Would you say that Barb manipulated Chris to ... you know? No matter how you look at it, it's quite fucked up.
This is the tricky question here. Cole published a memoir that specifically went into details about Barb's life when she was raising him. To put things mildly, Barb was physically abusive toward him and didn't give a shit if any of her boyfriends were abusing him. Cole specifically mentions one incident where a bullet almost went through his head because Barb was threatening him with a pistol (or something to that effect).
Before marrying Bob, Barb was pretty much your average run-of-the-mill white trahs bimbo in her 40s with a kid she never wanted because one of her many one-night stands from decades past didn't want to wear a condom. Her idea of having fun every night was getting shitfaced in a local bar and then walking away with the latest catch of the day. It just so happened that the catch of the day was a (now-deceased) Robert Franklin Chandler.
Why did Bob and Barb get married? Fuck if I'd know. My money's on Barb getting knocked up
again and Bob being an old-fashioned gentleman figured the only appropriate solution would be to get remarried and raise this child like he did his previous three kids. In absolute fairness to Bob, his three adult children from a previous marriage did grow up to become functional and indeed, successful people (one of Chris's half-brothers on Bob's side is an optometrist if I'm not mistaken). However,
Barb was always the toxic influence.
Even in Chris's earliest ramblings from 2007 when barely anything was known about him, Chris still
vividly recounted the argument that Bob and Barb had in the late 90s when they didn't eat the dinner that Barb cooked and ever since then, she never cooked dinner again.
Barb is the one who has the hoarding problem and the toxic debt that Chris's been dealing with ever since 2016.
Barb is the one who kept pampering Chris and inflating his ego whenever it suited her.
Say what you will about Bob being a cantankerous and ornery old man whose misguided views on special education prevented his son from getting the help he needed in his most vulnerable years, but Bob was the one who was still trying to put some structure into Chris's life. Bob encouraged Chris to go to college, try and get a job to experience what being a working man is like, and even chaperoned a couple of dates of Chris's in the hopes that he'd find that special lady. There was only one small problem though.
Anything that Bob tried to do to benefit Chris, Barb almost always staunchly opposed it in one manner or another. Barb always coddled Chris whenever his employment endeavours inevitably failed, when he got expelled from college, when his dates ended with a nigger in a Pickle Suit crashed it and ran off with the girl. Any time that Chris would experience some crippling bout of rejection, Barb would always be there to reassure him that he is indeed special and that there's nothing wrong with him. She never made any effort to help prepare Chris for life as a functional adult, because she never
was a functional adult even in her younger years.
When Bob was hospitalised and eventually died, Chris started openly experimenting with his gender and appearance; something that was borderline unthinkable when Bob was still alive. After Bob's death, Chris went on an internet hiatus for a good 3-4 years (between 2011 and 2014/2015~) and there was almost
nothing in terms of content coming out of him.
That house burning down and Chris getting back on the internet was what fucked him up. It didn't immediately manifest itself, but once the Idea Guys came, the thread of prophecy was severed and we just kept continuing this doomed world that was created without ever knowing it until now. They shared a bed together for six months until the house was rebuilt. God only knows what that did to his psyche.
Could Chris have been proactive? Possibly, but it can go either way and that's the truly disgusting thing.
