#sonichu 11

SONICHU: And after I answered Robbie’s call, he hardly got a word in as Cera shouted towards his phone “Dad! Bring me jeans and a t-shirt! I have long thought this through, ‘As soon as I evolve, I’m ditchin’ the skirt.’ Again! Jeans and a t-shirt! No skirts or dresses, please, dad!”

SILVANA AS SONIC: Ha! Sounds like Amy after nearly every fashion magazine, “I gotta keep up with the trends, Sonic!” “Sometimes I’ll forgo function for fashion.” “I wanna look awesome for myself!”

SONICHU: Yeah! But that’s more my Christine Rosechu; loves style up. Cera is more butchy. Roberta came out totally feminine and skirty.

SILVANA AS SONIC: Uh. Who’s Roberta?

SONICHU: That was Robbie. A month or two later, he had evolved, but before that, he questioned himself. Between the psychiatric evaluation, consulting with both of his sisters, and his choice in clothes, he realized that he was a female soul, and shortly after evolving Roberta got help from the doctors and Magi-Chan to make herself physically match who she has been. She has never felt more self-confident before the transformation or in her life!

SILVANA AS SONIC: Gee wiz! And I thought Shadow packing heat was crazy. And all this doesn’t bother you?

In another wall of text heavy page, we learn that Cerah decided to express herself as a butch lesbian following her evolution, rebelling against the frilly skirts her parents put her in as a baby. Transitioning over to talking about Robbie (pun intended), we get more or less a summary of Episode 25, which goes into more depth about Robbie’s coming out as a transwoman and the steps she takes to get there. 

Title: Sonichu & Sonic / in Episode 24, part 1 / The Clip Show / Catching Up

Caption: August 21, 2009, at CWCville Shopping Center…

SONICHU: We should have a cart. It’s too bad malls don’t usually have any.

ROSECHU: Tell me about it.

SILVANA AS SONIC: Phew

SILVANA AS SONIC {thought}: Soo glad to finally get a break from Amy.

ROSECHU: Hey. Isn’t that…? [I]

SONICHU: Sonic, the blue blur! [II]

SILVANA AS SONIC: Sonichu & Rosechu, the zappers of our hedgehog bunch! Y’all are looking good. [III]

SONICHU: We’re okay, just a bit worn from lifting and shopping. [IV]

ROSECHU: Oh! You carry me, love. [V]

SONICHU: How ‘bout you? [VI]

SILVANA AS SONIC: I’m good. Amy dragged me here for the sales, “featuring the “CWC-sclusives””. J.K. The styles do vary by store. [VII]

ROSECHU: Amy’s here too? I wanna gosip! Honey? Can you mind our things for a while? [VIII]

SONICHU: Sure, Rosey. Sonic and I can jam here for a while. [IX]

SILVANA AS SONIC: Yeah! Awesome! [X]

SILVANA AS SONIC: Amy is at Macy’s now. [XI]

ROSECHU: Sweet! I’ll be back later. Be good, you too! [XII]

SONICHU: Alright, heartthrob! [XIII]

Yet another dialogue page that requires numbering, getting all the way up to a whopping thirteen.

Caption: One…

CERAH: Love!!!

Caption: Two…

CERAH: Not…!

Caption: Thunderpunch!

CERAH: …Hatred!

Caption: Paralyzed

DOGSON: Pant pant

DOGSON: For my love!

FERRAH: Uh… I think I left five bucks in my locker.

FERRAH: Later!

ROBBIE: Cera! That was amazing!

CERAH: I was just protecting my friends and family, baby bro.

ROBBIE: Still, you reacted more quick than I could. I love you, sis!

CERAH: I love you too!

Caption: Whoosh!

ROBBIE: Oh! My gosh!

CERAH: Ca ‘mon! Let me go!

The jerkop goes down in three easy panels, with Cerah using the Pokemon move Thunder Punch on him. Little Dogson, who apparently harbors some sort of feelings for Ferrah, also gives him a good kick. Ferrah bails, then Cerah and Robbie hug, but then Cerah, assumedly having gained enough experience points from taking down the jerkop to have leveled up, begins to evolve into a Rosechu.

FERRAH: I’m being bullied by the mean widdle kids; they teased me of my insecurities! Please, help me!

ROBBIE: Do not listen to him, sir! He’s the bully!

CERAH: Robert! Stop! There’s something off about that policeman. I sense it.

FERRAH: Hey! Jerk cop! Can’t ya hear me? I’m being bullied here!!

FERRAH: Well! There’s more than one way to get attention. Dogson! Ca m’ere!

DOGSON: Yes, sir! You called?

FERRAH: It’s time to play for our team, boy.

DOGSON: What?

DOGSON: !

STUDENTS: Oh! My gosh! / He kissed a boy! / But did he like it? / Soo going on my Facebook!

JERKOP: There will be no love in the world of Graduon, kid!

FERRAH: Woah, dude!

ROBBIE: Oh, man! A real Jerkop?! Here? Now?!

Dogson and Ferrah’s relationship might be a play on the relationship between Marcie and Peppermint Patty from Peanuts, Patty being aggressive and boyish while Marcie is demure and calls her “sir”, and the pair have long been speculated to be a couple or at least attracted to each other. Dogson’s name also might be a reference to his subservient, dog-like nature.

“Play for our team” is a variant on the phrase “playing for the other team”, a baseball-based metaphor referring to someone who is gay.

Two of the students loosely quote the chorus to “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry, rephrasing it to be about male-male kissing instead of female-female. 

SFX: Bonk

ROBBIE: Ow!

CERAH: Little bro, are you okay?

ROBBIE: Yeah, I think so. Oh. Not big Ferrah again.

CERAH: That bully?

ROBBIE: Yeah.

Caption? Sonichu?: Long story short, this bully has:

-No parents

-Lives with drunk uncle

-Hates on those he’s jealous of

-Does not really know how to speak love yet.

FERRAH: Look at the yellow rat scorin’ with the hot babes. And with her thick-headed Triceratops too. Give me your lunches, or I’ll pound all of ya!

CERAH OR ROBBIE: No!

CERAH OR ROBBIE: What a brute.

CERAH OR ROBBIE: We’re not gonna take your ‘tude.

CERAH OR ROBBIE: Love, not hate!

CERAH OR ROBBIE: Back off, bull!

FERRAH: Alright! Alright! What about you, tripping tea?

FERRAH: Ya gonna cough up your grub? Or maybe miss me with your weak zap? Ooh! Run away! I’ll catch ya after you trip and fall!

ROBBIE: Neee!

FERRAH: That all ya got, tea-zap? Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

FERRAH: Ooh! And what are you gonna do, Triceratops?

ROBBIE: I’m not runnin’ jerk.

CERAH: Leave us alone, Ferrah!

FERRAH: Wowzer! Now it’s two against one? I am soo scared.

CERAH: Keep making fun of us and find out!

FERRAH: I’ve got an idea! I’ll even the odds.

FERRAH: Here’s a cop!

FERRAH: Yo! Mister Police man!

Enter Ferrah (who is a dude, even though I’ve never heard Ferrah or the more common Farrah as a boy’s name). He’s a bully. Something about Ferrah calls to mind Butch The Bully from the similar So Bad It’s Good masterpiece Cool Cat Saves the Kids, though the similarities are likely coinicidental as both characters are simply standard bully stereotypes.

Ferrah has a smidge of depth to him, or at least some nuance - he comes from a broken home and he’s acting out because he’s jealous of Robbie and Cerah being happy. That’s… good? I guess? He does still want lunch money, the stereotypical bully motivation.

Worth noting that Robbie throws the first punch in the sense that he shoots lightning at Ferrah before he gets violent with them. Sure, Ferrah antagonized him, but still.

Caption: Behind-the-scenes prologue

SILVANA {thought}: The spa treatments are simply luxuriousl. Outside of meditation, this is the best.

SILVANA {thought}: When I am the star of an episode of our history, it is good. But when I have to play as a “guest star”, it can be a trial for myself.

SANDRA: Is it to your liking, Silvana?

SILVANA: You have done most very will, Sandra. Thank you.

SILVANA {thought}: I suit up… 

SILVANA {thought}: And yet I do not suit up.

SILVANA {thought}: It is part of most jobs wherever in any world.

SILVANA {thought}: I remain most proud of Miss Chandler, for in her hands and soul lies great skill and love.

SILVANA {thought}: This is not biased! She has earned my deepest respects, she truly loves and cares for us, her family.

SILVANA {thought}: So, with my sharp mind and spirit, I keep on physical peak, so I can be at my best for my family too.

This “Behind-the-scenes prologue” is a spectacular look inside the post-modern mind of Christopher Christian Christine Ricardo Weston Chandler. This is the zenith of Chris’s “comic characters as actors” in the Sonichu comics proper, showing Silvana preparing for her appearance in this episode with a footbath. Silvana notes that she’s been a star and a “guest star”, the latter probably referring to how she’s going to be pretending to be Sonic the Hedgehog in the issue proper. 

After getting her hair done, she puts on her clothes, thinking “I suit up… and yet I do not suit up”. Silvana seems to have become self aware, aware that what to her appear to be her normal clothes, are her character costume to the outside viewing audience. And, of course, she praises Chris, because of course she does. In a line creepier with hindsight, Silvana says that Chris views her as “family”, and this was before Chris said to have married her. Granted, that was an Idea Guy fabrication and this came slightly before, but it still gains an incestuous tinge with her future marriage to Chris in mind. 

Silvana’s statements bring the validity of this entire episode, and the second part that follows in Sonichu 12, into question. Was all this stuff, like Cerah’s evolution, Chris-Chan Sonichu becoming Chris-Chan Rosechu, and the weird weight-gain subplot in Episode 24.2, staged for the cameras? Does Sonichu know that “Sonic” is Silvana in disguise, or is the wool being pulled over his eyes? Is Sonichu real life? Is it just fantasy? Dammit Chris you put all these questions in my brain just to try to avoid getting sued by Sega.

LAYLA: Do not call me. Do not find me. I’ve unfriended you on Facebook. I’d just assume not look at you ever again, unless it’s on T.V. Goodbye.

PUNCHY: I understand. I am not worthy of your love and compassion. I am truly sorry, Layla. Stay safe and well.

LAYLA: And as for you, banana.

BANANASAUROS: Rrr?

LAYLA: You are bruised, moldy, and downright not fruit full. Good bye.

Layla asks Punchy not try to contact her again. She assumes they’ll never meet again, unless she sees him on TV (not gonna lie, I kinda laughed at that bit, even though I’m not sure it was a joke.) Though in universe, the problems with Layla and Punchy’s relationship was solely caused by BS showing up, it’s more likely that more cosmic forces drove them apart - namely Chris. The decision to break up both Punchy’s and Angelica’s relationships at the same time was probably not a coincidence. Let’s start with the two non-Chaotic Combo members involved. Layla was, however indirectly, the brainchild of Ivy O’Neil, who had been “dead” for about eight years at this point and was naught but a memory to Chris (if he remembered her at all). Reginald was Chris’s replacement self-insert for when he couldn’t use his more blatant self-insert due to being trapped in the Time Void. Both of these characters were relics of a time gone by, the time of Classic Chris, and their continued presence felt like an artifact. As we’ll soon see, they get paired up together, seemingly tying together two loose ends and writing them off more or less into the sunset (not exactly, as we’ll see in Sonichu 12, but that’ll come later). Moving back to Punchy and Angelica, remember way back in Sonichu 7 when Magi-Chan said that Wild and Punchy were competing for Angie’s love, a plot point that was soon dropped when Simonla came on the scene and stole Wild’s heart away? Well, between their partners leaving them and their brief conversation in Episode 22, it’s possible that Chris intended to set the two up to get into a relationship, the first two Chaotic Combo members to date each other, but it never really took shape. Chris seemingly didn’t care to set them up any further in Sonichu 12, and then that ship wasn’t part of the Idea Guys’ manifesto, so seemingly it’s been on ice forever. Chris has spent very little time as of late on either character, so their fate in the post Idea Guys world is somewhat foggy, and it seems their latent attraction has been suppressed.

Punchy takes getting dumped surprisingly well. He’s surprisingly mature about letting Layla live her life without him, though that might be because Chris was just done with the Layla character by this point.

SFX: Whoosh!

SIMON: Woah! Punchy, what was in that food you gave him?

PUNCHY Just some Pocky, man; wheat, soy, milk and strawberry powder. Simple Pocky. It’s not a rare candy; less than a dollar per box.

SANDY: Wow! We sure do grow up fast!

BANANASAUROS: Ner flem bamble flooby?

BANANASAUROS {thought}: What are y’all looking at>

PUNCHY: Banana…sauros!

BANANASAUROS {thought}: Dude. You’re spooking me.

PUNCHY: You just evolved. 

BANANASAUROS {thought}: Whaaa…?

PUNCHY: I have heard dragon Pokemon evolve super-late, but you hatched just a few minutes ago.

BANANASAUROS {thought}: Maybe it was your kindness that zapped me forward.

PUNCHY: It’s beyond me, man. Oh, well, let’s go, dude.

BANANASAUROS {thought}: You still take me in, dude?

PUNCHY: Hell yeah.

Caption: Bananasauros Grass/Dragon (normally evolves from Bananasaur at level 45)

The Pocky causes Bananasaur to spontaneously evolve, despite him presumably not being anywhere close to the Level 45 his species normally evolves at (which is actually fairly late for fossil Pokemon, who normally evolve somewhere between level 30 and 40, though Punchy notes that Dragon-Type Pokemon usually evolve at high levels, possibly referring to the Pseudo-Legendary phenomenon). Sandy muses that he grew up fast, just like she grew up fast, but while she had to grow up fast to drill Evan’s dick off, Bananasauros has no reason to be so hasty. Bananasauros chalks it up to Punchy’s kindness, seemingly quick to handwave the evolution into a more banana-like form.

The somewhat dull and uninspired name change from “Bananasaur” to “Bananasauros” is possibly based on the similarly bland change from “Kabuto” to “Kabutops”, another Pokemon that comes from a fossil.