Sonichu Interlude: the early 2010s · 4:00pm Feb 26th, 2022

Hello again, fellow friends and Christorians! Today, I bring you a short piece of information in preparation for the resumption of my Sonichu analyses next week. An awful lot happened inbetween Sonichu 10 and 11, and as such this blog will bring us all up to speed.

Sonichu #10 was finished in February of 2010, right at the height of major trolling campaigns against him. As a consequence of this, Chris announced he would leave the internet in November.¹

And then it all fell silent until August 2011. When Chris resurfaced on the internet, it was accompanied with a radical shift in how he presented himself, as he began to dress and style himself in a more feminine way. He himself dubbed this 'tomgirl status', a word he invented to describe a male with feminine interests and characteristics. Clearly drawing inspiration from the expression tomboy, Chris is seemingly unaware that the word femboy exists.² In either case, this marked the start of his transition to his current status of a trans woman, although this took a few years.

He almost immediately went back to his old ways and began posting videos, mostly calling out his old trolls with unsubstantiated threats. This saga came to an abrupt end in September 2011 when Bob, Chris' father, died of heart failure.³ The older trolls retired from trolling Chris after this, to let him grieve, and gradually people dropped back to observe.

It would not be long until something major happened. Back in 2008, Chris had been banned from a hobby store called the Game Place after years of innapropriate and aggressive behaviour.⁴ Numerous attempts to get the ban lifted had failed, but in October 2011 Chris heard the store was under new management and headed there to get his ban lifted. Upon learning the new manager was none other than Michael Snyder, the man who had banned him, Chris and his mother tried to flee- and then attempted to run Michael over.⁵

Michael pressed charges against the two of them, and in July 2012 the Chandlers were ordered to pay Michael's medical expenses and community service. Chris was furious that he had been found guilty, and immediately claimed Snyder had bribed the jury, unaware that the case was so open and shut it's hard to see how it would go any other way. The incident would also have a more devastating impact on Chris' life.

Barbara, Chris' mother, had, for reasons best known to herself, spent all the money Bob had left to the family on hiring Rob Bell, a top lawyer, to represent them, not realising that the public defender would both cost nothing and produce the same result.⁷ Combine this with Chris' out of control spending at the time (Chris was regularly racking up hundreds of dollars of debt a month at this point) and the family soon got into severe financial trouble.⁸

2014 was a busy year for Chris, to say the least. On the positive side, he now had a social life of sorts as he embraced his new LGBT identity and slowly rolled back his older prejudices. On the other hand, some of the nastier aspects of his life had not gone away, and at the beginning of the year both his and Barb's hoarding habits left them in severe danger when a fire broke out in their home.⁹ The mountains of rubbish that had accumulated inside the house acted as fuel for the fire, severely damaging the property. As a result, the Chandlers moved into a rental home whilst 14 Branchland Court was being repaired. To nobody's surprise, they trashed the rental house too; a CWCki agent report in August 2014 that the rooms of the rental home were piled full of rubbish, mountains of Lego boxes, and newspapers covered in animal excrement.¹⁰

Chris, on the other hand, had bigger things on his mind. In mid 2014, SEGA unveiled a spinoff to the main Sonic the Hedgehog series called Sonic Boom, which consisted of a TV show and several games. Chris, however, was mainly fixated on something very minor, and something I'll admit I hadn't even noticed until somebody pointed it out.

Sonic Boom Sonic's arms are blue, rather than tan as they are in the games. For some reason, this made Chris irrationally angry, and he formed several Facebook groups to protest against this.¹¹ His strategies of protest included posting angry rants on the internet, glitterbombing SEGA of America's headquarters, posting death threats online (his favoured tactic), buying stuffed toys of Sonic Boom characters and defacing them, and vandalising copies of the Sonic Boom video games.¹²

Things reached a head when on Boxing Day 2014, Chris headed to a GameStop to deface some more Sonic Boom game boxes. When ordered to leave by the store manager, Chris retaliated by pepper spraying him.¹³ For this stunt, Chris ended up with a $541 fine and a suspended sentence.

At the end of all this, plenty of Chris' observers thought we would never see Sonichu and his adventures again. Then, on 4th September 2015, a miracle happened.

List of References:
¹ https://sonichu.com/cwcki/100_2357.MOV
² https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Transgender#Tomgirl
³ https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Bob_Chandler#Later_life.2C_poor_health_and_death
⁴ https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Michael_Snyder#At_the_GAMe_PLACe
⁵ https://sonichu.com/cwcki/28_October_2011
⁶ https://sonichu.com/cwcki/28_October_2011#Arraignment.2C_plea_bargain.2C_and_sentencing
⁷ https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Rob_Bell
⁸ https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Chris_and_money#But_wait.2C_Chris_isn.27t_employed.21
⁹ https://sonichu.com/cwcki/2014_house_fire#Actual_Timeline_of_Events
¹⁰ https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Rental_House
¹¹ https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Sonic_Boom_Protests
¹² https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Sonic_Boom_Protests#You_Dropped_a_Glitterbomb_on_Me.2C_Baby; https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Sonic_Boom_Protests#Greatest_Mistake_Ever; For images of how Chris vandalised Sonic Boom game boxes, click here. For images of Sonic toys Chris damaged, click here (for reference, the toy is supposed to look like this).
¹³ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJkjjpFM97w