List of unheroic protagonist actions
Revision as of 17:12, 17 August 2014 by Ultimate Paragon (talk | contribs) (→Episode #10: Sonichu Babies)
A recurring tragicomic element of Sonichu is how Chris tries to characterize the protagonists of his comic as badass, insightful, and heroic yet instead unfailingly depicts his heroes as immature, maladroit, or even morally depraved. Over time, the characters have engaged in enough unintentional buffoonery and villainy to easily fill an entire list of unheroic protagonist actions. While any protagonist worth reading about will have some flaws, from Donald Duck's temper to Sonic the Hedgehog's hyperactivity, the number of vices the Sonichu characters possess don't just portray them as flawed but ultimately heroic but instead obliviously yet undeniably evil.
Recurring Shenanigans
- The Pokémon in this series often are at least as intelligent as human beings, yet various humans tote and order them around as personal servants. This was a problem with the original series as well, but Chris doesn't even attempt to address this issue in his comic. This creates stupidity like the comic finding nothing wrong with Trainer Kel pimping out her dragon to ease Rosechu's lusts while simultaneously finding it unremarkable that human children can date Pokemon.
- The protagonists are completely submissive to their raging libidos. The characters are extremely quick to hop in the sack with whoever strikes their fancy, only having known their partners for mere days or even hours beforehand. Aside from showing a lack of self-control, this propensity for romantic and sexual release has directly led the protagonists into danger. The protagonists also have a tendency of becoming uncontrollably aroused at the drop of a hat, even in the middle of an invasion of their precious city or confronting their adversaries.
- The characters are overly vindictive when they have any sort of advantage over their foes. Mutilation, violent sexual domination, and of course mass murder are always on the table no matter how disproportionate the response. This is in marked contrast to the basic morality of any non-ironic hero, where instigating or escalating a fight or seeking any revenge past what's necessary to stop a villain from committing crimes is a huge no-no.
- The heroes show absolutely no aptitude for any fighting strategy that's not 'run up to the bad guy and use superpowers until they stop'. They're unable to anticipate special techniques or strategies from their foes, have trouble doing basic coordination of attacks (unless it's to gang up on Black Sonichu), and can't perform any combat feats not constrained in the paradigm of plot-device items or the narrow application of Pokemon moves.
- CWCVille is a nightmarish monstrosity of human rights and resource allocation that nonetheless fails to provide basic safety for its citizens. By far the most popular stock parody of Chris's work is to depict the city as a Kafkaesque dystopia that only exists to fulfill the puerile whims of its dictator-for-life mayor. What's more, this only requires a slight exaggeration of CWCVille's unsavory traits. None of the heroes, of course, have a problem with how CWCville is run.
Sonichu #0
Episode #1: Sonichu's Origin
- Sonic just sort of disappears after crashing into Pikachu, and takes the credit for Sonichu's fight against the Perfect Chaos Monster. Sonichu isn't bothered by this and even names himself after the guy who ran him over and immediately abdicated an important battle.
Episode #2: Sonichu in 'Genesis of the Lovehogs'
- Sonichu stalks Rosechu to her home and spies on her through the window rather than make his presence known to start with.
- Kel straight-up pimps out her Pokémon to each other. Par for the course in the video games, but rather jarring to see outside of a game mechanics context.
Episode #3: Sonichu vs. Naitsirhc
- Giovanni's kid has at least two Legendary Pokémon and sports even more in the team CWC describes him having. Combined with no trainers from the video games appearing, this places Sonichu in a grimdark world where Team Rocket was victorious over Ash and co., whose bodies are presumably decaying in a shallow grave outside Saffron City.
Classic Sonichu Strips
Sonichu #1
Episode #4: Black Sonichu in Darkness, Speed, & Lightning!
- Did Giovanni snip off Black Sonichu's balls like a naughty poodle after he mildly sassed his son? Chris-chan sets up a potentially interesting plot twist -- a clone pretends fealty to their evil creators only to bide his time and betray them -- but then takes his sweet time resolving this subplot while Blachu sublimates his role as the villains' bitch. If Black Sonichu realized that he was forcefed a pack of bullshit and propaganda, why did he cheerfully go along with his handlers for so long before joining the forces of good?
Episode #5: Sonichu in Informal Meeting
Episode #6: Sonic and Sonichu in Black Metal Combat
- This issue is the first to show Chris's curious habit of having a character with explicitly better superpowers than their opponent or ally being totally outclassed, i.e. Sonichu's dismal performance versus Sonic the Hedgehog's unstoppable rampage, Bionic contemptuously dispatching Reldnahc, Wes-Li effortlessly beating up Chris-chan, etc. While this is a common theme in fiction to show that cunning, strategy, and determination is more important than brute force this dissonance seems to happen in Sonichu simply because the author says it happened.
- After a long and arduous battle complete with SONIC SPEED and ZAPPING TO THE EXTREME, Sonichu, Sonic, and Rosechu finally have two globally infamous criminals cornered. And... the comic just forgets about them in lieu of a shopping spree at the CWCville Shopping Center. Swell.
Sonichu #2
Episode #7: Sonichu in Anchuent Prophecy
- Wes and Sarah get personal training in how to use their hedgehog powers from the spirits of their ancestors; no such luck for Chris. The Ancient leader of the Cherokee Clan is more than happy to leave Chris to fend for himself. To his credit, Sonichu does at least help Chris get elementary training. Nonetheless, the clan leader's selective neglect of his disciple leaves Chris unaware of at least two superpowers that would've made things a lot easier on Chris. Not that he needs more deus ex machinas in his corner, but still.
Episode #8: Christian Chandler in Chaos & Serenity
- Sonichu disappears for a large portion of the battle between Wes and Chris-Chan for no good reason. Considering that Wes was trying to kill Sonichu's 'father', his help would've been much appreciated.
- After Wes goes on for some time about why he's behaving evilly, Chris goes on a self-aggrandizing rant that tries to paint himself as an innocent victim in the love triangle rather than trying to negotiate with Wes or calm him down. Chris clearly is more concerned about his own ego than getting their shit together to fulfill the Anchuent Prophecy.
- Sarah, despite being told that her role in the upcoming events was to be a peacemaker between the other two humans-turned-hedgehog, decides not to intervene until her partners almost kill each other.
- Chris gets his ass kicked in less than a page by Wes in spite of having way more superpowers than his rival.
Episode #9: Chris-Chan, Saramah, & Wes-Li in The Evil that Stomped CWCville
- Sarah very stupidly decides to dump Wes Iseli right before the prophesied evil takes place, causing Wes's heart level to collapse right before the fated battle with Mary Lee Walsh and Count Graduon. To be fair, you could argue that it wouldn't be right to romantically string someone along just to cajole them into doing the right thing... yet she had no problem inflicting this sneaky tactic on Chris at the end of the issue.
Sonichu #3
Episode #10: Sonichu Babies
- We have no idea what happened to Mypoe. As far as anyone knows Punchy straight-up murdered the girl with no reprisal!
- As much as we wish agony and woe on those obnoxious Sonee and Roseys, Punchy's violent reaction to Mypoe mutilating him shortly after his birth is completely understandable. The real question is: what the hell kind of dojo does Shinnabe run here?
- Unless he has one hell of an explanation for his actions Mewtwo pretty much stole Magi-chan's childhood and sculpted him into the borderline-autistic he is today for no good reason. Not that we'll ever know said reason.
Episode #11: The Chaotic Combo in When Hedgehogs Meet
- Why is something as powerful and calamitous as the Legendary Master Sunstone just sitting out in the open and guarded solely by a hapless parrot? At the very least it should be placed somewhere hidden. Then again, the Sunstone ceases to become an issue after this comic so maybe the mayor did something smart for once and squirreled it someplace more secure.
- Every single member of the Chaotic Combo pile on Black Sonichu at the end and just beat the everloving hell out of him. While he overpowered them one on one, Black Sonichu getting dogpiled by a half dozen mutants and left bleeding and disfigured doesn't exactly suggest an even fight between a team of heroes and a powerful villain.
Sonichu #4
- This section is devoted to everything that happens in the sub-episodes rather than having a section for each issue.
Sonichu #5
Episode #12: Christian Chandler in My Best Friend's Cherokian Wedding
- Chris is invisibly spying on the wedding. Meaning that he wasn't invited and decided to just show up anyway or that he just likes creeping around for no reason.
- What exactly was stopping Chris from deploying another Trap Card or at least warning the crowd when he realized that his Reasoning wasn't getting through? Someone might have gotten killed.
- With all of the craziness that happens in CWCVille as a matter of course, Sarah Spicer was careless to not have her lightning bracelets at arms length whether or not it clashed with her wedding gown.
- Boy,those Yu-Gi-Oh! cards sure came in handy this chapter and previously in episode #8. All of those versatile, powerful, yet easily-deployable effects should make protecting CWCVille and saving innocents a breeze! Too bad you'll never see them again; Chris thinks that having nine different ways to blast someone with an energy wave is more valuable than bringing someone back from the brink of death. So every time Chris gets put in a bind from here on is because of his extreme idiocy in just forgetting about his best superpower.
Episode #13: Shattered Hearts & Entrapment
Sonichu #6
Episode #12.5: One Lucky Dog
- Chris resurrects his pet dog. In-story she merely turned from a dog into a magical talking dog, but Chris doesn't hide what he's really doing. Regardless of how many people die in the comic's pages--from innocent bystanders, to victims of circumstance, to real-life gal pals--CWC has only extended this mercy once more.
- With the introduction of Allison Amber, we are forced to confront the fact that Chris has no interest in doing any of his mayoral duties that won't help him look cool or punish his enemies. What's more, an unelected city employee way down the chain of command is making decisions about the city way above her paygrade.
Episode #14: Evil is Afoot!
- Allowing his defeated enemy mercy and attentive medical treatment is probably the most unqualifiedly nice thing Chris does in this comic. Unfortunately, the magnanimity of this gesture is ruined by the fact that there's absolutely no security in Reldnahc's room during his convalescence, leaving Chris's archnemesis free to just walk out of the hospital.
Sonichu #7
Episode #15: Sonichu, Magi-Chan, and Christian in Time for a Ball
Episode #16: C.W.C. and Sonichu in Time Hogs
Tune in Everyday to Station KCWC for Everything!
- While nothing evil or negligent directly occurs because of a nominal hero's action or inaction, Chris and/or Allison Amber are still responsible for letting this dumbass DJ pollute the airwaves with his mindless blather.
Sonichu #8
Episode #17: Rage against the Garbage
- Rosechu is so ignorant about how the Internet and trolling works that she thinks that taking nudes of herself is going to overwhelm the flow of shemale pictures. Amusingly, this is one of the few instances where a protagonist is immediately broken of their delusions.
- Sonichu, Wild, and Rosechu plot a breaking and entering scheme without even trying to negotiate for the Sonichu Balls.
- Wild's father is kidnapped by poachers but the putative Mayor clearly can't be bothered to stop stuffing his face with chicken nuggets to take care of the problem.
- For that matter, Wild couldn't be assed to look for his father his own damn self. At this point in the comic, he knows at least ten other characters with powers similar to his own so has no excuse for not resuming his quest. Then again, Wild probably knew that his 'friends' were too self-absorbed to give a shit about anyone else anyway. Heck, Sonichu and Rosechu couldn't be bothered to do anything more than go 'oh, that sucks' at Wild's tearjerker.
- Sonichu, Rosechu, and Wild very stupidly schedule the latter's infiltration at the same time as their meeting with the owner of 4-cent garbage. Jason knows that they will be here, so why would they undertake this dangerous and important mission when he's on alert? Then again, Wild doesn't meet any resistance more stringent than a locked safe so it doesn't matter anyway.
- On several floors, Sonichu, Rosechu, and even Chris physically attack people whose only crime are uploading nasty pictures to the Internet.
- Jason Kendrick Howell flat-out admits that he owns an underage sex slave that he does illegal things with. Sonichu and Rosechu can't even give the tiniest of shits about this grievous affront to human dignity. They're only concerned about the dickgirl pictures, you see.
- After Jason taunts Sonichu and Rosechu, both attack him and in the latter's case attempts to rape/kill him. Jason only survives thanks to dark forces keeping him alive.
- The 19th Amendment, securing the right of women to vote, apparently doesn't apply to CWC-ville. You know, a city supposedly existing within the borders of the United States.
- Rosechu thinks that laws preventing a 14-year old from being able to assist in nude protests are dumb.
Episode #18: Spring Break 2008
- The protagonists are overly quick to forgive Blake. Granted, being a Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain his villainy hasn't exceeded 'kidnap Rosechu and get his teeth knocked out' -- a far cry from the mass murders the heroes cause in Sonichu 10 to be sure. Nonetheless, it's still dumb for pretty much every protagonist character to immediately trust someone who was only a few months ago working for two of the biggest criminals on the planet.
- Blake decides just to flat-out fuck without using the condoms he purchased because Silvana-Bubbles decides that they'd just get in the way. Either he didn't think that avoiding STDs/pregnancy is worth getting in the way of their Hanky-Panky (right after Sonichu implored the readers to practice safe sex in the previous issue) and/or he just likes flushing his money down the drain.
- Bubbles is astonishingly stupid and careless when dealing with Silvana-Blake. Despite getting two credible warnings from Magi-Chan and Jiggliami/Blake that she was about to fuck a impostor, she's still not convinced.
- Blake has more of an excuse than Bubbles than his actions, but wasn't he the tiniest bit suspicious that Bubbles aborted her mission in order to have nasty furry jungle sex?
Sonichu #9
Episode #19: Date Ed (Even Though the Idea Sounds Dated)
- This is not the heroes' fault but the Dating Education class is mind-meltingly idiotic. The coursework is piss-easy what with fifty-word essays, the IM portion being unsupervised, and an enormous douche like Reginald almost getting a perfect score. If the characters had an ounce of self-respect they would have dropped this worthless class by day two and demanded their money back.
- The heroes apparently have trouble discerning the identities of people with extremely obvious screen names. Gee, I wonder who DigDugette416 could be?
- Reginald Sneasel is, and let's be frank here, a fulminating asshole. Reginald lets down his IM partner and classmate FlorDora217 because of his Layla obsession, intentionally spreads scurrilous rumors about her, sabotages school equipment, and stalks the two on their date. By contrast Punchy decides to cooperate with Layla despite also having his eye on someone else, tries to keep an open mind about her, foils Reginald's cunning plan with his counter-gambit of 'have his best buddy ask Layla directly', and acts like a perfect gentlemen on his date. How sad is it that you come off as more of a jerk than a sex-crazed, sadomasochistic Sonic headswap? This wouldn't be so bad if Reginald was set up to be the typical jealous-yet-hapless suitor potboiler romantics comedies thrive upon, but given his fate in this episode and the rest of Sonichu 9 he's clearly meant to be a sympathetic character.
Episode #20: CWC-Defense
- Sonichu gets a glimpse of his wife's underpants while she's doing laundry and turns into a drooling pervert. Very classy of you, sweet-bolt.
- Sonichu goes on an uncomfortably long homophobic tirade that makes him look violent and unbalanced, complete with breaking the couple's property.
- Why hasn't CWCville elected or at least appointed a new interim mayor yet? It's been several months since Chris was trapped in the time void, there's no reason to think that he'll be back anytime soon or at all. Again, the city is forced to dump way too many important decisions on an unelected clerical worker. This gets discussed further in the next section.
- Prower can transform into a giant robot and was very close-by, yet he failed to help Punchy and Layla despite their being surrounded by Jerkops. Punchy was able to take care of himself, but Layla was clearly unused to fighting and almost got her head handed to her.
- The CWC-defenders are completely blindsided by the PVCC's game plan, sending their heavy-hitters on wild goose chases all around the city while unaware that the real target of the invasion is the CWCville Shopping Center; said mall is left defended by illustrious badasses like a skanky tween girl and a half-naked zombie dog.
- When the combined forces of Sonic recolors and Autobot rejects prove to be inadequate for defending the city, Allison Amber neglects to call the national guard or at least inform the media of what's going on. Bionic and Darkbind only realize what's going on as the conflict starts spilling out past the city borders.
- Even if Chris-chan is the one fated to personally stop Graduon and Walsh, there's still no reason for Sonichu to just let her fly away and regroup.
- After the battle is over, the Electric Hedgehog Pokemon show little concern about the destruction that has graced their fair city. The thousands of citizens whom now need comforting and disaster relief can be safely ignored... because the kids want to watch Mary Poppins! Okay, cue the laugh track, freeze frame, and roll the credits!
Sonichu #10
Having a little girl torture her grandpa? Totally normal behavior from your heroes!
Episode #21: Christian Chandler in Director Amenities
- The amount of evil the protagonists perpetuate in this comic clearly shows their transition from bumbling yet harmless goons to terrifying, violent sadists. From rape by deception to biological warfare, this issue has it all!!
Sonichu Specials
Mailbag
- One really needs to read Mailbag 5 in conjunction with Sonichu 10 to really grasp the problem, but the CWCVille municipal government is extremely flawed. There are three problems with this: the first is that an interim mayor should have been appointed from their ranks if Chris was going to be gone for so long. This varies depending on the city's charter but is typically the chief administrator officer -- which for a city of CWCVille's size would be an elected position (and not Allison Amber) unless the government is even more toothless than we thought. The second is that we never actually see them doing any work. Why, for example, was city defense left to Allison Amber again instead of the chief of police? The third is that the city council didn't do anything to stop or inform others Chris's plan to commit mass murder despite him flat-out telling them; even a bottom class-ranking paralegal would be able to get charges of conspiracy and accessory to murder to stick.
Other Instances
See Also
- Chris and writing
- CWCVille - For a more in-depth analysis of the various municipal failings of Sonichu's primary setting.