Grony

Grony is the slash ship between the Grinch and Tony the Tiger from the How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and Kellogg's fandoms.

Canon
The Grinch and Tony are both the viewpoint characters of their respective works. Both are often seen wearing red accessories are fairly bombastic characters (though in different ways). Both are also non-human (if Whos count as human).

Finally both are often seen interacting with children, though while the Grinch is had to warm up to the likes of Cindy Lou Who, Tony is already friends with a bunch of children with no explanation.

Fanon
This might be one of the few crackships where the two characters don't have that much in common. The ship started by complete accident on Tumblr, with user "equalistmako" intending to make a joke about the original "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" song, wondering what exactly the Grinch did to make the singer so upset about him. The user was presumably unaware that it was fairly common to headcanon the singer as the Grinch's ex-boyfriend before. Another user, "prokopetz" then pointed out that the song is the only thing in the original special not narrated by Boris Karloff, instead being sung the late Thurl Ravenscroft, best known for being the voice actor of Tony the Tiger. Prokopetz then introduced the idea that the Grinch and Tony had a very nasty breakup and "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" is the song Tony wrote afterwards.

What follows was fanart of the user "iguanamouth" of Tony looking at a photo of a drunk Grinch, tearing it in two whilst saying "You're a mean one... Mr. Grinch". The user "altadude" then responded with their own fanart of the Grinch looking mournfully at a photo of them happy together, while murmuring "You're... great...". Though a number of other users voiced their complaints, it was the user "randomslasher" who pointed out that the ship actually works. Already thinking of ways the story could go from here, like the Grinch and Tony meeting again after ten years, after the Grinch's heart "grew three times it's usual size" and ultimately rekindling their relationship after Tony realizes that everyone has the potential to change for the better. They described the phenomenon as "maybe we’ve all got a little bit of bad banana with greasy black peel inside us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make a damned fine banana bread if someone will give us a chance".

Tumblr user "biggest-gaudiest-patronuses" (who prefers to be called "gaud") then announced that they wrote a fanfic for the pairing, which received glowing reviews, with many commenting how simultaneously amazed and appalled they are at its quality, regarding it as genuinely well-written for what is essentially a crackship. The set-up is that Tony is a washed-up former sports star who had dreams about starting a family, but ended up in a divorce that left him unwilling to move on for two decades, moving "back" to Mount Crumpit after his "ex-boyfriend" calls, telling him that he's moving house and doesn't know what to do with his sports memorabilia. The scene of the Grinch and Tony sitting at a fireplace received fanart.

When asked about what their child would be like, gaud presented their traits side by side: The child would have the weird fur and unsettling appearance of the Grinch, but also the orange color and sporty personality of Tony. So gaud concluded that their child would be the Philadelphia Flyers Hockey mascot Gritty. When their followers suggested the Lorax as an alternative child, this inspired fanart of all four of them as a happy family. One of gaud's followers then suggested that the Lorax and Gritty were raised separately due to their polar opposite stances on protecting the trees and being there for the city. This inspired gaud to say that the Lorax and Gritty are in a "Parent Trap" situation, trying to get the Grinch and Tony back together. They also added that the Grinch was the one raising the Lorax (because they share the "The" in their name and both hate commercialism) while Tony raised Gritty (they're both mascots and enjoy sports).

Though the ship may look a bit weird at first, many argue that it genuinely works because it fits very well into popular ship dynamics like "extrovert/introvert", "grumpy/sunshine" and to lesser extent "nerd/jock". Thus, there are many people who ship it unironically. It currently has 16 works on AO3.

Trivia

 * According to gaud, the ship name, "Grony" was deliberately chosen to disturb. They held a poll with "Gronch", "Tinch" and "Tonch" being options along with a few less serious ones. Grony won.
 * One of gaud's followers sent the fic to their English teacher as an example of a well-written piece of fiction found on the internet. They got into trouble with them over it, because the teacher thought that the fanfic had sexual content in it, with their disciplinary officer being forced to read the entirety of chapter one to confirm that there isn't any sexual content in the fic. Later on, the same follower told gaud that since they went to a Catholic school, the disciplinary officer was a nun. Gaud thought this was so hysterical that they temporarily changed their Tumblr bio to "a nun was forced to read my grinch x tony fic".
 * Later, another follower showed the fic to their uncle, who is a priest. He supposedly blessed it, causing gaud to changed their bio to "someone's uncle blessed my grinch x tony fic".

Fandom
FAN FICTION

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