Au Onceler - Blog Posts

Reminder that Chapter 9 is up

While I like the concept of Once-ler having a mean, selfish family that shows why he turned out the way he did, I'm going to make it clear that listening to them and destroying everything was his own choice.

EXCERPT

It was unsettling how much having his family move in made Once-ler's life feel exactly as it had before.

Somehow they still managed to make him feel like the one imposing, despite them being in his house. It wasn't long till his closets were full of their clothes and shoes, and his ice box with things like "Brett's pickles, don't touch." "Gizette's hot sauce. No Oncies allowed" or "CHET ONLY" signs on the orange juice. Yuck. Once-ler patiently pushed the orange juice aside to fit eggs and milk for his pancake batter.

Since the time he'd seen them, Gizette had taken up soccer and now kept her equipment thrown across his lawn. It appeared she'd gotten her glasses somehow, glittery pink frames that she left laying around and never wore. Brett and Chet brought parts of motorbikes they fiddled around with, that Once-ler never saw in the long grass before they tripped him. His Ma seemed to have gotten even more knickknacks, clothes, and yarn than ever for someone who always complained about having no money.

However, he didn't know if he should complain because of how much she helped with the company. In fact, she helped a little too much, staying up all night on the phone, networking, negotiating, planning ads, and scheduling meetings for him to attend. She seemed to have become an expert manager overnight.

"Didn't you know I got a degree in business when I was in my early twenties?" she told him. "I used to help yer dad back when he was first startin' his wood cuttin’ business." Once-ler had not. She had never mentioned having any helpful skills up till this point.

Some of her ideas were better than others. Once-ler did appreciate the plans to expand the market, like with the promotions she took charge of. He liked the new top hat she picked out for him, to make him look like a proper CEO. And thanks to her fundraising efforts, the blueprints for his factory were becoming a brick and mortar reality atop the nearest hill beyond his window.

However, when it came to her suggestion about chopping down the trees to gather the leaves faster for their expanding customer base, Once-ler was annoyed.

"No. Truffula Trees take a hundred years to grow back, so that's not a good business strategy. Why don't we just use ladders?"

“Well, that’s pretty demanding of you,” said his Ma. “You make us move out here to help you, and won’t even provide the proper accommodations. Brett fell off one of those dangerous old ladders the other day, and got a big purple bruise on his nose. It’s not funny, don’t laugh. You gotta learn about bein’ a decent boss.”

Once-ler’s Ma’s opinion of a good boss seemed to be one that gave her whatever she wanted. Well, why did he have to give his family whatever they wanted all the time? His stubbornness was, indeed, the last thing still keeping him from getting out his ax and being done with it. The ladders and picker really were a pain. It would be easier to just yell “Timber!” and harvest a whole head of leaves from a fallen trunk, but he didn't want to give his family the satisfaction.

Oh, and there was his promise to the Lorax too.

Chapter Five is up!

Preview:

It’s rare that a fantasy comes true just as you’re fantasizing about it, but that’s just what happened when Once-ler’s wagon rolled over the next hill. Not only did the scene happen to be extraordinary, but it came at such a coincidental time of desperate wishfulness that Once-ler was ripped straight from his daydreams and his eyes filled with tears immediately.

PEACE! FREEDOM! INSPIRATION! it screamed all at once.

Such a heavy feeling of serenity and joy descended upon his soul that he knew immediately he was where he was meant to be. It took less than a second to decide this was home, and he would never change his mind for the rest of his days. A smile spread across his face, the kind that was so big it hurt.

The valley he overlooked was a forest, but not like the forest at home. He’d never dreamed a forest could be so different. Where the one behind his farm was small, dry, and gray, the one below stretched beyond the horizon, filled with the brightest green grass and dark blue water full of lily pads, duckweed, and cattails.

Wispy trees and bushes bloomed with pink, yellow, and orange silken foliage that filled his nose with sugary sweetness. Instead of being empty and boring, as if animals would rather be anywhere less desolate, it buzzed with bees, butterflies, frogs, and fish he could see even from his vantage atop the highest hill. A sense of adventure and endless discovery pierced his heart as Once-ler's wagon rolled deeper down into Heaven.

So this was how forests were supposed to be. Every choice he’d made up to that point had been right after all, if it had led him to this. When the wagon reached the bottom of the hill, the yodels died on his lips, and he threw his guitar in the back. “Come on, Melvin,” he said, leading the mule along. The forest only became more interesting from there.

Ho-li-ah Ho-le-rah-hi-hi-ah Ho-le-rah-cuckoo Fol-de-rol, laddie right Toor-a-lie-addy

“Wait, who’s singing? Oh, wow!” Once-ler stood in awe as he watched a trio of fat yellow and orange fish dancing atop a rock, using their fins as legs. They held hands, spinning with their eyes closed, occasionally kicking out their fins or breaking away to do an Irish jig.

“Bizarre,” he said, checking over his shoulder just in case it was some kind of trick. “Does anyone else even know this exists?”

A yellow butterfly soared past with wings the size of book pages. The dark spots on its wings looked like a cow's. It landed on a flower where a frog strolled by on its hind legs and started milking it into an acorn cap.

"Oh my goodness!" Once-ler hopped up and down. "I think I just stumbled upon a completely undiscovered habitat!" After his life at home, he'd begun to think there was no such thing as anything new or exciting.

"Magnificent," he said, tears filling his eyes as a swarm of orange swans flew over his head under sun-tinted clouds. They soared, then dipped, taking a dive alongside a waterfall that roared ominously.

~*~

Follow me for the rest of the rewrite! (I'm going to post new chapters every week).

I can't wait to get to the part about the Lorax. I'm going to write him so much differently than the movie that made him a useless smart aleck. I always thought he should be more mysterious and fae-like. Gonna try to make it like something Tolkien or Holly Black would write. This story is really fun to write!

The Great Lorax Rewrite (beginning)

Hey guys, here's the beginning of the fanfiction I'm writing on Ao3. The aim is to tell Once-ler's whole story from beginning to end without Ted interrupting. There are four chapters up so far, and a lot more to come:

"Where is it? Where did you put my guitar?"

Once-ler smacked his head as he looked under the triple bunk bed he was forced to share with his brothers in their small house.

"Reckon if ya don't get out there n' chop some trees, I'll let Brett n' Chet smash that dang guitar for good!" his Ma's voice called from the kitchen.

His younger twin brothers and sister laughed from the dinner table.

"Hurry up n' get more money from yer wood," Brett complained. "We only got three potatoes in our stew today, n' they're smaller n' ping pong balls."

"Yeah, an' none for you, Oncie," said Gizette. "I get the last one!"

"Why can't I ever have any of the stew if I'm always the one earnin' the money?" Once-ler tripped out of their closet-like bedroom, and squeezed around the table through the equally cramped dining area. This was made even harder by his abnormal height; he always had bruises on his knees and elbows from being such a tall person in such a small house.

Before him sat his shorter, but equally ungainly family, squished around the table: his mother with her teased up hair balanced by a bow, in her patched polka-dot sweater while serving brown stew water, the twins Brett and Chet with ripped up overalls and squashed hats who were staring eagerly at two tiny potatoes on their plates, and the youngest "baby" Gizette with ratty hair, buck teeth, and the biggest serving of stew of all (which was still not very big).

In the corner Once-ler's father was asleep in the rocking chair by the fire, using his old gray coat as a blanket. His gray hat was pulled over his stubbled face, and his ax laid on the floor beside him after his long day of woodcutting. Once-ler had to avoid the blade as he tiptoed to the only corner of the room with enough space.

"Because, sweetie," said his Ma, "You're the oldest child, and we have to think of the youngins. It's time for you to be an adult. Anyway, we've all got to make sacrifices when times are hard." The fancy unidentifiable dead animal she always wore around her neck bobbed its nose as she scooped the last tiny part of the stew into her own bowl.

This was always the excuse whenever Once-ler said he needed anything: "We have to think of the youngins." He understood the sentiment, really. It just seemed like he couldn't recall anyone ever using that argument during the short time he'd gotten to be the youngest. The youngest kids were also older than he'd been when they'd first started using this excuse. In fact, it seemed his family had decided Once-ler was an adult the second he'd been born, and that the others could never grow up.

I was only going to release one chapter every Wednesday, but felt like posting more for fun. Comments/likes/kudos are REALLY appreciated, so I can get an audience. Please share this novelization with anyone you think would enjoy it.

I've been working on it for an abnormally long time, and got really carried away doing multiple drafts, especially for the later parts. The aim was to make it better than one of those professional Disney movie novelizations. Hopefully it feels like a full satisfying book with a lot of little things that connect and foreshadow.

Because the original had a lot of plot holes and wasn't satisfying.

What to expect:

1. Actually tells the Once-ler's whole story from beginning to end (no Ted)

2. Gives Once-ler more agency and develops his motives beyond "my family made me do it."

3. Includes "You're all going to jail!" scene

4. Animals die/the stakes are raised

5. Logical explanations for why they couldn't just plant more trees or use a ladder, why Once-ler didn't just plant the seed himself, etc.

6. The Lorax is actually significant

7. Characters like Once-ler's dad, Norma, and O'Hare are woven in, but don't steal the spotlight. (Example: Norma isn't an annoying girlfriend who steals the role of the Lorax).

8. NO ANNOYING OCS, MARY SUES, OR STUPID ROMANCES!!!!!!!!!! Just a straightforward, comprehensive narrative of what the movie should've been like.

This entire novel is complete and has been through multiple drafts. If you follow it, you can be sure that it does have an ending and the author knows where it's going with foreshadowing and extra plot twists. Chapters will be released each week.