Are You Even Real?
Are you even real?
More Posts from Randomedgy and Others
Ted is a 12 years old boy that have to plant the damn seed.
They both are hated, both are the annoying teenager mirror characters.
The difference is that Shinji is intentionally build to be dislikable, they are hated by different reasons, for example, one is hated for not having the courage to interact with people and "get the girls" while the another is determined to get his crush, one is hated for not having the courage to fight for the world when he is called upon to the point that he scapes by a selfish fear, while the other has the audacity to stand up powerful people to do what was asked of him even if it(initially)was for a selfish task. But they are still the reflections of the loser, Ted is accidentally that.
The thing in which both have in common is that they are tied to the desires of others, they are dependent on other characters to do something, everything they did is to the others so they could gain some validation (except that Ted learned to care about the trees in the end), because Shinji was abandoned since a child he is desperate for attention and help, combine that with his teen fase and he gets insupportable, Ted wanted validation from his crush and later he fulfilled the Onceler desire to talk with someone about the trees and vanish the loneliness, at the end he fulfills the wish to replant the trees, wished from the own Lorax, The Onceler and Audrey, in the end, Ted was just a tool to put into practice the wishes of the other protagonists, but still in a selfish way. These boys are just huskies from what they could have been.
Ted deserved to be hated because he wasn't intentionally meant to be like that, he started his task because of a selfish desire: to have someone he doesn't have, even in the Thneedvile demo he had a selfish objective which is to have something that nobody has, Tumblr hates him, I understand it, despite that sometimes i think you guys kinda exaggerates it(specially because he is a kid), but know what? I like him in a ironic way, he may be a degenerate but he is at least a honest character, he may be hateable but at the end of the day, we're just like him, a simp that does everything for the others for the sake of validation and to gain something in our selfish objectives.
Now, because the movie is so badly written, the characters suffer with flanderization and horrible execution, The Onceler and Ted are the most affected by that, i agree that his love task was a bad idea and that's why I don't ship Audrey and Ted, I prefer them as friends( to be honest I don't ship anyone in this movie, i've always been an anti-shipper with this adaptation), i think that Audrey works as a female avatar and she should have her own character arc(already did a post about her), but Ted is not a totally disposable character, he deserves his own character arc too, if Ted were the male avatar view and Audrey the female view(let's say I have a principle called gender balance), his arc would obviously being about he learning to care about the trees, he would start with the desire to have something he doesn't have but he suffers with the many consequences and even get hurt until he learns to care genuinely about the nature.
Another Terence fanart i have to save for my fanfiction
Some Legend Of Zelda doodles
Okay, let's talk about the Onceler
I'm not so attached to him as i was on the beginning of june, the first time a saw him was on the trailers back in 2012 but i never watched the movie until years later, i remember finding him weird and kinda creepy(both the young version and the older version of him), sometimes I had afraid of that man, specially when the scenes shots showed him from bottom to up, making him looking like a tall creepy person for me.
I came so late into this fandom that i didn't created a strong love/admiration connection with him, specially because of everything people sayed about his 2012 version and the fandom, and i familiarized with 1972 Onceler first, when i rewatched the 2012 movie, i felt indifferent towards him, although sometimes i felt bad and at the same time despised him. I will talk what were mine interpretations about the Onceler.
I admit, i kinda of liked him(as a familiar character), he still isn't a great character but he works very well in the movie, even though he's a twenty-something idiot, he is a very competent person.
We appreciate him for the wrong reasons. He may have charisma, it's multifaceted, knows how to deal with people (specially when he is old, he became a very mature person) and there's a lot of narrative possibilities to work with the Onceler, but the most important, he still committed crimes against nature("father nature" if you count The Lorax as the embodiment), against his well being, against his will and indirectly against another humans, he sinned against the world creation, regardless of his family pressure.
It's hard to get over the mental abuse of many years, especially if it's from family, he still kinda of had the choice to get over his family abuse and embrace the new world(trufulla valley) he discovered, a place that had the freedom to live a health life and have better companies, but that man still chosen to deny that world against his well being and the well being of others, that's not justifiable by any way, even if the cause it's that he can't break free from the toxic utilitarian mindset him was pushed his whole life. That man still denys another life, another choice just to affirm his power and pride, deluded with acceptance, and later on with greed.
This mister may feel guilt and grief for what happens with nature, he may be a good person but he felt so helpless to stop destruction that he started to embrace pride and greed, he embraced the meaningless and accepted his destruction for finalities, this mister is supposed to remind us that even if you care or cared about things, you still lose your head and starts to embrace your bad deeds and destruction, as the end looks to justify the means, greed starts to grow until consume you totally. That is better represented on the song Biggering (unfortunately a song which got cut).
The Onceler really speaks for the men(humans), he speaks for the human needs and wants.
Of course his design kinda worked at his favor(just kinda), even when his old, the fact that the he is tall and the movie used this visual element to tell the story by representing how powerful he can be and how he imagines himself as cool(this is very clear on "How bad can I be"), his simple and generic visual it's obviously because of lazy ideas but here it worked because he represents the ordinary and can be anyone, although i'm not saying the Onceler has a good design, not at all, what happens is that his visual and design works in a very ironic way.
He is an adult man that has the power to destroy and transform anything, what doesn't help is that his design and style is very teen or childish, it seems that he keeps re-labeling his childishly clothes and he isn't very conscious about his actions, I say that he is a man almost fully because he takes the role of every human when turns into an adult, get a new home, search for resources and a job that he could destroy and transform the resources into new things, so much that his final form is The Industrial Man, the man that takes as many resources as possible and massively transform these into human goods and manufactures, that's the final stage of a human, that's the pinnacle of humanity power, that's why he is so powerful.
If people want to fill the vacuum of deep relationships with the Onceler without fall into shipping, then we need to appreciate different relationships dynamics, the friendnemies dynamic with The Lorax that is complicated, and also the potential father-son relationship that The Onceler had with Ted. Sometimes i wish we had more fanarts or fancomics which The Onceler interact in a way where he acts like a wise man with Ted. While, with The Lorax, well, i feel bad that the Lorax saw his friend turn into greedy, it's sad that the Onceler always harms his friends who's were the only ones that cared about him, the Lorax not only cares about the nature but also with the own Onceler, the woods was not only home to the animals and the Lorax, it was a home to the Onceler in the short time he stayed.
Nowadays i also have more focus on other characters, but the Onceler is so important as a character that we can't ignore him, he made many impacts on many lives even without intention.
(The art isn't mine)
Sometimes I have the feeling that we are missing something or many things, I already missed many stuffs in the past and it's late to came back, i don't want to miss anything again.
I really ask myself what happened with fandom culture after 2015, everything seems so distant from the early 2010's world.
Life’s been kicking my ass lately, but music always has my back.
They really are from the same media moment
Recently i realized that Thneedville demo is for Ted, what Biggering is for The Onceler
