Sonichu Critical Review, Episode 15 Part 1: OWWW, MY AXELS

Lucky There's A Family Guy

I'm breaking up the Sonichu review again because as the comic gets worse and worse, there's more to talk about. In this case, I'm discussing the Family Guy "Skitch"* he single biggest failure in Sonichu from a craft standpoint. There are plenty of sequences that are more unoriginal, pathetic, and/or outright depraved. However, Christian Weston Chandler's Family Guy Skitch fails hardest at what it set out to do. While most of Sonichu can be classified as drama that is unintentionally hilarious, this is Chandler's attempt at comedy-- and it fails miserably.

In the middle of Chris-Chan's adventure through his high school years, our protagonist says "I feel as silly as the time I temporarily gained weight, became stupid, and went to watch TV at Ghost Command". He then gives Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane a sketch involving Sammy, a man with Peter Griffin's corpulent frame** but Chris-Chan's clown-striped wardrobe. When looking for the bathroom at the headquarters for the Filmation Ghostbusters (not related to the Ghostbusters people actually remember and care about), Sammy apparently falls down an elaborate chute, goes through a sequence that's omitted for being "too gross and silly", and falls on the Ghost Buggy, who screams "OWW, MY AXELS" in pain.

Okay, where do I begin...

1.) When Family Guy's humor works, it works because it happens so swiftly***. Without any meaningful narrative structure or coherent character arcs, MacFarlane's show relies on one wacky joke after another. The "remember the time I" vignettes take you completely off guard, making them feel more humorous due to their random nature. Chandler, on the other hand, takes several pages setting the joke up. He makes clear distinctions between him and "Sammy", makes it clear that he's pitching this to MacFarlane, and has several panels which are just Sammy walking down the halls with no apparent comedic value.

2.) Family Guy has become famous/infamous for obscure references, but even its most arcane joke doesn't go further than cult classics. The Filmation Ghostbusters is a show that is all but unknown, lingering in the dollar DVD bins of department stores, and only seeing the light of day when a parent needs to shut their child up for cheap. The Ghostbusters movies, and their subsequent cartoons, are the ones people actually remember, and actually have been spoofed by Family Guy. Of course, Chandler's fanboyism leads him to stick to his "Real" Ghostbusters when the rest of the world has moved on, even if it makes his joke irrelevant.

3.) If you say "Scene Omitted, Too Gross and Silly", you're telling, not showing. This only works if you have some kind of clear suggestive imagery, giving the audience something to go on. Chandler just uses this blurb because he can't be bothered to draw what's gross and silly, and because he assumes that we'll take his word for it.

4.) "Oww, My Axels" is....I don't even know what it is, just that it's not funny.

5.) At the end of the skitch, Sammy convenes with Chris-Chan, asking his creator if he can keep his new wardrobe. Chris-Chan approves, and lets Sammy know that his medallion is not the original Sonichu Medallion, and has special writing on the back to clarify it as an officially licensed variant. Why Chandler is so hung-up on maintaining copyrights to his work is a mystery, given how all his work is plagiarized. Furthermore, it's another case of Chandler assuming that the rest of the world cares about the same things he does, even though he has little to no interest engaging with the rest of the world.

If you were trying to create a method of child raising that would result in Christian Weston Chandler (and you'd have to be a complete and utter monster to do this), using his influences is only part of the story. You also have to consider everything he's willfully ignored, and keep that from the subject. The Skitch is a Family Guy-style gag filtered through Chandler's limited experience, without any knowledge or interest in the outside world and what they find funny.

*Chandler not only doesn't bother to spell sketch right, but he mangles Seth MacFarlane's name, the very guy to whom he is allegedly pitching this sequence.
** And yes, Sammy is a closer approximation to what Christian Weston Chandler actually looks like than his svelte author avatar. Or to put it the way Audiobook Narrator dethchemist did, "We see that Chris is indeed fat and stupid".
*** He's also become fond of absurdly long and repetitive gags, a fondness that seems increasingly exclusive to MacFarlane himself. But even those are more focused than Chandler's writing.

Sonichu Episode 14 Critical Review, Part One: If Fred Phelps Had A Webcomic

(Broken in to two parts, due to two divergent subjects)

After a vacation in Seattle and some new work, I realize I've again neglected this series. Sure, Christian Weston Chandler may be neglecting his own webcomic (as well as his own life), but there's still lots of unintentional meaning to be extracted from his magnum opus Sonichu. And here's where one of Chandler's greatest enemies enters the picture-- the notion that a man can love another man.

Naitsirhc, the evil twin of Christian, enters the picture in this episode. He too has had a makeover, complete with a medallion that allows him to transform into a super-powered electric hedgehog. However, Naitsirch is more evil than ever, which in Chandler's mind, means he's gayer than ever. So he debuts with a costume featuring a black codpiece, a dog collar, and green leather straps across his torso. Upon seeing this, Chris screams "Oh my Dog", offended into near-catatonia as his fantasies "blow towards the opposite gender".

Because he's now gay, Naitsirch is even more evil to the point where Black Sonichu joins Chris-Chan to rebel against his 'fallen' master. Naitsirch's evil, which is largely informed and not really justified, makes him surpass even Mary Lee Walsh and Count Graduon as a symbol of The Bad in CWCVille. So what does this say about Chandler?

The most obvious guess is that Naitsirhc represents Chandler's homosexual tendencies, as Chris-Chan reacts with such horror at the guy's very appearance. Chandler hates gays, which might be part of his family's fundamentalist background, but an actual methodology to his bigotry isn't apparent. His criticisms against gays are purely a matter of aesthetics-- he considers them icky, without questioning why. If he did, he might see something in himself that he wouldn't want to admit.

There are plenty of gender issues at play with Christian Weston Chandler, as we see throughout his history. He doesn't associate with other males (except for the imaginary hedgehog kind), and he goes on about his many "gal-pals" back in high school. He has quite a bit of jewelry, albeit in the form of anime paraphernalia like his custom medallion. And he uses imagery like hearts and rainbows that he got from shojo manga-- i.e. manga for young girls. Then there's the "recycling" thing, which I'm not going to get into but is a pretty convincing example.

On the other hand, if we're going by stereotypical gender characteristics, Chandler is obsessed with getting "China"**, uses brutal physical violence to defeat his enemies in Sonichu, and has no interest in keeping clean and tidy (to the point of not changing his clothes, even in the comic). So while he's not totally straight, he's not totally gay either; like everyone, he's somewhere between the two extremes.

No, the reaction against Naitsirch is more about Chandler's fear of anything different. To Chandler, gays are not what he knows as natural; he believes that relationships are between a man and a woman, and he clings to this belief so hard that he expels any other types of relationship. His idea of true love is Sonichu and Rosechu, characters who are in a happy, conflict-free coupling with nothing contesting their societal standing. Naitsirch in his transformed state is not interested in women, so he doesn't fit into Chandler's worldview.

Ideologically, Chandler acts like he's immunocompromised. Anything new and potentially risky gets into his bubble, and he reacts with violent outrage.

* You don't want to know, trust me.
** His euphemism for the female genitalia. This is both an example of how Chandler uses funny words to cover up uncomfortable mature subjects, and how he has no understanding of other cultures beyond the surface and doesn't plan to learn.

Sonichu Episode 13 Critical Review: Frank Lloyd Wrong

Because Mall Are Such Great Political Offices

It's really hard to think of Christian Weston Chandler as a creator in any sense of the word other than the most technical. Though he does write (badly) and draw (badly), his characters are all plagiarized from his childhood fandoms, he never expanded his tastes beyond what he enjoyed as a kid, and his plots consist of his real-world personal problems repurposed to make him look better. But all of that wouldn't be so damning were it not for the fact that he refuses to learn from his mistakes, or even acknowledge that he makes them.

This is still the phase where Chandler is obsessed with Megan Schroeder, to the point of telling Sonichu about his love for her. Sonichu, dutiful imaginary son that he is, says that he and all the other electric hedgehogs wish Chris-Chan the best of luck. But before Chris-Chan can convene with his entire council of imaginary friends, he discovers that Mary Lee Walsh has waged her latest assault on the emotion of love. He learns of this thanks to an announcement on the CWCVille Radio by DJ Jamsta Sonichu (SERIOUSLY), who interrupts the latest Anime Hits block to break the news. Ideally Chris-Chan would actually pay attention to what's going on in his city, so the station could finish playing Nakagawa Shouko's "Sora iro Days" from Gurren Lagann. However, there's no time for something more interesting, because Chris-Chan has to remind us that the real police wear Black and Blue, while the evil Jerkop impostors wear brown.

Chris-Chan makes this arbitrary distinction to indicate that he doesn't have a problem with authority in general, just when they try to cock-block him. And he does that to himself better than anyone else could.

Anyway, Chris-Chan tracks down Mary Lee Walsh with his special Sonichu DS, which is a hi-tech satellite surveillance system in this universe (though presumably it didn't inform him about Walsh's return before the radio announcement, presumably because he had it in Sleep Mode amidst a game of Pokemon Platinum. This is another unintentionally symbolic representation of CWCVille's ethos; the mayor is too busy living out his childish fantasies that his main line of communication to his constituents is first and foremost his handheld game console. But Chris-Chan and Sonichu are pretending that they have no time to lose, so they jet over (Chris-Chan on a hoverboard) in one of the most atrocious uses of perspective in human history.

They're joined by the Chaotic Combo and Crystal Weston Chandler, but face Mary Lee Walsh's latest minion; CADD Chef Keneru Meneth. And this is a new middle for Christian Weston Chandler (as his lows are so improbably low).

Keneru Meneth is based on Kene Meniru, Chandler's Computer-Aided Drafting and Design teacher at Piedmont Virginia Community College. Meniru apparently gave Chandler an F on his CWCVille Mall class project. Most students would have taken this as a sign that they needed to change something, because what they submit didn't fit the class guidelines. Chandler, of course, not only recycles the hideous mayoral mall for his webcomic without any improvements to its haphazard structure, but makes his teacher into a giant monster partially modified off of Chef from South Park.

Chandler picked Chef, a parodically stereotypical black man, as the inspiration for his portrayal of the black Kene Meniru. It's established that Chandler has a very narrow range of tastes, and that toilet humor-featuring animated sitcoms like Family Guy and South Park are about as "mature" as he likes to venture. It's also established that Chandler is (despite his claims to the contrary) somewhat racist, even though he'll deny it. And Chandler has never created a unique character that doesn't have grafted, Frankensteinian parts from other materials. So the only black character he knew to steal was Chef, down to "Hey there Chicos" as a catchphrase (derivative of Hey There Children).

Chandler doesn't call himself racist, and probably doesn't even see himself as bigoted against other races (though gender issues are another matter). But bigotry transfers through ignorance, through people repeating stereotypes and acting before reflecting. Chandler's knowledge of non-white people (given how his main fandoms are Japanese childrens' shows with non-racial or even non-human worlds) comes from these adult-audience animated sitcoms, but his field of interests so narrow and fixed that he probably isn't even aware of African-American identities outside of Chef and Cleveland Brown from South Park-- and Cleveland wouldn't work as well as a giant, rampaging monster.

I can't call Chandler a creator, but I can call him an ideological contortionist. His talent is finding ways to distort and dismember reality to fit his worldview. He takes a teacher who gave him a bad grade for his lazily-constructed CWCVille Mall and makes him a giant monster and racial stereotype. He takes Megan, a woman who was willing to be his friend but not much more, and makes her lack of attraction to him due to inner turmoil and a troubled past that Chandler doesn't bother to explain. And this doesn't even touch his depiction of Mary Lee Walsh.

At least he admits that the Attraction Sign was a bad idea, but it's a case of one step forward and a hundred backwards.

Sonichu Episode 8 Critical Review: Fail is a Triangle

This is where the horror starts

In this episode of the Anchuent Prophecy Saga, we are introduced to Sarah Hammer and Wes Iseli, more characters who are based on real people. Sarah is Christian Weston Chandler's childhood friend, who he lost touch with after age 10. Wes Iseli is her boyfriend, which makes him CWCVille Public Enemy #1. Both of them also have ancient destinies dating back to the era of the Cherokian Clan; Sarah's ancestor was the wife of Chris-Chan's ancestor, while Wes' predecessor was head of the rival Wasabi Clan. Sarah's ancestor at least looks somewhat like a Native American woman, if you can call a blonde-haired blue-eyed white girl in Pocahontas cosplay " Native American ". Wes' Wasabi Clan ancestor, however, just looks like a Pope in orange.

In short; this is an alternate history where the Cherokee were Caucasians who wore Greco-Roman gold armor, wrote in Hieroglyphics, and were the arch-enemies of a clan who dressed like Catholic clergy and took their name from a spicy condiment in Japanese cuisine. This is either an extremely clever mixing of world cultures, or an extremely lazy handling of the author's thin sliver of Cherokee blood. I'm tending to believe it's the latter-- call me crazy if you want.

Stories dealing with ancestral destiny usually tend to have the characters question the old ways, and try to forge their own futures. This scenario implies that the characters ( and authors ) question the seemingly conventional wisdom placed before them. This, of course, is not how Chandler handles it. Instead, he takes the forces of destiny within his story and uses them to ensure that he will defeat Wes in the battle for Sarah's heart. The extent to which Chandler carries this is almost ingenious, creating a set of circumstances that rob both Sarah and Wes of any agency without denying them the pretense of free will.

This is a love triangle with the powers that be balanced squarely against Wes' point, even more than they favor Chris-Chan. If Wes were to win Sarah back, he would have to...

A.) Not be tied to the losing side of history. Presumably the entire Wasabi clan was wiped out, without even any survivors on CWCville-sponsored reservations. Wes says that their clan cried Trails of Tears* over losing claim to the Cherokian Crown, suggesting that in this alternate history the Cherokee were the ones to commit genocide against the Wasabi, via forced exile. Wes is Jacob Black, forever fated to watch with a broken heart and a bluish scrotum as his true love goes for the Cullens, the thoroughly European vampires that eradicated his race.

B.) Find a different arena in which to compete with Chris-Chan. In the real world, Wes has the clear advantage as a prospective mate, since he's a self-employed magician available for any festivities, as opposed to being, well, Christian Weston Chandler. But in CWCVille, the measure of a man's superiority is their ability to fight with the ancient martial art of " Being an Anthropomorphic Hedgehog ". In this realm, Wes-Li Sonichu is just a copy of Chris-Chan Sonichu ( himself a copy of Sonichu, who of course is a copy of Sonic and Pikachu ). And since Chris-Chan can bend the rules of time and space so that a Yu-Gi-Oh playing card actually becomes a dangerous trap, any extra skills that Wes may or may not have are moot.

C.) Not show any pretense that he wants to keep his girlfriend. While Sarah and Wes have since split up ( though Wes is currently married ), they were a couple at the time this comic was drawn, with Chandler looking on jealously. In Sonichu's universe, Chris' fixation on wanting to fuck his friend from elementary school is him being the hapless nice guy, while Wes wanting to keep this stranger with no capacity to move on is him being a controlling, jeaous boyfriend. Wes' words are twisted into a pledge of world domination, while Chris-Chan is in his own words, " pouring my heart about how I care for my best friend, while you did into your pot of greed **". Even Sarah's opinion is twisted into finding Chris-Chan's crush, one that persisted for the many years that the two were apart ( including all of puberty ) sweet and flattering.

D.) Treat Christian Weston Chandler with the credit he is due as a romantic rival. I.E. none, under normal circumstances. But " normal circumstances " are never something you expect within Chandler's mind...

* It's actually offensive that Chandler was familiar with the word, but didn't even bother to Google it to see that it referenced the government-sponsored murder of thousands of humans, not the invented heritage of a white boy who wants to be special.
** I have to give Chandler credit here-- he's great at delivering melodrama so overly bad that it's good. Were he translating video games in the late 1990's, he would have found a calling as the Master of Unlocking.