Chris-chan
- This article is about the TRUE and HONEST Chris-chan. For the online personality falsely claimed to be Chris-chan, see Ian Brandon Anderson.
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| Other names | CWC, Christine Weston Chandler, Christian W. Chandler, The King of All Lolcows, The TRUE and HONEST Chris, Chris-chan |
| Occupation | Comic book creator, YouTuber, illustrator, musician, doctor |
| Years active | 2001-present |
| Spouse(s) | Kacey Devoria |
Christian Weston Chandler (born February 24, 1982, as Christopher Weston Chandler), known online by his screen name Chris-chan, is a professional doctor, comic book creator, musician, and former YouTuber.
He's best known for his hit web series The Amazing Sonichu, commonly known as just Sonichu and briefly known as The Amazing Asperchu from 2009 to 2012.
Early life[edit | edit source]
Christian Weston Chandler was born as Christopher Weston Chandler to his father, Robert Franklin Chandler Jr., and his mother, Barbara Ann Chandler, on February 24, 1982. Not much is known about his early years, but in 1984 he had an encounter with an abusive babysitter named Rochelle, who locked him in his room. For years after this incident, he was silent. His parents took him to the doctor, where he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome.
Despite these major difficulties, Chris persisted. By the age of five, he rediscovered English, and began to rapidly gain reading skills. His parents objected to putting him in special education, and despite all his difficulties, he excelled in a normal school. When he was seven years old, his parents thought he was blessed by God Himself, and as such changed his name to Christian. Mere weeks later, he figured out how to program his own game with his dad's help. By his entry to third grade, his teachers considered him to be "exceptionally gifted". He finished elementary school with perfect grades.
Middle school was a significant period in his life, as he won $1,000 to spend on Sonic games. Despite being a fan of video games and playing them every day, he still got perfect grades in school. He made many friends during this time, despite his mediocre social skills. Besides this, his middle school years are shrouded in mystery.
Later education[edit | edit source]
High school[edit | edit source]
High school is widely considered the best time of Chris' life. During this period, he made some of the best friends he ever had, Clyde Cash and Jack Thaddeus. He also made many girls who became his friends, although most pitied him due to his Asperger's. They didn't hang out with him much outside of school, unlike Jack or Clyde. He graduated from high school on the honor roll, with everyone applauding him. He described his graduation as being dreary and depressing, although he pretended to be happy. In high school, Chris first realized his artistic abilities, and was considered one of the best artists to ever attend the school by his art teachers. Despite his proficiency in art, he did not receive an award for his artwork, much to the chagrin of Chris, his parents, and his fans. However, his high school eventually apologized for this atrocious mistake.
College years[edit | edit source]
Chris entered college in September 2000, feeling very depressed, as he had to move away from his gal-pals, as well as his friends Jack and Clyde. However, he was still sad most of the time, and girls wouldn't talk to him as much anymore. He was bullied by a ginger during this time, and as such developed an unnatural hatred for gingers. He had many encounters with the manajerk Mary Lee Walsh, which ended with a short suspension. What happened between them is unknown, but it is assumed that Mary Lee Walsh used her powers to summon an army of damn, dirty jerkops, who dragged him to the ground. He almost got suspended, but thankfully, GodJesus came in, killed the jerkops, sent Mary Lee Walsh to 99942 Apophis, and replaced her with a man named Jimmy Hill in December 2000. Right before the end of 2000, Chris received the news that Jack and Clyde were dating, which cheered him up a little bit and gave him the strength to continue and improve himself in 2001.
As his new year's resolution in 2001, Chris decided he would find new friends. Within a few weeks, he befriended Mao, Sean, and Evan. Evan had been drawing comics since high school, and the group quickly gained interest in drawing them as well. Starting in late February 2001, the group began formulating ideas for comics, distributing strips involving themselves as characters around the school. The school's principal, Jimmy Hill, took an interest in these comics, introducing his own character, Sonichu. The four greatly liked this idea, and as such, began production on the greatest webcomic ever made: The Amazing Sonichu, named after Jimmy Hill's character.
Career[edit | edit source]
Cartoonist career[edit | edit source]
Origins of Sonichu[edit | edit source]
On March 17, 2001, production of The Amazing Sonichu began. The story revolved around an electric, humanoid hedgehog creature named Sonichu, who could ZAP TO THE EXTREME! The comic featured drawings that many critics have described as "crude", although, contrary to the belief of many, this isn't because of Chris lacking art skills. The crude nature of the drawings is intended to be a reference to the nature of life, showing that it isn't perfect and doesn't need to be. The plot of The Amazing Sonichu has been acclaimed for its complexity and tackling of deep and complex sociopolitical issues. Using his own experience with having Asperger syndrome, Chris created the character of Asperchu to raise awareness of the disability. Asperchu was not that good at social interaction, so the titular character of the comics helped him with this. Asperchu has been acclaimed, both by critics and autism rights organizations, for being a highly positive and accurate representation of people with Asperger syndrome, raising awareness and removing stigma surrounding the disability. However, some people have criticized the Asperchu character for being too similar to Chris, but this is a stupid idea.
Sonichu was first shown to Jimmy Hill, who said that it was "The best thing I've ever read". Afterward, it was published in the local newspaper, and it somehow ended up with an approval rating of 132%. However, despite these successes, The Amazing Sonichu never received that much success or profit. By Chris's college graduation, the four had made around $70,000 from selling copies of The Amazing Sonichu books.
Clyde Cash and Jack Thaddeus soon found out about Chris-chan's comics, and greatly approved of it. Chris, Mao, Evan, and Sean were also very popular in the region due to their comic. They continued to produce more of it, with a page or more coming out every single day from 2000 to 2004. Chris, Mao, Evan, and Sean came to be known as the Sonichu Four.
The Sonichu comics would have such a lasting impact on the Internet, that they would later inspire the Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokémon franchises. Although some have criticized SEGA and Nintendo for making these franchises, which some fans saw as infringing on the copyright of Chris, Chris himself was happy about it and decided not to push charges.
Dark ages[edit | edit source]
After the graduation of the Sonichu Four in 2004, production on the comic slowed down, as they went to live far apart and could only communicate via email. While a page came out once every few days in late 2004, after their graduation, by 2005, it had slowed down to one page every few weeks. During this time, Chris met his future sweetheart, Kacey Devoria, and he went to medical school. Mao decided to start a career as a computer programmer, Evan got an office job, and Sean was exiled amongst the Amish for several attacks on gooners. He was, however, pardoned by Barack Obama.
In 2007, Chris became aware of a FALSE and DISHONEST comic created by an impostor who claimed to be named "Christian Weston Chandler", also called Sonichu (however, not The Amazing Sonichu). Digging deeper, he realized that this impostor's real name was Ian Brandon Anderson. Chris quickly realized that the needed to reclaim Sonichu, as Ian's fake Sonichu was quickly becoming more famous. He rallied the Sonichu Four (except for Sean, who was exiled amongst the Amish), where, beginning in January 2008, they began to ramp up production of The Amazing Sonichu, creating at least one page per week. While these efforts to reclaim the Sonichu name were initially successful, Ian led a massive counterattack, creating some fake Sonichu pages that were objectively worse but were widely distributed. Almost all attention that was being received by The Amazing Sonichu had been diverted by this point, and, in May 2008, the last page of The Amazing Sonichu for the next few years had come out. It seemed like the impostor had achieved victory.
Musical career[edit | edit source]
Albeit short-lived, Chris-Chan proved to be a highly skilled musician during his musical career as a guitarist.
Legal controversies[edit | edit source]
Impersonation[edit | edit source]
In 2004, a "high functioning" autistic male by the name of Ian Brandon Anderson discovered Sonichu while he was suspended from college for harassing people.[1]. He didn't actually read the comic, as shown by the fact that he couldn't grasp its several layers of socio-political criticism.
He decided to steal it create his own version of Sonichu, and it mostly went unnoticed due to its many flaws. Not even his parents liked it. This comic highlighted his blatant homophobia, egotism, poor grasp on reality, and his underlying homosexual and transsexual desires. Thankfully, only his parents saw it, and they were just a bit too dull to realize this.
On November 3rd, 2007, the Encyclopedia Dramatica website found about Chris-chan's works, and an article about him was created. , Ian Brandon decided to create a userpage and fill the page with misinformation, claiming that he was the real Chris-chan. However, this would later backfire him, as ED would start calling him
Upon finding about Ian's false claims, Christian W. Chandler didn't waste time and started spreading around the Internet the truth about who the real Chris-chan was. When Ian realized that he had been caught, instead of coming out as an impersonator, he tried to keep the illusion by fabricating proof of his self-proclaimed authencity as Chris-chan. The real Chris-chan, instead of taking legal action, decided to start a psychological fight with his impersonator by proving that he was better at everything he did, until Ian Brandson got tired of keeping his façade and finally came out as a faker.
After several years of psychological warfare, Chris-Chan realized that there was no real value in fighting against a severly damaged individual, and as a result, decided to let the impersonator held the title of Chris-chan as well as the copyright to the Sonichu brand. Despite this, Christian still won this battle: while he left the comic industry to pursuit a job as a doctor, the false Chris-chan's mental state slowly degraded to the point of going to jail for sexually abusing his own mother.
