Ted Structure
| Synonyms: | Tobin Structure, Tobin Theory |
| See also: | Ted/Robin |
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Ted Structure or Tobin Structure is a lens of analysis of the series How I Met Your Mother that arose after the finale. It is meant to apply to white-dominated American TV series. "Ted" refers to Ted Mosby, the protagonist of HIMYM, and Tobin is the ship involving Ted and Robin Scherbatsky.
Within the Ted Structure, the protagonist, typically a white man, is know as "the Ted" and is "the center of the universe for the creator (the Ted), and everyone else is an extension or reflection of him. and he is usually designated a One True Love (the Robin) that he will get or not by the end of the series as his reward for being The Best."[1] The concept was created by Tumblr user candyumbrella, and ships that fit the Ted Structure are purported to be superior to all other ships.
Basically, they have this elaborate theory about how all writing can be described in terms of HIMYM, mostly to justify why the person's ships and faves are Objectively Good Writing - all shows supposedly have a Ted (main male character who's the bestest ever and... not that much like the actual Ted; supposedly the Ted archetype is, like, suave and charismatic and basically a Gary Stu) and a Robin (original female LI who's - supposedly - obviously destined to be endgame). And they've added all this stuff about, like, some characters being "weak Teds", and "Ted displacement" if a show switches its Ted character (not necessarily the main character to anyone but candyumbrella - they think Angel is Ted to Buffy's Robin and Kilgrave is Ted to Jessica Jones' Robin), to attempt to explain all the shows that obviously do not fit this dynamic. They also claim if a non-"Tobin" ship is endgame, that's objectively terrible writing and everyone will hate it, because only Tobin ships can be good writing. But if it doesn't become endgame that's because it was "weak Tobin" all along, because no-one would ever write a "strong Tobin" ship and not make it endgame, that's unpossible! Oh, and they have a whole charming thing about how no writers can possibly sustain non-white or female Ted, which is why all such main characters are terrible, but of course that's not candyumbrella's own prejudice, it's just an ~objective fact of writing.
In or before January 2020, candyumbrella deleted all their Tumblr posts about the Ted Structure.[2] The URLs have been excluded from the Wayback Machine.
History
Spread
The Ted Structure analysis has been applied to other shows and ships considered similar to Tobin.[3][4]
| Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples. |
- Westallen from The Flash in Ted Structure,[dead link] Aug 09 2017 by candyumbrella
Criticism
References
- ^ I'm a little confused, what is the Tobin structure? I didn't watch How I met your mother, so I think that's why some of it is lost on me :),[dead link] 5 October 2017
- ^ Ted theory at fail-fandomanon. 25 January 2020.
- ^ "tobin structure" chronological tag on candyumbrella[dead link]
- ^ "tobin series" tag on candyumbrella[dead link]