User:NegaCWC/Another Greene County Conspiracy - Theory about a dark past

The following is an essay which was posted on the CWCki forums by user Bernd Lauert. BL posits that much of Chris's current behavioral problems are the result of parental abuse he endured as a child. While BL definitely tends to overstretch his case at points, his thesis is well argued and and I do not wish to see it disappear in case the current CWCki forums will go down like their previous incarnations. For those reasons I've decided to preserve it on my userspace.

Another Greene County Conspiracy - Theory about a dark past

I would like, if I may, present the following thoughts to the esteemed fellows of this board:

1.Overview - The following speculation is based on the assumption that Chris’s current mental state could be explained without resorting to some sort of genetic syndrome, substituting an “acquired” mental disorder, most likely a kind of post-traumatic stress reaction - speculative “evidence” for this scenario can be gleaned from Chris’s bio - said disorder is left untreated and the effects of it are increased by Chris’s terrible surroundings and his lack of beneficent exterior stimuli - It’s more or less a given that Chris’s homophobia, misogyny, racism, dependency and overall social awkwardness can be comprehensively attributed to the terrible influence of Bob Chandler.

2. The Earliest Years Chris is born to unlikely and unwilling parents. Bob is >54 at Chris’s birthday and has lost contact with his two kids and his former wife, preferring to make an ass of himself at seedy bars. Barb, at >40, has alienated her first son with episodes of deceit and abuse and is also a regular barfly. The unplanned birth of Chris does not change their behavior, as they start to leave their child in the care of an unfit babysitter so they can continue to drink their misery away. Not the best conditions for a child to start a normal life.

3. The Trauma Something happens in 1983 that makes Chris lose his ability to speak or, more likely, prevents him from developing his speech skills at a normal rate. I regard his muteness as the first reaction to a singular traumatic event - most likely a (recurring?) episode of cruel and unusual punishment at the MANOS of either his babysitter or, more likely (one of) his parents. Considering Chris’s age, the likely trigger for such punishment would be that Chris repeatedly soiled himself. Freudian psychoanalysis puts little Chris squarely into the “anal phase” of his development. Nowadays, Freud’s theories have lost much of their appeal, yet in Chris’s case I find them strangely fitting: Messing with a child’s anal phase can result in prolonged difficulties with cleanliness, social interaction, conflict-solving capabilities and frustration tolerance and can also hamper the development of the superego (that part of ourselves that makes us susceptible to extrinsic motivation, resulting in ambition and a desire to achieve social status). Whatever modern reaction to Freud may be, I think that in the case of Chris, he really has a point. Also, the Atsimu Papers reveal that Chris “has been treated in the past by Imipramine for unclear reason” (sic, p.2). While Imipramine is an antidepressant, it is also used to treat bed wetting. Sadly, Borb were just the kind of parents to use old fashioned methods of education (belts, blunt objects etc.) before resorting to medication. The Chris we know and observed has always displayed a marked meek compliance towards his parents, just as if an all-encompassing fear of them had been beaten into him at an early age.

4. The Aftermath Chris stays mute for the next five years. His parents still enroll him in a regular school, pretending that everything is just fine. To further discourage anyone from suspecting that their abusive cruelty is responsible for their child’s odd behavior, they have him fitted with a common, run-of-the-mill diagnosis which at that time was a regular catch-all for a lot of developmental oddities when nobody would pay for further investigation. Neither of Chris’s parents show any signs of acting adequately, preferring to treat the symptoms, not the cause. I find this strongly suspect behavior: They act as if they know something nobody else does, to wit: They’re trying to cover up the mess they made. This might be a reason why nobody has ever seen the atsimu diagnosis and the Atsimu Papers only parrot Chris statement about him being five or six years old when diagnosed.

5. The Plot Thickens In 1991, Chris attends Nathanael Greene Elementary School, leaving it almost as soon as he entered it. Whatever happened there remains a mystery. Bob’s version consists of calling the school officials homos and pedoforks; strong signs of trying to shift the blame and resorting to ad hominems when proper arguments are not available – just like a guilty conscience would act. Chris’s muddled recollection of the events involves a) several school officials showing profound interest in him and b) a tape recorder. This is one of those puzzling details. It appears that the officials are trying to record some statements, being inquisitive about Chris’s personal life. He probably shows signs of neglect, appearing in school without a proper lunch and dressed in clothes from goodwill, unwashed and without control of his bowels; they suspect that something is amiss and try to collect some evidence so they can save a little boy from a hazardous household. Chris, noticing that the authorities he has learned to fear are attacked, flies into a rage. His parents, instead of being thankful that someone is finally willing to solve the problem they’ve been dragging around for almost ten years, immediately sue the school for its meddling attitude. When this doesn’t have the desired effect, they flee the county’s interference and move house several times, more or less like fugitives on the run. This phase of Chris’s life has never stopped influencing him. Never again has he come this close of escaping the detrimental effects of his tormentors, never again have his parents inflicted this much stress on him. The memories of the time spent on the run continue to haunt Chris to this very day – enough reason to assume that something major went down. Yet all he ever said about it was parroting his father’s angry diatribes against the school officials, consisting of unlikely accusations and the same helpless and fearful rage Chris himself has later displayed so very often. As soon as Barb retires from her job, the neighbors start circulating undisclosed rumors about the Chandlers (then living in Surrywood), prompting another escape. The family only settles down when Chris has completed his education, ensuring that he’s out of reach of county officials.

6. Squalor and Fear With Barb constantly at home, the family’s living conditions speedily deteriorate. Outsiders shun Chris who starts to rely more and more heavily on his parents’ views. Bob injects him with a backward mentality and probably fuels an already internalized homophobia when he loudly speculates that Chris cannot get laid because he might be up the pole. When his son comes of age, Bob immediately turns him out to pull the Chandler train ( jobs at Wendy’s and Cutco) and (probably resorting to insurance fraud) sets up an SSI claim for him. The Chandler family’s financial situation around 2000 is not well documented; but during the Nintendo saga it becomes obvious that Chris considers his family rather poor. Arguments about money and bills seem to be the order of the day – how else would Chris catch on? Anyway, Bob pockets more than 50% of the SSI stipend for himself and discourages Chris from finding additional employment. With enough money at his disposal, Chris could leave the house, leaving Bob without the extra cash – and once outside the house, he could also blab about his past to some outsider, probably resulting in some very uncomfortable questions coming in Bob’s direction. Belittling Chris and establishing himself as a dogmatic authority is the best way to keep things under wraps. Having shown a complete inability to hold down a job, Chris starts to make a nuisance of himself at home. Bob decides to enroll Chris in college. Chris’s only marketable interest is his art, yet Bob adamantly refuses to pay for a degree in marketing, steering Chris in the direction of CADD instead. Needless to say, Chris meekly complies, even though he has absolutely no talent or ability and stumbles through his classes. Chris starts to suffer. He’s unattractive and left with unresolved oedipal issues. He becomes a regular at some game store, acting as if he owned the place – the only way to act like a “normal” young male, trying to compete with authority and establish a place in a “pecking order”. That’s also what he does at PVCC. He should have done this at home, but a deeply ingrained fear of Bob made that impossible. The unresolved oedipal issues cause him to act out and he gets banned from school. The Megan disaster will eventually unfold and Chris will be banned from his one social outlet. While that is going on, Bob and Barb turn disappointment into paranoia to discourage Chris from ever establishing contact with the outside world and spilling the beans on his abusive parents. What passes for normal within the decrepit Chandler household is long since considered gross and inappropriate by outside standards. Desperate for some form of outlet, Chris publishes Sonichu. His ability to communicate is atrophying rapidly, as he has no-one to talk to. The backwards views of a bitter geriatric southern ”gentle”man are his only reliable sources of information about the outside world. When the outside world reacts differently, he flies into bouts of powerless rage. Hilarity ensues.

7. Conclusion Yes, Chris might well be a “genuine” autistic. Yet all the symptoms commonly put forward to strengthen this hypothesis – social awkwardness, limited understanding of others, literal-mindedness, reclusive behavior, inability to leave a strange personal comfort zone – might just as well be attributed to his terrible upbringing. His more individual symptoms – incontinence, disability to communicate, slovenly habits, lack of drive or ambition and especially his unquestioning obedience to a laughingly inept white-trash couple – would actually fit some sort of PTSD way better than they do the atsimu. His parents have wrecked him and didn’t care about what was going to happen to him. When outside officials took an interest in their wrecked offspring, they reacted very defensively and in a very suspicious way. Bob milked his ruined son for all he was worth - remember the family drama when he found out that Chris had accrued credit card debt? Bob didn’t give two shits about the ED article, the Megan fiasco, the string of troll sweethearts etc. but as soon as his sweet, sweet do-re-mi was involved, he sprang into action. By the time Chris was allowed to go to college, everything was already too late. The tugboat was already coming in, so Bob didn’t care whether or not Chris actually succeeded in achieving anything, the school was unwilling to cut him any slack and the damaged man-wreck tumbled ragingly into the depths of depravity. Needless to say, he did not go gently into the good night.