It is time. For nearly 30 years, the biggest rivalry between Television Cartoon Stations is coming to a head. They are shows, networks, we grew up with, some of us picked sides, some of us loved both, but EVERYONE Knew of the Rivalry, and today, I plan to settle it, with a Match for the Ages. Shirley, Nickelodeon’s Artificial Villain, created from the most powerful science and magic in the multiverse, who merges together separate cartoon franchises as his personal plaything to get revenge for being forgotten. Strike, the living embodiment of cartoon cancelation, who hunts heroes from across the Cartoon Network multiverse, in a never ending bloodlust to become the ultimate cartoon being. These two titans are the Most Powerful characters in their entire cartoon multiverses, Their respective network’s Ultimate Villain, The Final Boss, who even fighting in and of itself would reshape cartoons as we know it. But if these two faced off, who would be the victor? I’m Thor Gundersen, and after prepping for this with every cartoon blog I have ever made, I have finally found the answer….
Background:
Shirley:
Nickelodeon is an American television channel owned by Viacom and CBS in 1986, initially made as a sister channel to MTV. Eventually in 1991, it was made into their official Kids network and began creating and airing numerous children's cartoons, collectively known as Nicktoons.
Over the past 30 years, Nickelodeon has grown into a large multi media network, and spawned many additional related channels, including Nick Jr., Nicktoons, TEENick and The N, containing various different subsets of their massive library of animation and content.
Nickelodeon has over a hundred different cartoon universes, ranging from the early 90’s to the modern day. While these universes are separate and generally only explore their own stories, they do exist in a collective Multiverse.
Each Nicktoon world exists in this multiverse and it has allowed characters in them to penetrate and travel to other shows before, and take on threats to All of Nick. But today’s story starts with the very characters that tend to combat those threats.
The Fairly Oddparents, is the most powerful verse in Nickelodeon, about a Pink Hatted, Buck Toothed kid named Timmy Turner who gained Magical Fairy Godparents who grant his every wish. The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, is the most intelligent verse in Nickelodeon, about a large headed, swirly haired supergenius named Jimmy Neutron, and his scientific exploits to gain adventure and popularity.
When it came to traveling to other Cartoon Universes, these two characters with their potent Magic and Science abilities easily did so most often, entering into 3 separate network crossover specials known as The Jimmy Timmy Power Hours.
In these iconic specials the two series casts would interact and Jimmy and Timmy would butt heads a great deal and inadvertently cause mayhem in the other’s world due to not understanding the rules of their universes. However eventually they decided to become friends and use their abilities to help each other out in battling their various enemies. The Problem…
NONE of the Villains in Either of their Rogues Galleries stood Any chance against the both of them together, and were quickly defeated with such ease it was actually boring. To satiate their need for action and excitement, the two of them decided that if no villain could challenge them, they would make one of their own.
And so, Jimmy and Timmy got to work, combining Science and Magic to make the most powerful villain they could think of, basing his design off the final boss characters of numerous of the most popular fighting and adventure games.
They loaded him up with metric tons of dangerous powers, deadly weapons, and a mustache, because mustaches are super Evil. Jimmy wisely gave him a Destructo Chip fail safe that would destroy him if he was too much, and Timmy gave him a nifty tail. Wanda however, feeling some sympathy for this creature, suggested giving him real feelings and emotions, as well as making him adoptable, so they could give him a good home when they were done playing with him, which Timmy begrudgingly agreed to.
Except when typing in he should be Adoptable, Timmy accidentally misspelled it as Adaptable, which went unnoticed, giving the villain unknown powers Jimmy hadn’t planned for.
Using Science to siphon magic out of Cosmo and Wanda’s Wands into their blueprint, they brought their ultimate Magi-Tech Villain into reality.
With all the extreme threats they had built into this guy, he was easily the most imposing force either character had ever come across, if not for…
Jimmy and Timmy were so busy giving him powers and weapons, they forgot to actually make him Evil. The villain was rather sweet and excitable, considering Jimmy and Timmy his best friends, and believing this epic battle they planned to have with him was merely a lighthearted game.
No matter what Jimmy and Timmy did to antagonize him, he just wouldn’t get mad at them, being too strong for them to actually hurt, and too innocent to tell they were annoyed with him.
So, Timmy told him to meet them at the mall in an hour so they could hang out. But, he just said that to get rid of him, and the two completely ditched him and went to make a new ultimate villain completely from scratch.
Devastated and betrayed, Shirley’s feelings were completely shattered. Feeling extremely hurt caused Shirley’s adaptation power to kick in for the first time, protecting him by replacing Sadness with Rage.
With his newfound aggression, he hunted them down and told them off for ditching him, where the entire truth came out, they didn’t like him, they treated him like dirt, and they never even gave him a name, not considering it important at the time.
He took exception to that, and started actually attacking the two.
It only got worse when Jimmy, in a panicked state, named him Shirley, which Timmy quickly mocked as being the dumbest name ever.
At first, Jimmy and Timmy were excited they finally got to have an epic battle with him, but that…Didn’t Last. Shirley easily powered through anything they threw at him with his Adaptation ability instantly countering anything they tried.
None of Jimmy’s scientific Gadgets, None of Timmy’s Magic, No strategy or combination of abilities was enough to get through this, and Even that Destructo-Chip Failsafe was Immediately Adapted away.
With his creators completely defeated, Shirley stole what made them special, Absorbing both Jimmy’s Intelligence, and Cosmo and Wanda’s Magic, gaining the power of a cosmic god. But before he could finish them off, they gave him a peace offering to go hang out at a local spa.
Where they ditched him again. Finally angered beyond all reason, Shirley went off the rails and decided that if humans like Jimmy and Timmy only saw him as a toy to be played with and thrown aside when they got bored, he was going to do the same to them.
Using his powers, he opened portals and sucked in all matter from both The Fairly Oddparents and Jimmy Neutron worlds and pulled it into a new universe he created. Destroying his creators home universes and making his own hybrid one, RetroDimmsdaleville!
A flat 2-dimensional canvas made to entertain its master, ‘The Villain whose name ISN’T Shirley’, or Shirley for short.
He also took Timmy and Jimmy and imprisoned them while he messed with their loved ones, to make them feel the pain and loneliness they caused him. Shirley was impossible to defeat in a fight, with only his want for companionship being his downfall.
Shirley was eventually defeated by Jimmy’s girlfriend, Cindy, who befriended him and, along with the others, executed a long con strategy to stop him.
She used their friendship to trick Shirley into getting into a lot of situations where some of his powers were disadvantageous to have, leading to him eventually adapting them away one by one overtime, until he became vulnerable again.
But after being stopped, Shirley finally calmed down, and retired from villainy, now being the proud owner of a local Pizza Restaurant where he remains to this very day.
Shirley is a relatively pretty nice, polite and humble guy who most people would not describe as being evil. He wants to make others happy and cares a great deal for the enjoyment of others above his own. That said, he has Powerful and complicated emotions that cause him to violently lash out when he feels like he’s been betrayed or treated unfairly. This has caused him to develop insecurity and trust issues that has resulted in him being much more cautious around people and strangers, and will go full villain mode at the drop of a hat just because it's easier for him to blow up at minor things and calm back down, than to let lots of things pile up inside of him until he goes berserk like he did the first time. Shirley is a perfect villain for collective Nick because he is extremely compelling, you relate to him and can see why he lashes out when he does, much like Nick Characters are made to deal with relatable down to Earth problems, even in over the top ways. Shirley’s adaptation can protect him from everything, but even that doesn’t mean he can’t have his feelings hurt, and that’s the ultimate reason why he became a villain.
Strike:
Cartoon Network is an American Television channel created by The Turner Network and Warner Media back in 1992, in order to play and profit from their newly acquired vast library of classic animation made by Warner Bros., MGM and Hanna Barbara.
This included cartoon staples from old school Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry, to television icons like Scooby Doo. From these building blocks, Cartoon Network quickly rose to become one of the most popular cartoon channels, although since much of it was nostalgia based, they evolved to start making their own original cartoons, dubbed the Cartoon Cartoons, to compete with other rival networks.
Eventually becoming one of the most successful cartoon channels of all time, as well as the only one to do this using Exclusively animated content, as rivals like Nick and Disney always mixed in a fair deal of live action. Over the past 30 years, Cartoon Network has amassed hundreds of cartoons, incorporating the former KidsWB cartoon channel into itself and expanding into other networks like Boomerang and Adult Swim.
The Cartoon Network Multiverse is vast and intricately designed. While each of their series does exist in its own separate universe, characters crossing over into others is fairly common. This is because each Cartoon Network show is an emanation connected together through one singular world at the center of its Multiverse, known as CN City.
This enormous city is the Central Hub for all cartoon activity, and is made up of iconic environments and landmarks from across all of Cartoon Network. It is also continually expanding, incorporating new areas into its layout as more and more cartoon universes are added to or created for CN.
Here, one can find characters from across all of the multiverse exploring things, interacting with each other, running errands, going to parties and using it as a gateway to crossovers. However, none of them are native to this world.
The Natives of CN City are a species of Blank, 3-Dimensional humanoids known as Noods. Noods are adherently benevolent, playful, goofy and heroic creatures, which like a blank sheet of paper, represent the limitless potential of creativity, imagination, and by extension, cartoons.
Because of that, they are in a way, more ‘Real’ then those that visit their world, and run the entire CN multiverse from behind the scenes like a weird combination of The Watchers from Marvel and Santa’s elves.
The primary ability of Noods is to take in essence from the multiverse they inhabit, in order to take on color, ideas, and the traits of any character in all of Cartoon Network, from their biggest stars, to their most obscure one-offs.
They can acquire, swap or lose these at will, and while they have these they also gain the traits of said character, from their powers to their personality quirks.
But, while the Noods maintain the Multiverse and make sure it’s functioning, there is also the necessary evil, a being made to End universes to make room for the new. Such was the purpose of Strike, a powerful entity who was created to Strike (as in a Takedown) the Cartoon Network Universes which had completed their stories, essentially Cartoon Network’s embodiment of Cancelation.
Ideally, when a Cartoon World gets canceled, it merely gets fully absorbed into CN City, where the characters live on and continue to influence Modern Cartoon Network, but Strike, with his adherent need to end all things, grew incredibly bored of doing things that way.
In a shocking turn of events, Strike stole a powerful device known as The Magic Pen, and used it to attack and Conquer all of CN City, defeating the entire Nood population and stealing their powers for himself. This rush of battle only drove him More insane, becoming obsessed with growing stronger and proving himself in battle.
He began pulling in “Heroes” from all the surrounding Cartoon Network Universes, past, current and even upcoming, to fight him in the city ruins Most Dangerous Game Style so he could steal their powers and rule over all reality.
Through this Strike single handedly took out almost every single series in cartoon network history and kept them as trophies, however it was this immense success that eventually led to his downfall. In his Hubris, Strike toyed around with a rag-tag group of characters who stood no chance against him, but in his distracted state, they managed to steal back The Magic Pen and use its power.
With that, they were able to hit Strike with a mighty attack that I like to call the “Punch Time Explosion”, which unleashed the combined attack power of every single protagonist in Cartoon Network history on him all at once, reducing him to nothing more than an arm.
And with him defeated, they used the Pen to restore CN City and all the characters of Cartoon Network back to normal. While this was a happy occasion, Strike would eventually come back and wreak havoc once more, as while one can Fight against Cancelation, it can never truly be stopped for good.
Strike is a cold, calculating and ambitious villain with a lust for complete power and control that is matched only by his massive Ego. He hated being essentially a controlled function of the Multiversal hierarchy, so fought to surpass the limits of his position and now wants only to accomplish more by dominating those he believes to be his rivals, characters from shows that weren’t ready to be canceled. He’s incredibly serious, always getting right to the point and not holding back, loving to put his foes in unwinnable situations, but he can also be massively overconfident and tends to be caught monologuing and gloating to a comedic degree. He is a perfect villain for Collective Cartoon Network, as he is archetypically evil, a full mustache-twirling evil-doer, who represents the most ultimate, destructive thing a cartoon could be met with, and his goofy but still dark attitude creates a sort of Uncanny Valley effect, where he seems like he is cartoony, but his ideology doesn’t fit correctly with the rest of them.
Powers:
Shirley:
As a being created to be the Ultimate Big Bad Guy, by 2 literal 10 year old boys with access to the most potent science and magic in the multiverse, Shirley has a tremendous arsenal of deadly attacks and abilities to pull from, even in his original base state. Some of these magi-tech powers include:
Weapons:
Shirley’s body is absolutely loaded with weapons that he can seemingly produce from literally any part of his body by altering his form. His arsenal of projectiles includes Lasers, Missiles, Rockets, Sonic Disruptors which break things apart using intense vibrations, and a large variety of Pizza Toppings, as someone got hungry while designing him.
Aerokinesis:
Shirley has built in air jets that allow him to blow stuff away or suck things towards him with tremendous force.
Flight:
Shirley, like every good cosmic supervillain, can also levitate and fly as he sees fit.
Pyrokinesis:
He also seems to be able to summon and control massive blazes of bright red fire similar to the one above his head.
Hard-Light Manipulation:
Shirley can also manipulate some energy referred to as Hard light, able to shoot it from his hands, control it with his mind and forge solid objects from it. It is capable of trapping foes inside of force fields that only Shirley can move through, and any being that is trapped in these has their entire body sealed in Stasis, preventing them from moving.
Neutron Tech:
Shirley is able to use his shape-shifting body to replicate any of Jimmy’s technology, from his Brain Drain Helmet, to his Shrink Ray, to even his Flux Field Duplicator, which can delete planets into oblivion.
Adaptability:
Shirley's most Iconic power on the other hand, is his Adaptability, and Boy does it show, as it may just be the most Broken example of this ability I know of in fiction. Shirley’s adaptability is fueled by a combination of Type 4 Science, and Universal Reality Warping Magic, which will work in tandem to rewrite things so that Shirley is best suited to take on whatever he is being faced with.
It is able to completely, fundamentally alter Shirley’s body in any conceivable way, allowing him to change his form, and gain additional powers and resistances on the fly to absolutely crush his opponent.
Unlike what it is often compared to, Reactive Evolution from Saint Seiya, Shirley’s Adaptability doesn’t make it so an attack won’t work on him twice, rather it automatically Adapts a counter to any attack being thrown at him AS it’s being thrown at him for the first time, making him basically impossible to harm. Even the very Destructo Chip feature of his own body, was not good enough to get around this power.
Shirley can also choose to activate this ability of his own accord, allowing him to use his Adaptability not just Defensively, but Offensively too. Such as when Timmy wished himself and Jimmy 'Indestructible Super Suits’ to protect from his attacks, Shirley adapted himself to have keys to deactivate the suits, destroying their defenses.
Most of the time however, the Adaptability power works completely passively, and will independently move to protect Shirley from any hardship, and this isn’t simply limited to Combat either. Literally ANY Situation where Shirley is faced with a problem will cause him to Adapt accordingly, whether it's adapting to be the proper size to win at sports, to even altering his very emotions when he is Sad, as his feelings are ‘hurt’. Shirley used it to do one more super dangerous thing though, he used it to adapt Power Absorption to Steal the Powers of his own creators.
Super Intelligence:
After using the Brain Drain to Drain Jimmy’s intellect away, Shirley adapted the ability to absorb Jimmy’s intellect into himself, making him just as smart. Jimmy Neutron is confirmed to be the Most Intelligent Being in the Entire Nickelodeon Multiverse by these very crossover specials, putting him above Nora Wakemen, the creator of XJ9, Plankton, who could create a device to rewrite timelines allowing one to swap lives with someone, and Professor Membrane, who can outsmart the Galaxy Spanning Irken Empire, which use planets as buildings and can annihilate half the universe in one blast, each of which would be high type 4 intellect feats on the Kardashev scale. Jimmy can freely manipulate Gravity, Magnetism, Time, Space, Size, Genetics, and even other Minds, perform trillions of calculations at once in his head, and at one point built a working time machine out of mud, sticks, berries and a diamond while trapped in the cretaceous period.
Fairy Magic:
Shirley also consumed the magic wands of both Cosmo and Wanda, the source of their magic power, which turned them into humans as a result. This allowed Shirley to absorb the full power of Fairy Magic. Unlike normal Fairies, who are bound by Da Rules, Shirley can basically use his magic however he chooses, easily able to grant wishes that wouldn’t be allowed normally.
Shirley can use this magic with nothing more than a thought to warp reality in whatever ways he sees fit, he can teleport himself and others, even to other dimensions,
Dramatically alter size, induce paralysis,
Manipulate Magnetism, turn people 2-dimensional,
Open Dimensional Portals, create entire pocket universes, fuse different universes together,
Control the Weather in any conceivable way, and Much MUCH More. Basically, anything a Fairy can do, Shirley can do it better, so forgive me in advance if this ends up being the longest section in the entire blog.
Fairy Magic is without any doubt the single most potent and untamed powerset found throughout Nickelodeon, essentially giving the user the power of a god. Those who have this power can effectively control all of reality on a universal scale and manipulate it in any conceivable way.
Cosmo and Wanda have casually changed reality to do things like remove all color and distinction between people, transform the planet into a jungle world ruled by apes, turn everything into a 1920’s style rubber-hose cartoon, change the Earth into a comic book world where everyone had superpowers, make the world into a dictatorship and made it so everyone eats only dessert foods, just to name a few, and in every instance it retroactively changed history and memories so people didn’t even remember what it was like before.
In the episode ‘Timmy the Barbarian’, Jorgan displays abilities similar to The Ghost Writer from Danny Phantom, where, using Fairy Magic, he casually traps Timmy, Cosmo and Wanda with his words, and makes up a story, in which literally everything he says comes true and they perform whatever action he narrates them too, despite being self aware. Timmy has even made a wish that gave him Word of God powers, that prevented him from being Wrong about things, his words automatically made whatever he said true Causality Manipulation style, and it was even strong enough to banish Cosmo and Wanda.
Fairy Magic’s warping abilities are able to completely and easily manipulate even high concepts, allowing them to do things like literally Transmutate the Concept of Gravity into Gravy, or make 2+2=Fish, and have that be correct.
THAT is a power known as Math Manipulation, a not often seen power that sounds super boring and useless, I mean, what good is it besides being able to make up the right answers on your Homework? But actually, Math Manipulation gives you almost limitless control over every function and aspect of reality itself.
Everything, every concept, every value, all of time, space and perception, all of it, can essentially trace itself back to Mathematics in one way or another, it's a concept that is above other concepts, as Numbers are an abstraction we form concepts FROM. A character using Math Manipulation, coud say, Nullify all your attacks by changing the amount of attacks you’ve thrown to equal Zero, or manipulate the numbers of the Big Bang to literally remake reality in any way they see fit, including giving yourself all your opponents powers while they have none. Shirley could use this to set the amount of himself to be equal to the amount of seconds since a certain event, which not only would cause him to constantly multiply, but since that number would be a constant, one also couldn’t Reduce the amount of Shirley through any means of attack. Math manipulation can also allow Shirley to move in directions that normal 3-Dimensional beings cannot even conceive, making him impossible to directly attack, or alter the Visible Light Spectrum, Atomic Structures and even Wavefunctions.
That said the most common way that Fairies use this power is to bolster stats. Cosmo and Wanda can raise or lower any stat they want, from Nothing to even Infinity, using Math Manipulation. And I don’t just mean Physical stats like strength and speed. Fairies, and by extension Shirley, can instantly give themselves or others any skill one could think of at any proficiency, or completely take it away from others. They’ve made Chester the best baseball player ever, made Timmy better at any Carnival showcase than the respective Carne that specialized in it, made Timmy the greatest martial artist in the world, have made multiple characters the most intelligent being in existence, and can even Nullify their own magic, give their magic to others, or make things immune to magic.
But that's enough on Math, Fairies Magic also possesses a sort of cosmic awareness that alerts and makes it privy to knowledge from across the stars. The reason the Jimmy Timmy Power Hours even happened was because Timmy wished to be in “The Greatest Lab in The Universe” and this Normal Wish just poofed him into the Jimmy Neutron world, meaning it knew about and could access other Nickelodeon Universes.
Cosmo and Wanda have even appeared in Live Action Nickelodeon shows like Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide like no big deal, and have met the other Butch Hartman characters in a big crossover short. This allows Fairy Magic users to spy on people and events across space and time and even see a mythological alternate dimension.
Fairies can shapeshift themselves, or transmutate others into literally anything, Rule 63 someone into a different gender, and create matter at will, including entire planets, magical items, enough laughing gas to flood the earth, and technology as advanced as Jimmy Neutron’s.
One more common thing them make is You Doo Dolls, which are essentially like normal Voodoo Dolls, having the classic powers of Forced Empathy, Bodily Control and Gravity Manipulation, but they can also force someone to speak, control their mind and spatial pull someone’s body apart without doing any damage. Timmy once had Cosmo and Wanda make a halloween curse where everyone would become a real and scary version of whatever they were dressed up as. Fairies can put people into stasis, or force them to sleep, as well as literally remove the ability to sleep from every person on earth. They once wiped away all sound from the cosmos, made an entire civilization starving, and have Necromancy powers that allow them to raise the dead, restore extinct species, and resurrect.
Fairies are also insanely fast healers, possessing regeneration so extreme they can come back from being reduced to literal fairy dust in seconds like it was no big deal. But their difficulty to kill goes far beyond that.
One time, Timmy wished he was Never Born, causing Cosmo and Wanda to not only Erase him from Existence, but Erase him from having ever existed in the first place, where history itself was altered to no longer include him. This is something the Fairies have been shown to do on multiple other occasions, like when they erased Dinkleberg from existence and throughout time, or when they erased every being on the planet except Timmy and Trixie.
Yet even when they do this, Fairies can still find nonexistent persons by traveling to and from this nonexistent plane, and restore them, heck Jorgan specifically even personally escaped from “The Dimension for Godkids who Improved The World, By Wishing They Were Never Born.” Meaning that Fairies can survive being completely erased from existence and time, as well as do and undo this to others.
Fairy Magic lets one duplicate themself or others an unlimited number of times, create artificial beings including intangible ghosts, bring inanimate objects the life, including the Sphinx in ancient Egypt, and even use Simulation Summoning to create real versions of fictional characters, like making The Crimson Chin real, bring tom sawyer out of his book, creating Dark Laser and his entire Empire from a toy magazine.
Beyond that, Fairies have incredible immersion abilities, capable of entering into various media forms at will, and interacting with the characters there. Cosmo and Wanda can Digitize themselves and others into videogames or the internet, and even create an entire virtual world from scratch.
The fairies can enter Movies, Television Cartoons, Comicbooks and even actual classic novels stories, and effectively manipulate these fictions like the authors themselves.
In episodes like Channel Chasers and Shelf Life, Fairy Magic was able to completely change the plot of these works of media, and most shockingly, this made everyone in real life who knew those pieces forget all about the original versions and only know this altered one, even changing official printed material that referenced it to match this new version. This is a power known as Temporal Fiction Manipulation, which makes any changes you make to said reality retroactive, so it was always like that, and always will be until it is changed back, as see when the Fairies gave the Crimson Chin a mental breakdown upon showing him he was fictional, the comic publisher was unable to have him do normal superhero stuff, despite tanking sales, until they went back in and broke him out of this funk. This power is also not exclusive to fiction either, as it has been shown that they could use this power in a documentary or text book and it will actually change real world history and science.
Fairies have insane spatial manipulation that can let them fold an entire continent in on itself, teleport entire planets, segregate the entire planet into a male and female side, and live in a massive mansion that somehow fits in a tiny castle inside of a fish bowl in a 10 year old’s room.
They can travel to other dimensions, warp space to make it so that Timmy and Chloe‘s parents always ended up going to the same location, and manipulate size so as to grow as large as a planet, or shrink to subatomic size.
Time wise, Fairies are immortal creatures that live forever, and are perfectly capable of traveling through the time stream to any point in the past and future. They can do things like Stop Time, Make temporal pockets allowing it to be the Cretaceous Period only in Timmy’s room, and do the super interesting “ReDo” Time Manipulation, which lets one instantly go moments into the past and redo any event but with something spatially swapped to have it go more favorably, like if someone beat you in a swordfight, but then you redid the fight and their sword was a balloon now.
They can also use it for Age manipulation, letting them set someone's age to anything they want, or even trap people in Time Loops. In she special Timmy’s Secret Wish, we find out Timmy had Cosmo Trap the entire universe in a time loop where no one could age, change, or be aware of how much time has past, for 50 years straight, so Timmy could stay a kid forever and never lose his godparents without anyone noticing.
Going into Mental abilities, Fairies can manipulate and control minds on not just a planet wide basis, but a universal basis as it has shown to be able to even reach distant alien civilizations and even into Fairy World just by the godkid specifying ‘everyone’. They’ve made the world ruled by kids, made people innocent in a court of law, made it so people thought anything someone said or did was the funniest thing ever, reduced peoples levels of concern and responsibility to Zero, forced people to spill all their deepest darkest secrets, made the entire universe desperately want Timmy, and Hypnotized Britney Britney into believing Cosmo is Chip Skylark and they are at the music awards.
Fairies can possess people and objects, cast intricate illusions, read minds, see peoples flashbacks, erase memories, and manipulate intelligence, from making everyone on Earth even stupider than Timmy so he can get good grades, to accidentally making cockroaches smart enough to overthrow humanity.
They can swap the minds of two different beings Freaky Friday style, bring someone’s imaginary friends into reality, and even travel into someone’s unconscious mind on the mental plane, where they can have mental plane battles using imagination and mental sealing, or also mess with someone’s dreams like Freddy Krueger.
They can even manipulate things like Emotions or Morality, able to literally remove All Timmy’s emotions (and Common Sense) and turn them into Consciousness plane beings (who they can interact with), and removed all of Vicky’s Malice and Cruelty and turned it into a bug.
They also have a LOT more one off simple powers that don’t fit into broad categories that I’m just gonna list for simplicity, Fairies have superpowers like Invisibility, Telekinesis, Cryokinesis, Intangibility, Heat Vision, Breathing in Space, force fields, X-Ray Vision, empowerment and the ability to nullify other super beings powers.
They can even nullify other fairies’ Magic from affecting their own.
Strike:
As Cartoon Network's embodiment of Cancellation and Ender of worlds, Strike has an enormous arsenal of abilities, both that he possesses naturally, and that he draws from the Cartoon Network multiverse as a whole.
Regeneration:
First and foremost, Strike has really great regeneration, being able to come back after being reduced to nothing but his robot arm by the collective CN Punch. As Strike is the force that cancels series in Cartoon Network, he is effectively necessary to cosmology of CN as a whole, and thus always will exist in some capacity, even if his body were to be eradicated, but that has shown to take an extremely long time and is basically not combat applicable.
Flight:
As a pretty common power among fiction, Strike is perfectly capable of flight, because this flight is levitation based rather than relying on wings or boosters, it can function in any environment including space.
Pyrokinesis:
Strike has also shown a typical scary villain ability of manipulating Fire. Strike is able to surround himself in an aura of damaging red flame, shoot fireballs and draw energy from it in his anime style “Extremely Long, Uninterruptible, Power-Up Sequence”.
X Projectiles:
Strike’s primary ability, the for which he’s designed to use to strike shows in need of cancellation, is his ability to X Things Out. This power allows them to fire red, X shaped projectiles out of his body.
Anyone who is hit by one of these, instantly becomes Petrified in stone, metafictionality. it has been shown to affect intangibles, incorporeals, inorganics, and purely meta-fictional beings, sealing off their influence from the multiverse.
Being X’ed Out is like being faded into obscurity and forgotten by history, characters affected by it even vanish from their posters and advertisements, being shown only as silhouettes, as if they never existed in the first place.
The X projectile has been stopped before with the use of a protection spell, from a character from an especially resilient show that refuses to end, however it still locked their body in stasis, rendering them unable to move. The only thing shown to reverse a successful X’ing however, is the Magic Pen itself.
Robot Arm:
Strikes Robot Arm was something he created himself, likely by using his Magic Pen. This isn’t your average, run of the mill robot arm, as it basically functions like a database for the entirety of the Cartoon Network multiverse! With this, Strike has awareness of all the various universes he is connected to, and can pull valuable information from anything that resides inside of it, including powers, stats, lore information and more.
It can also be used to create dimensional portals to other universes, allowing him to traverse the multiverse, summon things from across the multiverse, teleport, BFR Foes into other worlds, and redirect projectile attacks back to sender.
This allowed Strike to pull heroes from all the the various Cartoon Network series into his domain, even including Erin from Miguzi, which is actually a programming block that plays CN Shows,
as well as Golly Gopher, who is actually from one of the few Live Action CN series, Out of Jimmy’s Head.
The Magic Pen:
The Magic Pen is Strike's primary and most important weapon, which he affectionately nicknamed ‘Ol Blasty’. And it is easily one of the most dangerous weapons I have ever covered.
This Pen is very heavily implied to be the exact same Magic Pen introduced in Tiny Toon Adventures in 1990. According to Tiny Toons Lore, this is THE Pen that Warner Bros. Animators used to create every single one of their cartoon worlds and characters. From the original Looney Tunes, to the Tiny Toons, and presumably later all of Cartoon Network.
This pen has casually shown the ability to create an entire cartoon universe and bring it to life in seconds, just like Strike’s did to restore CN City after Strike’s defeat and restore every single character who was X’ed.
The magic Pen can both erase or create any cartoon character object or trait on the meta level.
It also can both fly and act independently of its master, just like Strike’s pen can.
Since being captured by Strike, he has essentially corrupted it by adding numerous layers of advanced technology to use as a weapon against the CN Multiverse.
The pen can now be attached to Strike’s arm and fire laser beams like a modified futuristic gun.
It can also be sent out independently to track down and destroy a foe all by itself, and be given complex orders via Strike programming it on the fly.
These lasers it fires are extremely powerful and dangerous, able to be shot in singular blasts, a continuous concentrated beam, and even a spinning shot that can cut through practically anything.
When a character is hit by one of these lasers, It essentially dematerializes them of their powers, literally retconning their powers away on the meta level, converting the ability back into an idea and storing it in the Pen itself, much like it did to Plucky in the original Tiny Toons. There is no way for a character to get their abilities back without it being restored by the Pen itself.
That said, that power does have a limitation in that rather than completely removing all Powers from their target in one shot, It seems to only be capable of removing one power at a time. The Pen Stole Raven’s dark magic, but not her levitation ability or protection spells, it stole Garnet’s Future Vision but not her other Gem powers etc. That said, It can be used to take all powers under an Umbrella term, such as when it took Ben’s Power of “Omnitrix” leaving his current Fourarms form unaffected, but taking all of his other aliens in one fell swoop and preventing him from turning back to normal.
The Pen is also immune to its own powers, enduring its own shot being reflected back into it, and will still erase that which reflected it.
The Pen is also capable of creation as much as destruction, Strike used it to create an entire army of glowing red fish monsters to protect his compound from intruders.
It can instantly create any object that the wielder sees fit or recreate anything that it previously absorbed.
This includes the ability to restore someone's ability to use their powers, or imbue someone with new powers that they didn’t have before like a creator adding new traits to a character. That latter part is really bad, because Strike used the pen to Steal the Powers of all those he went up against, giving him access to their abilities. And as you can imagine after taking the powers of an entire multiverse consisting of every show a channel has run in 25 years, he's got a LOT of powers he can pull outta his ass, this includes.
Super Intelligence:
Since Strike Defeated Dexter, he has access to the Boy Genius' massive super intelligence. Dexter is a Type 5 intellect on the Kardashev Scale, a being who is smart enough to perfectly harness and utilize all the energy in an entire universe, which he has successfully done in his cartoon. Dexter has invented dozens of hazy sci-fi gadgets, and can do things with science that are basically indistinguishable from magic. He can turn his thoughts into matter, change size to the point it eclipsed the universe, and lead Mankind after it had been regressed to pre cavemen times, into a futuristic utopia.
Enhanced Skill:
Strike would also have combat skills comparable to the greatest heroes in CN, including Samurai Jack, who trained in every single type of martial art known to man with the warriors that invented them, and mastered them to a superhuman degree.
Probability Manipulation:
By Defeating Lazlo, Strike gained access to his passive Probability Manipulation powers. This Probability power gives Lazlo such good luck that he can walk through a massive rainstorm without a single drop of water hitting him, answer any question correctly with an incorrect answer, and do scientifically impossible things like use a giant block of bricks as an effective boat. This would make successfully landing an attack on him more than 1 Trillion times more unlikely than a Monkey perfectly typing out the entire Shakespearean play Hamlet on a typewriter.
Enhanced Regeneration:
There are a great deal of regeneration powers found throughout Cartoon Network, Strike’s own included which once allowed him to regenerate from being reduced to only his arm, but since he defeated Gumball, Strike can scale to his Regeneration of coming back from being reduced to literal nothingness.
Mind Manipulation:
From defeating several different cartoon network characters from HIM to Dexter, to Gumball and Grim, Strike would also have access to Mind Control which would be superior to that of Mandy’s.
And Mandy was able to super casually Mind Control the entire planet from her couch and force them to do her bidding as slaves, stating that “this is Her world, and she's just letting others live here.”
Strike’s Mind Manipulation abilities allow him to read people's minds.
Erase and alter people's memories.
Enter and manipulate dreams, and control someone's sleep cycle.
Use telekinesis powerful enough to move celestial bodies.
And even use Boogey’s Nightmare Hypnosis spell, which traps the victim in a never ending series of infinite Nightmares that just get worse and worse as they go, until their will is completely broken and they become his willing servant. This ability is so strong not even Mandy could escape without aid.
Metafictional Manipulation:
Another power common across numerous Cartoons on this channel is Metafictional 4th wall powers. And because of this, Strike has a slew of Meta Powers to draw from across numerous series. Meta manipulation is the power to see and interact with a reality more Real than your own. This makes Strike able to tell he's a fictional character, and thus manipulate the world he inhabits as if it was artificially created.
He can use Meta-Spacetime to completely change around when and where things are happening, including removing effects of the animation to destroy attacks, entirely erasing the cartoon that they are currently in leaving nothing more, or even delete things and events from the script.
He can totally step out from the cartoon into a higher reality like Mandy did when fed up with the plot, using this to escape attacks and detection.
Similarly he can also use Immersion to enter into media works that are fictional to him, allowing him to go into photos, comics, TV Shows and even the text of novel stories, where he can escape attacks and BFR people.
Meta manipulation can even allow a 2-Dimensional cartoon character to enter into those vague background layers characters shouldn’t be able to interact with, basically meaning Strike can move in more directions than others.
Strike can also use it to Remove aspects from his foes, essentially taking traits off of someone and putting those traits somewhere else.
The Eds took this power to the fullest and have gained the ability to instantly destroy other characters by removing their very outline.
That said, one of the most devastating things Strike can do with meta powers is access The Void. The Void is a dimension between all cartoons, essentially the fictional trash heap, where failed ideas vanish into obscurity.
Anyone who is pulled in here is paused in stasis for all time, as they are literally erased from existence throughout the rest of the universe, with their history, property and memory all being wiped from their multiverse. Being BFR’d here is basically a death sentence for any cartoon, as it's basically the equivalent of being retconned from ever having been a character in the series, and just being another scrapped design.
Digitization:
Strike can digitize himself and others to enter into technology or leave others there as a BFR.
Teleportation:
Numerous characters across Cartoon Network are also capable of teleportation. This includes advanced forms of teleportation that allow one to travel to other dimensions, take others with them, teleport others without going himself, teleport objects, and even spatially swap places with others.
Astral Manipulation:
Numerous characters in Cartoon Network also possess Ghost Like Powers, such as Carrie from Gumball, who is intangible, and able to turn invisible and possess people.
Gumball can also physically interact with her and resist this possession. Similarly other Cartoon Network characters can use actual Soul Hax, like Grim or Enid.
Transmutation:
Through means of Magic, Science, Natural Abilities and more, Strike can transmutate beings into essentially anything he wants.
Shapeshifting:
Strike could also Shapeshift himself into anything he so chooses, able to disguise himself, turn into alternate forms or states of matter, and stretch himself into outer space with total ease.
Time Manipulation:
A well known broken power that is seen throughout Cartoon Network from Dexter to Steven Universe is time manipulation. Some of the best feats of Time manipulation in the multiverse come from none other than Gumball Watterson, who can casually travel to any point in history or the future, including the Big Bang.
He is able to manipulate Age and Decay to rapidly age things, as well as resist this same power being done to him.
He is also able to flatly Stop Time in its tracks, or even reverse things from happening. If you add in other time manipulator characters you could look at Grim.
Who was able to continue moving even after time itself ended.
Strike can also pull versions of himself from different points of time to duplicate himself. There are actually many methods in which he could self duplicate, but doing it through time travel is the strongest as you could essentially continue doing it forever.
Simulation Summoning:
Strike can turn representations of things into reality to create real world versions of fictional characters which contain literally whatever traits they have in their canon just by bringing an image of them to life.
Chaos Manipulation:
Strike would also have the abilities of the Greek Goddess of Chaos, Eris. Eris’ chaos manipulation is so strong, that she is single-handedly and passively responsible for all Chaos in the entire Billy and Mandy Multiverse, to the point that if she were to be destroyed, it would destroy all Order due to it not having an opposite to define it, and end up erasing reality.
Chaos allows Eris to defy logic and do completely nonsensical things that cannot be truly defined, because as the opposite of Order, she is no more bound by any rules than physics is bound by delusions.
Feats:
Shirley:
Strength:
Shirley easily defeated both Jimmy and Timmy at once head to head, before even gaining his fairy magic abilities.
Jimmy Neutron, without any tech, was able to fly into a gigantic tornado the size of a large country and reverse it with his physical body, a feat that even via surface area would still require him to tank Gigatons of force.
Shirley has directly Torn two different universes apart to create his own universe.
He also is more powerful than any of the Fairies in The Fairly Oddparents series, and for reference, Jorgan was once able to create a bomb that would rip apart the entire universe, ending all time and starting it anew, as well as a desk that could block it.
When Jorgan regained control of himself however, Jorgan was literally powerful enough to crush this same explosion into nothingness.
Another fairy named Poof was able to warp, and was going to destroy, the entire goddamn universe, and is implied numerous consistent times throughout the special to be able to do that. This didn't just include our own universe, but also that of all the different magical creatures, but Poof was able to prevent this by resetting the universe.
Also Using Math Manipulation, The Fairies have been able to make it so a person’s (Their own included) Physical stats can raise dramatically higher without limitation. Such as when Timmy wished to be ‘The Strongest Person on the Beach’ and any time someone or something stronger than him set foot on the beach he became more powerful than they were. This means Shirley could potentially raise his own strength to infinite levels.
Durability:
Fairies are just as durable as they are strong, Cosmo and Jorgan were able to physically hold Da Rules together, which was going to explode with enough Force to rip apart the universe, meaning they physically contained a universe destroying explosion with their bodies.
Fairies are also able to make things indestructible within their own verse, using their Math Manipulation they can effectively exponentially increase the durability of anything to the point of infinity.
Speed:
Shirley is superior in speed to Fairies, even an early Cosmo was able to fly into deep space, through a quasar and into Yugopotamia physically in a short time frame, assuming it took a few hours, this likely would be at least 650 billion times lightspeed.
This feat can be bested by Jimmy Neutron, who very early in the series created and piloted an entire fleet of Rockets that were able to fly to the Yokian’s Planet in less than a day. And the Yokian’s planet was later established to exist in another universe similar to the Fairly Oddparents one. Using the Observable Universe’s size, and assuming it took them a total of 16 hours to fly this distance, as they stopped to sleep on an asteroid, this would be a speed of over 25 Trillion times the speed of light.
However, the Fairies can casually Fodderize even that speed, as shown when Cosmo and Wanda casually made Timmy a rocket that bested the exact Rocket Jimmy did this with. Fairies casually fly interstellar distances all the time, and in Fairly Oddbaby, a group of roughly 200 fairies were able to successfully search Every Corner of the Entire Universe in only 3 Hours. Even being conservative with that, it would still likely put their flight speed in the Quintillions of times the speed of light.
Shirley should also be more powerful than The Darkness, a sentient black hole entity that was able to fly to and individually consume every star in the universe so quickly it seemed to happen at once. The Observable Universe is estimated to contain about 1 Sextillion stars found in 10,000 different galaxies. And the average distance between 2 stars is 5 Lightyears. Which would suggest that The Darkness could fly 5 Sextillion Lightyears in under a second. Which would be roughly 2 Octillion times the speed of light.
Also, again because of their whole Math Manipulation powers, Fairies could make themselves and others infinitely faster than even this if they use Magic correctly.
General:
Defeated Timmy Turner AND Jimmy Neutron at once with only his base abilities.
Destroyed 2 of Nick’s Strongest cartoon verses and merged them together.
Is the strongest being in the collective Nickelodeon Multiverse.
Successful small business owner despite publicly trying to destroy the world.
Strike:
Strength:
Strike was SUPER casually able to go against Garnet, Reboot Fourarms, TTG Raven and at the time Level 3 K.O. In a relatively close contest Garnet would be roughly the strongest of these combatants.
Garnet was strong enough to Fight the Gem Warrior Jasper in an even head to head battle.
Immediately after this fight, Jasper was able to tank an explosion that blew a massive hole in her ship at its epicenter, and the subsequent blast that blew the ship to pieces.
This ship was casually able to no-sell a direct blast from four Laser Light Cannon’s all at once.
Just one of these weapons was previously able to obliterate the Red Eye ship in a blast that was calculated to be well into the Gigatons of TNT, putting Garnet well into Island Level Power.
But fighting that group of characters is far from the whole story. Strike has defeated essentially the entire verse of every other verse in CN History. Including Chowder, Robot Jones, I Am Weasel, Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, Juniper Lee, My Gym Partner’s a Monkey, Ed Edd n Eddy, Billy & Mandy, Cow & Chicken, Courage, Generator Rex, Johnny Bravo, Time Squad, Camp Lazlo, Adventure Time, We Bare Bears, Mighty Magiswords, Craig of The Creek, Mike Lu & Og, Over the Garden Wall, Dexter, Samurai Jack, Villainous, Steven Universe, Gumball, Uncle Grandpa, Regular Show, The Powerpuff Girls and Many, MANY others.
The power found in most of these verses varies greatly, but numerous of these characters have been able to casually move, destroy or create Stars the size of our sun without much effort.
That however isn’t even the half of it, as the most powerful Cartoon Network Characters easily get into the Universal scale of power. In Billy & Mandy, Grim’s Scythe, Gods like Eris, and Monsters like Cthulhu, are all stated and shown to be able to casually destroy the entire universe with Ease. Eris is able to do so simply by taking a vacation too long, and Grim could by merely using the Scythe to change one of Billy’s grades. The Scythe is stated to be able to end the universe and all time as one knows it.
In another verse, Ben 10, Alien X was able to super casually endure the destruction of the entire universe at its epicenter, and recreated the universe in seconds. And even this feat gets one-upped by Mandy, who via smiling is capable of destroying and resetting all of reality.
There is also the notion of Stat Bolsterization abilities that are commonly present in Cartoon Network. Characters like Grim and Eris have been able to use their powers to drastically increase their own and others stats before. Grim once was able to use his Scythe to pump Mandy with so much power she Outgrew the entire universe and entered into the Multiverse, where she and the other Infinitely Expanding Beings, would continue expanding at an Infinite Rate until they fill the entire Infinite Multiverse. Meaning Strike could potentially make himself Infinitely Strong.
Durability:
Strike is so durable he is portrayed as being practically immune to damage by characters attacks, with only a combined effort by all the CN Protagonists being able to destroy him, several of which could casually bust the universe. He also would scale to his own DC feats in Durability.
Also, that Grim Stat Bolstering Ability still applies to Durability, meaning that yes, Strike could make himself infinitely durable as well.
Speed:
Strike was able to super casually fight Season 2 K.O., Garnet, Reboot Raven, and Reboot Fourarms all at the same time.
Gems like Garnet have reaction time speed fast enough to dodge, block and attack the fully assembled Harmony Core.
Which was so fast it could fly from Homeworld, in the Andromeda Galaxy, to Earth in Seconds, putting it over 133 Billion times the speed of light. Yet Garnet had to use Future Vision just to avoid Strike’s attacks.
Another character Strike has shown to have defeated is Buttercup from the original Powerpuff Girls.
The Powerpuff Girls are all ridiculously faster than light, able to fly all the way to the sun and back in seconds in just their pre-series cartoon shorts, and literally Time Travel out of sheer speed.
The girls’ greatest measurable speed feat occurred when they were shrunken down to microscopic size and had to defend the entire city of Townsville from an army of Nanobots equal in number to the amount of raindrops that fell on the city over the course of half an hour.
Considering that these Nanobots also all exponentially multiply at a rate of thousands of clones per second. This means that the girls would have to have flown everywhere in the entire city and killed 85 quintillion nanobots, every single second, just to stalemate them. Equating to roughly 239 Trillion times the speed of light.
For consistency, Strike also defeated Double D from Ed, Edd n Eddy, Who was able to out-speed the PPG’s mech, Dynamo, who is clearly as fast as the girls. Plus The Eds have independently shown the same ability to Time Travel via sheer speed.
Strike was also able to cancel the original Ben 10 series for the reboot to exist at all, which would put him above the Celestialsapiens. Alien X once flew in a circle fast enough to create a Galaxy-sized black hole, repeatedly moving the circumference of an entire galaxy in less than a second, which has been calculated to be over 7 Quadrillion times faster than light.
Also, that whole Stat Bolstering thing from the Billy and Mandy High tiers I mentioned earlier still applies here, meaning Strike can also boost his speed to potentially Infinite at any time.
General:
Conquered all of CN city.
Survived being Punched by Every CN Protagonist at once.
Is responsible for Canceling All Previous Cartoon Network Series.
Is the most powerful character in all of Cartoon Network.
Weaknesses:
Shirley:
Shirley lacks most weaknesses in the conventional sense, with even Da Rules, which normally greatly limits what Fairies can do, not applying to him, and having Jimmy’s super intelligence to circumvent the usual stupidity of Fairies. That said he does have some weaknesses, most notably the one True law of Fairy Magic, that it is nullified by Butterfly Nets. If Shirley is trapped in a butterfly net, he’ll be unable to escape or use his powers unless he adapts his Fairy Magic away. That said, you’d likely need knowledge of Fairy Lore to ever think of this. Shirley also does not have resistance too much of his own arsenal to begin with, much like how Fairies have basically no resistance to mind control despite how strong their mind hax is. His biggest weakness however, is that he’s honestly pretty naïve, and easy to manipulate if you do it right.
Strike:
Strike has a big ego and often doesn’t consider the possibility of him losing, which has led him to have an almost nonchalant energy to his work, and has allowed him to lose to foes that he shouldn’t conceivably lose too. Strike’s own tech, such as his Pen can be used against him and he is especially vulnerable to something like that during his “Incredibly long, uninterruptible power-up sequence.” Strike’s pen can steal his target's powers away, but only one at a time, meaning it could be difficult to truly hinder those with a large power variety. Additionally Strike’s most iconic move, the ability to X foes, has shown to be less effective on characters from stubborn series that refuse to be Canceled like Teen Titans GO!
Summary:
Shirley:
Advantages:
Faster in his base state.
Can gain completely new powers at will.
Isn’t arrogant.
Has better passive defense.
Could absorb Strikes Tech.
Can access some powers that don’t exist in Cartoon Network.
Disadvantages:
Lacks some default resistances.
Much more näive.
Less Experience.
Has an arsenal focused more on potency than power.
Strike:
Advantages:
Arguably smarter, being less naïve and having more experience.
Less likely to hold back.
Larger Power Variety in base state.
Has a couple powers Shirley would need to adapt resistance to.
Can attack from Multiple angles at once.
Has conquered more worlds.
Disadvantages:
Has no experience with 3-Dimensional cartoons.
Incredibly Arrogant.
Can only delete powers 1 at a time.
Less easy access to powers.
Battle:
Silence, emptiness, nothingness, it all befell the white, blank abyss that stretched into eternity. A Baron canvas of a universe, created and just as quickly abandoned by its god.
…..
The silence was suddenly shattered by a rift, followed by a long scream before an earth-shattering crash into the bare white floor, as a cloud of dust expanded in all directions. When it settled, it revealed a large man dressed in red and black, embedded into a crater. Casually, he got up and brushed himself off as a strange floating pen descended to his position.
“RAAAAAAAAAAAAHH” he screamed, not in pain, but in annoyance.
“Oh those, weak meddling Heroes, joining together against me seems to be their only strategy left. Well that won’t save them next time, when I get back, I’ll throttle em, I’ll…. Wait, where am I?” Strike took a moment to look around this strange universe, it was unlike any universe he had seen before, or at least, any Natural universe.
Strike floated into the air traversing the land, where he soon found a large scorched ruin with a sign. “RetroDimmsdaleville. …well, poor naming aside, this universe wasn’t born, it was made. Who or Whatever did this must be incredibly powerful, perhaps something that could even keep Me entertained” Strike said chuckling to himself.
“I must find this Hero” he said as he pulled up the screen on his arm, and began scanning the surrounding Universes for a match.
…
The chatter of a long line of people filled the popular restaurant, as a large blue cyborg worked behind the counter. “Here’s your large Pie, Chester,” Shirley said, handing the 10 year old the box. “Wow, thanks dude, this is the only place that will let me top it with fresh Roadkill” Chester said with a big grin.
“Haha, you’re welcome buddy, NOW, GET OUT!!!” he suddenly yelled, causing him to flee the store in a panic.
“Ha, crazy kid” Shirley chuckled, going back to the line, “Hi, welcome to Shirley’s Evil Pizzeria! Name?”
Suddenly a large square grid of Red lines appeared at the front of the line, as a powerful, large cyborg man stepped into existence. “I Am Strike” he said, sizing up his new opponent.
“Hey, that's a cool name! And what do you want?’ he questioned as he pulled out a notepad.
“Perfect, right to the point, I want to fight someone who’ll actually give me a challenge, let’s see if You’re up to the task….Hero” Strike said with a mixture of glee and disdain as he suddenly pointed his magic pen at Shirley and charged a powerful laser blast.
Shirley was taken aback, “Hero? No man, I’m the Villain, didn’t you read the sign?” he said, pointing to his clearly labeled menu. Strike starred, deadpan, “Yeah, I don’t Care” and fired without a second thought.
FIGHT!
The back of the building Violently exploded in a flash of red, crowds of customers fled screaming from the scene, and Shirley’s form was seen flying out the top of the hole as he did a quadruple backflip before landing on the grass behind it. He raised his hands to his head in shock, “AWW, HEY, I Still had 3 More Payments on My Lease Here!” he roared in frustration.
Slowly, Strikes form levitated through the smoke as he chuckled loudly, “The reason I call you Hero is simple, because in the face of ME, anyone against me is the same” his pen raised and charged again, firing another volley at Shirley, who gritted his teeth in anger.
ADAPTING, ADAPTING, ADAPTING…..
Shirley's entire body suddenly became covered in reflective Mirror which refracted the beams backwards and blasted into Strike, making him drop his pen and knocking him far back. “Ha” Shirley called, when suddenly, every mirror on his body turned a transparent red and dematerialized, “Wait what?”
Strike Flew back, very annoyed. Shirley raised his arms and multiple laser guns emerged from his wrists, “I don’t know how you just did that, but Eat this!” he shouted as he blasted dozens of lasers at his foe. “Hahahaha” Strike laughed as those same mirrors that disappeared from Shirley suddenly emerged from himself and reflected them back to sender too. Shirley quickly flew up into the air to dodge the shots. “Does it make sense Now? Your powers are Mine to possess!” Strike said in absolution. Shirley had reached his boiling point, “You scared off my customers, broke my store, and wanna take my powers too? Oh that Does it, Prepare to Face the Wrath of SHIRLEY!” Strike brought his hand to his chin, “Shirley? Huh, I Like it, It’s Manly AND Threatening. Perfect for My Challenge.” In his anger Shirley briefly smiled “Finally, SOMEONE Gets It” he said in relief before teleporting behind strike and suddenly kicking him in his rump. “Ah, Haha” Strike said, glad the fight was really starting now. Strike turned around and threw a punch, but Shirley blocked it and hit Strike with a sudden headbutt, the fire on his head raising up to burn Strike’s face causing him to break their grapple and grab it. “Ow my Eye, My One Good Eye!” he cried, as Shirley grabbed his cape and pulled it over his head before punching his foe into the Earth with enough force to make every building in the city jump 1 foot into the air. Strike blew his cape off his head and Grinned, “Perfect” he said as strike crashed down into him and shot heat vision out of his eyes at him. A forcefield appeared atop Strike and deflected the beams which shot up into the sky and disintegrated all the surrounding clouds. Shirley went in for a punch but suddenly was stopped in his tracks, in fact, so was everything, as if Time itself stood still. Strike suddenly stood, “Alright let's see what powers you’ll give me” he said raising his Robot Arm as a little red Screen came up.
Name: Shirley
World: Indeterminate
Age: 50
Powers: Fairy Magic, High Tech Weapons, Adaptable
Persona: Misunderstood Villain
As Strike took his time reading while Time was frozen, a word suddenly appeared atop Shirley’s chest…
ADAPTING, ADAPTING, ADAPTING…..
Suddenly Shirley was freed from the Effects of Time, and with a glare he looked up at the distracted Strike. “Hey Jerk!!” Strike looked up just in time to see Shirley whack him across the face with an enormous tree. “What, how can you even Move Right Now?” Strike called and shot a group of X-Projectiles at Shirley. Shirley suddenly ducked out of the way and his tail reached down and ensnared Strike’s ankle, pulling him towards Shirley who grabbed him by the throat. “Don’t underestimate me, If you wanna play games, Let’s” Shirley said with a confident smirk as suddenly he pulled them into a portal.
….
The two were suddenly spat out in a 3-Dimensional world called Retroville, which Strike looked at in complete confusion. “What in Staples name is this? Why is everything so…bulgy?” he said looking at his hands. “Welcome to Retroville, You’re out of your depth.” Shirley said as he suddenly launched tons of Missiles at Strike. With a wave of his hand, Strike telekinetically stopped and detonated each missile in the air, but from the smoke, Shirley jumped through and
Slammed both his fists overtop of Strikes head in a Haymaker that forced his face to explode. Shirley’s feeling of success didn’t last as a new head quickly grew in its place, and laughing maniacally, Strike started sending a flurry of punches and kicks at Shirley, and the two’s blows crashed and sent shockwaves around the city that caused a massive upgrade. ‘He’s pretty good, I’d better up my Skill game’ Strike thought. Suddenly Strike turned the tie of their brawl and started Plumbing Shirley with blow after blow, easily countering any attack Shirley threw his way and Punched him through City Hall. Shirley rose up from the rubble. “Hey, quit punching me!”
ADAPTING, ADAPTING, ADAPTING…..
Strike charged him, but suddenly Shirley grew, about 20 new limbs and quickly threw so many attacks at strike he couldn’t possibly block them all, and ended up getting grabbed and repeatedly slammed into the ground. “Yes, This is what I wanted, a Real Fight!” Strike teleported out of his grasp and into the air again. “But can you handle this?” Strike said as he grew a small orange monkey tail, and flew forward, fist ready. Shirley sent all his mechanical limbs towards him, and Strike, despite making no attempt to dodge them, just flew straight through with none of them being able to land a hit on him. He punched Shirley HARD, and grabbed his new Limbs and used them as a rope to spin Shirley around and around until they broke off and he flew into Outer space, crashing into the red eye of Jupiter with enough force to disperse the entire atmosphere. Shirley got right back up and saw Strike Teleport right to their location, and Shirley’s eyes glowed with Magic, as suddenly every single Atom on the entirety of Jupiter turned into a Quasar, causing a Massive expansion of infinite gravity and an explosion of light trillions of times brighter than any star that tore the entire Galaxy Asunder, before space returned to silence.
Shirley breathed Relief. “That takes care of him, the odds of avoiding a hit like that are..” Shirley was interrupted as his body was suddenly turned into a donkey. He turned around, to see Strike floating there without a scratch. “..are less than 1 in 23 Duodecillion? I believe that is the proper Probability, but then again, that Is something under MY Control” Shirley quickly turned himself back to normal, only for Strike to knock him through another portal.
….
Shirley flew to the Moon in another universe, although found himself on a collision course for a large structure ON the Moon. “Alright Kids Next Door, all hands on deck, I want the suspicious Adult Activity Monitored Yesterday” Numbuh 362 spoke before Shirley crashed through the roof, drawing looks from everyone around, weapons drawn. “Who the heck are you and what are you doing in My Moonbase?!” she yelled as Shirley got up. “H-Hey? You kids look a LOT Different from any kids I’ve ever seen before…What..Is this place?” Shirley said in confusion before Strike, yet again teleported to his location. “This world, is one of MY Domains”
Panic Quickly overtook the faces of the surrounding operatives, recognizing this second intruder. “RETREAT EVERYONE OUT OF HERE NOW!!!” They yelled as they scrambled to escape pods, a sound that brought Strike great joy. Shirley jumped up to face him, “I’m ready for you this time you edgelord colored freak.”
“Are you now? Let's find out!” Strike called as he lunged for Shirley, who responded with a grin and a magic spark in his eyes.
Probability Formula: X = Luck x -1
Strike suddenly tripped over his own Cape and stumbled towards Shirley, who grabbed him by the face and Drop Kicked him with enough force to smash into the ceiling and rip the entire top half off of the Moon Base. Strike shook off the hit and furious and shocked, yelled, “How could you Possibly hit me so easily? I was untouchable!?” he said, quickly pulling up his arm to check his power was still active.
“Like you could ever stop Me from hitting you, I am the Ultimate Villain, the Scourge of the Multiverse, Tremble before my Rocket Powered Fists!” Strike looked up and chuckled, “Please, I Read your Abilities, You don’t have Rocket Powered-” BAM! Strike was suddenly punched in the face hard enough to spin his head. Shirley stood the word adapting prominent on his chest as his flying fist returned to his arm, “Do Now.” Strike fell to the ground before Shirley teleported and grabbed his robot arms wrist, and stomped Strike into the ground with enough force to tear it off causing sparks to fly everywhere. “AH! Strike called in actual pain this time as he crawled away.
ADAPTING, ADAPTING, ADAPTING…..
Quickly, Shirley’s body shifted around and absorbed the technology of Strike’s arm, turning his own left arm into a seemingly identical copy. Shirley’s eyes flashed green as images flashed before his brain as the Arm shared its cosmic knowledge with him, Mechanical Teenagers, Talking Sponge people, Spy Families, Cats and Dogs working together, Cats and Dogs FUSED together, and so much more. “So…so many worlds, so many cool new people to meet and play with that AREN’T Jimmy and Timmy, I Haven’t truly been the Villain I was Made to Be, but that Changes NOW!!!!” Shirley yelled triumphantly.
While he was distracted, Strike decided it was high time he stopped playing around, as he whistled for Ol’ Blasty to come back, which Quickly appeared out of a portal and drew him a brand new Robot arm. Shirley heard the whistle and turned his attention back to Strike, “ready for Round Two?” Strike stood back up, “Oh this is at LEAST, round Seventeen” He then grabbed Blasty and held it forward like a Sword, “And I won’t have it end…in a Draw.” Shirley smiled and using his new arm, Summoned a very wet Giant 3 dimensional Pencil, and held it in the same manner. “Hm, you’ve made your point….but NO Matter!” Strike said as he quickly used his magic Pen to make an army of Red Piranha Fish, but just as quickly Shirley made an entire army of Frankie Doodles with his Magic Pencil and the two armies clashed!
Red Fish got tossed all over the place as the Doodlebob army rampaged across the Moon base leveling everything to the ground in a chaotic, Mad frenzy. Strike flew upwards and Shirley followed suit charging him with the eraser side of the Pencil and Erasing Strike’s right Shoulder, causing his arm to disintegrate and for him to drop the pen. The Pen kept fighting for it’s master and shot a beam as it fell that Cut Shirley’s pencil vertically in two, and continued firing at him.
Strike fell down to the ground and was quickly dogpiled by numerous Frankendoodles, but suddenly they all turned to stone and were blasted off of him with a Giant Red X flying off of him, a New arm having grown on Strike while he was in the pile. Shirley charged down to hit Strike again, but his fist phased right through him, he kicked and punched but everything went through, until Strike knocked him away, and launched numerous X Projectiles at his downed foe.
ADAPTING, ADAPTING, ADAPTING…..
Number of Strike Projectiles = x*0
All of Strike’s X’s suddenly disappeared before his eyes, “wait…what did you just do?” Strike yelled. Shirley simply raised his arm up and scanned Strike.
Character Power In Use
Name: Carrie Krueger
World: Elmore
Age: 327
Powers: Ghost Type
Persona: Goth
“Answer me!” Strike said, brandishing his fist, when suddenly an Eerie Green energy overtook the entire surrounding environment and Strike was immediately decked in the face with enough force to knock another tooth out. “Welcome to The Ghost Zone. Where Ghosts CAN Get Punched. At speeds Ridiculously faster than what the specters around them could comprehend, The two Monsters flew around, throwing every kind of physical hit, clever plan and crafty power they could on each other, but still unable to get any kinda ground on their foe. Their Punches started to damage the very overspace holding their multiverse together, and before long, the Shockwave of their Punch blew the top off the Entire Ghost Zone Universe and shot the two through space and time.
They landed in a strange Desert that was separate from all of recorded spacetime in the Multiverse called Nowhere, Kansas. Shirley dusted himself off, “you know, I’ve had Just about enough of you” he said. Strike smiled, “I never have enough” he got up and the two came into another Titanic Clash that Divided all of Reality…
Out in Space a battle had broken out between the Massive Irken Armada and the Advanced Gem Empire which had suddenly found themselves occupying the same home planet and were throwing everything they had at destroying the other.
ADAPTING, ADAPTING, ADAPTING…..
Shirley teleported back into the middle of this mess gripping his head, only barely managing to Adapt Mind Resistance. On the other side of the battle field, a Thunderous Tiger Roar could be heard as Strike could be seen emerging from an ethereal Green Tiger monster, and tried to take in the situation. In a Surprise attack, Shirley Shot Strike with his Hard Light Manipulator, trapping him in a Forcefield and causing him to Drop his Pen. “Huh. HEY! That’s a cheap shot.” Strike protested. Shirley just walked over calmly to him though. “So tell me Strike”, he said, brandishing his copied Arm from the man, as he walked between Strike and his Pen. “Is it reasonable to say this Pen is the source of ALL Your powers?” Shirley said with an evil Grin.
Strikes Glare narrowed from within his bubble. “You wouldn’t DARE” he said coldly.
“HAHA, Oh. I Dare, I Dare ALL My life, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!” He Laughed maniacally as he reached for and swiped the Pen!
…And nothing. “Huh?” Shirley said as his hand seemed to just pass through it. He swiped at it again and again but each time he couldn’t grab it, “What The?” he called as he tried to adapt, but His Adaptability didn’t even grasp what it wanted from him. In Frustration Shirley Yelled, “Why can’t I Take It!”
“Because…It’s more REAL, than you.” Shirley turned around to see Strike casually grab the end of his stasis bubble, and peel it off of himself like a 2 dimensional sticker, causing Shirley’s mouth to drop. “I don't think you quite realize what I am, let me show you!” Suddenly the entire background scenery completely disappeared, and they were left in a blank void. Shirley flew towards Strike to hit him, but Strike merely stepped into the background, causing Shirley to crash into a wall. “Your World is an Illusion, Shirley, and I am the one who puts forgotten Dreams like you into their Proper place.” Strike said as he turned the entire background into THE VOID causing Shirley to fall in ....”Your Future IS Canceled!” Strike called with a maniacal laugh as the doorway closed forever.
Shirley floated through the void, his existence was no longer a factor even in his own worlds, he was like all the rest of those trapped here, a forgotten relic of the past, frozen in eternal stasis forever, inconsequential, just a retconned mistake like the rest. But that never stopped him before. Shirley's Eyes Quickly Shot Opened.
ADAPTING, ADAPTING, ADAPTING…..
Strike teleported back to CN City, a little disappointed in the Fight being over already, but nonetheless satisfied he had a great battle, when he heard a noise behind him. He turned to see sparks and electricity open into TV Static which suddenly took the form of Shirley right before him…..”Miss Me.”
“You…You CAN’T Be Here” Strike said, sounding uncharacteristically worried. “Oh I’m not only Here, I’m taking over!” Shirley called.
Amount of Shirley’s = Seconds Since Beginning of Battle
Suddenly there were Hundreds of Shirley's surrounding Strike on all sides. And there was another appearing by the second. They all flew towards Strike who did his best to Combat them, but it was impossible to defend against so many at once, They Beat Strike senseless into a pulp, and into nothingness, and even is Strike managed to kill one of the Shirley’s, they would just be replaced the Plank Instant he did it. “This is the END for you”
Strike = 0…
As soon as Shirley put the command in, cracks emerged all over Strikes torso as a golden light started penetrating through them, he was shattering. Shirley smiled and watched it happening…But just as suddenly it stopped….as beneath Strikes armor lay a Golden Apple like texture sporting a giant K on it. Strike had Become, the Golden Apple of Discord. Strike panted as he floated down. “That was as close as anyone has ever gotten…I’d tip my hat if I had one,” he said, teleporting Double D’s hat onto himself for a second. Shirley laughed, “I've never lost a fight before…and I’m not going to start now.” The two foes smiled and Ran at one another, putting infinite speed, infinite durability and infinite power into a single blow.
….
In a Titanic explosion that would shatter endless dimensional space, the two drifted apart, Floated above in a white void that existed beyond creation, beyond Cartoons, A Void in Imagination itself. And as the two’s new senses adjusted to the higher realm they currently occupied, they glanced back down to CN City, and saw it changing. Numerous new buildings and landmarks and people started popping up all over, a home called Fenton Works, a Restaurant called the Krusty Krab, a dangerous looking Volcano with Miracle City written across it. There was an inner city, a beaver dam, a massive trash dump, and Numerous new faces from Football headed Kids to Green Witches riding Giant Hamsters. The older Residents of CN City approached these new arrivals with caution, but the Ice was Broken when Suddenly Rocko and Bessie were grabbed and hugged by an orange Monkey. “Hey new friends, Welcome to our little town at the edge of the multiverse, I’m Lazlo, don’t worry, we’ll show you the ropes!”
Shirley looked at this event, “I-I Can Do it, I Can be their Villain, I just have to stop this guy and they can all be my Enemies and I’ll never be abandoned Again!” he said in vigor as He powered up shooting red fire in every direction. Strike turned back to him, a tear actually forming in his eye, “Is This what happens when so many Worlds are left to their own devices? They produce someone who can Actually Equal Me? Maybe I have been too aggressive with ending worlds, maybe, Letting them tell their stories to the end Is how I can be satisfied too…..”
“Let He Who Wins, Rule It Wisely”
They both said in unison, Reading each other's Minds as they met for one final clash. Shirley used his magic to Nullify Strike’s own removing his stat boosts and managing to Blitz him and deal great amounts of damage to his hide. “When I Win this, it's going to be my greatest masterpiece ever, called MiracleBikiniTownsAmityMarsiClamDimsPricklyGeniusRetroBellwoodEndsOOOAaronBeachNowhere!” Strike laughed at this as his arms were torn off. “Ha, and What a Chaotic Nightmare It would have been”, he said as he Bit down on Shirley’s outline and Tore it off, reducing him into a liquid state. “What Is this?” he called as Strike then jumped OUT from the paper they were drawn on and fired an X at the paper itself.
ADAPTING, ADAPTING, ADAPTING…..
….
ERROR ERROR ERROR.
Shriley was X’ed Out.
K.O.!
Results:
That fight certainly got real in the end. This battle was the tricky combination of extremely close due to them both having massive, MASSIVE arsenals of powers to pull from, and extremely hard to determine a winner just because despite their huge arsenals, it would be extremely hard to find a way to put one of them down. Shirley and Strike both scale to the same general stat range in their baser forms, and also could both just endlessly bolster their stats infinitely in response to one another, so they couldn’t get any kind of edge over each other in raw power or speed. They also both come with insane means of regeneration to the point that what their physical stats are, basically just become a NON-Factor. A similar thing also happens when you look at their arsenals of powers, where normally very helpful powers like Flight, Massive Super Intellect, Teleportation, Time Travel, Invisibility, Cosmic Senses and (Jesus I could go on for Hours) end up yielding no net advantage to either side of the matchup, because they both have it. These two are the kind of characters that are easier to define by what they CAN’T do rather than what they can. So this matchup really just needs to focus in on what their most unique and potent abilities are, and how they properly interact, and most of all, what their actual limits may be, and the rest will fall into place.
Shirley’s adaptation power is one of the most broken defenses we have ever seen in one of my blogs, but it is also something Shirley relies on in order to protect him from Hax, as neither he nor The Fairies he gets his powers from naturally have very good resistances. Unlike Strike who tends to independently have resistance available to almost all of his own powers. Basically, Shirley had to find a way around a wide variety of different defenses in order to one-shot Strike with a hax, meanwhile Strike only had to find a way around One to do the same.
However that on the surface didn’t make this easy, as while Shirley not starting with resistance to these powers is notable, his Adaptability CAN provide him that upon it being relevant, and he could adapt ways around Strike’s own resistances, and that’s in addition to his already broken arsenal. His Math Manipulation would totally nullify Lazlo’s Probability Aura, as Probability, regardless of how good it is, is still a value and number that applies mathematically.
That said, Eris’ Chaos Manipulation was a different story. Chaos manipulation allows one to essentially ignore logic and rules like math, it’s adherent power is to do crazy things that don’t make sense. And as Eris is the most powerful chaos manipulator in all of cartoons, who passively causes all disorder in her universe just by being there, she could easily equal out, if not flat out over power fairies’ math power. However even if it is stronger, Chaos Manipulation would never be sufficient enough to destroy Shirley because he can persist even after being removed from existing in spacetime, thanks to his Fairy Magic.
The Magic’s ability to allow one to undo being erased from history and existence, would have even allowed Shirley to persist and return from The Void in The Amazing World of Gumball. But it wouldn’t quite be good enough to survive Strike’s X’ing power, as that is erasing you from the fiction itself, rather than merely history. Shirley also likely wouldn’t be able to persist against the X like TTG Raven could, as while Fairly Oddparents CERTAINLY ran for a long time even after enormous quality dips, Shirley as a character really didn’t, not being referenced in the show since his original premier.
But Shirley’s Adaptation could just continuously counter or misdirect any of this right? Well Maybe, but there is a catch, and bare with me, things are about to get Meta. Adaptation is Shirley’s most broken power, it allows him an automatic defense of Type 4+ Science and Universal Warping Magic instantly Changing Reality to make him able to win out in any situation. But believe it or not, there was something that it Couldn’t Adapt To, and That was the Absolute Plane.
Metafictional Manipulation, Is the ability to affect the Absolute Plane, aka a Higher reality that is more Real than you are, which to a fictional character, like in cartoons, means being able to alter their world much like the real human animators in our world can. This is a level of control above Math Manipulation even, and thus would work as a good be all, end all counter.
After watching every single bit of Material in both the Jimmy Neutron AND Fairly Oddparents franchises, there isn’t a single bit of evidence to suggest either verse has ANY Metafictional manipulation whatsoever, with the closest things being characters making a few brief references to being on camera in early season 6 of Fairly Oddparents, but still, nothing concretely saying that they have even 4th wall awareness as it reasonably could have been an actual camera in those situations.
True, Fairly Oddparents does sometimes show live action people, such as when The Nega Chin found and beat up his own comic writer for always having him lose, just for a quick example. But that's the thing, The Nega Chin is a fictional character within the Fairly Oddparents world, meaning despite him being live action, this writer is in the fairly oddparents world, and not our own.
This also lines up well with how other Nick shows also treat Live Action Humans as just a part of the world the cartoon characters inhabit, instead of as higher plane entities, it's more treated as a funny style of animation than anything directly Meta. On that note, Metafictional abilities are actually Extremely Rare in Nickelodeon series in general.
While they of course do exist in some shows to a certain extent, they are very uncommon, seen as unusual, and are often quite limited, with some of the best examples happening in said series’ supplementary material like comic adaptations where Nick has less direct creative control. This is because Nick actually has somewhat of a policy against Metafictional Humor, something which was seen most famously when The Angry Beavers were going to go full Meta for their final episode and break down how it was all a cartoon and nothing was real, and Nick canceled the episode midway into production, with only the audio surviving.
Cartoon Network on the other hand, is a MASTERCLASS of Metafictional Manipulation, featuring some of the biggest toonforce juggernaut series in animation history such as Ed, Edd n Eddy, Chowder, The Amazing World of Gumball, Uncle Grandpa, OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes! And the Original Looney Tunes just to name a few!
The only way to counter Metafictional Manipulation is to have some form of Metafictional Manipulation yourself, even just having ‘resistance to Metafictional Manipulation’ is still having it to a limited extent, as anything less wouldn’t work by merit of just being ‘Not Real’ by comparison. Which means Shirley would need to adapt Meta Abilities to counter. SINCE Metafictional Abilities, Especially ones as broken as the ones Strike has access too, Don’t exist in Nickelodeon, let alone Jimmy Neutron or Fairly OddParents, it would therefore be a No Limits Fallacy to just assume Shirley’s Adaptation can somehow replicate this, so we are forced to say it would Fail.
That said, if Shirley were to get his hands on Strike’s Pen, it would be all over right? Maybe, if he could actually take it that is. This pen was used to CREATE the Cartoon Network shows, characters and CN City itself, and that all suggests very heavily that the Pen is an Absolute Plane, Metafictional Object.
If one pays attention to the times the pen was interacted with, they will see it was touched by only 5 different things in the special. Strike himself, who scales to numerous Meta feats. A chunk of CN City and the Pen’s own Beam attack, which both also would qualify. K.O. Himself, who has his own slew of Meta feats he learned from Holo-Jane, and Garnet.
Garnet, despite being from one of CN’s more serious shows, does have meta feats, both in her fused Sardonyx form, but also displays direct meta feats herself in the Uncle Grandpa crossover, Say Uncle. Which while stated in the ep itself to be noncanon to Steven Universe, IS canon to Cartoon Network as a whole, and therefore would apply in a crossover situation like this. Heck even the Tiny Toons characters manipulating it is consistent to this rule, meaning Shirley likely had no way to interact with the pen whatsoever, and therefore couldn’t use it to become meta, which gets into the Biggest reason I think this fight went the way it did.
I Love Nickelodeon, but one reason why I love it is because the shows are designed to be relatable. The characters, even in some of their wackier series, have struggles and day to day problems similar to us and keep things more down to earth and grounded. Their goal is not to inspire us to aspire for greater things than we think we can do, but to comfort us by showing that others are going through things with us, and making light of those very situations, unlike CN, which does the Opposite.
Cartoon Network is full of Hero’s, Warrior’s, Legend’s and Dreamer’s.
Iconic characters who expand their world's reality, or break it entirely and make it different, and inspire those watching with their drive, creativity and resulting achievement.
These are characters who fight for what they love, and Never give up against anyone, even Strike himself, and that I think sums up exactly why Strike wins. While they seem pretty even on the surface, Shirley draws his power from a multiverse of characters he’s basically invincible to, while Strike draws power from a multiverse of characters who CAN and HAVE Stopped Him before. If you put Strike in Nickelodeon, he would be just as invincible as Shirley was, but Shirley against the Cartoon Network Multiverse, would eventually lose, just like Strike did. With Strike using the same powers of the characters that can bring threats like them down as a weapon, He had the proper means to defeat a cartoon god.
It was a close fight, but when all is said and done, ‘Surely’ a mere Nickelodeon is easier to Strike than an entire Network of Cartoons.
The Winner is Strike.
In any hobby or field of passion, there are downs and there are ups, and then there are those few milestones that justify the whole endeavor. There come points that are the moments one recalls when looking back on how you've spent your days.
ReplyDeleteI guess the first thing to say is congratulations Thor. I know how long you've worked on this, and I want to say unequivocally I wouldn't trust anyone else in the world with this blog. Even before getting into the technical quality, I commend the passion on display. But to get into that technical quality...
This is the greatest vs content I have ever consumed. There are few matchups between two characters that could be more ambitious, as there are few franchises as immense as these two to fully scale. Despite this, there's immediate tact and mastery evident in every section of this blog. Your knowledge shines here in the vs context, and even moreso your passion shines in how well you relate these series. Your writing evokes the best of these characters and their reflection of their multiverses; from the naturalistic relatibility to the abstract elegance of Strike, and somehow paradoxically contrasts them while making them feel as though they belong to the same world. And by the climax of your blog, perhaps they do; perhaps the duality of what is real and what is not is captured in the art of exaggerating the real for effect; the cartoon.
Your character sections I know must have been challenging with these sheer amount of abilities both characters had but you did a very nice balancing act of expressing the possibilities and the most broken peaks without redundancy. It's remarkable how well you capture the spirit of these two franchises in these characters, from the descriptions of the broken possibilities of math hax in a naturalistic setting to the interesting expressions of meta-power born from artistic techniques. You've said to me before one of your favorite themes in fiction is balance, and that to me is what is beautiful about this blog. It captures the importance of the balance in cartoons between the real and the abstract, the line Scott McCloud refers to as the line connecting the icon and the person.
Speaking of, the fight was amazingly done. I greatly applaud how you really built up to each level naturalistically, a trait I've never felt able to do; in my own works I find it's always a static level or a jerky back and forth of one person winning on one level, than the other on the next and so forth. Conversely this bridged that gap; naturalistic but elegant, the characters powers interacting and moreover their archetypes interacting was so immediatly clean. When I first stated I thought you might be able to write them better than their own specials. But you write them better than even their own archetypes would allow normally by writing them as expressions of their franchises.
The final section of the fight, from the moment the different cartoon multiverses meet and are reconciled matching the time that Strike and Shirley develop, reaching out characterwise to take in that missing element of the other like yin and yang is absolutely breath-takingly beautiful. I wander through fiction feeling neutral about most of it, I find it hard to truly hate any work of fiction and hard to love any work of fiction, but this was I can say fully a work of fiction I unabashedly loved, a perfect expression of the meeting two styles of cartooning, and in so, two ends of human thought, and in so what is beautiful about animation.
DeleteYour conclusion was also fantastic, I can only imagine how many details went through your mind but it was immediatly clear from how you expressed it. You explained it perfectly, and I think it acted as a good explicit expression of what was embed in the fight, not just vs-wise but also emotionally and symbolically. The part comparing what you love about these two franchises was...I try for pathos a lot in my writing, but true pathos is difficult to express, nonethless I felt it dripping off each word. I could tell just how much time and energy you've spent with both of these multiverses and how much they mean to you.
I don't really know how to end this comment, but I guess I wanted to reiterate that I know how long and hard you've worked on this blog and I want to say I think it really shows and paid off. Happy 30th Anniversary of Cartoon Network and Happy 45th Anniversary of Nickelodeon, this is a blog worthy of celebrating both of them.
As Shirley's melting body begun to harden back into steel, and his adaption kicking in yet again, a extremely bright red light shined all over... whatever Shirley called this place, as Nicktoons shielded their eyes and Cartoon Cartoons braced for impact. Staring at the epicenter of what looked like an afterlife beyond afterlife itself, magical tears started to flow from The Villain's eyes, hoping and believing that his immovable magical shield and his immense adaption could block the colossal, unstoppable force approaching him.
ReplyDeleteX
But it wasn't registered. All the forces he had merely had his frozen body slowly descend to the city of cartoons below. The encompassing red faded out, and the stone statue of Shirley now stood in the center of the still lively and colorful town, marked as a landmark, and what caused the creation of...
"C.N.I.C.K City."
This was a battle between the ultimate antagonist of Nick and CN, full of destruction on a multiversal scale, and you captured that vibe perfectly. As action packed and destructive as the battle may be, there were some small quips and interactions that kept a comedic side to the fight, and while I expected the winner to be laughing like a maniac in the shattered cartoons and childhood that remained of every show on both network, the fight ending with both characters coming to terms and creating a world connecting all shows on both like building blocks is truly beautiful.
As for the verdict, I expected the fight to boil down to Strike being more experienced and intelligent to use his massive amount of abilities more effectively (and Mother of Pearl do they both have a ton.), or possibly how different the Nick and CN universes/multiverses are, kind of like how I thought that was a major point when I did The Reaper VS Shirley a couple years ago, but Strike being able to affect Shirley on a level neither he nor just about any Nicktoon had access too makes a lot more sense, and how Shirley adapting to that would be akin to a No Limits Fallacy rather than something more logical. Nickelodeon sets up a world and many problems for it's protagonists to overcome, and even literal superheroes like Danny Phantom or Jenny Wakeman must abide by these rule and have to adapt to the society they live in just as much as they fight the monsters out to destroy it, but to be one that has some control over your world, being just as much as a creator as the people that create your world are, and if your someone like Red Strike, someone with the power to make it so there are no heroes to challenge you or even erase every heroes that has lived in your world...
THAT is Cartoon Network.
I don't know where to begin to describe how fantastic and well put together this was. All I can say as another fan of Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, you absolutely have done justice to both networks and what they stand for. Honestly, I would have guessed Dexter vs Jimmy Neutron would have been the best possible CN vs Nick matchup, but you really saw something special with Shirley vs Strike and they really do work as a representation of both of their networks respective strengths of. Honestly, I think I came out of this with more of a respect for both networks in ways that I haven't before. I can definitely say you captured the feel of both networks perfectly and your love for both networks is highly apparent throughout this blog.
ReplyDeleteThe analysis for both characters was fantastic and I like how you tied the history of their networks into their backstory. I was surprised to see some things in the analysis, like the reference to Ned's Declassified but it still made sense in the context of the analysis. The amount of detail you went into in the analysis, whether its references to whole bunch of different shows or detailed explanation of powers like math manipulations shows you definitely took your research of this matchup really seriously and didn't skimp out on anything. Shirley had an absolutely perfect analysis as someone who watched the Jimmy/Timmy specials, and despite not yet watching Strike's episode, you absolutely made me a fan of his character both in his analysis and in his interactions with Shirley in the fight. The music throughout the blog was well chosen and fitting, and I like the touch of including music from the Nick/CN crossover games like Fusion Fall and All Star Brawl.
I loved the fight and the way you had their powers interact really does justice how formidable these titans of animation really are. So many neat details, from the cameos of various Nick and CN shows to the creative way you showed a division of reality occuring, to the various ways math manipulation was used. Just a really fun fight really.The entire section where Nick shows get integrated into CN City was a great touch and now I am thinking about how amazing that would be to see those characters interact (Lazlo hugging Rocko and Bessie was wholesome btw). It's kinda crazy how I never noticed how little fourth wall breaks occur in Nickelodeon,
let alone that there was apparently a network mandate banning them. Thematically, it was absolutely perfect that Strike ace in the hole against Shirley is using the absolute plane.
In a way, it transcends this from being a fun fight between two powerful cyborg threats into also being a thoughtful analysis of the guiding philosophies of the networks so many of us have nostalgia for.
So fantastic job Thor. You really put a smile on my face with this. And I look forward to learning about the Tall man next time.
A cartoon clash for the ages! I had no idea who either of these guys were before this blog, thanks for the guide to the Nick and CN metaverses! This one was huge, I can only imagine how many hours you put into it. Between the very detailed and thorough background on both combatants and the tremendous amount of crazy abilities they each had, not to mention the epic battle itself, this blog lived up to the hype two final bosses like this could generate when they clash.
ReplyDeleteReading how Timmy and Jimmy created Shirley was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I can't believe those two...well, maybe I can lol. Magic and technology meeting is always a really cool concept (first fell in love with it with Final Fantasy) and Shirley is one of the most interesting characters to exhibit this fusion. He feels like a very sympathetic villain and when you were discussing his personality/character near the end of his background section, I wanted to just give the guy a hug and be his pal. I'm glad things turned out well for him in his multiverse.
Strike on the other hand, I'd say he fills that other sort of villain role I really dig: a terrifying force of nature that can't be reasoned with. I wouldn't say he's very sympathetic other than being a principle given form and thus unable to not cause death and the end of worlds. Then again, he seems to really love his job! The things that really stood out about him to me were his magic pen (soooo cool how it's connected to greater toondom like the Tiny Toons stuff) and how he really felt like the final boss of a verse when you look at what opposed him, where everyone including minor characters came together at the end to stop him. Speaking of “stopping”, it really speaks to how strong both of these fighters are given they were only stopped, never killed.
Moving on to powers, thanks for the very cool explanation on how OP math manipulation is; I loved how you used it throughout the fight itself. And that long section on fairy magic, jeez! It's a good thing fairies tend to not be too bright or malicious. But then you give it to a supergenius villain AND remove all the restrictions of the rules that normally bind it! Adaptation is probably Shirley's coolest power though, and I figured the ability to overcome it would be instrumental in settling this debate.
On Strike's side, that power to “X-out” anything is fearsome indeed. Plus it's so stylish! Pretty funny that TTG could somewhat resist it.
Gonna have to split this comment in half, gettin' too big lol.
The fight, oh boy, the fight! First of all, I haven't mentioned the blog's music up 'til now and I really should, it's fantastic! Had me boppin' along throughout my read and then you kicked it up even further for the battle. I'd say this is one of the most action-packed matches you've written and I had a blast getting taken along for the ride. I haven't watched their shows but the dialogue sounded great, with plenty of comedic moments mixed in with the seriousness that mounted as the two realized how significant this battle was (culminating in that cool shared line near the end). The formatting was one of the most interesting parts about this section. The way you included the stat blocks when the arm was used, the magical equations, that fantastic “split” part when the two fighters were in different worlds and of course, the signature “ADAPTING...” which set up the finale so well. It was nice to see you try new things with this fight like that, made this extra special blog even more noteworthy. If I had to pick a favorite part, it was probably just before the end where Shirley came up with an amazing name for a new realm. Oh, and the intro before the “Fight!” Those scenes sometimes get left behind when people get excited talking about the big action scenes and dramatic moments, but the opening to this fight was one of the best you've ever done imo. Felt right out of a cartoon, gave me the feeling I was sitting back watching TV as I read it. Funny interactions, too.
DeleteI agree with what you said in your concluding arguments and wow, this part was big too! Fitting. I also appreciate how you continued to fill this section with great and relevant gifs from across both franchises; kept things visually appealing and fun just like the rest of the blog. Good job delving into the crucial metafictional aspects of this fight; that example with The Nega Chin was a neat reveal on how live action relates to Nick toons. Congratulations on finishing what I'm sure you consider to be one of your masterpieces...and you'd be absolutely right! You did an exceptional job on this one dude, so take a bow! Oh, and the trailer for the next big blog, oh my God!!!! I am EXTREMELY excited, I love Phantasm and The Tall Man is one of my favorite horror villains of all time, and that's saying something as I'm familiar with most of the big ones. Could be one of the blogs I'm most excited for ever. Let's keep celebrating Halloween all year long together!