Trivia / Sonichu

---

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: Beer is usually referred to as "reeb". Reeb is actually a brand of beer in China, and also an example of back slang.
• Creator Breakdown: Christine allows a lot of events in her personal life to become major plot points in the comic, such as her unrequited love for a close friend becoming Sailor Megtune and the tribute to the death of her dog, Patti.
• Creator's Pest: It's rather clear Christine hates Bananasauros, a Patreon backer's pre-existing character. Christine wrote him out of the comic in the same episode he was introduced, and called the paid advertisement for the Bananasauros video game "out-of-context, outdated and juvenile" on the same page as the ad itself. Chris later outright had the original iteration of the character die offscreen in lore that she later described — a rarity for Chris's story — although the species is still technically alive.
• Dear Negative Reader: In Issue 10, Marvey Blaziken non-subtly calls out those who complained◊ about the lack of updates.
• Flip-Flop of God: Due to the fact that all the details of Sonichu really only exist in the author's head and are always subject to her whims and fancies at the time, virtually everything is subject to changes that really only make sense to Christine. She seems to assume that the audience will automatically understand her intentions.
• In Memoriam: Sonichu 12 had Christine dedicating the issue to her late father. Her tribute to her dog, Patti in issue 6 as well.
• The Merch: You can buy high-quality Sonichu merchandise that's been approved by Christine here. All profits are donated to the Organization for Autism Research.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: Simonla Rosechu was based on a fan-character called Simonchu.
• One-Book Author: The only webcomic by Christine Weston Chandler. Given that it's one of the most hated webcomics of all time, Christine herself is one of the most infamous members of the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom (if not the entire internet, to the extent people may know who she is even if they have only vaguely heard of the webcomic), and the numerous memes mocking Sonic, it's not surprising.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Although a lot of events and characters are inspired by Christine's real life, one notable incident would be when a troll bought ad server space on Christine's wiki and filled it with gay porn and offensive art in order to force Christine to kill off a character taken from their "fan" art and genderflipped without her permission.
• Reality Subtext: Around 2011, Christine started identifying as a lesbian (later bisexual) transgender woman. This lead to their Author Avatar becoming a female and Robee Rosee evolving into Roberta Rosechu.
• Referenced by...:
  • A "SONICHU" license plate can be seen in the background of Harry Partridge's "Skyrim" animation.
  • Sonichu is among the Sues in the Sonic verse seen in Ensign Sue Must Die.
  • Sonichu briefly appears in So This Is Basically... Sonic the Hedgehog.
  • The cover of Sonichu #0 is directly referenced in the pilot of OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes. Ian Jones-Quartey stated that the reference was even more blatant in the original storyboard.
• Rule 34 – Creator Reactions: Christine did not take it well when she saw "fan" art of Rosechu and other female characters from her comic having penises when those images surfaced on Encyclopedia Dramatica and 4chan. Christine then uploaded porn of her own to these websites, showcasing that Rosechu and other female characters' vaginas; some of that same porn factored into the narrative of Sonichu #8. Christine would later claim that Rosechu was a trans woman, which would imply that the trolls may have had the right idea all along.
• Saved from Development Hell: Sonichu issue #11 was on a hiatus with little work completed for over six years. Financial motives and Christine finding new inspiration in the LGBTQ sector finally brought the series back.
• Schedule Slip: Many issues took up to a year to be completed. The Christmas Special, featured in Sonichu #11, was completed eight years after it had been started (it was originally illustrated in 2009; after a sudden burst of motivation, Christine began work on the comic again in 2017).
• She Also Did: In recent years, Christine has been involved in two reanimation projects. In the first instance, Christine contributed a scene for the multi-creator project Shrek Retold. The scene in question was Lord Farquaad making a deal with Shrek to go on the quest in exchange for his swamp. Christine later took part in a reanimation project for Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie dubbed Sonic Rebuilt just over a year later.
• Streisand Effect: Much of the comic was fueled by Christine's attempts to fight back after 4chan and Encyclopedia Dramatica tried to troll her, creating an infinite loop where she would create new material, which would lead to more trolling, which would lead to more material...
• Tribute to Fido: Patti-Chan is based on Christine's deceased dog, Patti.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things:
  • Christine stopped making Sonichu comics in February 2010 due to her (justifiable) belief that her fanbase consisted solely of trolls and feels that they've sabotaged her attempts to court a girlfriend just so she could continue making comics. ^note Christine was also upset at being forced to kill Simonla, as she believes all her creations to be real in some way. Tellingly, one of the first things she did on returning was bring Simonla back. While she released a few pages in 2015, it wouldn't be until May 2017 that Christine officially started work on issue eleven along with a cover for the next issue as well. By the end of June, issue eleven was finally completed after almost eight years.
  • Christine would stop writing again in 2018 thanks the influence of two trolls known as the "Idea Guys", who convinced Christine to include a lot of offensive content in her work, plus a slew of overdosed memes that Christine didn't understand. Christine's observers, critics and genuine fans near universally hated the Idea Guys as soon as they found out about them and tried to get Christine to stop listening to them. In response, the Idea Guys tightened their grip around Christine's psyche, inflicting even more trauma as they threatened to report her to the FBI on false charges of pedophilia, then followed up with extortion of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars from her to fund their gaming habits. The Idea Guys were eventually doxxed by a group of users on the Kiwi Farms, seemingly scaring them off, but by that point the damage on Christine's already tenuous mindset had been done.^note As of this hiatus onwards, the comic has since been succeeded by a series of Sonichu-related TSSSF trading cards.
• Writer Revolt: Simonla Rosechu was based on a fan character (who was originally male). Eventually, their creator grew dissatisfied with Christine's treatment of their character and demanded that they be written out of the comic. When Christine refused to budge, trolls bought ad space on the site and filled it with gay porn (of which Christine was infamously not a fan) and demanded that she write Simonla out of the comic before they'd remove the offending ads. Christine dug in her heels for as long as she could, before eventually giving in and having Simonla blown up offscreen, immediately introducing her functionally identical daughter Sandy, writing her creator (and a few others who'd offended Christine) into the comic as Simonla's murderers, having them be sentenced to death by a Kangaroo Court and murdered in extremely violent fashion, before she would later resurrect Simonla anyway.
• Write Who You Know: Most of the characters that aren’t Pokémon or hedgehogs are derived from people the writer has met or "known" in real life. The closest thing to a completely original character that Christine came up with would be Count Graduon (who's supposed to be based on her feelings towards her high school graduation).
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: The Random Events Plot certainly owes to its creator doing everything on the fly, basically hearing the characters as they bump into her mind.
• What Could Have Been:
  • During early years following the main character's creation, Sonichu would have been originally identified as the author herself, while Rosechu and Blake would have been identified as Sarah Hammer and Wes Iseli. The author eventually found it necessary to distinguish herself from Sonichu and created a new set of hedgehog alter-egos for herself, Sarah and Wes.
  • Silvana Rosechu's entire backstory was meant to be different. Silvana was to be a space-traveling Pikachu who crash landed on the moon, and was hit by the Rainbow created from the collision of Super Sonic and Pikachu, transforming her into a Rosechu with a Pikachu's tail. She would have created a spaceship out of the spare parts of her destroyed ship, and traveled to Earth to abduct all the Sonichus on the planet, to fill the gap of loneliness she holds while being on the moon for so long. Because of outside influences however, the author has scrapped this backstory and created the shapeshifting Silvana Rosechu we know today.
  • Christine's original plan for Issue 9 involved Punchy and Layla Flaaffy having sex in the handicapped stall of the women's bathroom at the McDonald's substitute CWCee Dees, and Reginald Sneasel walking in on them and slashing Punchy's tires.
  • As noted here, a Canadian YouTuber by the name of DStecks who had become rather popular due to reviewing Sonichu started to have mixed feelings on his reviews of all of Christine's Sonichu comics, so after reviewing issue 10, he singlehandedly financed the production of issue 11 - as he was the sole executive producer, he could not review issue 11 without violating personal ethics (only to do so a few months later as a part of reviewing the last thing he was not involved in the production of, the Sonichu Christmas Special). DStecks donated $1,000^note technically, DStecks donated a total of $1,200, from a combination of his own savings and Patreon money; however, due to the differences in exchange rates between USD and CAD, the end donation was around $1,000, and as a result, Christine was obligated to create 100 pages, but failed to deliver on her end, only producing 16 pages^note it's possible that while this was enough for D Stecks to decide against doing a separate video on issue 11, Christine's failure to produce the other 84 pages was not enough to make him decide against showing the 16 pages in the video. Who knows what the end result for issue 11 would've been like had Christine actually drawn all 100 pages?
  • The 13th issue was going to have a crossover with Planet Dolan, but outward drama involving some of the castmates changes it to involve a crossover with My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic instead.

---