Dreams
Nowadays, it is widely accepted that dreams can provide valuable insight into the mind of the dreamer. While they represent, at best, a warped reflection of what goes on in the unconscious mind, dreams are nevertheless made up of more than just random, meaningless images; usually involving the memories and thoughts of said individual.[1]
Chris adheres to a simpler, primitive belief in the significance of dreams. It's part and parcel of his religious mysticism — he believes many of his dreams are messages from God, as if he were a modern-day Nebuchadnezzar. Dreams, in Chris's mind, can provide accurate portents of the future, and much of his strange behavior may be connected to his attempts to make these dreams into reality.
Significant dreams
Chris has often claimed that his dreams represent communications from the divine. On IRC, when asked about his purpose in life, he explained it like so: "To eventually be married to my Sweetheart, then give birth and raise my daughter, as God has pointed it out for me in my dream." Likewise, when PandaHalo asked him why he wanted a daughter so badly, he said, "it was fortold to me in multiple dreams."
During the Father Call, when Matthew Devoria pointed out that his belief in prophetic dreams was both highly unlikely and potentially blasphemous, Chris was willing to back off from some of the weirder implications of his philosophy. "I am not saying that I am a prophet," he admitted. However, he continued to cling to the belief that his dreams represent the future. "I'm not saying that it is the definite future," he explained, "but that it is a POSSIBLE future."
It could be that Chris believes that God gives him these "visions of the future" in order to comfort him with the knowledge that he will, in fact, triumph in the face of adversity and autism. Chris himself has, on several occasions, shown that he fears suspense and uncertainty, and it wouldn't be a great leap of reason to assume that he thinks God is personally tossing him spoilers for his own life in much the same way as Chris slathers them onto Sonichu.
When a letter in Mailbag 55 called Chris out on his insane belief, his response was to ask "What is YOUR Dream Career?", suggesting that he has misinterpreted various dream-related expressions such as "the woman of my dreams" or "my dream job". While the expressions actually mean "it would be dreamlike to have a job like that or a wife like her", Chris may take it to mean "God literally showed this job/woman to me in a dream".
Chris has discussed several of his more important or influential dreams in many of his comics, chats, and videos. There may be a great many more that he's never felt like sharing with the outside world, so this section is by no means comprehensive, but it should at least provide a basic overview of the sort of prophecies Chris believes that he receives.
The Crystal dream
| “ | I have my dreams that God gave to me, and I have to see my Crystal Weston Chandler be Born. | ” |
| Chris, Vivitheg's AIM chat | ||
By far the most significant of Chris's dreams is this one, where he saw himself married to an unspecified woman and raising a daughter named Crystal. This represents the genesis of his Love Quest, or at any rate his favorite excuse for it. When he's not willing to admit that what he really wants is a replacement mother, Chris claims that his search for a sweetheart is intended to fulfill God's will and produce his prophesied daughter.
| “ | You see, I have a dream, I have my dream, and that dream is to give birth, to have, to share a daughter with my wife-to-be, and her name would be Crystal. | ” |
| Chris, during the Father Call. | ||
Chris, always one to share too much personal information during conversations with strangers, sometimes brings up the Crystal dream while introducing himself to people. In one of his Facebook conversations, he sent a new contact the following question: "Do you know any 18-25-year old single women who might like me? I would appreciate any help I can get in finding the one who would be my Sweetheart, and help me realize my dream of me fathering a pretty daughter named Crystal Weston Chandler."
For some time, the many trolls following Chris operated according to the belief that the dream took place when he was around 21 years old, right around the formal beginning of the Love Quest. During the Father Call, however, Chris very clearly stated that he had the dream when he was in elementary school, between seven and nine years of age. In that description of the dream, he also noted that he "had, like, an office job" in his future life, an embellishment that smacks of Chris attempting to impress Kacey's father.
This statement, however, predates the Father Call. In an email sent to Katie Bay near the end of July 2009, Chris used this dream as an excuse to not get a job. Specifically, he expressed annoyance that he does not know what kind of job he has in the dream, only that he is working in an office building, his daughter is present, and shortly after the dream begins the building starts to collapse and he needs to run away with Crystal.
Chris's dreams about his future daughter are at least partially responsible for his refusal to date black women. In Mailbag 35, he explained, "I never saw a black woman being my wife in any of my dreams of me and my white baby daughter."
The Grim Reaper dream
In a dream some time before 2005, Chris met the Grim Reaper:
| “ | I understand my dad does not have long to live, but I have to ask while you're here, when will you be taking my father? He informed me that he would not claim his soul until the year 2015. | ” |
| From Jackie E-mails 31 | ||
Chris found this comforting, but was enraged with the Grim Reaper (the ultimate troll) when he took Bob's soul in 2011.
| “ | Damn you, Reaper, this is Two Thousand Eleven! I Was Promised that we'd be blessed with father's presence for Four More Years! I Was Promised!!! | ” |
| Chris, cursing Death for not giving him
what he is entitled to | ||
The Blanca dream
During the late summer and early fall of 2008, Chris wildly ping-ponged back and forth between a number of potential sweethearts, including PandaHalo, Sarah Jackson, and Blanca Weiss. On September 29, however, he finally settled on Blanca, having supposedly experienced a dream where he met her in the lobby of a Charlottesville hotel.
Chris describes the dream in some detail in his e-mails to Blanca, as well as the letter he sent to her along with his medallions.
| “ | I FINALLY HAD my Dream that I have been waiting for for soo long; the dream revealing the name of my Sweetheart-to-be. the scenario was simply, after talking to her over the internet, I went to the local Hotel to meet her, and her name came up Often, and was Burned into my Memory and my Heart...SHE is YOU. :) YOU, Blanca Weiss, ARE MY SWEETHEART-TO-BE! | ” |
| Chris, falling for it on a number of levels. | ||
He also mentioned the dream on his blog, claiming that "God and Jesus have revealed to me the name of my True, Honest Sweetheart-To-Be." Three weeks later, the object of Chris's divinely-inspired love dumped him (after dumping his beloved medallions in pickle brine).
The PandaHalo dream
Although breaking up with Blanca temporarily sent Chris crashing into slumber, he recovered from the trauma quickly enough with the aid of his dear friend PandaHalo. By mid-November, he was having wet dreams about her and sharing the details in their communications, which Panda promptly passed on to her fellow trolls on IRC:
| “ | During my most recent dream, You were in it. You were alone in your apartment; I had just run in to see you. We talked for a bit, but then you and I, we made out, then got naked and lost our virgin ways to each other. It got soo goodly hot and wild, that I came in my sleep over you. | ” |
| Chris, traumatizing a chatroom full of trolls. | ||
If this particular dream also happened to be a prophecy, GodJesus must have gotten his wires crossed. Chris never met Panda in person, and had more or less gotten over her long before she allegedly died early in 2009.
The Ivy dream
In Episode 19, Chris recounted a vision where two-thirds of the Holy Trinity told him, in the most explicit possible terms, that Ivy was destined to be his one true love, that his enemies would be defeated, and that his biological clock would soon be conveniently reset. None of these prophecies came true.
The Watery Maze Dream
Another one of Chris's wet dreams, in the literal sense this time, involves a vision of encountering his promised sweetheart in a "watery maze." Chris mentioned this recurring dream in his quiz about himself, although he didn't offer very many additional details.
Liquid Chris took advantage of this bit of information to mock his rival in one of his videos, declaring that he and his girlfriend Kacey "are going to swim through a watery maze and make passionate love to each other and it's going to be awesome".
Chris eventually immortalized this dream in a terrifying animation, showing us a little more of what it's about. The details were unsurprising: in a maze full of water, Chris meets an unspecified woman and has sex with her. The end.
Chris was especially eager to keep this animation on Flipnote Hatena, having uploaded it a grand total of six times, despite its assorted violations of the website's policies. Though the site's moderators deleted it a number of times, he doggedly kept re-uploading it. Judging by the monologue after the dream ("If only I knew who you are in reality...") Chris believes that the "LOVELY WOMAN" is a real boyfriend-free girl somewhere, perhaps one who suffers from a recurring nightmare in which she is raped by an obese manchild. By putting his sex fantasy where everyone could see it, Chris may have been attempting to contact the non-existent woman.
Mother dreams
A Facebook post on 10 August 2016 revealed that Chris has had incestuous dreams about his mother. He seems to believe that "everyone" has these sorts of dreams. Fortunately, he clarified that this dream in particular was not prophetic and at the time, he had never had sex with Barb, although he doesn't mind if other mothers and sons have hanky-panky.
Little did anybody know that it was an ominous prediction of what was to come.
Minor dreams
The Sonic on Game Boy dream
In the Song of Christian, Chris claims to have experienced a dream involving a Sonic the Hedgehog game for Nintendo's Game Boy handheld. According to the Sonichu Chronicles, it took place in June 1997. This, he says, is what inspired the "Sonic Dumps Sega, Joins Nintendo" cover story on his homemade Nintendo Power magazine, as well as the many half-assed knockoff Sonic game concepts inside of it. He also wrote a letter to the real Nintendo Power describing the dream.
This is one dream of Chris's that actually came true, after a fashion. While Nintendo never made a Sonic game for the original Game Boy, Sonic Advance hit the Game Boy Advance at the tail end of 2001. It was one of the very first Sonic games for a non-Sega hardware platform, seeing release around the same time as Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for Nintendo's GameCube. In typical Chris fashion, he announced that he "pretty much foretold that outcome" in a PowerPoint presentation.
The Pamela dream
During his chats with (someone he believed to be) Vanessa Hudgens, Chris cited a dream that taught him a useful moral lesson. Supposedly, during the long months of the Megan Saga, Chris had a dream where he "had to choose" between his True and Honest love for Megan Schroeder and his temporary lust for TV star Pamela Anderson. "I stuck by my morals and went for Megan," Chris explained. "And because the same is being applied between you and Ivy, I am going to remain strong and true and stay with Ivy."
Given that he never got any from Megan, of course, in retrospect the sensible choice would have been to go for Pamela, a la Borat. Here's to the path not taken.
The Patti-chan dream
Some time after the death of his beloved dog Patti, Chris had a dream (or multiple dreams) reassuring him that Patti was all right and living comfortably in the presence of God. Chris discussed this in his Plea to Clyde Cash from January 2009, hoping that Clyde would follow his example, "get over" the death of Ryan Cash, and stop cruelly tormenting him. For some reason, Clyde chose to ignore Chris's advice.
The swimming pool dream
According to the Ivy Q&A Chris had a wet dream (or "sticky dream" in Chris's parlance) in late March 2009 involving himself and Ivy in a swimming pool. In the dream Chris is somehow her "hero", possibly saving her from drowning. Chris told Ivy that this had been his first pleasant dream in a long time.
Due to the combined threat of his somewhat slippery grip on language and his peculiar mindset on sex, Chris is noticeably confused about basic sexual terminology. When Ivy asked if by "sticky dream" he meant a wet dream, he replied, "No, that's when you pee yourself, silly!"
Chris had this dream while sleeping on his couch as he had just shit his bed after receiving a death threat over the phone from somebody claiming to be Clyde Cash.
The Hey Arnold! dream
Around early April 2009 Chris had a dream involving the protagonist of the Nickelodeon cartoon Hey Arnold!. Ivy reports that "It started off with him skiing on a mountain with Arnold. They went off a steep jump and flew/floated through space. When they returned to Earth, they landed in the ocean atop a pair of identical surfboards. Chris high fives Arnold and sees everyone on the beach cheering for them."[2]
The acid factory dream
In Mailbag 39, responding to a question that attempted to reason with him about his hatred of Asperchu, Chris dove off along a tangent and described a particularly picturesque nightmare that mixes his hatred of tobacky, his now non-hatred of alcohol, and his racism.
| “ | I was in a factory and I watched PEOPLE lying on a conveyor belt with their mouths full of cigarettes, going through BURNING OVENS, coming out singed (not ON FIRE), then dunked into a huge tank of Alcohol that DISSOLVED THEM to DUST like ACID would do, and their remains would come out of the factory's smokestacks in puffs of smoke and ashes. And another detail, the Front of the factory is SKULL-SHAPED. | ” |
| Your guess is as good as ours. | ||
Chris has a habit of bringing up traumatic experiences from his past on the least provocation, usually as a way of fishing for sympathy. For instance, during the Father Call, he went on the defensive by suddenly changing the subject to the incident where he was allegedly abused at elementary school.
Dreaming of death
Chris has apparently dreamed on multiple occasions of the instant that precedes death. In his conversations with the Sysop of CWCipedia, while complaining about various objectionable advertisements on "his" site, he delivered the following bizarre non sequitur:
| “ | Seeing the BIG Ad in the One Spot is as terrifying as the Flash Of Light at the Instant Millisecond of DEATH, or even, technologically, the Blue Screen Of Death. And Believe Me, IN DREAMS, and even IN MOMENTS within my mind while AWAKE, I HAVE SEEN AND FELT That Death Light. Not only is it the Most Horrifying Thing Ever, but I am LOOOONG NOT READY FOR IT YET. | ” |
| This statement offered without comment. | ||
Exactly why Chris chose to draw a connection between the moment of a human being's physical death and the moment of a Windows PC crashing is uncertain. This might be because the error alert that comes up after a critical system error in PCs is colloquially known as the "Blue Screen of Death," which literal-minded Chris would associate with a real near-death experience.
Chris's dreams of a light at the moment of death may be based on Bob's recollections of his own near-death experiences. During Chris's date with Emily, Bob tells her that he has "died" several times, and Chris says that Bob "has seen the light, but did not actually go to it."
High school dreams
During his date with Emily, Chris mentioned recurring dreams about his days at Manchester High School. Given that his high school years were the last time Chris had anything like real friends or a fulfilling social life, it's no surprise that he often revisits them in his dreams. He describes the dreams in a very wistful, nostalgic tone: "I get to see all my, all my old s-, c-, all my old friends...there."
Chris also added that Megan Schroeder sometimes appears in his dreams of high school, even though he didn't meet her until well after he graduated and returned home to Ruckersville. Clearly, his unconscious mind is cobbling together an amalgam of all his fondest memories.
Prince dream
According to an August 2010 e-mail to Jackie, Chris dreamt that he was in a Prince and Pauper situation, in which he switched lives with a Prince. He called it "confusing and stress-filled" and said he was surrounded with people who had no understanding of him, and was upset with the Prince's babysitter for calling Yoshi a "homosexual icon."[3] Chris offered an explanation for this otherwise baffling scenario, claiming it was an analogy for his brief stint as the prince of the trolls and his discomfort with the homosexual tendencies of his new caretakers.
Father dreams
Since his father passed away on 6 September 2011, Chris has indicated that he regularly dreams about him, and hints that these are messages from the spirit world. In a private Facebook post in March 2012, Chris wrote, "I see and converse with him in my dreams," while his mother "feels his presence in the house." In 2014, in his OKCupid profile, when faced with the question, "Have you ever had a ghost or spirit around you and you could feel it?," Chris replied yes, and added, "My late father appears often in my dreams."
In a video uploaded in July 2016, Chris reiterates that his father "comes visits me in my dreams nearly every night."
School bus dreams
In October 2013, Chris fished for pity from his gal-pal Rebeckah by saying that all the stress from family obligations, the trolls, money issues, and paranoia were giving him recurring nightmares involving "school bus trips resulting in driving off the high freeway edges, flying to dive towards a cliff, water, another road or whatever." As if Chris didn't already have enough negative associations with school buses.
Yahtzee dream
In a January 2014 Facebook post, Chris describes a dream he had in which he played a worded version of Yahtzee. As he describes it, "there was a predetermined crossword pattern on cardboard pieces and a set list of words. And the seven dice had letters and asterisks for blank squares instead of dots for numbers. You roll the dice and match the letters out of them in a word, and you match them up in that cross word. After completing one word, then when you complete another that intercepts the first, that's when you yell 'Yahtzee!'" Unlike Chris's other dreams, he did not seem to read too much into this one.
Strangler swallower dream
On 27 December 2015, Chris documented a dream where Marty McFly informed him he swallowed a "strangler". He had no comment on the meaning of the dream.
Two Chrises dream
On 15 December 2019, Chris claims he had a dream where he was in the year 2004 in a Wal-Mart. There, his past self meets him, and chases him to the other end of the store, apparently being attracted to him. He then turns his face upside down, which scares away the past Chris. Chris claims that he now understands how all of the previous sweethearts he pursued at the time must have felt from his innapropriate behavior.
Summer 2020 dreams
In the Bismuth DMs from 30 July-6 August 2020 Chris relates a number of vivid dreams:
- A "dream involving a Jim Carrey type of dude who could literally transform from human into a VW Beatle Taxi Cab". Chris is looking after children, then wanders through a shopping mall and takes a trip to a mountain retreat full of "LGBTQ individuals really having fun". Chris observes a toxic gas rising up the mountainside.
- Barb and Chris are driving along Interstate 64 in his Cadillac. Barb nearly crashes the car. They end up at a diner, where Chris uses the ladies' restroom along with various young women in the diner. In the bathroom Chris glimpses their genitals (somehow) and gets splashed with their piss (somehow). Chris and Barb go to Best Buy and another store and buy random crap. They then travel home on a raft down a river.
- Chris records a crime taking place in an antiques shop and apprehends a criminal with the help of the management. Somehow this dream also involves a bootleg Sonic game.
- A dream involving "one or two devilish females who were on the verge of dying out with their species" who could be killed by means of a "Holy-Blessed mirror".
- Chris attends a party with characters from the cartoon Doug where everybody changes into costumes which represent their true selves. Chris dresses in a woman's outfit, which he interprets as a sign of his increasing femininity.
- Chris is back in Manchester High School and finds himself lost in the hallways. He picks up his class schedule from the faculty office, which includes such classes as "Astral Physics", "Goddess Training" and "Magic Conjurings". His feeling of alienation is heightened by the subconscious knowledge that his gal-pals are not real.
- Chris is riding on a school bus in a hellish landscape with Tiffany Gowen and a big man with bad body odor. Various demonic phenomena are being caused by the anger of a past version of Chris. Present-day Chris (or Sonichu, it isn't exactly clear) reasons with past Chris, and the demonic phenomena stop. On the bus, Chris confesses his feelings to Tiffany, which she takes in stride. Chris takes a look at the big man and realizes that he is "a piece of Jacob". He shatters the man to dust, sucks the dust up into a Master Ball and fires the ball into the sun.
- Chris rides a chair attached to a wheeled platform downhill to his house. In the house he hears what he takes to be the voice of Magi-Chan, but it is actually a dark-haired man. The man tells Chris, "I may be controlled by someone else's input, but I do not let it get me down." They cuddle and Chris seemingly wakes up. In bed, Chris is approached by a different man and wakes up again. This happens yet again. Chris is now in bed with his imaginary baby sister from a previous dream. The baby says "I like you" and Chris finally wakes up for real.
Golden disc dream
In the Pennsylvania Trip chatlog Chris describes a dream he had the night after he returned from his road trip to Philadelphia on 8 October 2020. The dream was about a segmented golden disc decorated with zodiac signs and other symbols including "Bushido symbols".
Talking blob dreams
On the night of 30-31 July 2021, while staying in a motel in Richmond after being expelled from his home under suspicion of incest, Chris had a lucid dream which he believed was inspired by the plot of the 2011 video game The Binding of Isaac. The dream consisted of a conversation between "some individuals, and a constant flesh-coloured blob that changed shape, but it was mostly big-head oval. It also sometimes has a brown splotch on the bottom; possibly a beard."
At 7:00 the following morning, Chris fell back asleep and had another, similar dream, but he was now being annoyed by the blob's "discernible dialect" (Chris probably means "indiscernible") and "wanted out of this 'what the fucking hell' kind of dream". Chris confided the content of both dreams to Sean Walker in a text conversation on 31 July.[4]
The connection between the dreams and The Binding of Isaac is not immediately obvious. As The Binding of Isaac is about a mother who tries to murder her son, it may suggest that Chris believes that Barb betrayed him by cooperating with the police and getting him expelled from his house.
The dream turned out to be prophetic, as the very next day, 1 August 2021, Chris would indeed converse with a fat, bearded, big-headed blob and his companions.
Typifying Chris's dreams
Just like those of real people, Chris's dreams can be split into some distinct categories which can tell us more about his motivations, his fears, and his state of mind at the time he dreamt them. It should be noted that the dreams Chris has seen fit to discuss are no doubt the ones which have affected him emotionally and which he thus considers worthy of discussion. It is highly likely that on most nights he simply dreams his Aspie dreams about day-to-day events, just like we all do. Considering what Chris's life is like, these are probably not worth consideration by anyone.
Wish-fulfillment Dreams
Freud stated that all dreams were a kind of wish fulfillment. While this has been discussed ad nauseam and expanded upon by many psychologists in the years since, this represents a good jumping-off point for studying some of Chris's dreams. As one example, Chris's dog died, and he wanted to know that she was happy, so he dreamt that she was in heaven. This is simple enough (though it does raise questions about Chris's ability to work through his grief). Also related to this are dreams when he is back at high school, in dumbass classes where he wasn't affected by the cruelties of real life, surrounded by gal-pals and still svelte enough to fit into his Ash Ketchum costume. The anachronistic appearance of Megan in these dreams serves to confirm that they represent mental wish fulfillment on his part. Chris wants to go back to high school, and his mind allows him to do so.
Aspirational dreams
Chris's dream about Crystal, and those he attributes to the influence of God, represent a far less common and somewhat more problematic type of dream--one which seems to create aspirations in the dreamer. These dreams are extremely rare, in many cases happening only a handful of times in an entire lifetime (according to Jung). Chris's dream about Crystal, considering it happened at such an early age, likely coincided with a major period of psychological growth in his life (what little we know about Chris's life at this time may support this notion), which would have inflated an otherwise small thought in his mind to a highly emotional aspiration. To have remembered this dream for so long suggests a feeling of bliss or enormous happiness at the time of dreaming, which he now associates with the content of the dream. Crystal therefore represents less an actual wish for a daughter (as Chris doesn't know shit about raising children and is too lazy and self-centered to do it well) and more a desire to return to the state of happiness he felt in his sleep, likely at a moment of extreme personal catharsis within his waking life.
Nightmares
Given Chris's total lack of imagination, his nightmares seem shockingly vivid. The particulars of what they represent are a job for a psychologist of a level above that of a church counselor (although the acid factory dream is simple enough to understand--Chris hates alcohol and tobacky), but their apparent muffled severity offers us some hope that within the stagnating mass of lard and stupidity that is Chris, there is a voice of reason struggling to escape like a drowning man screaming madly for the surface. If Chris ever discovers the core of the turmoil indicated by his nightmares and what they represent, it would very likely destroy his perspective on the world and he may finally continue on the path towards psychological maturity.
See also
- Bismuth DMs, in which Chris describes many dreams
- Chris and psychology
- Chris and religion