#it's complicated because toons really AREN'T humans

[aparticularbandit]

i have thought of something

Considering how a lot of things have become more accepted nowadays, as they always have been, how far would toon rights have gone by now?

Also, eventually there would be a human who marries a toon, when toons have the right, how would Jessica feel about that marriage?

OKAY TOON RIGHTS ACTIVISM LET'S GO.

This is gonna get long, so I'm gonna put it under a cut.

Also heads up, because we're talking about what would have been a civil rights movement, we're going to be talking a lot about politics. So general trigger warnings for that, particularly since we're going to be dealing with, ah, voter fraud as a discussion topic.

Oh, also trigger warning for mention/discussion of suicide.

Alright, here are some links re: Toon Rights Activism and what I already had posted re: timeline canon for Jess just as refresher course (I went and checked them because I honestly didn't know what I posted and what I didn't).

Toon Rights Activists - this talks about the origins (and also mentions TWO BITS (the Toon Welfare Organization and Bureau Investigating Toon Safety)) of general Toon Rights activism as well as precursory mention of the radical split off from them. (tw: police brutality)

The Genie - this is more about the lengths the radical Toon Rights activists went in their search for said rights (and has nothing to do with the Genie from Aladdin. This is a different Genie).

Also, honestly, read the TWO BITS link posted above, too, because it gives a sort of timeline in terms of TWO BITS started in 2000, so the radical Toon Rights activists had to come after it.

Beyond that, if I remember correctly, because Jessica and Regina met in what should have been roughly 2011 (because Henry was still ten but Emma hadn't shown up yet, so it had to be pre-OUAT but not by much and OUAT s1 took place in 2011), and that was after Jessica's year of Default post-Roger's death - this means that Roger died in 2010, my verse write-up for at the seams (which was the verse where he was a rabbit and Jess was a human) states that he lived for ten years as a rabbit, which means that Jess became a human and Roger became a rabbit in 2000.

That's a bit compressed of a timeline, given that it's mentioned in The Genie above that it took many years for the radical Toon Rights activists to be able to create the Genie in the first place, which means they must have been crafting him since probably the late eighties/early nineties for him to reach completion around that same time. But given that Toon Rights activism began roughly around the end of the Vietnam War and it took almost thirty years before even TWO BITS was instituted, it would make sense for the radicals to have gotten fed up earlier. TWO BITS is great and all, but it didn't give Toons actual rights, etc.

At least Toons in America. Toons in Japan are treated differently. That's an entire other set of meta, and I'm not going there right now.

Anyway - the general idea that apparently never got posted is that eventually, due to the let's turn politicians into Toons and see how they like it aspect of the radical Toon Rights activists' plans (when, you know, turning Toons into humans didn't play out the way they wanted), that did eventually lead to Toons getting some rights. This is all stuff that would have gone on in the background of at the seams and as they fall (which was the verse post-Roger's death and post-Jess's default because I didn't have a verse for her Default year) and I think I'd planned on...roughly the rights happened during the Jess/Regina stuff? Potentially right before Jess committed suicide (not the attempt, the actual suicide).

I don't have a specific date on that.

To be honest, I don't think Jessica would have been around more than a few years at that point. The suicide attempt would likely have been within two years of meeting Regina (I hesitate on this - I feel like one year is too short but am not sure) and her actual suicide would likely have been within a year of that. So - 2013/2014, roughly, the Toons Rights activists would have succeeded in terms of Toons being recognized as a sentient species of their own with free will and deserving of bodily autonomy.

Ish.

There would have been caveats, of course. You couldn't just make a Toon and suddenly they get all the rights to all the things, just like a newborn baby doesn't get all the rights to all the things automatically (voting, drinking, driving, etc.), and you run into the complications of who is allowed to make Toons and so on and so forth. Even with licenses to make Toons being even more constricted by the legal stuff in 2000 surrounding the establishment of TWO BITS, a licensed artist would basically be creating a new being. Laws around that would probably get even stricter - and ownership would become even more complicated because of course a newly created Toon would need someone to teach them how to act and etc. in the world, make sure they wake up from their Default (because Toons in Default have no rights - they're acting on their Default, they aren't exercising free will, they technically under Default do not have free will or sentience - and if they shove themselves back into Default, they're choosing to give all of that up, which is why Defaulting is an equivalent to Toon suicide).

...we don't need to talk about the last administration to understand why future rights might have stalled.

However.

We run into the peculiar issue of if Toons are sentient beings and are acknowledged as such, then they should be allowed to vote.

Except.

Toons aren't humans.

I mean, duh, obviously.

But Toons can be created by anyone with enough money to get an artist with a license to create a Toon for them with a specific Purpose - and they can make that Purpose whatever they want: good, bad, nefarious, insidious, so on and so forth. And because Toons are being created by imperfect people--

Say someone wanted to run for Senator and knew they wouldn't get enough human votes. Say someone had enough money and enough networking to have hosts of Toons created just to vote for them. Immediately. Then you would have hosts of Toons and hosts of Toon voters who exist only to pad the vote for one politician or another and said host of Toons and Toon voters would overwhelm and overrun actual human voters--

It would be a mess. It would be a huge mess.

So, of course, despite the fact that Toons technically now have rights (and did vote for the mayor of ToonTown, where the movie is concerned, but even then, Judge Doom won because he paid off the voters (pretty sure this is actual movie canon that they discuss - and my concern is whether or not the Toons themselves voted for Doom or if there were humans making decisions for the Toons, but regardless it's still a human as mayor of ToonTown, which makes me wonder if a Toon could even run for mayor in the first place - and that would be another legal issue with Toon rights because a Toon's Purpose is to entertain humans and if they were running for political etc. and won, even outside of Default--))--

So there are still laws in place in terms of what Toons can and can't do, even if they have more rights than they did in the first place.

And it's possible that, at least initially, there was talk about how to address the Toon voting problem so that Toons could vote. Tighter rules on licensing, more than there already are. Maybe a set period on how long Toons have been around before they can vote (like how people don't get to vote in the US until they're 18).

...and now we really do need to bring up the previous administration and all of the discussions of voting fraud and you'll understand exactly why all of those in-roads and thought processes got extremely stalled.

So things are better for Toons, roughly. But not as good as they could be. It's...it's so complicated the idea of Toon rights. They're people and should be treated like people. But they're also not.

Which brings us to the discussion of Toon/human marriage.

This is different from other analogies we could draw with interracial or queer marriage because Toons are drawn, not born. A human - with enough money or connections, again - could have a Toon tailor-made to be their spouse. Or...think they would be tailor-made and then find in the process that they really aren't and something went wrong, and then that's a whole living Toon who was made to be in love with them that now gets to Fade away because no one knows who they are and the one person they're supposed to be with for the rest of their life...doesn't...love them.

And the argument - politically would be that if humans could just make a Toon to be whatever they wanted, then that would interfere with human/human relationships. Humans would just end up choosing Toons over each other, and then we'd have even fewer babies (-coughcough-), and that's not even getting into the issues of Toon/human children (it's possible, Nonnie Montgomery proves that it's possible) and what their rights are - would they be counted as Toons under the law? Would they be counted as humans?

So I'm not sure that Toons would get that right.

Even with the very long legal battle that would probably eventually get brought up before the Supreme Court because the Constitution doesn't cover Toons - it's all men are created equal and Toons aren't human beings - and I don't think they would succeed at that point.

But if they did while Jess was still around, to address the rest of that question--

It really depends on--

Well, this is timeline canon we're talking about, right?

Or, at least, a version of it where Jess doesn't commit suicide, anyway.

Because here's the thing - if Roger was dead and Jess survived that last suicide attempt and Regina offered, if Jess was better and thought that her being there wasn't making Henry hallucinate, if she allowed herself to move on, yeah, if asked, she would have married her. (That one's half up to @notoriousjae, though, because idk if it ever would have gotten to that point. Just, from Jess's standpoint, she would have, if she got to a mentally stable enough point where she would have. If that makes sense.)

Like - Jess, even now in human form, has now fallen in love with two humans (at least), and that's not a result of her suddenly being a human instead of a Toon, if she'd been a Toon in the same circumstances, she would have fallen in love with both of them, and being in a position where she knows 1) that neither of them created her and 2) she fell in love with them quite independent of her Purpose, she would want....

No, that's not how I want to say that.

Jess knows what it is to be a Toon - even wrapped in a human body - and be in love with a human...and to have that human love her back.

She would be grateful that the courts would allow for people - and Toons - to marry the people that they love, regardless of etc.

I just don't think the courts would allow it.

Not without some of the very strict legal etc. to keep people from tailor-making Toons for their own purposes, among other things.

[aparticularbandit]

I kind-of want to check out WandaVision thanks to On Toons and Magic. But I hear the MCU has a lot of complicated continuity and lore and stuff. So is there anything I need to know going in? Any other MCU media I should watch first? (I have randomly seen the first Avengers film and Thor and Iron Man 3 in my school's Film Club, but that was years ago.)

Mostly, if you want to see WandaVision, you need context!

Technically, you could see the other three Avengers films (and the last Captain America film), but that's...strictly speaking not necessary. Because I can provide context!

...because really you need Wanda's storyline and her relationship with Vision, and those aren't the major focus of anything she's in prior to WV, and you don't need to see entire movies to get those moments. (They are cute moments! I love them! They are VERY CUTE. But.)

SO. CONTEXT.

AGE OF ULTRON:

Wanda is from the wartorn country of Sokovia. When she and her twin brother were ten years old, a Stark bomb fell on their apartment, killing their parents immediately, and then they sat for days and waited for the bomb to explode and kill them, too! But it was a dud and did not kill them.

Years later, radicalized from these events and wanting revenge on Stark, they joined Hydra and were experimented on using what ended up being the Mind Stone. Wanda got some super cool magic powers that we got no specifics for (but she can read minds and implant visions and shoot blasts from her hands and also make shields), and her twin brother Pietro got super speed! (One of these things is not like the other.)

They join sides with a super robot who thinks he wants to save the world by killing all of humanity! Once they realize he wants to kill all of humanity, they switch sides! (As you do.) They help the evil super robot's new body get hijacked, and then it gets infused with the same Mind Stone that supposedly gave them powers AND BECOMES VISION. He is not an AI. He is wonderful. WE LOVE VISION. (We know we can trust him because he's worthy enough to lift Thor's hammer, and none of the other Avengers could do that! (Except for Steve who made it move a little bit and then backed down but that's not important.)

BIG EPIC SHOWDOWN IN SOKOVIA.

SOKOVIA GETS TURNED INTO A FLOATING CITY THAT WHEN IT CRASHES WILL DESTROY HUMANITY.

WANDA'S TWIN BROTHER DIES.

HER ENTIRE CITY EXPLODES. (After they evacuated everyone first.)

WANDA TRIED TO GO DOWN WITH THE CITY BUT VISION SAVED HER.

Wanda has been in exactly one movie and has lost her entire family WOO LET'S GO. (Technically she was in an end credits scene in Winter Solider but, like. if you wanna count that, you can, but.)

CIVIL WAR:

Wanda stays with the Avengers! To learn to control her powers! She joins them on one of their missions to Lagos, and when a suicide bomber tries to kill Steve in the middle of a crowd of civilians, she uses her magic shield powers to try and lift the bomb up into the sky away from people! But her powers falter and she ends up blowing up a building instead!

As a result, Tony locks her in Avengers Tower! Because she is a liability! And she's a ticking time bomb who could kill a bunch of people!

BUT Vision stays with her and cooks for her and it is very cute!

Then Hawkeye comes to break her out of house arrest because Steve wants her to help him fight Tony. She gets into a fight with Vision. She goes to help Steve. Everyone on Steve's side gets seen as breaking the law because of the Sokovian Accords (which was something to try and control when the Avengers could go help people because cities keep getting torn apart and destroyed when they try to help people, and like. it would have been worse if they hadn't gone to help people - this is kind of one of the main points of the movie, actually, but. only slightly important here).

EVERYONE WHO GETS CAUGHT GETS LOCKED AWAY ON THE RAFT. WHICH IS A HIGH DETENTION PRISON IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN. WANDA GETS PUT IN A STRAITJACKET AND A BOMB COLLAR SO SHE CAN'T USE HER POWERS!

But it's okay because Steve breaks her out and then everyone has to live under the radar because they're all fugitives WOO.

INFINITY WAR:

So this guy named Thanos wants to collect the Infinity Stones so that he can balance out the universe by killing half of it because something something resources.

But no one on Earth knows about that because he's been looking out in space!

Wanda and Vision have been secretly meeting because she's a fugitive and he isn't but they are in TOTAL LOVE THEY LOVE EACH OTHER! THEY ARE VERY CUTE! They've been checking to see if their relationship will be okay! And it is! And Vision asks Wanda to run away with him so they can be together forever!

...and then he sees news footage of space people invading Earth and decides to go help him because Vision is a very innocent superhero who is definitely a hero, we love Vision, okay. But just as he starts to leave, more space people show up to attack him!

BECAUSE THE MIND STONE IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS FOREHEAD IS ONE OF THOSE INFINITY STONES THANOS IS AFTER.

But, like, Vision can't live without the Mind Stone.

Wanda fights for her man! He tries to protect her! He gets super hurt! Then some of the other fugitives show up and they all go to Wakanda because Wakanda is better at tech than Tony and Bruce are and maybe they can find a way to get the Infinity Stone out of Vision's head without killing him. (Meanwhile, Vision is like, Wanda. You got your powers from an Infinity Stone. You will be able to destroy it. And she's just, I'm not KILLING YOU, Vis. There is ANOTHER WAY. And you are going to LIVE. I think you see where this is going.)

The Wakandans CAN get the Mind Stone out of Vision's head without killing him, but it takes time! And the space people show up and there's a huge fight! And Wanda tries to stay to protect Vision, but her besties are in trouble, so she goes to help them! But this is a ploy so that the space people can attack Vision! So after saving her besties, Wanda goes to help Vision, and he pleads with her again to kill him by destroying the Mind Stone. And she says no. AGAIN.

And then Thanos shows up and there's no time, and Vision convinces Wanda to destroy the Mind Stone and kill him. Which she does. Which is a spectacularly painful moment, but it'll be okay because they saved the universe!

...except Thanos has a Time Stone and he rewinds time and brings back Vision and the Mind Stone and rips it out of Vision's head, effectively killing Vision a second time right in front of Wanda.

...and then he does the Snap and erases half of all life throughout the universe, which includes Wanda!

ENDGAME:

The Avengers collect the Stones through sketchy time travel shenanigans and reverse the Snap and bring everyone back and Wanda helps in the big battle, but because they only reversed the Snap, Vision is still dead! Woo!

SO TL;DR - what you need to know before starting WandaVision:

WANDA'S LIFE SUCKS. EVERYONE SHE LOVES KEEPS DYING. HER PARENTS. HER BROTHER. EVEN THE ACTUAL LOVE OF HER LIFE!

SHE HAD TO KILL VISION. AND THEN IT DIDN'T MATTER. AND THEN HE GOT KILLED IN FRONT OF HER AGAIN.

-slaps Wanda- THIS BABE CAN FIT SO MUCH TRAUMA!

....

And that's what you need to know before starting WandaVision!

Oh, also, Vision is still very much dead. He died. Very very dead.

Go forth and enjoy!