Reminder That Chapter 9 Is Up

Last chapter of The Great Wish Movie Rewrite up today!!!!!!

Guys!!!!!! The last chapter of The Great Wish Movie Rewrite is up today!!! Read here: Link

This rewrite was so much fun! It was especially pressing for me since we can all agree Magnifico deserved better! Haha. It's a good thing we can always rewrite these things if we need to, and have a lot of fun doing it, too! Thanks to everyone who read this novelization/rewrite to the end! Link

Excerpt: Chapter Ten: Rosas Restored

Magnifico awoke on top of his tower.

The hopeful hum of the wishes had returned.

He sat up on the stone cold floor, and stared at them floating in the dawn with utter reverence for so long he almost forgot his kingdom was still in ruins.

He reached out to let one land on a finger. “How glorious.” 

The skies above told him two days had passed since he'd entered the black hole. 

He had so much time before him now.

Magnifico got to his feet, and walked out onto the edge of a platform. He looked down upon his kingdom of sticky rubble and wreck. “I have a great deal of amends to make,” he sighed as he bowed his head. "And I do not blame my people if they do not forgive me after this." 

The first thing he did was to snap his dark staff in two, and toss it over the tower's side into the sea. He picked up his old, less potent sceptre and used it to close up his tower again, its spiked platforms folding in from their star shape back into a dome that protected the wishes once more. Then he went down from his tower, out into the streets where he used it to stop the rhinoceros still barreling around. He shrunk the animal down to the size of a mouse, and gave it to a little girl skipping past to keep as a pet, and she was too overjoyed to be scared of him when he handed it to her.

“Why bless my soul! It’s Magnifico,” said a peasant woman when she saw him strolling around the town, putting things back in order. 

“It is I!” he said as he shot down the dragon with a fiery arrow from his scepter, that crashed down into the forest, and he looked so disarmingly cheerful that a grin nearly escaped her as she took in his metamorphosis, and everyone wondered what had come over him a second time.

Magnifico was in such high spirits that if he were wearing a crown and it was knocked off his head by the wind, he'd have been too cheerful to notice and gone right on without it.

Next he sealed up the tears in the earth, then herded the stampede of unicorns into a gated pasture to give to Farmer Finnegan as an apology for destroying his other livelihood, after which he turned to the dark castle he’d grown out of the ground and shrunk it into a merry go round for children to ride in the middle of his courtyard. He found that everything could be reshaped into something joyful.

“Good morning sir!” he said to the baker as he put his bakery back in order with a few zaps. “Such a fine craft you’ve perfected. I have always held it in high regard."

Once all his paradoxes and anomalies had been sorted out with some serious conundrum-solving that left his head in a guddle, and he was sure each of his subjects were as safe as could be, he went down to the edge of the forest where he found Asha and Star Boy bouncing up and down on a discarded trampoline in the shade of the trees, and walked up to them. 

The pale white wand in Asha's hand had been mended, and she held it carelessly above her head as she bounced, a few sparks leaking out its end that she didn't even notice. 

"A fine day to you!" Magnifico called to them, and their mouths fell open at the sight of him. They ceased bouncing. "What have we here, my dears? Let's have a look." He approached them with a smile on his face.

Asha's face scrunched up into the same one she'd made when her Saba's wish had been yanked from her days earlier. “Go away," she told the king. "Everyone was a lot better off without you. Do you think anyone is going to listen to a big stupid-head when they could listen to me? People just have to believe in themselves to make their dreams come true. You just have to follow your heart, and anything is possible. All it takes is a little faith and a wish upon a star.”

“Enough of these idiotic phrases.” Magnifico plucked the mended wand from her hand, and snapped it in two with a satisfying crunch. 

Asha's face went pale, and her jaw nearly hit the ground.

"Asha, it seems you’ve finally earned yourself a proper sentence," he said, and raised his sceptre, but Star Boy was ready, and the fire he shot from his palms collided with Magnifico's spell. 

But this time, the fire was no match for the white light bursting from the king's sceptre, and the star was not prepared to be hurled backward into the trees like a worthless gnat. 

Star Boy emerged from the prickly plants with the look of a crumpled fly, his hair, full of prickers, sticking up as if he'd been electrocuted. He staggered forward, too dizzy to walk straight, and cried, "The earth's a mess, there's no more delight, I'm done with this, time to take flight." He shook his hair back to normal as he leapt into the air, and a suitcase materialised in his hand. "I've had my fill, this game's a bore, I can't take humans anymore. I'm packing my bags, going off with a zoom, no more human games, I'll return to the moon."

"Wait!" called Asha as Star Boy disappeared in a streak of light like a comet, right after which Magnifico sealed up the Eclipse Enclosure behind him with his sceptre, stronger and more secure than ever, ensuring he could never breach the realm again.

Asha's lip trembled as she watched.

Magnifico turned to her. "For your insolence, you will tend the chickens kept by your people day after day, from sunrise to sunset. No magic, no shortcuts. You will protect them and learn to do some good for society." And with a flash, he transported her back to the Hamlet, where she materialised surrounded by chickens inside a run closed off with barbed wire, outside which she could not step foot without getting a zap.

From then on, Asha had no choice but to follow the chickens, feed them, sweep up their dirty hay, and gather their eggs, all to the tune of relentless clucking. With no escape, she slowly, but eventually learned to focus on her tasks until she found a strange rhythm in the routine that wasn't quite pleasure, though she was no longer restless and wishful.

The same night she received her sentence, Magnifico gathered his guards into a search party to find Amaya, who had gone into hiding after his disappearance. 

"I fear she is like a serpent in tall grass, watching and waiting to strike," he told his guards. "She must be found and captured at once."

It was only midnight when his guards returned with his wife, who had been hiding out in a cave in the forest.

"Magnifico, I was possessed," she tried to lie as the guards dragged her off to the dungeons. "I do not know what came over me. It was the dark magic, I swear it was." Her protests faded as she was marched down the dark lower stairwell out of sight. Finish reading: Link

The Lorax Novelization

Do you ever kinda wish something would exist, so you just decide to make it yourself?

Read here. I release new chapters every week.

One reason I rewrote the Lorax the way I did was actually because I got annoyed at a book I was reading. Books always give the youngest child the hardest role, which is kind of cliché. But the last straw was that this main character had to help provide for their family. And that just hit a nerve. It's one thing to use the typical trope of 'the oldest got all the attention, but the youngest was ignored' for the millionth time, but why does it always make it seem like the oldest child has no struggles, all while giving their more common struggles to the youngest just to fit a marketing cliche? Anyway, it gave me the urge to write some realistic oldest child representation for once, and it happened to fit the archetype for this story really well. (Kind of a random priority, but I have a lot of random priorities that cause me to write). Sometimes there's just a story where you feel like "okay, wait, wait, stop. I'm the one who actually knows how this really happened though."

Chapter 7 (The Wrath of Nature) is up. Excerpt below:

(This specific scene was one of the main reasons I wanted to rewrite the movie).

"If you meant no harm, then why did you put my bed in a river?!"

"I didn't mean harm, my touch was light, a gentle breeze, for the softest flight. I merely meant to float you away, to a land of dreams, to another day."

"ARE YOU STUPID?!" Once-ler exploded. "I FIND THAT VERY HARD TO BELIEVE! OF COURSE THAT WAS A DANGEROUS IDEA! And you're telling me you didn't know there was a waterfall there when you're supposed to be the all-knowing Guardian of the Forest?!"

The Lorax was speechless, caught in his lies. "Remember your promise, I'll hold you to it now. In the river you swore and made a vow."

"I said that because you were threatening my life. Do you really think you've accomplished anything?"

"Hear this important plea, loud and clear," said the Lorax. 'Everyone needs the trees that are here! 'We need the wood,' the voices cry, 'To live and stay, or else we'll die.'"

Once-ler felt a speck of pity when he realized the Lorax really was that dumb. In his simple mind he’d really thought his plan to blackmail Once-ler into a promise was going to guarantee the safety of his sacred Truffula Trees. Typical fey creature.

"Okay, that's it." Once-ler finally grabbed the Lorax by the scruff of his neck. "You've manipulated and tricked me. You've tried to kill me. Let's have this out once and for all. I refuse to be bullied out of this forest. If you can actually give me a logical explanation for why I shouldn't cut down the trees, then I'll stop. How bad can this really be, huh?"

"Fine, have it your way, we'll talk, indeed," the Lorax said. "But know I'm earnest, and please take heed."

"Fine."

Once-ler dropped the Lorax onto a stump, where he stood up straight and cleared his throat. He said in a meaningful voice:

"You think you can chop down whatever you please. But everyone here needs the trees."

"That's too vague," said Once-ler at once. "You have to explain what problem it causes, so we can figure out how to solve it."

"Well," said the Lorax, "my feathered friends have all made nest, in the trees they decided they liked best. You can't impose upon their tweets, and come and steal their cozy retreats."

"Okay," said Once-ler. "Then I just won't cut those ones down."

"Oh, great excuse, I'm sure you know best, but how will you tell which ones have nests?"

"I promise to use my binoculars every time."

The Lorax considered this. "Well, my dear sir, even if that part might be alright, what about the fruit in which Barbaloots delight? This fare is their favorite sweet, juicy treat. They aren't the type of bears that just eat meat."

"Wait," said Once-ler. "There are a bunch of other trees around here that have fruit. So they won't be affected."

The Lorax sighed. "Beyond that, other things are at hand. Trees create fresh air for the rest of the land. Through leaves so frugal, they drink the air, and give it life, don't you even care?"

"Okaaaaay," Once-ler considered. "But counterpoint: there are still lots of other trees and plants around here to contribute to photosynthesis."

"I'm afraid I haven't been explaining this right," the Lorax said frustratedly. "Because the Truffula Trees are a special type. It takes hundreds of years for them to grow. Why waste them on cheap products, I don't know!"

Unfortunately, the insult only distracted Once-ler from his strongest argument.

"Hey, my product is NOT cheap! I put tons of effort into developing it. The Thneed actually took lots of research, and I had to fight and sacrifice a lot—"

"Alright, alright, you're getting offended! This conversation should really be ended. I'm just saying don't waste ancient trees. I don't see why it's so hard to agree…"

(Read the rest on Ao3).

It was really hard not to make the Lorax seem like a psychotic jerk here. I decided to make him into more of an unpredictable fae creature who will show more depth and have his say later.

I wanna try my best to steelman both sides in this, because the movie accidentally made Once-ler the most sympathetic by far. (Though even he didn't go far enough). Gonna give the Lorax his due soon.

The argument was important for me to include here, because the Lorax had no arguments in the movie and only relied on manipulative music.

Chapter 12

Once-ler turns evil. Gets dark at the end. Read the whole thing on Ao3. Excerpt:

It was nice when he could get a second guitar without even thinking about it. Perhaps even nicer than it would have been to someone who didn't have heartbreaking memories of always being told his parents couldn't afford a good one for him. After all, hadn't it been just the other day he'd asked for one on his eighth birthday in front of the music store window and gotten tears in his eyes when his dad told him no?

He didn't have any memories of clothes-shopping as a child either. All he'd gotten was hand-me-downs for short people from his church's charity drives. Surely other people had always gotten measured at tailors to get jackets and trousers of the highest quality to fit them perfectly. This, of course, justified the exorbitant bill when he bought a new designer wardrobe complete with extra tall top hats in his favorite black and bright green colors.

It turned out, the world was full of things he'd never been able to appreciate before he'd had money:

Clothes, drinks, cars, trips, events. There were so many more opportunities when you weren't just a poor helpless urchin…

He would never go back to being poor. Never. He was even worse than his Ma, after a short time.

"Oncie, don't ya think maybe we could take a day off to have a family picnic and celebrate the end of summer like in the old days?" she said to him one day.

Once-ler looked up from the photos he was studying for a new billboard advertisement. He'd almost settled on what he thought was a charismatic picture of himself with his arms spread wide and an eye-popping grin on his face, though Brett had remarked it made him look rather possessed.

"Ha!" He slammed down the photos. "You mean the old days when we were poor and miserable? Why don't we take the whole week off and have a real party? Or better yet, a month-long tropical vacation?"

His Ma blinked. "Sounds real nice, honey, but who's gonna run the company? Didn't you just get back from a cruise? Ain't ya gettin' just a little too extravagant these days?"

"Who cares? I'm rich! We got a million employees now. Besides I deserve it cuz of all the sufferin' I went through before."

This excuse got less impressive by the day as Once-ler's new luxuries quickly outweighed any misery he'd previously endured. His identity as a lower class citizen faded even more quickly from his own memory and personality than it did into the past.

"I'm so glad that in the last year I was finally able to discover the real me," was something he'd told everyone in his family more than once since they'd returned. It never occurred to him that what he meant was: "I'm so glad I finally have money to do whatever I want without any consequences."

***

2nd excerpt:

"I just wanted to tell you, the Barbaloots are dying."

Something got through the iron-clad self absorption that had enclosed Once-ler for the last few months. He was surrounded by terrible people all the time now, but when harm fell upon innocent creatures, it was different. He remembered the little Barbaloot that had given him a hug after the fiasco in the river.

"What do you mean dying? How can they be… Surely they're not actually dying ?"

"There was something in the water that made 'em sick. Something from your factory that set in quick. It's making 'em not move and lay around. And some of 'em…" There were tears in the Lorax's eyes. "Some of 'em ain't gettin' up from the ground."

READ THE FULL THING ON AO3!!!

The way Tumblr treats the Once-ler reminds me of a Barbie. Just a plain, basic character that everyone has a personal spin on and plops into their own elaborate story and universe. I feel like I could write a whole paper about how fascinating it is. There's just something about that Lorax movie that really gives you the urge to improve upon it, I guess.

Out of curiosity how long do you prefer fanfictions to be? Are you more likely to read something with just a few chapters or do you like a long quality story?

New chapter is up!

Preview:

The first place Once-ler tried his luck was the city of North Nitch where the biggest businesses were. It was a city of rainbow, sleek buildings twisted into swirly shapes and blinking lights, filled with the latest technology, including traffic lights with seven colors instead of three. He lost track of how many times he almost got run over in traffic trying to understand what they were supposed to mean.

O'Hare's Business and Innovation Center was the biggest, sleekest, twistiest building where he made an appointment to pitch his product. He rode an elevator up to the hundredth floor at the top of the building where helicopters flew so close to the window it looked like he could touch them. The O'Hares were a famous line of CEOs who ran all the major companies in every country.

Once-ler pulled his guitar from his back, mentally going over the pitch he'd carefully prepared for the team of salesmen. He took a deep breath, and began:

"The great is Thneed… I mean, the Thneed is good," he missed a note, completely forgetting how to sing in anapestic tetrameter.

READ THE REST ON AO3!

Join me as I post an actually finished rewrite of this entire movie! Extra plot twists, foreshadowing, and embellishments, since I did multiple drafts! Nobody ever finished a full rewrite before, so I did it myself.

Chapter 15 is up

GUYS, THERE'S ONLY ONE CHAPTER AFTER THIS! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S COME SO FAR!

Excerpt (here I attempted to insert more logic into why the seed was never planted earlier and the Lorax didn't help or create more):

A thunderous crack interrupted his thoughts. It was louder than bulldozers, like when the factory had collapsed, but more formidable and extraordinary, a sound Once-ler could never forget, that he heard every night in his dreams.

He peeked between the boards, and, sure enough, the sky had the telltale purple hue and spiraling clouds that signaled the Lorax coming back to earth.

Brown mossy paws landed weightlessly upon the UNLESS stones, and a yellow mustache under glittering black eyes turned up to look at Once-ler.

“HELLO IN THERE!” the Lorax hollered. “Still taking care? Haven't said goodbye? You’ve yet to die?"

Once-ler didn't know what to say at first, but after spluttering for a few moments, settled on: "Well, FINALLY! Where were you this whole time? Let me out so we can plant more trees already! We need to get a head start straightening out this mess, it's gonna take a loooong time to fix!"

The Lorax held up his hands. "Calm down, I can only create one seed every hundred years. And they can only be planted under certain circumstances, I fear. Seeds (and trees, for that matter) ain't cheap consumerist stuff. Unlike Thneeds, creating living things at will is tough."

He walked up to the Lerkim, and did something Once-ler couldn't see to the lock. Perhaps he had created a cheap consumerist key, but, in any case, a clink told him the chain had finally fallen away.

Once-ler slammed his full weight against the door and tumbled out.

"Sorry it took so long, but do you know what went wrong?" said the Lorax, waiting for him to straighten himself as much as he could—Once-ler's crooked spine had been bent too many times to ever go back to normal. "I can only stay in the valley as long as the animals or trees that I protect are in it. Right now a swomee-swan is passing through for a minute."

"Right, well, anyway, we need to plant this!" Once-ler held up the seed he'd protected in the Lerkim for ten years.

The Lorax sighed. "The time still isn't right, that’s why I put up such a fight," he said. "My point, if you’d heard my pleas—is that Truffula Trees don’t sprout with ease. The good news is," he said to Once-ler's dejected expression, "that if you get one to grow, then soon you’ll see—a bloom of others follows naturally; it's like one's the mother, that hundreds of babies spring around. Plus they can clean up the air, the water, and ground—planting Truffula Trees is the first step to restore and  bring this place back to how it was before."

"Okay. So… When can we plant it?"

"We?" asked the Lorax. "There’s nothing I can do. I can't stay here, so it's up to you. And you're gonna be too old to plant it yourself in forty-eight years. When the time comes, you’re gonna need help out here. You're gonna need to give the seed to someone else. Explain what to do and pray that they’ll help. Tell them the story and the instructions I’ll leave on the stones… I have to go, I feel something slipping away in my bones. The swomee-swan is trying to get out of here fast. Goodbye, if you don’t succeed, these words might be our last."

"Wait—"

But the Lorax was positioned on the UNLESS stones, his hand pinching his fur. "Your job now is to spread the word about the seed. Until you find someone willing to do the deed. It's time to live up to your name and not keep making the same mistake. Actions have consequences, so stay awake. At a certain point you can't take your choices back. Only encourage others to stay on a better track. Just remember," he said, "Unless someone cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit One Shot

Just wanted to put it out there that I also recently wrote a one shot about Oswald's tale. I'd like to make the whole video game into a book with more depth someday.