kishi
Experienced member
Posts: 345
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Post by kishi on May 24, 2009 17:45:55 GMT -5
Well, Doom said the hyenas were their cousins. I don't take that in a literal sense of 'brother'. More like 'brothers' in that they're the same species/have the same goals/brothers in arms. I think they have a family, too. Smartass especially strikes me as a disgruntled toon actor...like he tried to make it but couldn't and now he's bitter. I don't know -why-, he just does, so I'm sorry I can't point out any particular thing that makes me think that.
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Post by Fatal hilarity on May 24, 2009 18:00:21 GMT -5
Yeah, that's what I said- I don't take his use of the word "brother" literally. I see as the sense that Christians and black people use it- brother weasels. I also like to think that Slithy looks up to Smarta** and sees him as an older brother. That's why I think he seems so deranged, amoral, and vengeful in Resurrection of Doom- having his "older brother" die of Dip made him kind of snap. I even think he loved him like a brother...
I know a lot of people will have their own ideas of what the Toon Patrol's parents are like... Me, I like to think that the weasels are direct descendants of the ones in The Wind in the Willows book, and they got radically redesigned at some point. But in some ways I'm not certain about that. So it might be more reasonable to assume that the Toon Patrol is a couple of generations removed from them, and born in America. It's a kind of a sticky subject... I know some will disagree with me, but I want to have the Disney weasels connected to the Willows weasels somehow.
...That's actually one main reason I brought up this subject- so we can come to some sort of agreement. I don't wanna come out with a fanfic of mine that everyone disagrees with...
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kishi
Experienced member
Posts: 345
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Post by kishi on May 24, 2009 18:37:23 GMT -5
Why -can't- they be related? Although I do think the Toon Patrollers were born in America (or Mexico, for Greasy) In my mind, I've been kicking around the idea that the predecessors of the Toons were somehow involved in illustrations/etc. And maybe they were fully visible only to those who had the imagination to -see- them? I don't like to think of humans creating toons as a species. XD It gives far too much credit for something so complex. (Which I know not everyone agrees with.) I see it as more of a symbiotic relationship. Toons need laughter to live, Humans like to laugh at the toons. And I wouldn't worry too much about it. Your stories are -yours-, so you can do as you like. Me, I read stories and as long as they aren't completely erratic, I don't mind. It's when they decide to arbitrarily change them from weasels to...I dunno, elephants, with no reason other than the author likes elephants that I get really -really- annoyed. It's the same way I know most would disagree with me on my thoughts that the movie we know is a 'historical' picture that doesn't quite have all the facts straight. At least in -my- version of the weasel universe. This is mainly so I could have the weasels -not- dead.
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Post by Fatal hilarity on May 24, 2009 20:49:49 GMT -5
I guess you don't realize how important it is to me to have everything make sense, and to have people agree with me... I want to listen to the fans, because I don't want to risk having some detail that somebody will get on my case about. Peace is very important to me. Also, I'm a stickler for sticking to the canon. Admittedly, a lot of this stuff is fan speculation, but I figure coming to a consensus would be good for everyone, so long as the theories remain logical... Everyone can pitch in! My art is for the viewers, so I want to listen to the viewers.
Oh, there's no doubt in my mind that toons have their roots in comic illustrations. Caricatures, editorial cartoons... the visual style of American animation itself was directly based on comic strips in newspapers of the time. Now why couldn't humans have created toons entirely? I mean, WE did in OUR world. Obviously, though, their natures didn't come out of a box, and evolved over time as our imaginations expanded. After all, somebody had to draw them in the first place. If WE can create them, why not have humans be able to do it in the WFRR world? That's just simple logic.
(And to get semi-religious and philosophical, since we are created in God's image, so it is our nature to create. In the WFRR world, what's different is that the creations that are intentionally humorous and unrealistic are those that come to life. Tolkien believed that when we create, we're peering into another world... I don't expect anyone to agree with me on that.)
I think the emergence of toons, and their illustrative predecessors, into the physical world was a gradual process, and a phenomenon that wasn't widely observed until the Baroque period, when cartooning as we know it became more common. Once newspaper comics and animation were created, the population of toons exploded and they became toons as we know them today, although they still had some ways to go when it comes to their evolving natures.
I think a toon is entirely reliant on their creator's imaginations. Things get more complicated when they are separated from their creators, of course, which I think would allow them more freedom to change- but their base natures would still remain, because they were born that way. To use hyperhole, we wouldn't consider Mickey laughing evilly and blowing up the universe to be truly Mickey, right? Not at all! Despite his changes over the years, he's still Mickey. Toons evolve because of our changing ideas of what they are. "I'm not bad- I'm just drawn that way!"
Now here's a question: since having the Toon Patrol be descendants of the Willows weasels- who had gotten redesigned and emigrated to America- is a possibility... how does that explain how Greasy came from Mexico and still be drawn in the same style? (Not to mention Dizzy...) Did the Toon Patrol and every other weasel at the time get redesigned at the same time? If so, what in God's name did they look like before then??
A related topic is about how I personally think that Wacky came from another studio, as opposed to Disney like all the others. He's pretty different from the others... he's a trickster with incredible control over toon physics, while all the others are hoodlum bad guys who have bad luck with toon physics!
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kishi
Experienced member
Posts: 345
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Post by kishi on May 26, 2009 5:10:47 GMT -5
So we humans did create them in our world...but in our world they don't -live- like they do in WFRR. We haven't figured a way out to truly bring them to life in that manner. And that's what I meant about humans not really creating them from the get go. (It's complicated. :\)
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Post by Fatal hilarity on May 26, 2009 5:19:33 GMT -5
...And that's why I say that the reasons WHY and HOW toons come to life are shrouded in mystery. I never said that humans knew how it works, like Dr. Frankenstein or anything like that.
I don't see why a human couldn't draw a toon someday and have it pop off the page (or whatever), making the human go "WTF??!!"
EDIT: And while we're (sort of) on the subject of the Toon Patrol's origins, shall we say that the weasels in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad are descendants of the Willows weasels that kept their accents, or even the Willows weasels after getting redesigned?? I'm just wondering how exactly they came to be, and how they're related to the others. Would they or would they not be able to interact with the Toon Patrol?
I'm of course assuming that the Willows weasels came to be as Kenneth Grahame wrote about them, and that Disney's version is merely an adaptation in which the weasels play roles. If they are indeed descendants- or the originals- they would be pretty much reenacting events that actually happened to them or their parents/grandparents, albeit in heavily modified form. My personal theory is that Walt discovered them after Judge Doom got Dipped, and hired them on the spot because they lived those lives, more or less. It's then that they sign a lifelong contract and become part of the Disney family, getting newly created members every now and then... Which is why I prefer to think that all the weasels, starting with How to be a Detective, would be unable to interact with the Toon Patrol, because they were "born" after their deaths. Of course, even though all of the Roger Rabbit comics take place after the events of WFRR, they are still directly related to the film and the best candidates for being around before 1947. Those who were actually created by Disney in the '40s in our world, of course, are automatically included.
Of course, this still doesn't explain how Greasy has the same design as the others when he was born thousands of miles away from England. Or if you prefer, a couple hundred from America (if you don't like the English roots theory). Was Greasy redesigned, if he ever was, at the same time as the others after becoming associated with them?
See, these sort of questions tend to come up, and if you don't answer them, the audience will ask them without having a definite answer. If we can mostly agree on something, then our fanfics will make perfect sense and have total audience believability! I'm just here to help everyone here. (Nevermind that they're all toons. In my mind, physics are the only laws that toons break... not logical ones.) After all, Star Trek's technobabble is accurate enough to make it believable... I say it's better to come up with answers to the questions WFRR ignored than to leave readers scratching their heads... a good, solid mythology makes for a better work of fiction. We don't have to scientifically explain everything toons do, of course, since most of what they do is impossible in our world, but just saying "it's a cartoon" isn't good enough for me... Quite frankly, I think it's a poor, flimsy, and lazy excuse.
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Post by Fatal hilarity on Jul 4, 2009 3:18:54 GMT -5
Isn't anyone interested in my theory about their origins? I thought Eternity would be.
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Post by Fatal hilarity on Jul 5, 2009 19:52:10 GMT -5
So... what do you think?
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Post by Fatal hilarity on Aug 1, 2009 20:32:50 GMT -5
Spikey, if you are interested, I'd like to hear your thoughts. That goes for everyone else. How can I discuss this if no one posts anything?
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Post by Fisi on Aug 1, 2009 20:51:21 GMT -5
Well I think it's great.
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Post by Fatal hilarity on Aug 2, 2009 0:26:53 GMT -5
Well, that's at least encouraging. I'd like to use this in my own fanfiction, but I like to see what other insights other people might have before making a final decision about that sort of thing... you know, in case there's a hole in my logic or I missed something. There are a couple of other toon-related concepts I'd like to discuss, which I mean to incorporate into my WFRR-related works... www.youtube.com/watch?v=vot4HAkRD-EThis unfinished final episode of The Angry Beavers coins the term "rerunincarnated". The basic idea is that cartoon characters can live on after their show stops being made if their show is played on TV over and over. I think this works well with the concept from the Tiny Toons episode "Fields of Honey", where toons can be kept young by an audience's laughter. Where do you watch cartoons nowadays? On TV, on video tape, and on DVD. Not so much in theaters. Bugs Bunny would be forgotten if none of his cartoons were played constantly. Therefore, it makes sense that a toon would thrive primarily on reruns. Of course, the less often their cartoons are watched, the less healthy they'd be, I would imagine. The second one has stuck around with me since my childhood, much like the concepts we see in Tiny Toons and Animaniacs. It's a Bloom County Sunday strip. img.photobucket.com/albums/v428/tymime/comixcomprehension.pngWhile Bloom County as a whole has some slight distance from classic cartoons, you still see a lot of basic principles of traditional cartooning. Not only does this particular strip give funny names to abstract cartooning symbols, it sort boils down everything you see in comedy cartoons while providing some education... In other words, it's fun and it still has its uses.
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Post by Fisi on Aug 2, 2009 9:53:38 GMT -5
Maybe if Lynx was here right now I know she was maybe she would love it I don't know it's her opinion but she would love it I guessed.
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Post by KrazyRandomness on Aug 2, 2009 11:16:13 GMT -5
I like your origion idea. I just really can't say anything because I can't watch YouTube videos.
Your origions make sense to me.
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Post by julayla on Aug 2, 2009 11:49:52 GMT -5
Very interesting theories you have there, though I'm surprised that there's no explanation on this theory: In Cool World, if a human and Toon are in love with one another (be in the case of Frank Harris with Lonette) or attractive to one another (in the case of Holli Would with Jack Deebs), the "patty caking" would either result in a half breed of a human and Toon or would transform a Toon into a human, though the side effects would be that both human and Toon that made love would result in going in and out of being human to Toon clowns or something. Though I don't know if I can consider that canon or anything.
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Post by Fatal hilarity on Aug 2, 2009 15:22:06 GMT -5
I like your origion idea. I just really can't say anything because I can't watch YouTube videos. The videos don't have anything to do with the Toon Patrol's origins, actually... it's really too bad that you can't see the video, though, 'cause it's really funny. The second link is an image, so you should be able to see that... I mentioned Cool World in a couple other threads. I don't think it's canonical to the WFRR world, and it's simply because of this: a human is carbon-based lifeform, and a toon is an ink-and-paint-based lifeform, which makes them essentially inorganic. So they couldn't even BEGIN to breed, even more so than a rock and a carrot. And forgive me for saying this, but even though a toon and a human could conceivably engage in the act of sex, as far the man's sperm is concerned, they're in a painting. This is rather awkward because the majority of toons are mammals, and cartoonists often incorporate their own ideas of beauty into a toon, if the toon is meant to be attractive (Jessica is a perfect example). Even the average fan can have a crush on a cartoon character. But if a toon and a human were to have a relationship, they'd be pretty much perverts, despite the fact that they're both living, rational beings and may even resemble one another... ...And that's why I could never bring myself to be sympathetic for a toon/human couple. But Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit? DOES offer the possibility that a toon can become human and vice versa through the use of Toon Tonic. I don't have any idea how it works and I couldn't even begin to theorize, but I assume it replaces all your genes with corresponding toon genes, or the other way around. It'd be a pretty big change, obviously, but it's the only way I can think of a toon/human couple could become morally acceptable (at least in my eyes)- by either becoming toon/toon or human/human. Obviously, I have pretty strong feelings about it...
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