Oncest

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Pairing
Pairing: Once-ler/Once-ler
Alternative name(s):
Gender category: slash, selfcest
Fandom: The Lorax (movie)
Canonical?: No
Prevalence: so popular that it's also a fandom
Archives: Ultimate Oncest Fanfiction on WordPress
Other:
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Oncest is the generic name for Once-ler selfcest, the most popular pairing of The Lorax movie, and considered a fandom of its own.

While there are many AU and OC Oncest ships, the most common can be considered the regular Once-ler/Greed-ler, his post-success self. This is also known as "Classic Oncest." Classic Oncest shippers' anthem is the in-movie song, How Bad Can I Be?

The fandom is most known for its copious amounts of Tumblr askblogs.

Fandom History

The birth of the Oncest fandom came shortly after the Lorax movie was released, in early 2012. Many fans fawned over the Once-ler, slash fans especially, but found it difficult to pair him up with anyone, since the only notable relationships he had in the movie were with a 12-year old boy, and the Lorax, who is a non-human creature who resembles an old man. (Some do ship the Once-ler and the Lorax, though.)

Thus, the concept of shipping pre-success Once-ler with his post-success self was born.

The explosion of the Oncest fandom began with the use of askblogs on Tumblr, when fans realized that there was only two - or, technically, one - character to fixate on. So soon enough, fans started created other alternate personas of the Once-ler, ranging from "regular" Once-lers to green Once-lers to original character Oncelers, such as Swag, One-ler, Bitter, a diary, Computer-ler, Dino-ler, Game-ler, and Parakeet-ler. The askblogs were inclusively based around fanart, roleplay, and fanfiction - some would do one, while others would do another.

Swag Once-ler is the most popular Once-ler askblog, based on roleplay fanart. The blog had at least 5000 followers as of 2013[1], and likely received many more since then.

As more and more askblogs came into fruition, the fandom eventually spawned the AU trend of the fandom, beginning when Swag received an ask where someone had asked if he had ever gone to summer camp. This created the first AU, Camp Weehawken. Afterward, other AUs that began were Thneedville High, a high school AU, and Truffula Flu, a zombie apocalypse AU.

Popular Oncest pairings that came as a result of these AUs are Swoncest (Swag/One-ler), Swittercest (Swag/Bitter), and Swontercest (Swag/One-ler/Bitter).[2]

Eventually, the Oncest fandom moved onto a trend of "deoncelerization," where Once-ler characters based on the Once-ler removed the Once-ler aspect from them, thus becoming OCs of their own. They became OC askblogs, no longer in Once-ler/Oncest fandom. This happened the most frequently with the high school AU Once-lers/askblogs.[3]

Like for many fandoms with limited content - especially the Oncest fandom, where the content was almost entirely fan-created - the fandom declined by the end of 2012. As of 2017, many old askblogs are now deleted.

Fanwork Examples

Fanfiction

Fanvids

Fanart

  • Classic Oncest. Digital fanart by dizylizy.

    Classic Oncest. Digital fanart by dizylizy.

  • Classic Oncest. Digital fanart by miru667.

    Classic Oncest. Digital fanart by miru667.

  • Classic Oncest. Digital fanart by noxatn.

    Classic Oncest. Digital fanart by noxatn.

  • Classic Oncest. Digital fanart by sburbox.

    Classic Oncest. Digital fanart by sburbox.

Cosplay

Cast Reaction

On 25 April 2012, a Funny or Die live broadcast had Ed Helms, who voiced the Once-ler, in a Twitter Q&A session. During it, many fans asked him about Oncest, in a sexual nature.

His response was... disturbed.

I heard there are people who have a sexual predilection for my character in the Lorax named the Once-ler, and that having sex with the Once-ler is referred to as Oncest? And someone just tweeted that. And that is very odd, because he’s not a real person. I do agree, however, that he’s extremely sexy. But I don’t condone sexual fantasy about the Once-ler. I don’t condone it.”[4]

“This is getting very creepy! If you are having sexual fantasies about my character, in The Lorax, a cartoon character, named the Once-ler, then you need to talk to a professional psychiatrist and relationship counselor”

“I am getting really freaked out about this” “GO GET PSYCHIATRIC Evaluation RIGHT Now!”

“This has become a community crisis, America is in crisis. There is an Once-ler Fetish that has gone out of control.”

Retroactive Comparisons & Analysis

Since the decline of Oncest fandom, many people have begun to compare new focuses on certain characters in other fandoms as "the new Onceler," especially if they are conventionally attractive men or interpreted as conventionally attractive men. Examples include Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls, Sans from Undertale, and Raymond from Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

However, on April 24, 2020, Twitter user jasperrolls made a thread analyzing that no fandom would ever be like the Oncest fandom, because the Lorax movie itself was barely on a Oncest fan's radar as a source of enjoyment. jasperrolls points out that the uniqueness of the Onceler fandom was because "he was the only 'attractive' element of his source property,"[5] while other mediums such as Gravity Falls, Undertale, and Animal Crossing had other genuinely appealing properties. But because of this, the Onceler was not shippable with anyone... except for himself. This is what made Oncest fandom the pinnacle of a phenomenon that has barely happened before - focusing on a character so much that not only is the source material is almost entirely dismissed, but also that the fandom character focus created its own selfcest fandom of its own. No other fandom has (yet) been known so much for its single character selfcest fandom, and very little else.

like, given enough time, a fandom will hit a similar point of weirdness, but onceler was so mad specifically because the sparseness of the source material meant that the fandom effectively no choice but to immediately hit the nadir of bizarre fan material and keep going

it was a rate of growth, mutation, and decay that takes most fandoms years to get to, and the onceler fandom did it in the space of like, 3 months. in almost no time you were seeing onceler shipped with an absolutely insane variety of AU versions of himself

The Oncest fandom was the driving point of its own content - fans took the Onceler, and created their own medium from him. The evolution and decline of the fandom was due to that fans were fueling each other's ideas; they drew from each other for inspiration, and new versions of the Onceler. Once the actual hype for the Onceler in the movie died down - leading to the deoncelerization - so did the fans.

Further Reading

Sources

  1. ^ Ask received by ask-swag-onceler on Tumblr
  2. ^ Tumblr, the Onceler Fandom, and Socialization: A Sociology Project on Prezi
  3. ^ "Deoncelerization" on the Thornville Wiki
  4. ^ Ed Helms Live Chat on Funny or Die
  5. ^ jasperrolls on Twitter
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