Made things worse for other weasels

[Eternity]

The weasels' involvment in trying to wipe Toontown off the map I imagine would have made things worse for other Toon weasels. Weasels already have bad raps, but this would have really made life harder for them. No one would want to have anything to do with weasels. They would be shunned by everyone in any place. What I'm saying is that the TP weasels hurt their fellow weasels through their actions.

[kishi]

I'm sure they did on some level.

You have to wonder if they went on a 'witchhunt'...like how they did the people who had any kind of contact with the Communist party. (Which has now been ruled unconstitutional, but that doesn't help the people whose lives were ruined then. )

[Fatal hilarity]

I'm of a similar opinion, but if "The Weasels' first solo story" with the weasel school and Perfesser and everything, as well as Stan the Woozle are any indication, the Disney weasels deliberately made themselves "bad" because everyone expected them to be.

So in a way, the Disney weasels brought their reputation on themselves. It would seem that they've had a bad reputation for centuries- I've seen some bad traits given to weasels even in Aesop's fables, like I've said- so it's my theory that after being hated so much by toons and humans alike, they did everything they could to be totally unlike those who frowned on them. Which of course caused them to dig themselves deeper.

It's a vicious circle, really. That's why I depict the Toon Patrol's story as a cautionary tale.

[Eternity]

So, in other words it's like a self-fullfilling prophecy, is that what you're saying?

[kishi]

I think that's exactly it. Everyone expects bad things of them, so why bother trying to be better?

[Fatal hilarity]

I think it's primarily the hatred that ruined them.

[psychoangel51402]

This is actually the entire topic of my work-in-progress sequel/alternate ending to Dizzy's story. I imagined that when the public found out about the Toon Patrol's involvement in Doom's plans, it would trigger a public reaction to weasels similar to the Zoot Riots of the 40's. They'd be hunted, discriminated against, and hated. I imagine some of the "higher-class" Toons (namely, the more famous ones) would take great pains not to get involved and keep their opinions to themselves to preserve their images, but a few might help the weasels, namely villain companions. Yet there would be the great risk of their friends turning them in, too. I can see Slithy in particular trying to save his own skin by ratting out some fellow weasels.

[Fatal hilarity]

I had always imagined that after the events in WFRR, almost all weasel toons go into hiding or, in the case of the ones working for Doom, get thrown in jail. Have you ever noticed how rare they are, especially outside of the Golden Age and the Renaissance? I've only encountered a tiny, tiny amount of weasel toons that aren't made by Disney.
Now, since The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad came out two years after 1947, I like to think that Walt discovered that the weasels were descendants of the ones in The Wind in the Willows (which is something I'd like to discuss more thoroughly in the "useful stuff to know" thread)- or at least that a bunch of weasel toons were out of work- and hired them right away for his adaptation of the book. Like all Disney toons, they were given a lifetime contract (potentially forever), and went on to create new ones over the years, like Sidney.
Some sharp-eyed viewers recognize that Walt had hired ex-criminals, but the company keeps it hushed.

Slithy, meanwhile, since he was so dedicated to the Toon Patrol and especially SA, snapped when he heard the news of their death, sending him over the edge and making him obsessed with revenge and delight at the thought of killing his enemies. Devising a way to bring back Doom would be constantly on his mind.
Resurrection of Doom makes a sly, passing reference to Crusader Rabbit, who was the first cartoon character made exclusively for television, and his series debuted around 1950. Because of that, I think the comic took place around that year. (Although his Wikipedia article mentions some theatrical shorts made in 1948, which would make the newsreel make more sense... I dunno, what I read was a little unclear...)
Some weasels I think went on to be the minions of other criminal leaders, like Wally and Bub were working for Big Bill in "The Trouble with Toons!" You know how it is with weasels- they're almost always working for someone with more power and/or money.

Do you really think Slithy would be desperate enough to rat out his fellow weasels? It seems to me that that would be the lowest thing a weasel could do to another weasel, at least according the weasels themselves.

Also, it seems to me that toon weasels would have been pretty frowned upon already, if the way the Radio Toontown news reporter lays the negative adjectives on thick is any indication. "Those no-good, dirty rotten weasels!"

[demoweasel]

The weasels in my characters' world are almost universally hated for the actions of law-breaking weasels. Even the good guy weasels have their lives threatened on a regular basis.

Weasels aren't even allowed to step foot in banks there.

As for the WFRR world, I can see how the Toon Patrol would cause an even greater enmity among other Toons toward toon weasels.

Sad, but most likely true.

[KrazyRandomness]

Even though the Toon Patrol (and many other weasels) did do bad things, it seems more like a racial issue. I mean, just because one weasel did something, doesn't mean all the weasels did it. I know there are many facts pointing to how they are bad, but not EVERY weasel can be bad. It seems people have only focused on the bad sides of weasels in cartoons, but never the good side. It's like they really didn't care anymore or that WFRR and everything else put too much pressure on being a bad weasel. To me, I think it is possible for a weasel to be good. The only real reason other Toons or humans would hate them always seem like some kind of racism.

[Greasy]

Right, but there is a new weasel on the screen. In Ice Age 3 is a weasel named Buck who actually helps Manni and Ellie to get Sid back.

[Fatal hilarity]

Here's exactly what you're looking for:
smg.photobucket.com/albums/v428/tymime/Weasels/Good%20Neighbor%20Roger/?action=view¤t=good_neighbor1.png
Even Roger, despite his naïvety and innocence, has difficulty believing that a weasel can be good.
So yeah, I agree that there's pressure on weasels to be bad- like I said, it would seem that weasels act bad partially because everyone expects them to be. "Beanie", as I have named the weasel in the comic in the link, immediately assumes that Roger attempted to kill him, so he has difficulty getting people to believe that he's good.
There are certain traits I've observed in weasels, or have seen attributed to weasels, that would be considered honorable or admirable in other contexts: loyalty to your leader and/or fellow weasels, intelligence, stealth, cunning, cleverness... obviously, most of these traits are most often translated into the "weaselly" words "sneaky" and "deceitful", but if you saw them in a hero, you'd like that hero.

Thanks to demoweasel, I recently discovered an unreleased video game about a weasel called "Crank the Weasel", which is in a similar vein to Conker's Bad Fur Day. After decades of cartooning and most importantly the immense success of WFRR, it would seem that everything that's been said about a weasel culminated into this one character:
ps2.ign.com/articles/360/360772p1.html
www.psxextreme.com/ps2-previews/250.html
(demoweasel might think I'm weird for bringing this game up again, but I admit to having a blast learning about it.)

And once again, I must point out prejudice against weasels should technically be referred to as "speciesism".

[Greasy]

loyalty to your leader and/or fellow weasels, intelligence, stealth, cunning, cleverness... obviously, most of these traits are most often translated into the "weaselly" words "sneaky" and "deceitful", but if you saw them in a hero, you'd like that hero.

I would say that this things Fatal named here above this, are very good things a charactor can have. But it´s the thing how you use this behavior. For a good or a bad result. That´s the thing which is important. I think they created the weasels in this way, because only one species acts that way, to use such behaviors for getting a bad target or dream into real.
And maybe they did not recognize which species is shown in the faces of the weasels:-the humans. Only this guys are that way. and Weasels are more similar to humans than most other animals, only that weasels don´t do things for badness or to satisfy their own cruel charactor.
So if people have prejudices against weasels, they have prejudices against their selves!
Wowah, That must out now!

[Fatal hilarity]

Cartoon characters and talking animals in general are always reflections of who we are as human beings, simply because we add human speech, expressions, gestures, and very often bipedal movement. It's called anthropomorphizing.
I've often observed that cartoonists will add their own mammal-centric ideas of beauty into a cartoon character that is meant to be perceived as physically attractive, such as Lola Bunny.

It would seem that weasels are a victim of humans dumping just about every morally undesirable trait on them, simply because they were perceived as sneaky egg/chicken-stealers when they squeezed their way into chicken coops and killed the chickens and ate the eggs.
Like I've mentioned several times before, I've read some Aesop's fables in which weasels are depicted as unsavory killers, so the tendency to show them in a bad light dates back to ancient times.
Predatory animals are worse off than prey animals in cartoons, and I suspect it's because we have a preference for cute and cuddly-looking animals and don't like seeing them killed. Foxes, wolves, cats... all of them have been made villains more often than I care for. Cats have been given a break nowadays though, and I suspect it's because of the heroic depiction of lions.
Why exactly weasels have been given such a bad image is unclear to me, but I suspect it's because of the impact of The Wind in the Willows, and Disney's subsequent adaptation- which, it would seem, ingrained the standard weasel image in the world of cartooning. The tremendous success of WFRR seems to have made weasel stereotypes iconic, despite the fact that weasel toons are actually extremely rare outside of Disney.

WFRR gave people the idea that weasel cartoon characters, with all their bad traits, were a common sight in classic cartoons... but it's been my observation that this isn't actually true, and is really just a product of Disney's long-lived use of weasel characters, many of which are in their more popular works. In the Golden Age of Hollywood animation, your "typical weasel" doesn't actually exist. It's really more of a classic cartoon revival thing.

In the world that the Toon Patrol lived in, though, weasel toons were probably a lot more common. A good deal of the Disney weasels I've discovered starred in stories taking place in the '40s and '50s, so the WFRR world has an altogether different story.
It's my theory that The Wind in the Willows made a weasel's reputation precede them, so they were marginalized by society, making them desperate to survive in a world that rejected them. This, I think, led them to a life of crime.
The Toon Patrol surely made weasels even more infamous, and like we're all discussing in this thread, their attempt at mass murder scarred their image even further.

[Greasy]

I´ve never seen them as mass murderers. But i would say that Buck the weasel in Ice Age 3 could be one of the first weasels, which could help other toon weasel charactors get a new better image.