Thread by @fbfishslap

So @NolanTrashZone reminded me that Once-cest was a thing, which means...

Hey kids! Who wants to learn about standard fandom shipping dynamics, and what happens when they go horribly wrong?

So a lot of the time when a show/game/etc comes out, the fandom tends to zero in on what we’ll call the “fandom husbando”. This is usually an attractive male character with a degree of emotional depth. He can’t just be a himbo — there has to be SOMETHING intriguing about him.

Here’s a few examples of this phenomena, both recent and not. Whatever it is that attracts people to this character, the fandom husbando will oftentimes overshadow the content he comes from.

Because a majority of fandom content is shipping based, a lot of the time, fandoms will end up centering around ships with the fandom husbando. For a variety of reasons (which are too complex to get into here), the partners in these ships are generally also male and attractive.

Some fandoms have an easier time forming these ships than others. For example, shonen shows are almost always based around rivalries. The popular pairs can be picked out literally by looking at a cast list.

In Death Note’s case, literally every cast member is a super smart pretty boy who’s engaged in intellectual warfare with the other boys on the cast. It’s rife with homoeroticism and relationships to exploit, and it’s no surprise its shipping fandom was SO BIG when it was current.

Some fandoms have it harder. In Rise of the Guardians, there’s no other human male characters around Jack’s age, so he ended up with the Easter Bunny. MP100 had the same issue until Serizawa was introduced, so the most popular Reigen ship was with a literal ball of fart gas.

Which brings us to the Onceler.

So in 2012, the Lorax movie came out. And instead of keeping the Onceler offscreen like in the original, he was an actual dude.

And the internet collectively said “Oh no, he’s hot.”

So the Lorax fandom had a problem. People were all over the Onceler. They were SO horny for him. But literally the only other characters of note were a couple of children and the titular Danny Devito puffball.

And while some valiant souls TRIED to have the Onceler and the Lorax fuck, it didn’t catch on.

To fix this problem, Greedler was invented.

Greedler was the Onceler after he went full capitalist pig in that one musical sequence. The differentiation was, essentially, made so that there could be separate characters out of one, giving the Lorax more potential husbandos.

And then everyone collectively started making fanart of Greedler and the Onceler interacting, which soon segued into shipping, and soon, into pornography. This in turn led to more and more Onceler AUs, until there was no Lorax fandom, just more and more Onceler variants.

Eventually, the Onceler fandom died off, as these things do, but it serves as a case study in what happens when the fandom husbando has no one to fuck. The fandom eats itself.

And the Undertale fandom proves that this isn’t an isolated incident, because this EXACT SCENARIO happened with Sans!

In Sans’ case, the issue was fairly similar. His options were:
- Frisk (a child)
- Toriel (too hetero)
- Papyrus (incest)

So of course, once AUs got popular, the fandom ouroborosed itself and all of the AU Sanses started making out.

In summary, the Onceler situation is a natural conclusion to common shipping dynamics trying to apply themselves in media that doesn’t support them existing. It was horrifying at the time, but now that we’re past it, it’s quite frankly kind of hilarious.

And now to answer questions no one asked:

Q: Why do you care so much about this

A:
- 1. Because it’s funny
- 2. I lived this shit on tumblr back in 2012, and the ways people interact with media are endlessly fascinating to me

Q: Why weren’t het ships an option? Couldn’t Sans and Toriel have smooched and we’d be done with it?

A: For various reasons (heteronormativity, poor writing for female characters, sexual expression, fetishization, etc), fandom typically trends toward same sex relationships.

A cont.: This is SUPER common regardless of if the fandom is generally male-oriented or female-oriented, and especially so if the canon hetero relationship is (as it often is) unsatisfying to the fandom.

A cont.: It’s actually much more notable if the fandom-preferred ship IS a het one, because that means the way it’s written in canon was satisfying enough that people don’t feel the need to explore other options and just want to see more of that relationship.

There’s also some interesting interactions between demographics and fandom based on the audience for a thing. Like, modern anime and Persona are both highly self insertable, so there’s less f/f shipping and more m/f shipping. But that’s getting off topic

Q: What about OCs? And isn’t an AU version of a character just an OC anyways?

A: Fandom is NOTORIOUSLY hostile toward fan OCs, something that dates back to the early days — the term “mary sue” comes from a Star Trek fanfic making fun of the common tropes of Star Trek OCs

A cont.: On top of that, OCs are deeply personal creations, which means they run into the issue of “why should a casual viewer give a fuck”.

Meanwhile, AU versions of characters have less barriers to consumption, even if the only similarities might be name and appearance.

This might sound a little bit like I’m shitting on OC creators, but honestly it’s more that primarily engaging with fandom via OC content is like playing the engagement game on hard mode. You’ve gotta work SO HARD to get people to care, and it won’t stop Once-cest from happening.

I think that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject. This shit is FASCINATING to me as someone who engages a lot more with the ship oriented sides of fandom more than other bits, and like I’ve said, the Onceler was just... the perfect thing to give birth to fandom bullshit