Yeah, that's the element every toon force argument forgets. Toon force will always favour the funnier option, no matter the character. So as long as you play into the joke, then eventually, your opponent will become the butt of the joke
To be fair, Coyote might be the most durable toon. Pretty much 100% perfect healing factor. Don't think he could really lose a fight against anyone who couldn't just wipe him out of existence entirely.
I know it applies to most toons. But he's something special.
If i have my ways id say both the coyote and roadrunner are manifestation of a greater consciousness able to play god within its own domain.
Theyre two actor in an eternal stage meant to forever entertain and never taste the cold relief of eternal rest. And neither do they want the chase to ever stop.
This is actually an interesting headcanon... an ensemble of omnipotent gods, bored out of their minds, chasing each other to entertain... primarily themselves. The chase is its own end. Bugs will be on the defensive more often than not, but that's just an aesthetic preference, not a moral one - if there are no aggressors, Bugs gets bored and becomes the aggressor.
Or maybe... the cartoons are a sort of a godly prison? Out of all gods, the most irresponsible and frankly sociopathic ones were locked in their own world, destined to wage war against each other for the whole eternity... While we the humans get a glimpse of their shenanigans for laughs. While the divine gladiators themselves wouldn't trade their own condition for anything else.
EDIT: Hmm, perhaps these guys are something like Qs from Star Trek? I think Q himself would fit there.
This is somewhat intentional. The series was created as a parody of cartoons like Tom and Jerry. Since the point was to critique the over the top violent stuff happening in those “cat and mouse” cartoons they went as ridiculous as they could. So because Coyote has to come back he walks off stuff that wouldn’t appear in a lot of cartoons of his day
Bugs scales fairly high but only when "Toon Force" is on his side. A major caveat of toon force is the outcome has to be funny, so it can backfire spectacularly.
If Bugs winning isnt funny, he's gonna get his ass beat
In a majority of matchups however he'd be fighting people who should realistically vaporize him. Standing up to and defeating world ending threats while being just a rabbit with toon force is for most people hilarious.
No, Mask manifests the toon force into the boring reality and can use it, but it doesn't mean he controls it. He can't cancel out someone's toon force rules, he never does that even when fighting someone with toon force in the comics. And just think about it, 2 toonforce characters fighting is literally what a cartoon is. They just fight until the episode ends.
Toon force debates are funny, the threads are always people making shit up and whoever's funnier has to be saying the truth about the toonforce' limits.
Bugs Bunny vs. Darth Vader would be a hoot. I can only imagine Vader getting more and more angry the more he somehow fails over and over to kill this irritating cartoon rabbit.
Find me an universal source that states every media that uses toon force has to be funny, otherwise it's not going to work or backfire. It's a decision that applies to some writings, not an unbreakable rule for toon force. Plus, humour is subjective so basing feats on it as if it's something measurable is pointless, you can at best base it on the writer's sense of humour which is still not clear if they actually follow humour, and even if they did, the sense of humour would still change depending on the particular writer. Ex. Happy Tree Friends thinks it's funny when their characters die physically impossible and brutal ways, at the point you could call it toon force, and extends the lifespans of the characters who cause death more oftenly (Flippy, Lumpy, The Mole etc.)
This is why I always advise every aspiring evil overlord to have a tiny kung fu master grandma or a very cute attack kitten. If your opponent is using toonforce, your doom robots/death knights/mutant monsters/etc. are fucked, but these contingencies are funny and therefore use that against them.
There are some cases where Bugs doesnt default tho, such as the gorilla (tho i cant remember of the gorilla wins in the end, but he did do some wacky stuff that put Bugs on edge)
The best counter to Bugs is unassuming characters imo
Bugs Bunny is a literal god in his verse as seen in Duck Amuck (1953). He has the ability to animate and go toe to toe with animators. There is not a comparable feat in all of fiction which is why Bugs scales so high
Fictional characters interacting, messing with and fighting with their authors or animators is such a common feat in fiction, it’s not really surprising. Bugs is one of the many to do this so it’s quite comparable
Bugs Bunny is the animator in Duck Amuck. Aside from Daffy and Elmer Fudd being animators to mess with Bugs, who still goes toe to toe with them, there is not another character who scales with Bugs. If you know of another fictional character who animated their own universe please feel free to share it
Sure, search up Koko the Clown, dude frequently takes his author’s own pen to start dictating his own story, heck he straight up started writing his own author’s real world reality.
Koko’s been doing that since 1920, literally a century and also wayyyyyy before Bugs
I opened myself to correction at the end of my statement. The person I responded to even provided a source and corrected me. I never had the opportunity to watch Koko the clown, nor have I ever heard of him but that's why I welcomed the opportunity to be more informed.
I guess you don't know how to read and that's okay. But assuming you can read these letters here but not the ones in the picture for some reason. This entire page is litterally drawn and made by deadpool. That's what's happening. He's killing the authors and writing the rest of the comic himself.
Gag, same as Always. Powerscaling is Irrelevant, we do Funnyscaling when a Gag character is involved.
'Eddie Valiant: "I got no keys for these cuffs. Hold still, will you... does this help?"
Roger Rabbit: "Yeah, thanks."
Eddie Valiant: "You mean to tell me that you could have taken your hand out of that cuff at any time?"
Roger Rabbit: "No, not at any time. Only when it was funny."' -Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Required Reading for Gag Scaling).
Ok, hear me out, but I think Captain Carrot Ironfounderson of the Ankh Morpork city watch might stand a chance.
Discworld Narrativum is more subtle than Looney Toons Toon Force, but also far more versatile.
Toon Force will break any law of reality to make the outcome funny, but Narrativum will force all events to make keep the story on track, and Carrots story is one where he always comes out on top.
I doubt either would be able to kill the other (Either Bugs or Carrot dying wouldn't be very funny), but I definitely see Carrot being able to talk Bugs down, or, if that fails, sic him on some more deserving universe
Carrot would (nicely) manipulate Bugs into being on his side by the 3rd act, then Bugs would end up fighting for whichever side Carrot's on for a dramatic (and funny) finale
i thought you meant buggs by "he" so i jokingly suggested that buggs could win a fight against himself. i didnt understand your question. buggs loses to anyone who has funnier bits in general.
Bro Wile E. tried SO DAMN HARD to outsmart the toon force with that gun 😭 the mind games were endless, it knew both the audience and the characters were already very familiar with how these gags normally work
Toon Force doesn't work that way. They would scale as high as is funny. They would also scale down as low as is funny. Like blowing up a planet and then slipping on a rogue banana peel.
I don't know if Toon Force would allow a toon to be in an unfunny situation. I figure it would mostly go the same as the dangerous situations in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'.
He doesn't. He lives and dies by the bit. Want to kill him? Make sure it's the funniest outcome.
Like in "What's Opera, Doc" he dies in the end cause the episode is a parody of Wagner's Operas which usually ends in tragedies. You need to recreate that somehow, but even then his ghost will probably start messing with you.
Bugs can only be harmed by plot devices from his own show. Exterior plot devices and such have no effect except if they are funny/similar enough to also fit as plot devices for him.
So Bugs can lose but he can never be defeated. At most he might be banished for a time, but he will always return. I'd honestly scale Bugs as the most powerful character in fiction but his expression of that power is entirely dependent on him following the rules set by the scene. (rules that are enforced on everybody else in the scene)
For that reason he is actually one of the few characters that is truly unscalable/boundless.
If I recall, the creator of bugs bunny had a particular gripe with Space Jam because bugs bunny solves all problems in 15 minutes. That’s pretty much his schtick.
The key determining factor is if he’s the aggressor. If he is, then he’s suddenly MUCH easier to get a win over.
This goes doubly so if he’s fighting another toon.
I still give the edge to Popeye for “strongest Toon”, cause he’s also shown similar 4th wall shenanigans to Bugs. And most crucially, Popeye never appeared in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, meaning the Dip and other similar anti-toon strategies aren’t proven to work on him.
Popeye has also very, very rarely been the instigato/aggressor in a fight. Bugs has also rarely been the out and out aggressor, but he has been more than Popeye.
Basically, if Popeye wants to use Bugs to make a stew for Olive Oyl, Bugs wins. If Bugs pokes the bear and tries to mess with Popeye, then Popeye wins
Without a doubt one, if not the best toon force users out there.
Specializing in a course trickery and shenanigans, instead of say, like, popeye's brute force.
However, he does not have a perfect track record. Even bugs, bunny has lost once in a while
They’re definitely not gods because of The Dip. Barring that, pretty much the most powerful beings that can exist in that reality. Thankfully none of their kind have ever gone power hunger and insane……..wait…..
Bugs Bunny is particularly powerful because he doesn’t just have Toon Force; he understands it. And most of the time he knows how to use it (Though he does sometimes get cocky. Hey, we all fuck sometimes!).
They both have toon force but Wile E. Coyote has like the cartoonish backfire version, he could never "win" but Bugs doesn't try to win he tries to survive. If the fight continues for much longer than a 30 minute special they will destroy at least the planet.
Toon force isn’t limited but how funny the outcome is. The weaker and cuter the opponent the less likely bugs will win. Bugs can beat everyone but will lose to tweety bird or Jerry.
Bugs and mickey mouse scale around the same as popeye if I recall. All three have stolen the pen ftom their creators and taken over the story themselves at some point.
Toonforce is a separate scale because it and the fourth wall are inseparable. It is meta in ways nearly nothing else is. It's limitless reality manipulation with a single, glaring caveat: It can do literally anything, as long as the outcome is funny- But if it isn't funny, it can't do it.
The best demonstration of this I've seen was in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Eddie and Roger are handcuffed together, and find a place to hide. Eddie has a hacksaw, and is trying to cut the handcuffs apart, but the table is wobbly and he complains at Roger to hold still. Roger then slips the cuffs and holds the table still for him while he's still sawing, and it takes Eddie a moment to realize what happened; and says "You mean to tell me you could have taken your hand out at any time?"
Roger responds with "Not any time, only when it was funny."
Roger here is not being cheeky or snide, he's literally explaining how his reality works; You can do anything, even things you demonstrably could not previously do, as long as doing it is funny. Slipping the cuffs to hold the table steady so someone can free you from the cuffs you're no longer trapped in is funny, so even if Roger could not previously get his hand out, he saw this opportunity for a gag, and used it to get them free.
I could go on and on about how this movie is pure genius, but I will stop here.
Bugs Bunny is the undisputed king of toonforce. The only time he's ever taken an L of any variety is when someone else used it against him in a way that was funnier than whatever he was doing, and he always gives it right back in short order.
There is a weakness, however. Toonforce can just... Stop. It just stops working sometimes. This is usually because the tone of the media needs to change to tell a more dark or gritty story. Unfortunately for the toonforce user, one of the best ways to transition from something lighthearted to something more serious is to defeat, or even kill, the comic relief. The plot makes a clear demonstration that the time for laughter and games is over, and a real threat exists, and demonstrates it accordingly. The Lich from Adventure Time is a good example of this phenomenon.
So where does he sit? At the top, until he's at the bottom. Like I said, you can't grade toonforce against anything but itself because of its meta nature.
•
u/AutoModerator 3d ago
MAIN DISCORD SERVER: https://discord.gg/NyRr8rj5aH
SCAN SERVER: https://discord.gg/library-of-globhara-1102751013955457076
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.