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====== The Couch Chris Saga ======


===== Introduction =====
The **Couch Chris Saga** is the first saga of the South Center Age, and takes place in Josh's first apartment(as well as partially in his dad's basement) from Summer 2012 to February 28th, 2013. It is named as such for the predominant screentime of the first Homeboy in Josh's videos, Couch Chris - a high school friend of Josh's who would initially start as a friend in need who quickly became a freeloader, and then a parasite. 

===== Characters Overview =====

==== Major Characters ====
  ***[[characters:KingCobraJFS|Josh Saunders]]:** Fresh from his stint in the Boxelder Job Corps and in desperate need of money, Josh attempts to find gainful employment and move up in the world, fighting for his independence. At this stage, his hairline is showing the first signs of recession.
  ***[[characters:Couch Chris]]:** The first of many gothic freeloaders, and the de facto star of this saga.

==== Minor Characters ====

  ***[[characters:Stephanie]]:** Playing only a minor role, Stephanie would appear on occasion as Josh's steady, albeit long-distance girlfriend.
  ***[[characters: Clint Saunders]]:** Homedad Clint continues to be the driving factor behind Josh doing anything with his life, this time around ensuring that Josh gets a little bit of independence and freedom in his life.
  ***Kayla:** A girl Josh double-teamed with Chris for a cigarette. Pregnant at the time.
  ***[[characters:The Trolls#Matt Ciampi]]:** The leader of the Casper ZDF, a doomsday prepper cult, a homewrecker, and an overall sex pest.


===== Set up =====

Following the ultimately disastrous [[sagas:The Job Corps Saga|Job Corps Saga]] and its blazing conclusion, Josh has found himself at home once more with a series of new rules. Clint would hand Josh an ultimatum: Find a job in two weeks, or get another Punishment Haircut. While the proof is spotty at best, it is also believed that Clint threatened to have Josh sent to a group home for people with Asperger's. Facing the threat of having to deal with other tards, Josh would throw himself wholeheartedly into the hunt for a new job, determined to keep a roof over his head, and his hair under it.

===== Key Events =====


==== Getting hired ====

While uploads were frequent during this saga, many of these videos have been lost to time. One such video is "My life story", a video where Josh would detail his life, openly and emotionally admitting to his spotty relationship with his father, which the two would attempt to mend at this point. Josh would continue to work on his next album, [[Albums:The Darkness]], which "Chronicled [his] life before Job Corps, during Job Corps, and after Job Corps" while successfully acquiring a job as a table cleaner at a local Wendy's, where he would earn $8.25 an hour; $3.10 higher than minimum wage in Wyoming. 

==== Relationship advice ====

During his time off work, Josh would spend much of his time hanging out with Chris, a high school friend. In this time, one of the few videos saved of this time, "Relationship Advice", would be uploaded to the channel. In it, Josh would talk about his long-distance relationship with Stephanie, the kind of hijinks he and Chris would get up to, and his numerous suicide attempts. Out of these suicide attempts, two were alarmingly recent: The first when Josh walked out onto the highway at night after Chris' van broke down, thinking he would be unable to make it into work the next day, and the second when he attempted to strangle himself with his amp cord, which reportedly did nothing after ten minutes.
While professing his feelings quite heavily for Stephanie in the same video, a while later Josh would cheat on Stephanie with a girl named Kayla in exchange for a cigarette, double-teaming her in Chris' van when Chris got a flat tire on the highway. While Josh did come clean to his girlfriend, it would be some months later. Stephanie would opt to stay in the relationship for now. Josh would later disclose that the girl in question was pregnant at the time.

==== Family tension ====

While he was making money from his job at Wendy's, Josh still craved independence. Numerous times before moving out, Clint would remove the cords from his computer, hindering Josh's ability to make videos and continue work on The Darkness, his fourth album. In a video uploaded via Chris' dad's laptop, "A new video", Josh would say that the main reason for this was that he was not paying a share of the electricity bill. This event and other cord-removing events would strain the Clint-Josh relationship and strengthen Josh's resolve to find an apartment.
Additionally during this time, Josh would once again attempt to infiltrate the troll community by uploading another video to his alter ego YouTube account PeachMonster666, where in a rare moment of self-reflection he mocks his own inability to play the guitar while also calling himself a fag. 

==== The Darkness ====

In September 2012, YouTube user Trappped would visit Casper, Wyoming to do a documentary on Josh, releasing a trailer for his project, although it would not be released for years to come. Josh would also release his possibly long-awaited fourth album, The Darkness, on TuneCore at this time. The album is nearly 5 hours long and attempts to portray the tumultuous life of Josh Saunders over music. One track, "Daddy Dearest", even has a sample of Clint tearfully lamenting how Josh has changed into something hateful and violent. Josh would have little presence during the month of October, but he would post a video titled "trying to explain my self" where he would dispel rumors that he was dead, and recite a poem about how he felt, as Goths often do.

==== Moving in ====

The main reason for his radio silence was actually because Clint had been looking for an apartment for Josh using the bond money that had been left for Josh by his grandparents. This would eventually result in Josh moving into the First Apartment, [[places:615 South Center Street]]. While this would mean that Josh would have to travel three miles for his daily commute to Wendy's, Josh would remain adamant that this was the apartment he wanted. On November 5, 2012, Josh would officially move into his new apartment(With the help of Clint, of course) while also working split shifts at Wendy's, which some would consider the high point of Cobra's executive function. Clint would also help build a work bench for Josh, which would eventually become the backbone of [[art:wand_business|Cobra Craft Wands]]. Josh would return to YouTube on November 12, 2012, with a video now lost to time.

==== Stephanie's visit and the third channel ====

During Thanksgiving, Stephanie would come back to Casper to visit her family, and Josh. Her visit would be documented in numerous videos including one on her birthday(November 18), where Josh would admit to not having the money to take her somewhere nice, and having phone calls with various people while Stephanie watched him. The video would end with Josh attempting to hide his fully erect Cobra Jr. from the camera.

On one of many occasions, Josh would be late for work after he missed the bus. Despite being an hour and a half late, his manager understood.\\
The very next day, Josh would have his password to the Gothickingcobra52 channel leaked, and his channel - with all its content - would be lost. The very same day, he would create his third and current channel, KingCobraJFS. While this would mean Josh would have to start from scratch, this channel was the foundation for the current age Boglim, whether we like it or not. Josh's first video on this channel would be "re: a message to haters" to another YouTuber by the name of Raymon20Federation, a similarly regarded content creator in the YouTube scene where Josh would apologize for the strife, oblivious to the fact that trolls were attempting to start an internet slapfight between the two.
=== "I treat Stephanie right" ===
A recurring concept in early KingCobraJFS videos was the apparent mistreatment of Stephanie - Many of Josh's videos would feature him talking for extended periods of time while completely ignoring his girlfriend, and he would attempt to prove the haters wrong by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9uOOAruwlc|making her a hot pocket for breakfast.]] This video would rise to infamy in early YouTube culture as a result, and Stephanie would return to Job Corps shortly after to continue her studies.

==== Chris moves in ====

Not long after the departure of Stephanie, Chris would be kicked out of his grandparents' place and rendered effectively homeless. Taking pity on a fellow low-income stoner, Josh would offer Chris a place to stay on his futon - An offer that would come to bite Josh in the following months. Not long after moving in, Chris would be seen in nearly all of Josh's latest videos in the background, endlessly playing Grand Theft Auto and generally making a mess. This would expand rapidly to also eating Josh's food and inviting his brother(Also named Josh) over to expedite the general mess of the apartment. Josh remained the steadfast friend in spite of this, only complaining when Chris was off camera. 
Chris would continue his antics by also inviting his father over and letting him play Josh's guitar while he was out, uploading the videos to the KingCobraJFS channel without permission.

==== Trolls attack ====

The first real world trolling happened to Josh in this timeframe, when a troll called Josh's manager at Wendy's in an attempt to get him fired. His manager laughs it off, and Josh claims that his manager watches his videos, as he does with nearly every person of authority in his life. 
Additionally, another troll would later call Josh's landlord in an attempt to get him kicked out, and another would try to bribe Chris into giving away Josh's address. The final wave on Josh's channel for the time being would come in a mass-flag that would cause a temporary ban on his channel. In the meantime, Josh uploaded to Chris' YouTube channel instead on the 11th of December, 2012. The majority of these videos have been deleted, save for a Cobra Classic: fun fight.
=== fun fight ===
//for a play-by-play of this incident, check out the Incident page [[incidents:fun fight|here.]]//  

On December 17th, 2012, Josh would get completely and totally shitfaced, plastered, rat-ass drunk off of a bottle of Peach Schnapps in the afternoon. During Chris' video that evening, claiming he was possessed by his inner cobra demon. Josh would spend the video hissing and growling, and it would require the combined strength of both Chris and his brother Josh to keep him restrained. This heroic sacrifice had lasting trauma on the viewers, as we were forced to see Chris take his shirt off.

==== The boiling point ====

On the 18th, Josh disclosed that he would be ineligible for SSI payments, as he was hosting Chris and his brother at the time. This would put a severe financial strain on Josh, as much of his income came from his government gibs. More importantly, this meant Josh would owe the government a few hundred dollars. Tensions quickly began to rise, as Josh started asking Chris to clean up after himself, to no apparent change from the parasite.
Little changed for the better for Josh and Chris' relationship, with both taking verbal potshots at each other in the middle of videos. Unfortunately, Josh had to put up with Chris as Chris would drive Josh to work most mornings, so that Josh would not have to ride his [[objects:the bike|bike]](weather permittable) some three miles through Casper, Wyoming. This began to evolve into Chris taking over Josh's videos on occasion with various topics, completely overshadowing Josh on several occasions.
This would finally culminate in Josh attempting to drive Chris' van in order to pay rent and buy a stick of butter, of all things. Josh would be pulled over by the [[characters:casper police department]] after his erratic driving nearly caused Josh to sideswipe a police cruiser. The Casper PD charged Josh for not having a driver's license and ultimately Josh was fined a few hundred dollars, a move that would cost Josh, both figuratively and literally. In the new year, Chris would lose his job at Wal-Mart after cutting himself with a box cutter, and the relationship with Josh would sour further.
==== The Beethoven sub-saga ====

On Christmas Eve, Josh would release a video titled "I might have been reincarnated from a famous musician" where he suddenly believed that he was a reincarnation of 18th-century composer Ludwig Van Beethoven. Although he would be corrected numerous times by Chris during the video, Josh said that he had been listening to the opening of popular Beethoven piece Fur Elise (pronounced "fur uh-less-ay"), and had felt something "weird", or a feeling of Deja Vu. Josh would attempt to learn the intro to Fur Elise on the guitar - a task he would continue to attempt for years to come.

==== The new guitar ====

In the new year, Josh would prove his financial prowess once more by putting down $400 on a $500 electric guitar he saw at a pawn shop after it "fell into his hands" - Money that was supposed to go to rent, and it turned out that the store did not offer a refund policy. To absolutely nobody's surprise, Clint would be incensed by this action and attempt to go to the pawn shop to get Josh's $400 back, only to end up with no electric guitar, no money. and a key board that didn't work.

==== The last straw ====

Chris began to step up his parasitical lifestyle even further by inviting a small cult of doomsday preppers to Josh's apartment. Whlle they attempted to indoctrinate Josh into their shitty prepper cult, Josh worked weekends, and was unable to attend their meetings. During a brief moment of respite where Chris would be on a camping trip with his fellow preppers, Josh would make a video insinuating that he wanted Chris gone. With the prospect of Stephanie returning soon, and Chris showing no signs of leaving, Josh gave Chris one month to find a new place to live. Eventually, with Josh starting to dip into his savings account to make ends meet and Chris' van - The sole benefit to Chris' extended stay at 615 South Center St. - impounded and with Chris refusing to pawn his Xbox to help pay for rent, Josh and Chris' friendship popped like a tailbone cyst.
Chris would be arrested later that month for failure to appear in court. On top of having no job, an impounded van that barely worked, Josh claimed that this was "The last straw". but would ultimately let Chris stay until February of that year.

===The "Fish is dairy" argument===
On the 31st of January, Josh and Chris would have yet another vicious argument, this time about whether or not fish would be considered dairy. Josh was adamant that fish counted as dairy while Chris corrected him that it was protein. Josh would continue to argue with Chris about him not finding a job, and being overly ready to correct Josh every time he made the slightest of mistakes.
This argument would go on for too long and hammer the final nail in the coffin for their friendship.

==== The final days ==== 

Finding out that he would only have to pay $110 for the fine of driving without a license, Josh would finally start to recover from Chris' destruction of his apartment and finances. Josh would attempt to get his driver's license, only to fail it. 
Josh would otherwise pass the time in this saga by working on his fifth album, [[albums:Rebirth of My Mind Decent Into Madness|Rebirth of My Mind Decent(sic) Into Madness]] and a novel detailing his obsession with blondes, namely his high school crush. Similar to the end of [[sagas:The Gothickingcobra52 Saga]] Josh would also debut another staple of the KingCobraJFS channel with his very first Food Hack.
After feeling guilty about cheating, Josh would break up with Stephanie on Valentine's Day(Like a true gentleman). He would go on a rant in a video uploaded the same day titled "Happy valentines day", using rhetoric common with the "Nice guy" stereotype. Josh would attempt to recover from this self-inflicted heartbreak and garner more attention with The Secret Video, a video uploaded to an adult website where he masturbated to completion, then talks like any other of his videos. Josh would claim to make a new "secret video" every two weeks, although there is no proof that he's made more than one.

The final video of the Couch Chris Saga would be the video {{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTZz9JJLsUs|"Talking with Chris Again"}} on February 28th 2013. Chris, who is dressed in what appears to be a secondhand army ACU, had bizarrely returned once more to sleeping on Josh's futon, only to be treated to a fusillade of troll comments directed at Chris and his behavior during the saga read off by Josh directly to Chris' face. Throughout the video, Cobra is ice cold to Chris and passive-aggressively confronts him while making remarks about Chris' lack of employment and constant weed smoking, while touting his own employment at Wendy's. Couch Chris would never be seen in a video again, marking the end of the saga, and the beginning of the Stephanie Saga.

===== Significance =====

The Couch Chris saga is a fantastic example of Cobra's very first taste of autonomy, and all the pitfalls that come with it. Much of Josh's habits in later years - Attraction to blondes, letting freeloaders overstay their welcome, doing dangerous things, and spending too much money on cigarettes and alcohol - would only have time to marinate in the coming years as the King continues to sink further into the mire of his own creation.

===== Trivia =====

  * Josh would release hundreds of videos during this saga, although roughly 175 have survived of an estimated //450//(If Josh uploaded on his usual 3-times-a-day schedule throughout).
  * The phrase "Chillin like a(rockstar) villain" was first used during this saga on November 27th, 2012.
  * Josh would acquire his Ouija board, several wands, and [[objects:The Bike]] during this saga.
  * Josh would replace his phone **one time** during this saga.
  * After Josh's parents returned from a vacation in Europe, they would gift him a pan flute. Josh would attempt to learn to play it, to no success.

===== Sources Cited =====
[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aErIWv4mXyg|Bitesize Cobra Videos' The Wendy's Saga - Part 1]]\\
[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97LaevklxGo|Bitesize Cobra Videos' KingCobraJFS Documentary Part 4: Independence and Heartbreak]]

{{page>:blurbs#The KingCobraJFS Story}}