Chanology: Difference between revisions

<blockquote>"Moe (pronounced "mo-ay") is a Japanese word that refers to feelings of strong affection mainly towards characters in anime, manga, video games, and other media directed at the otaku market." ~ Wikipedia</blockquote><blockquote>"Moe anthropomorphism is a form of anthropomorphism in anime and manga where moe qualities are given to non-human beings (such as animals, plants, supernatural entities and fantastical creatures), objects, concepts, or phenomena. In addition to moe features, moe anthropomorphs are also characterized by their accessories, which serve to emphasize their original forms before anthropomorphosis. The characters here, usually in a kind of cosplay, are drawn to represent an inanimate object or popular consumer product. Part of the humor of this personification comes from the personality ascribed to the character (often satirical) and the sheer arbitrariness of characterizing a variety of machines, objects, and even physical places as cute." ~ Wikipedia</blockquote>There is a tradition in the Joseph Anderson streams community of creating and drawing moe anthropomorphs (also known as gijinkas) related to the streams. The community refers to these as "chans", because the first few that were made all had names ending in the "chan" Japanese honourific. Many chans have been created over the course of stream history, and sometimes old ones make appearances in new fan art. Therefore, in order for the pages on chans on this website to have maximum usefulness, we follow the rule that a page can only be made on a chan if the same design of them has featured in more than one fan art. The phenomenon of creating chans is arguably the most unique and intricate detail of the streams and the community.

When looking through the history of chans, one name appears time and time again: Marik Bentusi. Among the hastily-drawn red save square lewds that Joe put on screen, one clearly stood out, and honestly, took the joke of "a lewd red square" way too far. The one which bore a highly-detailed ahegao was drawn by the frequent fan artist Marik Bentusi, who would in future go on to create several more chans that would help to solidify the practice as tradition. After drawing the lewd red square, he next created a more anthropomorphised version of the character, called [[Red Square-chan]]. Considering her humanoid appearance and the presence of the word "chan" in her name, this rendition of her is considered to be the first chan. He would then draw his next chan during the Dusk streams in January 2019, in which Joe discovered that each level contains a secret bar of soap which you can throw at an enemy to kill them instantly, leading to him carrying the soap all the way through each level and throwing it at as many enemies as he could.<ref>{{JoeYT2Cite|enW-XQ_EI1o|title=Dusk - Cero Miedo, Zero Fear (Stream One and Two!)|time=20088}}</ref> This prompted Marik to draw Soaphie-chan, another humanoid chan and the embodiment of the bar of soap. Unfortunately no recording exists of the moment Joe showed this fan art on stream, but it marks a further important step towards chans becoming what we recognise today.

So this means that the two characters that Trolley-chan was split into grew up and eventually fused back together again to form Breaker-chan, meaning that Trolley-chan was just young Breaker-chan. And this tracks thematically, because Joe used the trolley to break Half-Life 2. So if we combine all of this information, we get the following timeline which details the progression of Trolley-chan, Bomb-chan, Purple-chan, the dragon angel, Breaker-chan, Undo-chan, and Speedrun-chan over time. One important observation is that these characters don't follow the same flow of time as Joe and the real world, because the order in which he streamed these games was actually Catherine, then Slay the Spire, then Bugsnax, then he ran The Voting Game, and finally Half-Life 2.

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