Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: Jace's "wolf" in The Sims 3 is supposed to be male, but it has a litter of puppies.

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"That's it! I'm done!"