User:Borednewb
Aussie here. Feel free to ignore this page, I'm just trying to understand the ballsed up mindset that is Chris, at least a little. If this is inappropriate, feel free to delete it. I'm just putting some theories down to see what people think.
Chris' limited understanding
Reading this and watching the Monty Python video may explain a bit about Chris' mindset. Chris adores Monty Python, that much is obvious (and tragic). He loves it in the same way a child would ("That man has a silly walk!", "He's slapping the guy with fish!" would be the depth of his understanding) and understands that it is 'funny', and it is similar with his love of family guy. He loves the shows and understands that they are funny and so his own attempts at humour (as evident in his list of 'jokes' in Random-access humor) are based entirely around what he understands of the series.
He recognises that they are funny, he recognises that a lot of the humour in both shows are based on the non-sequitor nature of the jokes, and so in his mind he equates 'randomness' with 'funny'. In a normal person, they recognise the vast amount of work that goes into making something funny, it requires timing, relevance to the audience, risqué nature, and a host of other variables, all coming together in varied amounts (some being left out completely in particular types of humour) to create an entire form of communication. Chris only sees limited aspects and automatically equates them. To him risqué = joke, and random = joke.
Look at his 'joke' as an example. It lacks any form of pacing, no misleading statements about where the joke is going, nothing confronting, in fact the closest it gets to a joke is using milk and eggs as a metaphor for sperm and the female egg, an attempt at a double entendre that fails enormously. He then goes on to butcher whatever humour may (but doesn't) exist by showing a complete lack of timing and carrying the joke on past any humourous stage.
He believes that by including a risque attempt at a double entendre in what is otherwise a children's fable level of writing (all it's missing is a wicked witch trying to stop the husband getting home and the phrase "Happily ever after" at the end, and it would be a poor fable) it becomes a joke. Similarly, he knows the Junkions are meant to be comic relief in the original Transformers movie, and so he thinks that by making random statements he is funny. He doesn't understand context, or 'get' any second level to things.
Let's take this and apply it to his pride and joy, Sonichu. Chris likes Sonic and Pokemon, and Chris realises they are for children. By putting them together he thinks that makes his comic automatically for children. He doesn't comprehend the amazing requirements on a story to make it an effective children's story, he simply assumes "Sonic is for children, therefore anything with Sonic in it is for children". He can throw in hardcore gore, sex scenes, huge romance plots that really are inappropriate for children (kids don't read romance novels for a reason, they're not interested in a lot of that), and in his mind it is still a comic appropriate for children.
tl;dr version: Chris doesn't understand context, and believes correlation = causation. Sonic is in a show for children, therefore anything Sonic is in is for children, he doesn't understand that it was the stories in the children's show that made it appropriate for children, not by virtue of it being about a blue hedgehog.
Chris' Categorical Imperative
I wrote a bit about this on the page Chris and his Ego, but I just want to expand. There I said that Chris had a child like method of debating, he decides on the facts and then twist the evidence to support it (look at his use of parody to talk down about Asperchu, while at the same time legitimising Sonichu by claiming it to be a parody). But I think there may be something more to it than this. In philosophy there is the term in discussing morality called 'Moral Absolutism', that is where there is an absolute truth about what is moral and what is not. I will call Chris' view on the world 'Chris Absolutism'. That is, there is an absolute truth about the world, and when people disagree with him (his view being factual in his eyes) it is because they do not understand it.
Look at Megan and his end result with that. Chris believes that Megan is his sweetheart and therefore in his mind, according to reality she is. When the fiasco happened, she is upset with the picture Chris posted, and everyone jokes that he thinks she's upset because she doesn't understand the sexual act in question, but that is a sign of something far scarier.
Chris thinks he is a gentleman, therefore everything he does is the act of a gentleman, and if she's upset with him acting inappropriately well obviously he didn't act inappropriately because gentlemen do not do that, so instead she just didn't understand his action. So he explains it, thinking "My action is the action of a gentleman, if she understands it as I do, she will have to agree".
Chris gets confused when people disagree with him not because he's slow (well, he is, but that's not the only reason) but because he knows his belief is fact and so he just needs to work out what evidence he has to back it up, often evidence that doesn't exist. He does not understand the differentiation between perception and truth. It is why he is unable to learn, time after time, that all his sweethearts are trolls, because in his heart he loves (I think his conception of love needs analysis, too) them and so that means in reality they are his true love. Similarly, Chris honestly believes he is young, thin, handsome, honest and a gentleman because he states these to be facts. Any proof to the contrary does not fit with his self image and so it is ignored, and anyone who says he is not any of these things is obviously incorrect in his mind.
A search for the term "I was wrong" on this -pedia reveals that it is only used 10 times, and only 3 of those are Chris. Every one of those 3 times are him either apologising because he thinks it will get him something or... actually that's it. It's him talking to Kacey's father thinking apologising will get him out of trouble, apologising for the coke adds in an incredibly passive aggressive way thinking it'll get him out of trouble, and apologising to Kacey thinking it'll get her back. Chris is never wrong unless 'admitting' it gets him something.
tl;dr version: Chris does not understand the difference between his perspective and absolute truth. He has no conception of being wrong not because he is arrogant, but because he honestly doesn't differentiate between his perception and reality. And so anyone who disagrees with him is trolling or ignorant. Look at the white knights trying to save him from trolling sweet hearts (every one of them being ignored in favour of his perspective, that his sweethearts are 'true and loyal' to him). Or the Megan saga, where when Megan was angry with him he assumed explaining himself would make her understand that he was right.
Chris and 'love'
Like many things, Chris seems to understand love in terms best compared to a computer game (see his respect meter), that is to say it is a goal driven enterprise, not a mutual attraction. Falling in love and having sex are stepping stones in maturity and leaving childhood to enter into mature adulthood, and so to Chris it is the 'goal' he attains. In Pokemon and other games there is ALWAYS a pre-scripted way through the puzzles to the solution, so Chris assumes there is here. Rather than allowing it naturally to happen (assuming it would naturally happen in Chris' case) he seems determined to go through the steps as quickly as possible. Even in calling it a 'Girlfriend quest' or 'Love quest' it makes it sound like some bullshit dating simulator "Collect twenty panties and I'll sleep with you" game. In his desire for 'dating classes' he doesn't actually want to learn how to talk to women effectively, he wants a walkthrough he can finish the game with.
But that is not to say he is attempting to rush it, he merely assumes it can be done that quickly. From hordes of fables and romantic tales Chris 'learns' how love works (he assumes it is a magical 'eyes meet across the room and happily ever after affair), and from comic stereotypes and bad teen comedies he learns how dating works (the good guy meets with the girl, they have chemistry, fuck by the third date). Considering he seems to blur the lines between fantasy and reality in most things, it is no surprise he seems to view these as documentaries rather than stories and believes that relationships should move this quickly and always work out.
Put this together and there's one obvious conclusion. Chris does not love any of his 'girlfriends' (none of which are really friends, most of which aren't really girls), instead he loves the idea of a girlfriend. Chris has NEVER spoken of meeting someone and not really having a 'spark' with them, a situation most people experience fairly regularly, he just assumes if they are interested in him and meet his physical requirements, than they must be 'the one'. He loves none of them, instead he loves the idea of having a girlfriend, the loveydoveyness is a combination of the belief this is how people in relationships act, a desire to keep his girlfriend by telling her he loves her, and an expression of the feeling of accomplishment he has.
This is why Chris is able to move on so quickly when the relationship invariably falls apart. Follow the Chris Logic:
Man and woman fall in love -> Happy Ending.
If I settle down with a woman -> I will have a happy ending and be an adult.
If I settle down with a woman -> I will be in love with her.
If a girl is with me -> She is my true love.
If a girl leaves me -> She is not my true love.
In an ideal relationship, you're with your partner because you both love each other. In a Chris relationship whoever you're with, you love. When they leave him he's sad because they're not with him, not because his heart is broken.
And now, onto his fear of breaking up couples in relationships in his comics. Because he views the relationship as the end goal (the 'winning point', so to speak), having a relationship break up in his comic would be like depowering the characters (I.E. Utterly alien to him) or willingly trying to lose a game.
Additional: A theory on Chris and sex. Chris never reached any degree of maturity, but he still sexually matured enough to enjoy the act of sex (although in Chris' case it is a solo act, perhaps with props). But since he is not emotionally mature enough to truly have a sexuality, he falls back on accepted knowledge. Chris dislikes homosexuals and likes women because he has accepted from birth that this is what men like. A couple of times he's mentioned that in the past he's been called homosexual before his encounter with the trolls (I recall reading this, not sure where. Any help would be appreciated), so his homophobia is probably a backlash from that ("I'm being called homosexual as an insult. I don't like being insulted, so being called a homosexual is bad. So homosexuality is bad, so I hate homosexuals"). So without a genuine sexuality he feels he must force himself to be straight to fit in, hence his use of the Sailor Moon poster as a reminder to 'keep (him) straight'. This also explains why he uses things such as vibrators, since Chris never developed a true sexuality, he enjoys anything that causes sexual stimulation. In the same way a rat with a pleasure button does, Chris will keep pressing whatever buttons help him enjoy himself. He used vibrators until people said "That is homosexual", and so he 'publically' stops. It's possible (or even likely) he privately continues, because his hatred of being called homosexual may not be the fear of being called homosexual, it may be lingering fear of the social insult of being called gay in school.