In May 2012, Alec Benson Leary held a Q&A on CWCki Forums.[1] Notable answers are archived below.
The Q&A
| How did you manage to remain so composed during the ABL calls? (I've always enjoyed your saga because of your phone calls. Not only do they offer nice insight about how Chris’ mind operates, but you yourself are very “professional” throughout it all.)
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| Thank you. I have often been complimented on my patience in those calls. The only answer I really know how to give is that I have an extensive history of customer service, and thus am versed in being patient with jackasses who don't deserve it. Also, we were on the tails of the Liquid saga at the time, so I suppose I had heard enough of Chris being shrieked at and figured I'd rather let him destroy his own bullshit arguments.
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| are you still in any contact at all with Chris?
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| The last time I had direct contact with Chris was back during some of the Jackie shit. He emailed me because he wanted me to get Jackie off his back because she was pestering him about apologizing to people like me (which is ultimately where that awful Sonichu 10 ending-redux came from). I asked him what he had ever done to earn me doing him any favors like that. He chose not to respond after that, curiously.
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| How much of ABL are you? Like, did you draw the comic, manage the site, and do the calls, or were you one of those that wore the mantle of ABL? /cwc/ once said that ABL the artist and the ABL that talked to Chris weren't one and the same, and I've never been sure if it were a Clyde Cash type of thing.
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| The guy who drew the comic and the guy who talked to Chris were one in the same, and it was me.
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| Did you have to go through an extensive vetting process to be able to call Chris, like Ivy reported?
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| No, I think by the time I came along Chris's parents had realized that there was no chance of anything positive coming from Chris interacting with others, so they probably just gave him standing orders to not talk to people on the internet (which he ignored).
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| How active are you within the troll community/PVCC/inner circle/whatever nowadays?
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| I made quite a few friends through joining this community, and I am still in regular contact with many of them.
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| Were you an active troll for long before hand, or were you new to the hilarity that is Chris when you started Asperchu?
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| A little bit years ago, but by this point not really. I wasn't acquainted with anyone in this community until I got invited into PVCC. Basically, I was a casual reader of ED, after discovering Chris's lengthy article I googled him when I was bored one day, and was flabbergasted to discover an entire wiki about him. After reading it and watching Liquid videos as they kept appearing, I finally said to myself "I've been a spectator too long, I need to try my own thing just for the hell of it".
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| That was all Thorg, I had nothing to do with it. To this day I'm still a little amused that you can give Chris a name and say "that's the guy, go get him!" and he'll never, ever bother to do any follow-up or seek a secondary source of confirmation, he'll just attack without thinking.
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| No, I'm thoroughly neurotypical. I just used asperger's because it was the hot button in the mailbag at the moment I came up with the comic idea. If not for that I probably would have made a comic called "Homochu" and made it all about homoeroticism. As it is, only about 75% of the comic is about homoeroticism.
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| Just thought I would put this up here: Any chance we can see those scant emails?
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| You mean the ones I mentioned about him contacting me during the Jackie saga? I'm pretty sure they're buried in the 340 pages of Jackie e-mails on the cwcki.
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| Alec, what's the story behind when you called Chris and he was having chicken when you called? Did he ask you to call him so he could whine to you about the ads? Were you genuinely pissed off about it? It sounded like the only real time your calm voice broke in all the calls, especially when he tried to talk over you too.
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| Ah, good question. There are some emails and such that never got released, mostly because they are almost as boring as the 500 Kacey calls that turned up later on. But we scheduled our calls this way. That particular call, he had asked me to call him at exactly 9:30 on whatever night it was; if anyone else asks you to call them at an exact time it would be reasonable to assume they will actually make time for you. I wasn't really pissed, so to speak, so much as I was just taken aback at how arrogant he was about it. But his total disregard for the time and busy schedule of other people gave me something to scold him for.
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| What happened at the end of the 9th call? Chris seams to hang up in the middle of his own sentence. Did Chris ever give you an excuse for what happened?
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| He didn't directly explain it, but I'm pretty sure he just hung up on me because he was too stressed and too much of a pussy to say he was done.
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| Also in the a couple of calls he just flat out hangs up on you. Once while you are taking him to task for being disrespectful and once when he is mid-sentence talking to you. What were you thinking during each incident? Did you consider calling back? Surely he would be deserving of being berated for such rude and disrespectful behavior.
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| Considering that he picked up the phone right away when I called him back after that button-pushing thing, I am willing to believe it was more that he has a shitty phone because he doesn't take care of any equipment he can't play games on. But he hung up on me like three times besides that (including the time he impersonated his mother). I consider that to be a good example of his lack of respect or understanding for what a "promise" is - to him, a promise is just some words you say to make another person approve of you/give you something now, it doesn't matter what happens later and you can do what you want. After he hung up once, I asked him nicely to be a man and promise not to do so again, and he promised, but it never meant anything. At best, even if he does mean a promise, he thinks every promise he could ever make is contingent on him being happy and stress-free - he thinks if he's feeling bad, it gives him carte-blanche to disregard what he owes others.
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| Do you think that your saga was completely responsible for the death of the Sonichu comics, or that a lot of factors came into play when Sonichu ended?
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| Not completely. He was being told that he needed to update daily as a sort of "job", so as to show women that he was a successful businessman and capable of attracting/satisfying a female partner. Since that turned Sonichu into work instead of a free-play zone, I think that had more to do with killing it than I did. Still, I sure as hell didn't help him feel good about it, considering he barely had a breather after he had just spent months fighting Liquid for control rights.
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| Was the way you spoke in the calls the same way you speak all the time or was that your business tone? Also, if Chris was truly sorry (which I doubt he is capable of) and wanted to be friends, would you do it?
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| The way I spoke was pretty much my regular way of speaking, I wasn't "doing a voice" or anything. If Chris were sorry, I would totally offer him the olive branch just to see where it would go, but I doubt he could ever behave any way that wasn't antagonistic.
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| Shiiiiiiiiiiit, nigga, watchu talkin bout? Damn, dirty.
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| The Matthew Noble call ends with Barb going off about "I want you to spell your name, quit yelling, etc". Then the transcript says "cuts off abruptly". Was there more insanity or was that it?
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| The abrupt end was me hanging up because I couldn't put up with Statler and Waldorf anymore. I think of myself as a patient man but everyone has limits.
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| Do you think that Chris has any other clinical diagnosable deficiencies other than the autism?
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| Depression, most certainly. He hates his life and everything about it. That's what makes retreating into a fantasy world so appealing. He refuses to acknowledge it though, which is why it will never change.
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| Have you been white-knighted yet? And if so, how do you approach those situations? Or do you just flat out ignore them?
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| I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean have white knights tried to interfere with what I've done? Not really.
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| Considering (so the story goes) Alec and Kacey had a bust-up on the PVCC forums, and Kacey's voice is the one at the start of the Lars call I doubt it's Alec.
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| I'm going to comment on the relationship between myself and Kacey because I think a lot of folks are curious and don't know any details. Basically, when I created Asperchu I wasn't part of this community and had no idea who any of the players or watchers were. Round about the time I brought Liquid into the comic was the same time I was introduced to PVCC.
Shortly thereafter I got a PM from Kacey who was all mad because she had dictated that Liquid was not to be in my comic or be used in anything else because they wanted to be left alone or whatever. I responded (in a nice way, I didn't know her and didn't want to make enemies) by saying that I had no idea what she was talking about, which was true because the only person I even knew was Clyde, I didn't know any political shit that might have been going on at the time. I told her I was sorry but Liquid was already there, I couldn't exactly go back in time. Her response was basically "whatever, do what you want, I wash my hands of it", so I kept going without concern for the issue. A few weeks later was when I first spoke to Liquid, I brought up the subject and asked if he didn't like me using his likeness, but he told me he thought my comic was funny and enjoyed seeing himself as a character.
That brief exchange is the only direct communication she and I have ever had, and I never stopped to worry about it too much.
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| Tell us about the decisions to open up the doors and vandalize the CWCipedia. How much of that decision deep within the bowls of the Kewl Kids Klub your idea?
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| I pretty much had creative control over what was going on then, people wanted to let me run my own show while I was still in the limelight. Ruining the cwcipedia was other peoples' idea but I was the one who said "fuck it, why not" when it became apparent that we had killed Chris's creative spark for good.
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| I guess if nobody's asked it yet, what do you do these days? Do you have plans to keep trolling Chris, or are you going to retire peacefully, knowing that your job has been done?
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| My trolling days are basically done. I am content to sit and watch from the sidelines, since Chris is currently trolling himself for us by getting himself banned from multiple establishments and picking fights he can't win with police officers.
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| No, Liquid and Matthew Devoria were different people. I am, however, Cogs.
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| Where did the Asperchu medallion come from? Did you do it yourself? It's made of Crayola Fuckin' Model Magic?
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| It was made by a fan of mine. I am embarrassed to admit that I cannot recall said fan's name, as they deserve credit for it. They were going to mail it to me, but I asked instead that it be sent to Chris so I could make him wear it.
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See also
References
Asperchu Saga