#It has a sweet Gladstone & Donald cousin story

[adamarinayu]

Not me lamenting that I can't (affordably) get Topolino in USA

#Marina Muses #I want 3461 so bad #It has a sweet Gladstone & Donald cousin story #AND a Paperinik story #Anyway now I must one day visit Italy for the sole purpose of buying every single PK story to exist #(with the exception of Pikappa ofc) #(I'll even take PK2 but ya know) #and this one specific Gladstone story #2 AM posts #/j btw if it wasn't obvious

[tcsauaskblog]

What's the most wholesome thing Gladstone has ever done for Donald? ps: this blog gives me life

Gladstone can't cook. Sure, he could probably whip up something and have it taste moderately ok, but that was just his luck kicking in. It’s not like he knew what he was doing. 

‘Oatmeal’s so easy it’s practically cheating,’ he remembers Della saying a forgotten amount of years ago. And if Della could cook anything even remotely edible, then surely Gladstone would have no problems. It would be fine. He totally had this in the bag.

He looked up from his table of ingredients to the home phone hanging on the wall and had the fleeting thought of calling Gran. Not because he couldn’t do it or needed any help or anything, but just to be sure for assurance's sake. 

But no, he couldn’t call her even if he wanted to. Gran had taken Del and Feth up to the mountains for an overnight Woodchuck retreat and wouldn’t be within phone service till Sunday. 

Meaning Gladstone was on his own.

Gladstone rolled up his sleeves and gave a huff of determination. Like he thought, he’d be fine. Making dumb oatmeal was totally within his capabilities. Prepare yourself world, Gladstone was about to rewrite history and make the best freaking oatmeal ever!

He turned on the stovetop under a saucepan of water and brought it to a boil before adding in a cup of oats. He doesn’t really know what else you put into oatmeal besides, well, oats, but he had a distinct memory of Don’s oatmeal always tasting sweet and cinnamony, so he adds a spoonful of cinnamon and honey and keeps stirring. 

Somewhere in the back of his head, Gladstone thinks Don usually puts more stuff into his, making it taste creamy and sweet and delicious. But asking Don about it would seem like he lost this battle and Gladstone would not give Donald that satisfaction, so he pushes the thought out of his head and keeps stirring till the oats seemed soft enough.

Turning the stovetop off and letting the oats cool down a bit, Gladstone cuts up an orange and makes some honey lemon tea before putting everything on a tray and making his way upstairs.

He knocks on his cousins’ door twice, but doesn't wait for an answer as he opens it anyway and walks into the dark room. 

“Wakey wakey, eggs and.. well... ok so I didn’t make any bacon. Or eggs. But get up anyway, I have something better,” Gladstone sing songs as he balances the tray on his hip and uses his other hand to flip the light switch on.

The lump of blankets in Donald’s bed shifted as soon as Gladstone walked in the door, but it was another few seconds of jostled movement before a head poked out of the pile of quilts and glared at Gladstone.

“Go away,” Donald practically growled, and Gladstone had to forcibly stop himself from flinching at how scratchy and gravely Don’s voice was.

“No can do patient zero, I’m your self designated nurse for the next two days whether you like it or not,” Gladstone says, grabbing Della’s desk chair as he walked over to Don’s bed.

“Since when?” Donald croaks again, and buries his head under the blankets once more just as Gladstone took a seat beside him.

“Since you collapsed in the field a couple of hours ago with a 102-degree fever and nearly gave Gus and I a heart attack,” Gladstone comments as he sets the tray down on the bedside table beside them. “Gus is fine by the way, I sent him back to Cuthbert’s a little while ago after he helped carry you in. What have you been eating lately anyway? Took us nearly five minutes to haul you up here.”

“Shut up,” Donald groaned again before poking a one-eyed glare at Gladstone from under the blanket. “They couldn’t send a prettier and nicer nurse?”

“Excuse you, I’m the prettiest and nicest nurse in this joint. You’re lucky to have me, there’s a teddy bear down the hall that’s in dire need of a stitch job and here I am tending to your dumb ass instead,” Gladstone remarks as a heated joke, but quickly regrets it when Donald just breathes haggardly and stays a little too still under the blanket for Gladstone’s taste. “Anyway, can you sit up? You need to eat something. I made you some oatmeal.”

Donald didn’t reply back for a few quiet moments, and Gladstone almost thought he had gone back to sleep. But before Gladstone could shake his shoulder to check, Donald rolled over from his side and slowly sat up, the bed creaking the entire time as Donald rubbed his eyes to adjust them to the light. “You... you made oatmeal?”

Gladstone swallowed hard at the sight of his older cousin, and didn’t think it was possible to look so pale and so flushed at the same time. His cheeks and forehead were tinted a soft red, but his hands and arms looked clammy and washed out. There were dark bags like bruises under his eyes, a combination of stress and sleep deprivation that had overworked him to the point of getting a fever and Gladstone felt absolutely sick with how tired Don looked.

His eyes were a glazed over blue, unfocused, and hazy as he lazily made eye contact with Gladstone. “I... I didn’t know you knew how to make oatmeal. I didn’t know you knew how to make anything.”

“Please, oatmeal is so easy, it’s practically cheating,” Gladstone rolled his eyes and hoped he could get away with quoting Della without Donald noticing. 

It must have been a testament to how rotten Donald was feeling because he didn’t question it a second time and just nodded sluggishly, stifling a yawn as he balanced his head against his knee and closed his eyes.

“...Don’t need it.... I’m ok,” Donald muttered halfheartedly into his knee, like he was desperately trying to convince himself instead, and the worried knot in Gladstone’s stomach tightened into something angry and frustrated.

“Still dizzy? Need any more ibuprofen?” Gladstone asked, trying not to let the worried knot that had tied itself in his gut over the past few hours tighten, but Donald just shook his head softly.

“Don’t lie to your nurse, dude. You’re obviously not ok,” and Gladstone hated this side of Donald. The stupid stubborn side that refused to let anyone in and help him when he needed it. It reminded Gladstone too much of himself, which honestly made him hate it even more. “You can barely sit up and talk to me. Can you suck up your stupid pride for like, two seconds, and just tell me what you need?”

Donald gave Gladstone another one-eyed glare, but there was hardly any fight in his words when he mumbled a, “Really... I’m ok... Just tired.” And Gladstone was seriously starting to get pissed off now.

“If you say you’re ok one more time, I don’t care if I’m your nurse or not, I swear I’m gonna smack you,” Gladstone snapped, and was surprised when Donald let out a low and wheezy chuckle. 

“Are you... really trying to pick a fight with a sick guy right now?” Donald mused and Gladstone almost rolled his eyes so hard, he would have hurt himself if he wasn’t a pro at it.

“Oh, so NOW you’re sick. But when you’re hauling irrigation pipe around in 100-degree weather while being so dizzy you can barely walk straight and with a high enough fever to boil an egg, you’re all, ‘oh, don’t worry about me gran,’ and ‘I’m totally fine Della, go have fun.’ And by the time we figure out you’re not, it’s too late and you’re already half-dead in a creek somewhere,“ Gladstone complained, throwing his arms up in the air exhaustedly.

“I was in a field, not a creek.”

“My point is,” Gladstone rubbed his brow in annoyance, and tried to remember that he was indeed trying to take care of Donald, not pick a fight with him. But Gladstone was his cousin first, caretaker later, and it was high time someone spoke up to Donald about his self-sabotaging tendencies. “You always do this. You always push yourself too hard and never let any of us help you when you need it, and I’m getting sick and tired of having to worry all the time about you lying to us about whether you’re ok or not.” 

Gladstone crossed his arms over his chest tightly and let his words hang in the air, his eyes glued to Donalds in a fierce sort of way that practically dared Don to try and argue back with him.

But to Gladstone’s surprise, Don just knitted his brows tightly and shifted his gaze. Hugging his legs to his chest and resting his forehead on top of his knees, Donald muttered a soft “...I know... Sorry,” that caught Gladstone completely off guard.

And Gladstone had never seen Donald cry in all his 13 years, and Donald wasn’t crying now, but his eyes got an intense watery that made Gladstone’s heart turn ice cold and sink all the way to his feet. 

And maybe it was just that Donald was really sick and tired and wasn’t in the right headspace to put up a fight and defend himself against Gladstone, but still, Gladstone couldn’t help but feel the guilt of his earlier accusation tear through his angry exterior like a knife through butter, and Gladstone melted into something soft and forgiving and far less intimidating and hard-pressed.

He was still frustrated with Donald, but to be fair to his cousin, it wasn’t like Donald tried to be difficult like this on purpose.

Donald’s always tried to do things by himself, ever since they were little kids. He always tried to carry the world on his shoulders and be the singular pillar holding all his family up. When they all moved into Gran’s for the first time, Gran made a comment to Donald that he was the man of the house now, and she would be needing his help to take care of everyone. Gladstone knows Gran only meant it as a way to cheer Donald up, but Don took it all too seriously, and used it as an excuse to do things on his own.

It really wasn’t like Donald was too prideful to ask for help, like Gladstone. It was just that he didn’t know how or when it was ok too. And he’d much rather burn up completely at both ends before he ‘burdened’ his family with what he considered ‘his’ responsibilities. 

And it was frustrating cause in the same light, Gladstone didn’t know how to offer help without it seeming like he was looking or picking a fight.

“You don’t have to apologize, it’s just,” Gladstone sighed, and ran a tired hand through his hair before leaning forward and resting his elbows on the edge of Don’s bed, craning his neck so that he could make eye contact with Don from where he was leaning his head against his knee. “I don’t like doing this. I’m not good at doing this.”

“What... taking care of my ‘dumb ass’?” Donald muttered sarcastically. 

“Seeing you sick and being useless to help you,” Gladstone stated flatly, staring at Don’s eyes with a heated deadpan as they got wide and electric with surprise.

“Helping you is the easy part dude. Getting you to let me is what I’m not good at. You know it’s ok to take a break, right? I know I complain about doing chores and all, but it’s not like I won’t help pick up the slack if you need it.” And Donald's eyes were large and blue and glued to Gladstones as he continued, trying with every once of his luck to get Donald to understand his wishes. “You don’t always have to do everything yourself all the time. You’re allowed to take a step back and breathe once in a while. It’s not like everything will fall apart without you there to hold it together, ya know. We’re not so fragile that we’ll fall into ruin if you don’t run yourself into an early grave to fix everything yourself. You’re allowed to ask for help.”

Gladstone leaned forward and tapped Donald’s forehead a couple of times and gave him a wry smile. “So I don’t need you to apologize. I just need you to be ok. Like, really be ok. And to not try to take on the world by yourself. You’re not alone, dude. Stop acting like it.”

Donald didn’t retort with anything witty or spitfire back, which Gladstone half expected him to, but he nodded honestly and clearly, and gave Gladstone a wry smile of his own.

“Ok,” was all he said, and that was as good as gold for Gladstone.

“Ok, good!” Gladstone straightened up in his seat and reached over for the bowl of oatmeal on the nightstand. “It should be cool enough now for you to eat. I can’t promise it’s like, the best thing ever, but you need to eat something and I’m pretty sure this won’t make you feel any worse.

Donald took the bowl slowly, and raised an eyebrow of surprise in Gladstone’s general direction.

“I still can’t believe... you made me oatmeal.”

“What, like it’s hard?” Gladstone answered back, leaning forward on his elbows once again and looking at the bowl with a nervousness he didn’t quite know what to do with other than to not show it to Donald at ALL costs. “Just eat it before it gets cold, ya skeptic.”

Donald took an unhurried bite, and chewed for what seemed like a torturous forever to Gladstone, before breaking into a gentle smile.

“It’s good,” Don commented while he chewed, and smiled even bigger when Gladstone physically beamed on the spot.

“What, really? You mean it? I knew it wouldn’t be like, horrible, but it was my first time making it so I wasn’t sure and-,”

“Try it,” Donald interrupted, still smiling as he held out a spoonful towards Gladstone, who, in his defense, took it immediately in his excitement over his first real cooked dish. And didn’t even think twice about possibly getting Donald’s sick germs, (even though he never gets sick anyway.)

As soon as the spoon entered his mouth, Gladstone started coughing and gagging, and almost downed Donald’s entire cup of tea in one swig to try and wash the oatmeal down.

It wasn’t like it was horrible, it definitely was by anyone's standards edible. But it wasn’t good by any means either. Gladstone had definitely put too much cinnamon in it, and the honey was almost nonexistent, making it all together just taste way too bitter and chalky.

“UGH! You liar! You said it tasted good!” Gladstone barked, wiping his mouth with his sleeve and staring daggers into Donald as his cousin smiled innocently back. 

“I said it was good, not that it tasted good,” Donald supplied simply, taking his spoon back from where Gladstone had thrown it back onto the bed and taking another bite. “Not that is matters. I’m pretty sure this fever made me lose my sense of taste.”

“What’s the difference then?” Gladstone demanded, and Donald just continued to smile softly into his bowl, his soft blue eyes practically illuminated against the red of his cheeks.

“It’s warm,” Donald replied back plainly, not looking at Gladstone as he took another big bite out of it. “I like it.”

And Gladstone didn’t really understand what Donald meant by that, but a pull in his stomach told him it was a compliment, and he could feel his own cheeks get hot with pride. So he stood up abruptly and said something about getting Donald a glass of water as he walked toward the door, not wanting to show Donald how pleased he was by the praise. 

Even though the oatmeal wasn’t a huge success, Donald still liked it, which meant Gladstone won the battle in the end.

Once he had gotten a glass of cold water from the kitchen and a cold wash rag for Donald’s forehead, he made his way back up the stairs towards his cousin’s bedroom.

Gladstone had left Don’s bedroom door open when he left, but before he could announce his arrival, he heard Don’s quiet snoring. Donald had fallen back asleep, with half of his body uncovered by his blanket and with the lights still on. Gladstone shook his head and smiled, but when he walked over to put the glass of water down on Donald’s nightstand, he noticed the bowl of oatmeal completely empty against Donald's side. The spoon was still hanging out of his mouth. 

“Dummy,” Gladstone said with more affection then he’d ever let Donald hear while he was awake, and took the spoon out of his mouth with the utmost care. He put the empty bowl and spoon on the tray and recovered Donald with the blanket, making sure to tuck in any stray limbs. He brushed some of Donald's wild bed hair out of the way before placing the cold washcloth on his forehead. Donald sighed quietly at the contact, but otherwise made no show of waking up anytime soon. Gladstone noticed that his fever didn’t feel nearly as hot as it did earlier, and felt a sigh of his own escape his lips in relief.

Gladstone gathered the empty bowl and spoon on the tray, leaving all but a single slice of orange that he stole for himself on Donald's nightstand, and put Della’s desk chair by where he had found it. 

“Call me when you need me,” Gladstone said, and didn’t care that Donald was fast asleep and couldn’t hear what he had said when he turned off the light and closed the door.

#tcs #Teenage Cousin Shenanigans #tcs ask #tcs fic #donald duck #Gladstone Gander #fucking WHOOPS #Here i am supposed to be finishing up the first chapter of the abner story and instead #i just went fucking apeshit on this ask without meaning too #oh well i don't regret it but #huh this was not where i imagined the night to go #anyway here ya go #it's probably not the most wholesome but #it's been a sweet story of the two in my head for like 3 years now and i didn't know how to fit it in anywhere #glad is 13 and donald is 14 #i based this on my brother who this has actually happened to #he one time was so sick but just like??? #ignored it and kept working #and then night came and the rest of us were like??? where the fucking is mike #and turns out he was out in the pasture surrounded by our cattle cause he passed out while changing pipe #his excuse was that he had shit to do and didn't have time to have a fever or heat stroke and we were all like #BRO THAT'S NOT HOW THAT WORKS YOU NEED TO FUCKING LISTEN TO YOUR BODY HOLY SHIT YOU COULD HAVE DIED #But anyway yeah some soft glad and don fluff for your viewing pleasure

[wakquack]

I TL 2848-4 - Gastone e l'apporto fortunato

“I’ll admit, never would I have thought Gladstone to be such a nice travel buddy.”

This entire story is so sweet? Gladstone and Donald going on holiday together, with the explicit intention of Gladstone’s luck ensuring Donald has enjoyable holidays. And they are straight up just having a good time. Gentle cousin content.

Donald: Up to now, all my holidays have ended in catastrophes.

D: This year I booked a room in a rather expensive hotel in Malatesto for a week.

D: I really hope I will find some rest and relaxation there.

Gladstone: (hums)

G: You know what? I think I have an idea.

D: Do tell?

G: What if you invited me and we went on holidays together?

G: With me and lady luck on your side, you’d be protected from any bad occurences!

D: Huh...

[...]

Box: And so time passes happily, until...

D: And I am back to everyday life! But I feel ready for it!

D: Because this time, I am fully relaxed. What a great idea to go on holiday with lady luck’s favourite, hee hee.

D: We should do that again!

G: Just call on me, cousin dear!

D: I’ll admit, never would I have thought Gladstone to be such a nice travel buddy.

#gladstone gander #donald duck #duck comics #lara molinari #I TL 2848-4 #ltb 429 #wak posts

[popculturebuffet]

Goof Week: Sports Goofy in SoccerMania: GoofTales Woo-oo! (Paid For for WeirdKev27)

Gorsh all you happy people and welcome back to Goof Week, my Weeklong Celebration of everyone’s favorite goofus. 

And today we have a special treat, something nice and obscure but something that still has a vital place in Disney History. Welcome folks to Sports Goof in Soccermania!  

So yesterday in my Goof Troop review I wished there had been another DuckTales episode with Goofy, you know maybe find out what happened to Peg, see Max and Roxanne again that sort of thing.  Whelp SOMEONE must’ve hid a Monkey’s Paw around here somewhere because I got this special instead on comision. This is a VERY intresting little artifact as it came out only 4 months before DuckTales, was produced around the same time, and was written by Tad Stones, who would both go on to work on DuckTales and even more importantly create Darkwing Duck. 

Not only that but it has some odd things attached to it: it’s the first major production starting Scrooge, as he had an educational short about him, the first animated appearance of the Beagle Boys and most important the FIRST time Russi Taylor would voice Huey, Dewey and Louie, something she’d do till her passing a few years ago. At the time of this article she has not been recast, though I personally vote for Cristina Valenzuela, who took over the role of Young Donald and frankly does such a good job with that voice I didn’t know if Russi had already recorded lines for Season 3 before her passing. 

So what IS Sports Goofy in Soccermania you ask? It was a TV Special from 1987, again four months before DuckTales, that was later sold on VHS. My guess is Disney intended for this to become a regular thing like the Charlie Brown or Garfield specials, but my honest guess is with DuckTales MASSIVE success they wanted to put all the TV Animation resources into making more shows to go with it. The fact the special is essentailly a Scrooge story with Goofy in it and Scrooge and the Boys were now tied up in DuckTales probably helped the decision. So we only got one of these and i’m proud to share it for Goof Week. So join me under the cut to see what a Sports Goof is, what Scrooge sounds like without Alan Young or David Tennant andto see me refrence the film UHF because I likes it. 

 So we open with the titles which are neat and then open at the Money bin, we even get a great sign gag that looks like something Carl Barks would write.

So Scrooge greets his nephews the way he greets everybody.. with a canon to the face... though he backs of firing once he realizes it’s them. The boys ALL wear red this special so .. I guess Huey won and now rules all three bodies with an iron fist? So the Huey Hive Mind asks Scrooge for a donation, a standard Scrooge setup, ask the rich asshole for money, as their trying to help the local soccer program and they need a buck fiddy for a trophy. 

Scrooge’s voice here.. is terrible. I do not like to bash voice actors, they are hard working talented people who do a lot of great stuff, often for less pay than they deserve, and this blog ALWAYS makes that painfully clear. And Will Ryan is not without talent: While he hasn’t done much i’m familiar with he did play Petrie in Land Before Time and was great in it. So while I don’t dislike him as a person.. he did an utterly DREADFUL Scrooge. He dosen’t really attempt to do a scottish accent despite the character still saying cannae at one point, and as for what accent he is going for...

His Scrooge just sounds like someone trying to do a “foreign” accent and failing. It just sounds weird and makes every bit of his dialouge aside from one a chore to sit through. And the dialouge isn’t bad dialouge, it’s a well written and animated Scrooge even with the lower budget than Ducktales, but the voice just ruins it for me. Even without Young and Tennant to compare it to this just blows and the fact it’s paired up with the iconic Russi Taylor voice for the triplets.

This being Scrooge he instead fishes a Trophy out of the bin that’s all banged up and dinky and shoos them out. So in natural Barksian fashion the trophy turns out to be worth a million dollars. So we get some reaction shots.. INCLUDING GRANDMA DUCK!

For DuckTales fans joining us who have ZERO idea who that is, since she sadly did not make it into the reboot and Frank did have ideas, Grandma Duck is Donald, Della and Gladstone’s grandma. She’s a sweet old country woman who lives on a farm and is in fact the one who sold him Kilmotor HIll, with her husband renaming it from Killmule hill. I like her a lot since she reminds me of my own grandma and like her she still works when she can. Donald’s cousin Gus loafs around and eats as her farmhand. As you can tell I like her a lot, agani because she reminds me of one of my grandmas so this was nice even if she was only around for 20 seconds of screentime. 

This ends up in the paper and sends Scrooge through the roof, literally when he finds out. 

Two notes  before we move on: The bin has a unique really cool design , though I get why other productions haven’t used it: besides this one’s obscurity while cool it just looks a bit TOO nice for Scrooge. Even in 2017 while still damn cool looking it still looks practicle. This .. is not that.

This looks like MC Hammer built this. It still looks awesome bu tit’s just not Scrooge sadly. 

The other is that his Butler is named Jeeves here, but looks almost exactly like Duckworth. Just feels weird is all. 

Naturally the Beagle Boys happen upon the paper too and their leader, no name given has a plan: Enter legitmately and win the cup all legal like, which dosen’t sound like it lives up to the beagle code of no hones twork.... until he brings up theri going ot cheat their asses off. 

Meanwhile Scrooge tries bribing the boys with a giant trophy at their house... with Donald oddly absent despite Anselmo having taken over for Nash by this point. I know he was still a bit rough at the roll, but come on. It’s just.. weird especailly for reasons i’ll get into soon. 

So Scrooge agrees to sponsor the boys teams so he can get the trophy back square, and is forced to buy a knew ball and here we FINALLY get Goofy. I say finally because this special is 20 mintues long and it takes almost a fourth of it for him to arrive. It’s just weird for him to not be in it for so long. I mean I don’t want THIS

Flashbeagle didn’t take a fourth of the special to get to Flashbeagle. It did take longer than that to get to the title track but when your sitting on THIS

You gotta use it JUST right. Goofy here is not played by Bill Farmer, which IS odd as he did start playing him that year, but my guess is they weren’t sure if they were going with Farmer or the actor who played him in this special, Tony Pope, so they were trying out both as whoever DID get the role would have it for life. Disney takes the casting of the sensational 7 VERY seriously, as evidenced by the fact most cast changes are caused by death and unlike with Tony and Donald it’s clear Colvig hadn’t picked a succesor. I can also see why it’s a hard choice: while farmer IS excellent and was the right man for the job, Pope is still excellent in the role, bringing the warmth and energy you’d expect from Goofy and having excellent comedic timing that’s vital to getting the dog man right. I can see why this was such a hard choice, even if I also see they went with Farmer: Farmer just has slightly more energy to the roll. It’s a small diffrence and something that dosen’t effect the special, but it is a KEY diffrence and the reason Bill’s THE goofy to me even over his original voice actor Pinto Colvig. 

Also I may of mispoke there... see it’s not Goofy in this special it’s SPORTS Goofy. No really every bit of dialogue refers to him as Sports Goofy. It’d be like if they refered to then CEO Micheal Eisner as Won’t Think Through Eurodisneyland Micheal Eisner. 

So Sports Goofy helps them get a ball in an honestly awesome way and shows despite his clumsy manner, he’s damn cordinated, easily putting everything up and showing some real skill with the ball. So Moneygrubbing Scrooge decides Sports Goofy is his ticket to get the trophy back and recuits goofy as coach and star player for the boys team. 

So Asshole Scrooge meets his team the Greenbacks.. which are a bunch of random animal characters with no real personality. They are a hippo, a goat, expresso the ostrich, a navy (blue) seal,  an elephant in a beanie, a killaroo and a cheetah or leopard. But I have one question, really simple really easy one...

You need 11 players for a soccer team, thank you google. So they DID get that accurate. With Goofy and the Triplets you only need 7 more. THIS is why Donald’s absence is glaring: he’s just oddly not there when they needed 7 other characters but Elephant in a Beanie gets in there. And it’s not hard ot fill either: Donald , Daisy (Because duh), Gyro and Grandma Duck (Because both cameoed but I only mentioned Grandma Duck, though this is ALSO Gyro’s first apperance), Gladstone (who as it turns out had a cameo storyboarded that didn’t make it into the final product), Gus (Since grandma duck) and Scrooge’s butler since he was in an earlier scene anyway so why waste the character model. They could still play the same roll as easily steamrolled underdogs and it’d make more sense.  It just baffles me that with such a deep bench to play from, they don’t use ANY OF IT in favor of the cast of Animal Soccer World.

The Greenbacks can’t play for greenjack, which worries Scrooge.. but Goofy is able to carry them to the finals, while the Beagle Boys make their way there too. We find this out.. via newspaper transition. We get a bunch of headlines telling us what happened instead of you know a montage because that costs money and they already spent 1.50 making this special.. they only have 50 cents left. 

So the Beagles recognizing Sport Goofy is the only thing in their way plots a kidnappin. We get a gut busting scene of the beagles all hiding in Sports Goofy’s house with him being oblvious only to spring on him. 

The next day with Sports Goofy a no show the team is bummed, even mor ewhen they find a kidnapping note from Don’tGetNotToLeaveEvidence Beagle Boys. Seriously give that to the officals. 

So Asshole Scrooge tries to give a rousing speech... and it is a sight to behold and the one highlight of pope as scrooge... it’s why I picked it as the article image. That glitching isn’t me by the way: it REALLY does that. Coupled with the yellow eyes i’ts just fantastic. So the team decides to morosely play the game and Hivemind Huey boos scrooge for not having faith in him. Instead of again you know telling the officials. Maybe assimilating the other made Huey dumber. I

So the game begins and the Cheating Beagles cream the Give Up To Easily Green Backs, while Sports Goofy watches from the other Crime Beagles hideout. It honestly reminds me of UHF: a dumb well meaning guy whose vital to something succeding is kidnapped.. it dosen’t involve Weird Al dressing up as rambo but still. It also makes me want UHF but with the disney cast. Fethry as weird al, Donald as his best friend, Fethry’s girlfriend for the comcis as weird al’s girlfriend, Gyro as philo, Goofy as Stanley, and Pete of course is Stacey Keach. I could go on but you get the point. Someone draw this.  Sport Goofy is a clever bastard and escapes by working one of his shoes off, taking a nearbye knife and cutting himself free.. and almost stabbing a beagle boy in the face but that would just make two. Sport Goofy escapes and the lunkheaded beagle boys chase after him IN THEIR CAR WHILE GOOFY RUNS AHEAD OF IT.  Goofy, he can really move! Goofy, he’s got attitude! Goofy HE’S THE FASTEST THING ALLIIIIVEEEEEE. Sport Goofy makes it in time fo rhalf time, rallies the troops and it goes how you’d expect: They overcome the beagles blatant cheating, win the cup, the beagles attempt to cheat with a rigged ball backfires and they all get arrested. It’s by the numbers stuff. We end with Scrooge deciding to dontate the trophy instead (though in a great bit asking if it was tax deductible), and posing for a team shot> We get some awesome credits music and we’re out

Final Thoughts:

This special is mediocre: There are only a handful of great jokes, it’s your standard “teamwork makes the dreamwork plot” that dosen’t work because our underdogs really CAN’T play without their star, and Scrooge’s voice hurts to listen to. Pope and Taylor are great and while Will Ryan is an awful Scrooge, he is a good Beagle Boy or five. 

It IS worth a watch though. It’s riffable enough with the sometimes sloppy unfinished animatoin in the last part and Scrooge’s terrible voice, and it is still is a neat oddity for 90′s kids like myself to not only see Russi’s first thing as Huey Dewey and Louie, but to also see Scrooge and Goofy with vastly diffrent voice actors, as well as Gyro and the Beagle Boys first animated apperances. The fact this came just months before Ducktales makes it all the more intresting. So if your looking for a legit good Disney product.. this is shoddy at best if well meaning. But as a bit of disney history, especially only clocking in at 20 minutes so it’ sa brisk watch, it’s worth a look if your into that. 

Next On Goof Week: We come on in To The House of Mouse where goofy becomes faster than a speeding punchline,  more powerful than pete when his family has to wrestle him to the ground to take him to the doctor and able to make tall leaps of logic in a single bound. it’s SUPER GOOF!

So thank you for reading and if you liked this review give it a like and consider joining my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. As a patron you’d get access to exclusive reviews, the patreon’s discord and to pick a short each time I do one of these shortstaculars. Donald’s comnig next month and the deadline is in only a few days to join up for said month so the clock is ticking. Even a dollar a month helps me reach my stretch goals so please i fyou can sign up today and if not, I understand and i’ll see you at the next rainbow

#sports goof #soccermania #goofy goof #goof #scrooge mcduck #ducktales #huey duck #the beagle boys #gyro gearloose #grandma duck #animation #disney #soccer #football

[drummergirl231-2]

Hello, nice to meet you. I would like to ask you this, would you ever wish Lena and Violet would get more varied interactions with people? Don't get me wrong, I LOVE them a lot but their interactions do feel limited at times since it's usually just with each other and Webby and that's usually it which kinda makes me hungry for more of the Sabrewing sisters interactin with other characters?

Honestly, same. 

I mean, I know there’s no way all of us can see what we want to see. There are so many characters in this show, and the writers have a specific story in mind to tell. Even they have to cut a lot of the stuff they wish they could include for the sake of time.

Still, I’d love to see the Sabrewing girls interacting with more characters. I expected them to interact more with Gladstone in “The Phantom and the Sorceress!” but after Gladstone told Team Magic what happened to him, they pretty much just started interacting with each other or Magica and ignoring Gladstone’s bs for the rest of the episode. 

Story-wise I dunno if I’d wish it were different. The focus definitely needed to be on Lena. It’s just that after seeing so much Gladstone and Lena fanart for the last two years or so, I had been hoping for more interaction between them.

On that note, we saw Scrooge promise Lena she’d have a place in his family when “The Shadow War!” premiered in August 2018, and even though we saw Lena escape from the shadow realm in May 2019, we didn’t find out until September 2019 that Lena was living with the Sabrewings. 

So, naturally, for over a year, I imagined her joining Scrooge and fam at the mansion.

And as lovely as it is that Violet has a sister now, and as cute as their sisterly interactions are, I’d be lying if I said I’m not a little disappointed about Lena not being part of Scrooge’s immediate family, because I think father-daughter interactions between these two could have been so cute, angsty, awkward, sweet, hilarious, etc. 

I also really wanted to see her interacting with Donald and Della as their new little cousin. Della would absolutely adore her and I think Lena and Donald would really bond over their shared musical interests (not sure if he’d be able to make her a fan of the Three Caballeros, though XD). 

As for Violet, I’d like to see her interact with Mrs. Beakley. After all the fuss Mrs. B. made about Lena hanging out with Webby in “Terror of the Terrafirmians!” I wanna know if she was quicker to approve of little bookworm Violet, or if, in her overprotectiveness of Webby, she’s wary of anyone Webby plays with outside the family. 

But more than Mrs. B. and Violet interactions...

I LOVE THESE ADORKABLE BABIES!!! 

I need them to be bookworm buddies. I need it like a ninja turtle needs pizza. These two nourish my soul. 

I mean LOOK. AT. THEM.

#ducktales 2017 #ducktales lena #ducktales violet #ducktales

[scream-into-the-voiddd]

this looks like fun! [I can’t seem to find the og poster but i got it from @lizzaroona]

September 1st: Favourite s1 episode?

Honesty a super hard pick, and i think there are better episodes in the season but the one i go back too most often is ep 10 “The Sear of Selene” 

It just has some of the best character moments (for me) and is truly funny and interesting. And has some real insight into Donald and Dewey’s feelings about Della and her being gone. we saw glimpse of this in ‘dime chase’ and ‘woo-woo/Atlantis’ but here we actually see the pain Della left in her wake. And what it means going forward. 

Plus stokeulse is a big sweet boi and i love watching him and Donald ‘re-connecting’ speaking of witch it is also the frist time Scrooge and Donald have a form of re-connection to 

“just like old times ah lad”

look at that face.

its a strong ep and lead the way for bigger ‘emotional hits’ down the line (the last crash of the sun chaser)

September 2nd: Favourite triplet?

I don’t really have one as they are all fleshed out and well rounded, that being said I am looking forward to more of Huey this season. But i don’t have a fav.

September 3rd: Favourite member of team magic

Webby, but i don’t know if that counts as she is main cast so i see her more often then any other Team Magic characters. The girl is fun and filled with so much love and she is to be feared. and I love her faults to she is awkward and hyper-fixated on Mcduck history to the point that its scary. and is a fun loving social shut in.

She is just so multifaceted and complex that i love her with all my heart.  

September 4th: favourite three caballeros 

I am bias on this one as i love José Oliveira (the og José) and anything involving that funky little parrot makes me happy. But in DT17 I do love that there is elements of that Og Jose in his characterisation

like in s2 ep 4 

when he calls over and hugs Donald (so sweet), and that he knows how to claim Donald down so fast (by making him dance and then getting him to sing) and to my knowledge he is the only one to do this in the whole show not just once but twice, so it shows that he has a deep understanding of Donald that most just don’t, and i have always loved that about their friendship.

plus from what i can tell from that ep as well it was Jose’s idea to meet up and he planned the trip (as he payed for it) so the fact he made arraignments for Panchito, Donald and THE BOY’S (+ scrooge) shows how much Jose really loves his friends, and plays an umbrella as an trumpet.       

September 5th: favourite ep of season 2

This was a hard one as most of the eps knock it out of the park, but i’m going to have to go with, ep 16 “the Duck Knight Returns” its just such a good ep and has so many wonderful layers to it, and i was actually caught of guard with the final Jim Starling twist. like i can’t even remember the lat time a twist hit me that hard (i got side swiped) I actually had to sit in silence for a solid minute or two and then watch the whole ep again.

they wasted no detail big or small in this ep (like that Jim was already wearing an unbuttoned DW suit and had the hat in the box next to him, or the sound drake made being thrown into the bathroom just like og DW, and the meta jokes and the animation, the whole ep just went so hard) 

and it was a really fun way to ‘pass the torch’ from one actor to another, especially playing with the idea of someone just not being done with the character yet and not wanting to let go, (as a lot of audiences have that issue, with re-boots and relaunches, and especially when a version of a character has an unfinished story left, think Andrew Garfield’s spider-man for e.g.)

i could honesty talk forever about this ep but i’ll spare you all.     

September 6th: favourite hug? 

Honesty its a three way tie...

1) Scrooge and Della when she first comes home. Just they way he scoops her up like a kid and holds her tight, makes my heart full. 

2) this one with Louie, just the mother son embrace was really earned here. 

3) and this one with Jose and Donald, its rare we see Donald so happy to see anyone (who is not his family) and just how naturally he ran into his arms was so nice. And Jose dropping his umbrella right away show how he knew what was coming. Plus i am a big fan of men showing their love and friendship in sweet fun ways like this, so a win for non-toxic masculinity here.   

September 7th Gizmoduck or Darkwing duck?

this is a hard one as i do like both of these hero boy’s and i have talked about how they have conflicting views of their own success through the other (basically, Drake has is personal life together, but Fenton has his hero life together, and i think it would be a point of envy for both characters) And I love Fenton and Drake for different reasons, but at their core they are somewhat the same just two people who want to help others for no other reason then it is the right thing to do.

And i Love what the show has done for both characters but...I will have to give it Drake by a fraction of a hair (feather?).

As unlike Fenton I only needed one ep to be 100% on board with Drake and i know everything i need to know about him from that. As DW had a whole ass show for a reason and that one ep showed it. As Fenton is a wonderful character and he is a very well done character, but one of his defining traits is that he is all over the place (like in his life, work, the way he specks ect) but that can get messy from time to time as it can be hard to be ‘on board’ with someone with no clear ‘goal’ persay (they did cover most of this in “who is Gizmoduck” but some of it still lingers now that can be a tiny bit jarring at times) But like that is SUPER Neat-picky, tho. 

And Drake has that chaotic feral energy that Fenton just don’t have (Fenton has more Bi panic energy), but Drake also has tired dad energy (like how he growls at GD in moonvation and when he calls to LP before the set explodes) and i love that about him. 

Get this man his Gosalyn already so he can be the dorky dad he is destined to be.     

September 8th: Favourite duck cousin?

I’m going to have to go with Gladstone, because he is a HUGE prick, but in a way he is not fully aware of. He is generous (he literally offers the boy’s a bucket of diamonds, just because they came by)    

And I love that half hazard nature about him, he is true neutral, things just happen to him and for him and he just takes it, and that is actually really interesting, (don’t get me wrong i love Fethry, Della and Donald) but Gladstone is such a wild card in the duck/mcduck family when compared to everyone else that its a nice change of pace from the rest in a way (all of them good hearted and well meaning people) I generally have no idea what he might do when presented with an actual problem/ choice, so to see that will be fun and this crews take on Gladstone in that regard.

As i think out of all the cousins he has the most growing/changing to do.      

September 9th: favourite ship?

Ok here is the thing.

in general fandom 

I don’t really have any strong feelings about most ships one way or the other. I think a lot are nice and I enjoy seeing others enjoy themselves and all the wonderful art and time they put into it. That being said out of all my years of being in fandoms I have had a grand total of 5-10 ships i am super passionate about and that is over the span of 10+ years. 

and one of the things i love the most about ducktales is how much it focuses on family love and pure platonic friendships (for both kid and adult characters). And that makes my ace heart happy.  So basically I’m saying is I have no strong feelings about most ships in general beyond “aww” or “man i love how much the fandom loves them” and “that is some great art/ fic / creative output I’m happy for them.” 

But with that out of the way, the question at hand.

I’m going to have to go with Donald and Daisy, as from a writing sand point it was so well done and sweet and cute. And it gave a new perspective on a relationship that has been around for 70+ years, so that was impressive all on it’s own, and it is going to be a loving, interesting relationship going forward.

September 10th: Favourite season 3 episode  

I am going to assume that this is out of the 7 eps so far (duh), which again is hard cause this show is just so damn good. But I would have to say it is ep 6 “Astro B.O.Y.D”

now cue story of me as a kid in 3...2...1...

when i was a kid, I was obsessed with Astro boy, i was maybe 6 years old and i loved it. I was a relatively poor kid so in the early/mid 2000′s i would get a lot of my reading/watching materials from my local library. This included 4 VSH tapes of Astro boy episodes for the 80′s series and i would watch the 2003 anime dub on Saturday mornings TV (one ep a week if that), The library also had the first 2 vols of the og manga that i read so many times that i could probably re-sight it from memory. anyway, the reason i love astro boy so much was because it gave me a feeling i had not felt in my young life before that point, even if i did not full understand it at the time.

Its a feeling i still can’t fully put into words, but i will do my best. Astro boy goes right for the heart in every way possible, but it always twist the knife when it goes for, grief, regret and longing agony. specifically when in looks at lost love, usually platonic love (Tobio and Tenma e.g), the feeling these story’s gave me was the complexity of pain that losing love can bring, but it is most effective because it is through the lens of a child (astro/ tobi) and an innocent, loving child at that. The child is (somewhat) untouched by the tragedy (via memory loss) but is still shaped by the love that was put into them, despite the grief's overall out come (the abandonment of said child). So the feeling is a bitter-sweetness that comes from a place of innocents but also personal understanding of the self Astro was made by Tenma, but he was not what tenma made him to be (his lost son) but astro became his own person who loves and is loved by others, and is a whole person on his own outside of what he was made for (and is in a way still A son to tenma just NOT Tobi). and there is that sense of a child just wanting to be heard and understood for who they ARE and not what others what them to be, regardless of their “potential” (in other words personal choice’s and passions that the child actually wants for themselves)

I just love Astro Boy ok...and i never get a chance to talk about it, so i thought i would here, as this list was foolish enough to give me an opening.

Moving on to the DT17 ep.

The Astro Boyd ep. hit all of these notes, the longing agony of lost love (Gyro and Boyd) the regret that came from Gyro for boyd’s creation.

Boyd’s innocents and loving nature coupled with his wants and identity not being fully understood (gyro thinking he is evil, Fenton wanting him to be a hero, Akita having him be a tool and Tesuka thinking he is just a mindless robot) and just wanting to be seen for what he truly is “a defiantly real boy” and he gets that conformation from Gyro at the end!

and Gyro has is own actualisation, about his own grief, after thinking his love was “misplace” for years on end in a way that made him shut down his heart almost completely. Only to find that he was right to let himself love and that love is actually what helped Boyd help himself. Gyro in essence realising that both him and Boyd are not mistakes or failures but two people who lost the one they loved (each other) and have finally found a way back to each other so they can both begin to fully heal.    

So it was a good episode *wipes tear away from eye*

September 11th : favourite villain?

I don’t really have a favourite villain as the show don’t tend to focus to heavy on them and when they do it is somewhat short lived, (like Magica in season 1 and Lunarus in season 2) and since this season has a group of villains (FOWL) and not just one main one like the last 2 seasons, I have a feeling that one of the up coming FOWL members may take the top spot later down the line.  

but if we are going off the one i find most entertaining...

I’m going to have to give it to

Magica she is played as scary, funny and damn relatable on occasion (the funzo scene), and i am never disappointed to see her. I think she is very different from comic magica in a lot of ways, but i enjoy this version for different reasons. And i think this magica has room to grow/ change (for good or for worst). So safe to say i am looking forward to the first ep in the line up.  

September 12th : favourite character?

why must you make me choose...

seriously all of the characters major or minor is shown in a way that makes them feel very real and well rounded even if they have very little screen time. for god sake the ottoman empire guys get character development (one left the show to pursue acting and they fight with scrooge in the moonvation). So this is not an easy pick to say the least.    

but I will be judging it by the one i ‘get the most out of’ so to speck....

and I have to say its a tie...

Donald Duck

I love him ok. He is very small and very angry and he will fight god(s) for his family safety. Anyway, I have always love Donald Duck shorts and everything else he shows up in he is always my fav.

I have always been able to relate to Donald as i too have a bit of a disability that makes it hard for people to understand be (in writing) and i have a ‘voice issue’ that makes me different from everyone around me. So i really understand the feeling Donald have and the anger that comes from being misunderstood in the most basic ways. Its not fun

So Donald has always been important to me in a sense,  

The thing about Ducktales 2017 that i love is that it fleshes out Donald’s already established characteristics, by giving them context (e.g. using his outbursts to protect the boys). this gives him something that me has been missing (in animation) for awhile now, and that is how functions outside of himself.

what i mean by that is that Donald is kind of unique when it comes to the Disney sensational 6, unlike the rest is/ can be

-selfish

-cowardly

-rude/ mean spirited

-a loser

these things are what make him different to the rest but in animation for a while he has been shown by himself (without his family or even Daisy) so all of the above characteristics are not “diluted” or held to any standard outside of Donald’s personal misery.

So he can be super selfish and an all around ass cause, yeah, if your life was one pain after the other no matter what you did and you were all on your own all the time, then yeah, your going to be a miserable little shit.  

But by reintroducing the boy’s and giving him a more defined role (father/ solo care giver) at least at the start of the show, it gives Donald a reason to “fight off” his less than noble parts of his personality. It also makes his action have more weight as everything he does or fails to do effects the boy’s. So that makes him more appealing overall as what he does (or doesn’t) do now matters, and all the tragedy in Donald’s life are also given weight (Della being gone for 10 yrs, and what that did to his relationship with Scrooge) so his pain is now REAL and even tho he is funny and reckless, he is now a person with flaws and failings but also victory's (getting Della back and his family being close again) and dreams (the three caballeros and his relationship with Daisy)

I do love this little Rage machine  

the other fav is

Drake Mallard

(maybe I just like single duck dads? idk, lol)

I have already talked a bit about his intro ep,

but as of right now i am more in love with the potential i see in the character. As we have not really seen to much of him like maybe 4 ep’s total. But Drake is the character i am most hyped to see more of (and the people who are around him, Gos and LP etc.)  

as i find him really interesting and he is (ironically) one of the more “normal” people in the show as a whole, He is not rich (high society rich anyway) he is not an explorer, not a scientist, he don’t have a ‘crazy’ backstory (like Gyro in Tokyok) and he doesn't have a direct connection to Scrooge himself (he never worked for him directly, and is not a family member)

so he is just a random guy, who thought “I’m going to do this crazy shit just because a handsome pilot man said i could if i wanted to”

and honestly that’s cool.    

he is fun and goofy in an engendering way, and his ego is the right amount of controlled (ish) but still over the top. the character is full of story’s that can be taken from the og show and mixed in with the new show (like his intro ep),

Drake is a just fun to think about, and how his world relates to the world of ducktales in general, as they were separate for such a long time, so seeing it come together in a new way is super existing.

I was already blown away by his last solo ep I can’t wait to see more of him (and his how he will be with his Gos, and how that adventure will unfold)  

September 13th Favorited actor/ actress 

now this is just an unfair question, this is a star strutted cast and everyone is amazing. There is a pop culture icon and a Disney legend in the cast (and the fact your not 100% sure which one’s i’m talking about proves my point)

So i am going to cheat a little here, I’m not going off the actors and actress themselves per say but rather I’m going to talk about my favourite performance in the show.

I judge this on two things

1) how much the act ‘disappears’ into the character (as in i don’t see the human person when there talking, even if its still just their normal voice)

2) I can’t see (/hear) anyone else being able to do the role

So on those two things in mind i will have to go with.

Paget Brewster

she just plays Della with this fun life to her, she can switch on a dime from crazy adventurer to comic foil to herself and then have moments of deep self refection. And she had to carry the introduction to the character all on her own, as Della was isolated, so if she didn’t sell Della to us (the audience) then the whole mystery/ build up to Della would have fallen apart. So that was not easy but she pulled it off (with great writing as well).

and she was/is amazing as Della, she is just awesome and I love listening to her and how she plays Della.

September 14th Favourite song

Oh for me it hands down has to be “not good enough” I love a good Bond ballad and Ben kills it. Plus it plays a big part in the episodes theme’s for LP,

its perfect, it fits the story, character and the parody.   

September 15th: Favourite scene from favourite episode.

well out of my top 3 episode (that i have already listed) I’m going to not talk about ‘the dark duck returns’ as there is a scene in there that i will talk about later. my favourite scene out of the other 2 episodes i have picked, i would have to go with...

The ‘Defiantly real boy’ scene from Astro BOYD

(i have already talked about my love for Astro boy and this ep in relation to that)  what i love the most about this scene is that not only did Gyro and Boyd ‘find’ each other again, but they found themselves again.

Boyd turned back into the real boy Gyro ‘made’ him to be (the boy Gyro always believed he was/could be) and that not only was that ok, but the best way for Boyd be himself. Thus his reclaiming of the word Boyd, he is still ‘the same’ but now has a clear sense of what it actually means to himself, mixing both 2BO and Boyd into one. With the love given to 2BO by Gyro and the life experience he has had as Boyd, so Boyd didn’t have to change everything about himself to be complete he just needed to understand that he was loved for being himself and to get confirmation that he is what he believes himself to be a ”Defiantly real boy” (T-T)

as for Gyro, he realised that his love, care and idealism (as he put it) was not misplaced (on Boyd), as when the little boy he loved so fully seemingly turn on him, that broke his heart and his spirit in a way that just would not fully mend. (thus his cold and rude behaviour through out the show so far...) But when Gyro fully embraces his idealism and loving side again (by embracing Boyd) he realises that he can bring his true feeling to the surface again as it was never a mistake for him to do so. thus why he embraces Fenton as an equal, by calling him Doctor and showing the respect he actually always felt for Fenton.

They found themselves through each other, and it melts my heart (T-T) 

September 16th: Favourite moonlander

Penny.

September 17th: Favourite Beagle Boy

Black arts Beagle,

I mean he is the reason we have Duckworth back so thats got to count for something.

September 18th: Favourite scene of your favourite ship

I have to say its this little moment here...

Donald spent the whole episode wanting to impress this woman (Glamor), but after spending time with Daisy decided that Daisy’s dignity was more important then his Big Break. And Daisy returns in kind like ‘yeah i shouldn’t be treated this way’ and its just really sweet. It also got Daisy noticed and most likely jumb started her career and Daisy (again) returned in kind (most likely) by having the three Caballeros perform on stage right after.

so its a small but very insight look into the new dynamic Donald and Daisy are going to/ do have in this show.

[plus this screen shot was funny to me,

i think it has meme template vibes]

September 19th: Favourite scene of  your favourite character.

oh my, where oh where to take this?

every character in this show is so good so this is just hard man....

but I will go with “The Duck Knight returns” one of my favs, and honesty i could talk about this episode all on its own (and I just might after “Lets Get Dangerous” airs)  but for me one of the scenes that really stuck out to me (that others have not really touched on) Is when they have the “meeting” with Alister, Jim, Scrooge and Dewey and then Drake comes in (and then immediately gets his shit wrecked by Jim).

As a film student, I feel this scene on a personal level.

the old(er) man who knows nothing but wants to take control.

the Pretentious “artist” that thinks “making it dark” makes it meaningful.

the person who pretends they know what there talking about but is to stuck in their ways to really change their mind.

and a child or child like understanding (its more common then you think)

(tho i would place LP in the audience position, which is the point of this scene) This scene hit me where I live, and is a really good commentary on Corporate meddling. As there are three ‘battles’ happening in this scene

1) Scrooge Vs Alistair

this acts as a money vs art argument, that is seen all to often in movies and shows, as I can guess we can all name at least one movie or show that has the “the record studio is changing your sound its not authentic...”

but Dt 2017 shows the other side to this and asks

authentic to what? like its one things when its your own creation but what if its was someone else's (like a reboot)  

is it better to be authentic to what was before (the og material), or is it best to take a new direction because its more ‘comfortable’ for you to do (fits your style / sensibility's)

thus leading to

2) LP Vs Dewey  

or a young audience vs the older audience, now Dewey and LP don’t really clash in this ep per say but, they act as a more “aggressive” views on audience backlash now they are Not Malicious but they do act as conflicting presences. Dewey (understandably) doesn’t get why it has to be dark and gritty, or what was happening at all as Alistair is going for a high concept film, but guess what, kids aren’t always great at picking high concepts up (at least not right away) and they can be easily bored by it, if its not engaging in a way that can appeal to them.  

and LP as an older audience member does know what the show/ movie is “meant to be” so seeing these high concepts added in a way that is not in the sprit of og material can be unnerving. And high concepts can miss the point or main message/style of the og material to the point that unrecognisable (*cough*Live action, Titians *cough*).

both of these points are legitimate concerns for audiences to have, as if something is so different its not unrecognisable then why not just make something original? and not draw a comparison.

and if your main audience is meant to be younger, they how are you going to engage them in way that matters to them or in a way they can understand (youth culture or ‘young truths’ i.e. things kids deal with/experience when growing up)          

speaking of which

3) Jim Vs Drake

this one is kind of the mix of the pervious two, or nostalgia vs update? (i can’t think of a better word),  

Jim is so determined to be in the spot light that he is willing to ‘throw away’ is morals (as seen at the end), his ‘artist integrity’ no longer matters as long as DW gets to come back, he just wants some sense of being back that it doesn’t actually matter how (*cough* Teen Titians Go*cough*), so he losses a big part of what made it DW to begin with and not because he don’t care about DW but because he places his value of it in one spot (himself as darkwing)  

as Drake on the other hand. understands that changes need to be made but he knows the movie is off base (he says so himself later), but he puts the value of DW in more then himself, as he has felt it be bigger then what was just on screen (Jim) and has carried that with him here. And since he is set up as an ‘enemy’ here (Jim jumps him) new is seen as an enemy as well, but he literal gets attached for just existing, so yeah not a great move by Jimbo there, and due to nostalgia (both in and out of the show due Jim starling/cummings) most may not of have pick up on it right away.

so yeah, this is an underrated scene and i wanted to talk about it a little as it sets up the rest of the episode.  

September 20th: Favourite friend group 

hmmm....

I have a feeling that this is going to change after the new wave of episodes (i like how team hero is shaping up) but for now i will have to say team science. They just have a nice balance of personalities and ability's, plus they the most team (ish) as they literally have to work together (most of them)

huey, gyro, fenton, manny and lil bulb

and all have their own style and smarts

Manny and Lil blub don’t even talk but they have big personalities and now with the addition of Boyd this little group feels well rounded.

I love them nerds

#ducktales #dt17 #ducktales 2017 #text #gladstone gander #darkwing duck #drake mallard #Donald duck #jose carioca #webby vanderquack #will edit as i go #gyro gearloose #boyd gearloose #daisy duck #magica de spell #della duck #jim starling

[cartoonsliveon]

Ducktales Thanksgiving Headcanons

Fair warning, they may be very Webby centric but....

1. Webby is the most excited for her first Thanksgiving with the entire Duck family because she’s never had anything more than just a quiet but quaint dinner with her granny. She’s excited to have a big dinner with a big family and get into all the Thanksgiving hijinks she’s heard about from Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

2. Lena, on the other hand, is silently dreading her first Thanksgiving with an actual family. Webby is great, the actual best, but Lena doesn’t know where she fits in in the Duck-McDuck clan. Does she even fit in? Scrooge said she’d have a place in the family but... what does that even entail? Is she part of the family if she doesn’t go on crazy adventures with Webby and the boys? What do you even do on Thanksgiving? Every Thanksgiving she’s had before had been no different than any normal day in her life. 

3. Webby is so excited for her first big Thanksgiving celebration that she doesn’t sleep at all the night before. She spends the entire night wide awake, silently running around the mansion like the ninja she is setting things up. She’s dusting and she’s cleaning and triple checking that Mrs. Beakley has all of the ingredients needed for an epic Thanksgiving dinner. 

4. She’s so excited that she even tries to help Mrs. Beakley and Donald prepare dinner. Donald is too distracted carefully reading recipe directions to notice, and while Mrs. Beakley loves her grand daughter, Webby is too full of energy to be as helpful as she thinks she is. So she sets Webby up to keep Scrooge, Della, and the boys out of the kitchen.

5. But that quickly gets boring for Webby so she decides to make her own dish for Thanksgiving and ransacks the fridge and pantry for ingredients no one else needs.

6. Lena feels completely out of her element once all the guests arrive. Before, when it was just the triplets, her, Webby, Donald, Della, Scrooge, and Beakley, she could at least be somewhat helpful to Duckworth. You know, handing him a rag to clean with or opening a window to get the dust out. But then Gladstone and Fethry arrive, as well as some woman named Grandma Duck.

7. The arrival of Grandma Duck is the most amazing and terrifying thing because Donald and Della run out into the entrance hall so fast to hug the woman, Louie and Dewey nearly get trampled on. And then almost immediately, as Donald takes the three pies Grandma Duck brought with her, everyone is trying to steal a taste before they’re hidden in the kitchen.

8. And while Webby is hell bent on having the greatest Thanksgiving feast she’s ever had before with a huge family, and Lena is trying to fit in in the most not awkward way possible, Della is too busy trying to get in as much family bonding with her cousins, brother, and boys to notice what is going on with the girls. 

It’s a lot harder than she realizes because everyone’s doing their own thing and all of the old traditions her and her cousins did were long phased out. It’s incredibly difficult to get people to play games or get into mischief with her because the Duck family is way too competitive for their own good and everyone just wants to chill then go looking at Scrooge’s cursed artifacts.

9. It’s Grandma Duck who sees Lena sitting in the corner, while everyone is playing and talking. Fethry and Huey are off talking about their JWG books, Dewey and Della are trying to rope people in on a game of Taboo, and Louie is off watching the Thanksgiving specials with Cousin Gus. 

And Grandma Duck is the sweetest old woman Lena’s ever met but also low key the scariest because Lena knows, underneath all that sweetness, is a woman who will kick your feathered butt if you hurt her babies. She sits with Lena, waxing nostalgia to Lena about how much she reminds her a bit of Donald when he was in his punk-grunge phase as a kid, and somehow getting Lena to spill her insecurities without even trying. It’s some scary Grandma Duck magic. 

10. And somehow Grandma Duck manages to rope Gladstone in on their conversation while she’s telling Lena a story about the Duck Cousin’s adventures on her farm, and suddenly Lena and Gladstone are having too much fun being snarky with each other to realize Grandma Duck went to help Donald in the kitchen. 

11. Dinner is... something else. Everything is delicious, except for Webby’s butternut squash soup. She had been too stubborn and excited to wait for Beakley or Donald’s help and made the soup all on her own. Webby accidentally put 2 tablespoons of kosher salt and 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar instead of tea spoons. And had accidentally grabbed a shallot instead of an onion to use. The only one who likes it is Launchpad and Fethry.

12. Then there’s the fact that Della is trying to have a conversation with her brother, to make some memorable Thanksgiving moment with him for them to laugh about when they’re as old as Scrooge, but he’s too busy trying to wrangle Dewey into a seat long enough to eat, talking to Grandma Duck, that she can’t get a single word in. 

13. Just when Della is about to lose her lid too about not getting a word in to Donald, who should come to try and ruin dinner but the entire Beagle clan.

14. No one is sure who’s angrier, Webby for having her big family dinner interrupted, Scrooge because of all the days to do attack it had to be Thanksgiving, or Lena because she was just finally having fun. It quickly becomes the entire Duck-McDuck clan versus the Beagle family. 

15. If the Beagle Boys thought Scrooge, the boys, and Webby were difficult enough, they’ve never seen the fire in Grandma Duck’s eyes when her babies are being threatened. They’ve never had to take on Gladstone’s natural good luck, or face both Donald and Della. The Beagles, despite their huge numbers, don’t stand a chance whatsoever against them. Especially when Lena unleashes all her magic when she sees Grandma Duck in trouble. She sends Burger flying through one of the windows. Webby lands an incredible flying kick into Ma Beagle which has Scrooge cackling with laughter as Della and Donald take on Boomer and any Beagle who gets close to them or the boys. 

16. And at the end, with everyone sleepy from turkey, everyone is sprawled out in front of the TV watching a holiday movie while eating Grandma Duck’s pies. 

17. Webby falls asleep for maybe fifteen minutes on top of Lena, only to wake up like she was given a shot of pure caffeine and adrenaline when she remembers that they can start decorating for Christmas the next morning. But this time she can’t hold in her excitement to not rope Lena and the boys into it. 

#Ducktales #headcanons

[kenisu]

DuckTales turns 30 on the 18th of this month, and a friend of mine, Jason Schlierman of DAF Radio, wanted a banner for his Facebook group, so I went full Don Rosa and illustrated a collage of some of the most memorable Duck stories (except, unlike Rosa, I'm focusing on the animated series)! Starting with the left margin... TOP ROW, left to right: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗕𝗼𝘆𝘀' 𝗵𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼𝘂𝘁. Seen in various episodes, but depicted here is its appearance in "The Money Vanishes", after the Beagles teleport Scrooge's entire vault contents their way with the use of a special ray gun. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗕𝗼𝘆𝘀. Namely, Bigtime, Burger and Bouncer, the typical "Big Three" players in most episodes featuring the Beagles. Bigtime is holding the ray gun from the aforementioned episode. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘗𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘹 (the rocketship from "Where No Duck Has Gone Before"). Scrooge visited the studio of the kids' favorite sci-fi TV series, "Courage of the Cosmos", and told Gyro to build a new set for it, making the spaceship "as real as it can be". Well, to everyone's shock, the 𝘗𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘹 actually blasts off during the big unveiling, with Courage and the kids inside - Gyro DID make it real! 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗱'𝘀 𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗳𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗿. Donald spends most of the series in the Navy, but a small handful of first season episodes do feature him, and when he does pop his head in, you can usually bet the aircraft carrier he serves on will at least make an appearance as well. 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗱 𝗗𝘂𝗰𝗸. Here he is in his Navy outfit, running away from the Beagle Boys (Bigtime is pointing the teleporter ray gun at him). No such scenario occurred in the series, but I wanted the characters to interact with each other amongst the margins. SECOND ROW: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘀𝘂𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗗𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗮𝗽𝗼𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗼𝘂𝘀, from "Home Sweet Homer". This is one of those classic episodes that immediately comes to mind when someone thinks of DuckTales. It sort of retells the story of the Odyssey (with tons of creative license, of course), except that it takes place AFTER Ulysses has made his voyage, and his "nephew" Homer is the stand-in character. The Ducks, in a sailboat, approach a cleft between two cliffs, only to have a magical tornado sweep them up and send them back to Homer's time. They sail into the cleft, but the sorceress Circe uses her magic to move the cliffs together in an attempt to squash the Ducks. This causes the Colossus statue, which stands with its legs splayed apart, either leg to a cliff, to crumble away until only its feet remain, making clear why that's all that's left of it in Scrooge's time. I remember, when I was in 9th grade, the English class I was in actually watched this episode on its old laserdisc, when we were studying the Odyssey (though I did nudge the teacher a little into that decision). And when _The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring_ came out in theaters, I immediately thought of this DuckTales episode during the Argonath scene (I hadn't yet read LOTR, so it was new to me). Now that I think about it, I wonder if the Argonath inspired the writer of "Home Sweet Homer" to some extent? 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘀, again from "Home Sweet Homer". How could I make a reference to that episode without also referencing what I still maintain is the scariest scene in all of DuckTales? (Though I guess the fake Scrooge and fake nephews from "Nothing to Fear" are a close second.) This version of the Sirens is terrifying to me. They come across as beautiful female ducks... except... you can tell from the get-go something's wrong with them. Never mind their croaky singing voices; the fact that they're packed up to their heads in what looks like purple mud, with no visible limbs (evoking some grotesque parody of a Pez Dispenser), and that they sway creepily as they sing, makes the whole package VERY Uncanny Valley. When Scrooge is lured to their island, a gigantic ogre-like head with arms and a massive gaping mouth emerges from the mud beneath the Sirens, and we see it's all one hideous creature. To be honest, I think the over-the-top mud monster does take some of the bite out of the subtlety of the horror of seeing the Sirens by themselves and knowing there's something wrong but not knowing what that is, but five-year-old me would probably beg to differ. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗹. The very last episode (technically, two episodes) of DuckTales involved a golden idol in the shape of a goose that gave Scrooge the Midas Touch. The Beagle Boys stole it for Flintheart Glomgold, and after a big struggle in Part Two over ownership of it, it transformed into a live goose, going on a wild spree transforming everything in sight into gold. Eventually the Goose shed its gold coating, and this is where things got epic. The gold it shed onto the ground began to spread, covering all of Duckburg and continuing on to the rest of the world. In order to reverse this process, Scrooge and his few remaining allies had to return the Goose to the fountain it came from, in a monastery in Barkladesh, before the entire planet was lost. There's a particularly memorable space-view shot of the earth as the gold creeps over its surface (so much for the Blue Marble), and I knew I had to depict that in this picture. 𝗗𝘂𝗰𝗸𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 (Scrooge's butler), and 𝗕𝘂𝗯𝗯𝗮 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝘁𝘀𝗶𝗲. In "Pearl of Wisdom", Huey, Dewey and Louie race through a hallway toward their room, to gather their marble collection together for a big tournament. They jostle a stand on the way, knocking a vase off and into Duckworth's hand (Duckworth's expression doesn't change). Then, Webby comes tearing through after the boys, bumping into a second stand with a duck bust, which Duckworth catches with his foot (again, without changing expression). It's one of Duckworth's funnier moments, and I really think he doesn't get enough credit. "Duckworth's Revolt", for instance, is one of the best episodes of the series, and he certainly deserved more than just that one focusing on him. Of course, here I change the reckless character from the usual kids to Bubba the Caveduck and his pet triceratops Tootsie. Bubba takes a lot of flak from critics, and he too I think wasn't nearly as bad of a character as some claim. Heck, I remember just being thrilled at his debut episode, "Time is Money", and sure that had a lot to do with the fact that it was the first new DuckTales episode in nearly a year (an eternity to a six-year-old), but it's actually a really touching story, and Ron Jones really brings that out in the hefty handful of new music score cues he composed for it. There's also the episode "Bubba's Big Brainstorm", which for all its flaws contains an adventure I love it to pieces for. I don't care if you think I have bad taste. THIRD ROW: 𝗚𝗹𝗮𝗱𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗚𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿. Here he is freaked out by the fact that Magica has Scrooge's Number One Dime, evoking the plot of "Dime Enough for Luck", except that the manner in which she's procured it suggests "Magica's Shadow War". I fudged a bit here and depicted her shadow in its "super" form, which it takes on after it casts a spell to be freed from the flesh-and-blood Magica, even though here it's obviously still "attached". Magica's shadow could only grab the shadows of things and not the things themselves (though these objects would float through the air to keep up with their shadows), so here it grasps the shadow of the Dime's glass case. This is another great episode, and the original script is even online for us all to read. Check it out! It's awesome to see everything that didn't make the cut (spoiler: there's a scene where Scrooge and the kids cut through a department store to escape the shadows). And as for Gladstone, he was hypnotized in "Dime Enough" into handing over the Dime to Magica (side note: again, going back to LOTR, Magica actually makes a One Ring reference once she's back in her lair with the coin: "One Dime to Rule Them All", she cackles). Gladstone's character is notorious in DuckTales, because while his classic infuriating luck is there, he doesn't have the kind of gloating personality his creator Carl Barks gave him in the comics (Well, sort of. We do get a quick glimpse of what he's REALLY supposed to be like when he loses his luck and says: "I'll have to get a JOB like normal people!"). If you only watched the cartoon, you'd never know Gladstone was created to be unlikable, as he constantly makes his cousin Donald hate life by winning every contest he enters and rubbing in the fact that he never has to lift a finger to earn his next meal. This is exactly the impression I had of him as a kid, where the only Barks story I read in my youth that had Gladstone in it was "The Billion Dollar Safari", and there isn't much in that tale to indicate I should hate this character with every fiber of my being. 𝗠𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮 𝗱𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗼𝗲. Magica is my favorite recurring villain in both the DuckTales episodes and the Barks comics, and I think it's a shame that she only gets one more episode once season two starts up, and even then it probably only featured her because she was in the Barks story it was a direct adaptation of. Seasons three and four are quite inundated with Flintheart plus-or-minus Beagle Boys episodes, and it does grate on one's endurance after a while. As for Poe, he's actually Magica's brother turned into a raven. We never see what he looked like before the transformation, but supposedly if Magica successfully melts the Number One Dime into her amulet, it'll give her enough power to turn Poe back into his old self. This is a bit of a contrast against Magica's raven in the comics, Ratface, who was in fact an actual raven. Kinda reminds me of the different takes on Splinter between Ninja Turtles comics canon and 1987 cartoon canon. 𝗠𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗩𝗲𝘀𝘂𝘃𝗶𝘂𝘀. Magica's lair. In the comics she lived in a small hut on the slopes of the historical Mt. Vesuvius in Italy (usually these exterior shots have lots of inkwashed surfaces/sharp relief for atmosphere!), but in DuckTales she lived IN the volcano itself (which for some reason was isolated in the middle of the ocean), and Vesuvius was even shaped like her head. I was beyond thrilled when WayForward turned the final stage of DuckTales: Remastered into Mt. Vesuvius, it was so perfect. CENTERPIECE: That's the 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 on the top left, the 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆 𝗯𝗶𝗻 on the top right, and on the bottom, the 𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗼𝘁 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲, "Treasure of the Golden Suns". After Scrooge makes the mistake of opening all three doors in the vine-strewn temple, the giant discs lining the valley catch the rays of the sun and reflect off of each other to trigger the valley's final, horrifying trap: the molten gold deep in the temple's well rises to melt the temple and leave the Ducks stranded on the roof, seconds away from their doom, before Launchpad shows up in the nick of time. Again, I must tip my hat to Ron Jones, because the music in this scene is incredible, to match the visuals. Now, the right margin... TOP ROW, left to right: 𝗚𝘆𝗿𝗼 𝗚𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗟𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗲𝗿/𝗟𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗕𝘂𝗹𝗯. They're sitting inside the Time Tub, which Gyro invented in "Sir Gyro de Gearloose" to escape the drudgery of always having to be the Mr. Fix-It (or "Gadget Man") of Duckburg. Most probably recognize this episode as the source of the shot in the opening sequence on the lyric "...or rewrite history!" The Time Tub also made an appearance in "Time Teasers". 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝘂𝗰𝗸 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗿𝗼𝗻 𝗠𝗮𝘀𝗸, from the episode of the same name. The face behind the mask is that of Count Roy, an old friend of Scrooge's, whose twin brother Ray overthrew his rule and cast him in prison wearing the mask. 𝗚𝗼𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗲. In the flashback scene in "Back to the Klondike", this is how Scrooge first sees his main love interest, on a stage in a saloon, sitting on a swing while singing a song about her love of gold nuggets. SECOND ROW: 𝗠𝗿𝘀. 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗹𝗲𝘆. She's knitting the colorful scarf that would go to Skiddles the penguin in "Treasure of the Golden Suns, part 4". (Maybe I should have had her brandishing a tuning fork?) The 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗮𝘂𝗿 from "Raiders of the Lost Harp". DuckTales just can't get any more vintage than a chilling reveal of a giant statue early in an episode, then the statue coming to life once the treasure it protects is stolen, and spending the rest of the episode pursuing the thief. Scary stuff for a five-year-old, and still pretty effective for an adult, too! 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗮𝗿𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗢𝗻𝗲 from "Sphinx for the Memories". Specifically, the iconic scene of the crescent moon lining up behind the sphinx, a beam of light passing from the head decoration to a similar decoration worn by Donald, to complete the possession of Donald by the ancient spirit. I know I already showed Donald on the left margin, but I figured I could cheat for a scene as epic creepy as this. THIRD ROW: 𝗚𝗶𝗶𝗶~𝗶𝘇𝗺𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗸! Man, the introduction of Fenton Crackshell to the series may have taken some of the wind out of Launchpad's sails when it came to the role of the "heroic" character, but Gizmoduck is too awesome for me to have wanted it any other way. His debut story, "Super DuckTales", was just a blast all around. Blathering blatherskite! 𝗙𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿 𝗕𝗿𝘂𝘀𝗵𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹, an uncannily talented door-to-door salesman. This is a DuckTales-exclusive character from "Much Ado About Scrooge", the story of a race to uncover the lost play of William Drakespeare (that's the play Brushbill is holding under his arm). The late, great Chris Barat speculated Brushbill was, in the early draft stages, intended to be Gladstone in his debut episode, and I think he was right - after all, Brushbill does exhibit the obnoxious personality traits one would expect from Gladstone, and has the right kind of voice, to boot. 𝗙𝗹𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗺𝗴𝗼𝗹𝗱. I know it's probably hard to tell since I drew him so small here, but he's eating his hat - holding up his end of the deal from "Treasure of the Golden Suns, part 2". I designed the margin this way to suggest a character interaction: Filler Brushbill is running away, play in hand, from a frustrated Glomgold, only to be stopped by Gizmoduck. 𝗖𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗠𝗰𝗗𝘂𝗰𝗸 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗠𝗰𝗗𝘂𝗰𝗸. "The Curse of Castle McDuck" is my favorite self-contained DuckTales episode (as opposed to the multi-part arcs). Scrooge takes the kids to visit his chilhood cottage in Scotland, only to discover that his ancestors' castle across the stream is haunted by a bloodthirsty hound, and occupied by druids. While Scrooge and the boys set traps for the druids, Webby ends up separated from the others and wanders into a misty forest behind the castle. The others look for her and, in the forest, find themselves confronted by the hound. Just a GREAT spooky atmosphere all around, helped marvelously along by, yes, the music - in this case, there are a number of electronic cues that lend a truly surreal and dreamlike feel to this tale. FOURTH ROW: The 𝗧𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗮𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘀 roll toward a pillar to smack against it in competition for the Great Games. This depicts "Earth Quack", an adaptation of Barks's "Land Beneath the Ground". I was terrified of earthquakes as a kid (even though I've always lived in areas not particularly susceptible to them - but then, maybe never experiencing any made the fear worse), and I've always suspected it was this very episode that introduced me to the concept of earthquakes. FIFTH ROW: 𝗟𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗽𝗮𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗼𝗼𝗳𝘂𝘀 in the orange helicopter. And, if you can't tell, that's the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook Doofus is holding. Doofus is another character that got the shaft post-season one. Some people were happy about that, but he really never bothered me, even in his biggest moments of overbearing hero-worship of Launchpad. 𝗔𝗿𝗺𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴, from the episode of the same name. Gyro invents a robot that can outperform Launchpad at seemingly any task Scrooge can give him, but Armstrong eventually turns on the family and becomes bent on world domination, and it's up to Launchpad to stop him. It's a nice, solid episode, and I gotta mention the music again, as this was actually Ron Jones's audition for DuckTales composer, and you can tell he really gave it his all. 𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗚𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗻 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗹. These two actually never interacted, being from two completely separate episodes ("Double-O-Duck" and "Spies in Their Eyes", respectively), but as both episodes were spy-themed, I thought it appropriate to have them teamed up here in a sort of "Charlie's Angels" pose. Except their weapons aren't guns. Instead, Feathers is wielding her tube of poison lipstick, and Cinnamon is sort of gesturing toward her hypnotic eyes. Anyway, there are loads of other episodes and characters I could have included, but only so much can fit inside Facebook banner size specifications. I hope I properly captured the better part of what makes DuckTales so iconic! #DuckTales30

#DuckTales #Duck Tales #DuckTales30 #Uncle Scrooge #Scrooge McDuck #Huey Dewey Louie #Webby

[tcsauaskblog]

OH MAN I GUESS IT’S TIME NOW HUH???? THEN HERE WE GO KIDS

So Abner is one of the older cousins (about 7 years older than Fethry). He’s not much bigger or taller then other kids his age, but he’s built like a brick wall and stronger than he looks FOR SURE. He’s a rowdy kid, often getting into lighthearted trouble and roughhousing with other boys in the school yard, but all in all, he really is a good kid. 

He helps his dad out with the chores on his gran’s ranch without complaint, does the nitty gritty jobs so that his gran doesn’t have to, and isn't afraid to give his mom a hug and a kiss in front of the other school boys (even if they’ll make fun of him later for it, which he’ll then get into a tussle about, but more for the sake of principle than actually denying that he’s a momma’s boy and is embarrassed by her affection.) He really is, truly, a good kid. Just a bit rough around the edges is all.

He’s not good around kids though. He never really payed much attention to his younger cousins till they were old enough to actually hang around with. Donald was always a little too feisty and eager to prove himself, which Abner could respect, and he was fun to wrestle with once he was actually able to hold his own. Della talked a lot, but momma said that was just a girl thing, despite her being just as eager to wrestle and get down and dirty with the boys. Gladstone showed off too much, but sometimes his luck would get them free ice cream down at the shops on Sunday afternoons, so he wasn’t too annoying to hang out with. And it helped that Gus was around his age, and able to help him round up the little gang of hooligans when it got a little too much for Abner to deal with sometimes.

And then Fethry came around. 

And he was small. Smaller than the others had been, almost tiny in comparison, and Abner felt his heart flinch every time someone asked him to hold his baby brother. (Either for a family pic for granny or to help momma out sometimes when she was busy) 

It wasn’t like Abner didn’t like Fethry. He was a relatively easy baby. Hardly ever cried, compared to what Abner remembered of his cousins as babies, and usually was content just to be held and giggle. Abner just didn’t know what to DO with the kid. 

He was just. So. Little. little enough that one wrong move from Abner and his baby brother would break into a million pieces. Not to mention the kid was so adored by everyone around him and was the complete opposite of Abner in every way. Abner didn’t think he could stomach the idea of being the reason this little kid, who was all smiles and stars in his wide brown eyes, cried or got hurt.

So Abner did was any kid his age could do in his situation and just sort of,,, avoided Fethry. Not to be mean or difficult, but just to be safe. Just until Fethry was a little older, a little less breakable.

As the years went by though, it became harder and harder to break this avoiding game they were playing, despite Fethry’s BEST efforts. Because the kid LOVED his cool and distant older brother. He’d follow Abner everywhere he went, would try to copy some of Abner’s poorer choice habits (which horrified Abner to no end, thus furthering his efforts to keep away from Fethry so as not to taint the kid) And even though Fethry got older and wasn’t the baby he used to be, he somehow got even more fragile, even more precious before Abner’s eyes. The kid was as pure hearted as could be, while Abner, entering his early teen years, became more and more rambunctious with his shenanigans and got into a lot more trouble than he was probably worth. He became to hard to be near the kid, a shining beacon of everything good in the world, where Abner was bordering on the darker side of that shadow the beacon cast.

Abner didn’t really mean to get into as many arguments about his estrangement with his kid brother with his folks, mostly his dad. But it was hard to explain himself. Abner was a little too much like his father, where words were hard to come by and actions always did the job of conveying his thoughts anyway. His mother, a kind hearted and gentle spirit, was always able to see through his rough exterior and understand him perfectly, but even she was having difficultly understanding his hesitance to be around Fethry. Abner wished he could be a little bit more like Fethry, the spitting image of his mother’s kind soul, But alas, he was too much like Eider, and that made the two butt heads more often than not. 

It was Gladstone’s 7th birthday when the incident occurred. 

The party was being held at granny’s ranch, and it was a big family todo, (family events always were) and Abner was getting a little too smothered with all the constant chatter and loud music. He had only stepped away just to catch his breath, to be able to breathe a little easier without all the commotion. He had taken a walk down to the little pond at the bottom of the hill. 

He didn’t really like water all that much. He wasn’t a very good swimmer, and after the summer he broke into the movie theatre with some friends to see an R-rated horror film about a sea monster when he was 9, he’d never really been able to look at a body of water the same again. But he had half an egg sandwich he swiped from the buffet table in his hoodie jacket, and feeding the bluegills was always something that calmed him down, so standing on the little dock didn’t seem too scary.

Abner didn’t realize Fethry had followed him down to the pond. He should have. Of course he should have known the kid would. Fethry followed him everywhere, like a little duckling would. Abner should have realized Fethry would have trailed along right behind him.

But he didn’t. He was too stuck in his own head, trying to calm himself down from getting too overstimulated from the party. He didn’t realize Fethry was right behind him. 

He didn’t mean to jerk as hard as he did, when Fethry has reached out towards him, he really, honestly, didn’t. The kid had startled him, and Abner was acting on school yard protective reflexes faster than he could stop himself.

To this day he doesn’t really know if he actually pushed Fethry in or not. It hurts to think about. All he knows for sure is two things. 

That Fethry fell into the water.

And that Abner didn’t jump in to save him.

Someone did though, Donald a few seconds later. Where he had come from, Abner couldn’t bother to ponder about. Donald had always been a little too protective over Fethry, acting on those big brother instincts far better than Abner ever did. He must have followed after Fethry when he noticed the little 4 year old duckling toddle away from any adult eyes. He had jumped in the water immediately to save Fethry. 

Abner wasn’t even sure if the Donald could swim. It didn’t matter if he could though. That wasn’t the point. The point was that Abner didn’t jump in, regardless of whatever excuse he could come up with.

And he tried, for years. Abner spent countless hours trying to wrap his head around why he never jumped in. Why he couldn’t move. Why is heart felt like it broke the second Fethry’s signature, stupidly big hat, disappeared under the water. Why it didn’t feel better when both he and Donald broke the surface again, whole seconds later.

The coming days would be a blur after that. A hazy blur that Abner didn’t like thinking too hard about. 

The adults had come to the rescue a few minutes later, Gladstone and Della must have ran to get them after Donald had jumped into the water after Fethry. Fethry ended up ok, if not a little water logged and shaken, understandably. They had demanded to know what had happened.

And Abner couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even make eye contact. Just stared at his own feet, his hands clenching in his hoodie pockets hard enough to leave bruising as he willed the pain in his chest to go away. Donald had no such reservations, and told the story as he saw it. 

That Abner has pushed Fethry into the lake.

Abner couldn’t very well refute it, no matter how much he wanted to. He didn’t mean to push Fethry if he did, he didn’t mean to not jump in after him. He didn’t mean to hurt Fethry. He never did. Fethry was the last person on the earth that Abner wanted to hurt. But that didn’t change the fact that he did hurt Fethry, and that he didn’t do anything to change that.

He was sent away to a boarding school the following week. A school for lost and wayward boys. Boys who had caused so much havoc in their lives, that their parents didn’t know what to do with them or how to help them anymore. It was, for a lot of cases, a last ditch effort to save some reckless boys from causing any more damage to themselves and the people around them. Abner was one of those cases.

He didn’t want to go. Had begged and pleaded and fought tooth and nail not to go. Momma, the sweet soul that she was, didn’t seem like she wanted to send him away either. But Fethry had almost drowned, and neither of them could deny that Abner was the cause of it, and had said nothing to his defense against it. But Pa’s word was final, and Abner couldn’t do anything about it.

The school was strict, but it had never met a challenger quite like Abner Duck. Stubbornness was something tangible, flowing in his veins like the rest of the spitfire Duck traits he inherited, and Abner proved himself to be quite the problem child that everyone had always painted him out to be. 

It was about a year later, that Abner got the letter from his gran that his mother had fallen ill. She died the following spring. 

Abner felt out of sorts in his suit that didn’t fit him quite right as he stood in the spring rain at his mother’s grave spot. It was under the little oak tree on the hill overlooking gran’s ranch. The pond Fethry had almost drowned in was just a little bit away, in viewing distance at the bottom of the hill. Fethry was on the other side of his father. Abner felt bile creep up in his throat whenever Fethry would peek over at Abner with wide brown eyes that reminded Abner too much of their mother, and try to give him a smile. Abner tried not to hate him in that moment. It wasn’t Fethry’s fault. He was only 5. He didn’t understand what was going on. Didn’t realize the weight of momma’s death. Still didn’t really understand why Abner hadn’t been around the past few months, but still. There was a pit of anger burning itself into Abner’s stomach that he didn’t know what to do with.

He hadn’t seen his mother in almost a year, and now he’ll never get to see her. Never get to hold her hands or give her hugs or eat her brown sugar cookies that was the only thing she could bake without burning. The last memory he has of her alive is when she hugged him goodbye before the boarding school bus took him away. Abner was too upset and angry that he didn’t hug her back. If he had known that was going to be his last moments of her, he would have turned around in his bus seat, to at least see her wave him off, with little Fethry, not understanding the situation at all, waving good bye too.

Abner was incredibly heartbroken, but more than that, he was furious. Furious that his father had sent him away in the first place. Away from his mother, the only person who really saw him for his worth. They had gotten into another fight that night, screaming at each other so loudly that they neighbors dogs, a whole acre away, could hear them and started barking in turn. Abner doesn’t remember a whole lot of the fight. Just that they were both raw from grief and heartbreak, and that Abner knew, that without his mom, he couldn’t stay in that house. Not with a dad who was a little too much like him, and a baby brother who couldn’t have been more different. Abner left for the school again the next morning. He hated being in the school, but it was the only place that was familiar enough to return to, without feeling like it was a home. 

Abner got the news that his father died half a year later. Abner didn’t bother going to the funeral, no matter how devastated he was about the news. The only person left from their broken little family, the only person who would, undoubtedly, be waiting for him, was Fethry. And Abner couldn’t see him. Not now. He didn’t know when, but certainly not now. Not after everything that had happened between them.

Abner decided it was best to keep the distance between himself and Fethry. Nothing good came from them being near each other, and this way, Abner knew that at the very least, Fethry would be safer without him around. Fethry had granny to take care of him, and Donald and Della and Gladstone to keep him company. He didn’t need Abner.

Fethry would be better off without him.

#tcs ask #TCS au #Teenage Cousin Shenanigans #abner duck #boy sorry this was long #had a lot of thoughts about the boy #but there you go #that's why abner wasn't in fethry's life growing up #the long awaited abner story #the abner fic would have started out after this all happened #with fethry trying to reconnect with abner because he doesn't remember why abner left and no one would tell him the truth

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Reviews: The Phantom and the Sorceress

Ducktales returns! The Phantom Blot returns to animation after too damn long with a neat backstory, an infnity guantlet and a hate boner for anything magic related. And since Lena is magic related she’s forced to go to her worst enemy and local close up magician Magica De Spell for help. Also Gladstone is here because we missed him and for no other reason. But we missed him so it’s okay. Friendship Is Magic, under the cut. 

Woo-ooo! We’re back! Months later and in a new room, with new things to be depressed about because this year is groundhog day and everyone is bill murray, which isn’t as fun as it should be, Ducktales is finally back on screens and in my heart. And my galbladder.. he really likes ducktales.  But yeah with the recent cancelation of the venture bros, it’s nice to get it’s spirtual littlte brother back just a few weeks later to help fill the void, and while a comparison to it now I know frank’s a fan and noticed the simlarties between rusty and gyro thanks to a tumblr post, the same post for both things inf act, I might just do that one day. But tha’ts not what your here, for , iv’e had to rewrite this intro enough times, Pitter Patter, let’s get at er. 

This episodes opens with Scrooge sitting down for his morning tea when the kids pop out of the tv and hte bored way he figures it out is really hilarious. David Tennat is really good at selling just how Scrooge has both seen it all and has the deductive skills of Barbra Gordon. What eveyrone syaing “Of batman” gets old after a while and she’s just as smart as he is, especially as oracle. Point is it’s a good bit. As he correclty guesses the kids were playing Legends of Nerverquest or whatever that game Huey and Della played last season is called, one of them wished it was real, presumibly Dewey, and Lena’s magic accidently made it happen.  And since it’s her first spotlight episode of the season, and possibly only one since this season is kind of packed, it’s time to talk about Lena! Admitely I PLANNED to do at least her first episode and her two season 2 episodes before this, but life got in the way so here we are. Lena.. is easily one of my faviortes, the number of weblena chats have made that clear. She’sd got a compelling arc, the show tackles abuse well in her narrative, and she and webby have really sweet chemstiry. Plus she brought us Violet and i’ll always be greatful for that and she’s voiced by Kimiko Glenn in her first major voice acting role so that helps too. SHe’s a great addition to the cast and the canon. Same, as the previous comment made obvious, goes for Violet, and the three togther have a great dynamic and i’ts nice to finally see an episode with JUST the three of them post “Friendship Hates Magic.”. 

But yeah Lena’s magic’s been going haywire and I do feel the setups abit rushed.. hilarious but rushed. While Night on Kilmotor hill did establish her magic can run wild, it was also vauge if it was because of her, or it was because magica was messing with her head. IT’s still a plausable setup since we haven’t really SEEN her use her magic or have any intrest and doing so and she’s only done so either while working for magica, to undo something magica did, or to give her sister a mace so she could literally go midevil on some alien ass, it just feels a bit abrubt. And while Night on Kilmotor hill also set up a problem we hadn’t seen on screen, it felt like it gave us more time to ease into it and Lena’s issues, and made it clear SOMETHING was up instead of just telling us that. The rest of hte episode is still good i’ve just seen the show be way better at setup than this. 

But yeah Lena’s magic keeps runing their fun and she feels bad about it, while Scrooge ends up putting his foot and spats in his mouth by voicing his hatred of magic, with all his nephews giving him a “Grandpa no look” and Webby glaring at him.. and whiel I didn’t realize it while watching it.. whiel sh’es given him a disaporving look, the equilvent of shooting bambi in the face emtoinally, she’s only been THIS angry with him one other time.. and it was the time he said “Your not family”. Thankfully this time he’s not in defnstive arrogant bastard mode, so he meekly walks it back to exclude her and she shrugs it off: She hates magic too. And really.. it’s not hard to see WHY given that most times it’s enterted her life, it’s nearly got everyone she loves killed, and that the only spellcaster she knows personally is the absuive aunt whose gaslighted her on multiple occasions, most recently to try and renslave her.  Thankfully before Webby can make an old man bleed for his insesntivity, Della reveals some magical creature is there and Scrooge, while annoyed it’s more magic, is happy for another adventure and invites everyone along. And I jsut love that he dosen’t even show the slightest hesitation bringing Violet and Lena along. As far as he’s concerned probably their family too, maybe not as much as Webby but their still welcome. I mean granted i’m sure della and donald had an awkard conversation with Ty and Indy over all this to make sure it was cool, but still, it’s a nice gesture on his part and show’s his personality: He really dosen’t care who comes along as long as they can pull their weight and share his love for adventure, their welcome.  It’s also nice ot see him and Lena interact since the two really haven’t since the shadow war: Sure he’s been in the same room with her twice, btu they haven’t really spoken. Though my honest guess is they could’ve genuinely meant for Scrooge to adopt her into the family.. but when coming up with Violet found her family adopting her and them becoming sisters to be a better idea and went with that. And to be fair it is, and not just for  shipping purposes, I just wish we got some closure on that line, but i’m also aware the show has a LOT of ground to cover each season, so I understand it probably got squeezed out by all the other stuff going on and don’t really sweat it since we got something better anyway, her getting two gay dads and a sister, it just felt worth talking about.  And in universe.. I feel he didn’t simply because he didn’t either know she was back or have a chance to, though i’m also damn certain, at least in my own headcanon, he helped those men formally adopt her. I mean he owns most of the city, and they probably also had to make Lena legally exist in the first place since I doubt Magica bothered to put her on any offical records that weren’t signed in blood and written on paper made of avian flesh, which given SCrooge’s experince is probably not the first time he had to get a person into official records who came into being by way of magic or some other weirdness. 

Anyways, Lena opts out of the adventure because she’s worried about it going haywire and Webby opts out out of sympathy and while Violet is clearly keen to go, she gladly does so for her sister.. though this just makes Lena feel worse since now her girlfriend and her sister are missing out on stuff because of her, and suggests just going to sleep before she whoopsie daisy magics them to death.  The girls end up woken from their sleep however by a bang at the door. It’s Gladstone!

Yup it’s time to talk about another character I haven’t talked about yet. Gladstone is easily one of the show’s best overhauls. See in the comics while Gladstone is just as lucky and lazy.. he’s also just.. 

Okay i’m amazed it’s taken this long for me to refrence jean ralphio in one of these reviews but i’m glad it was for this.  Back on topic, while I know Gladstone in the comics has his fans, and is softend a bit in european comics, but in most stories i’ve read with him he’s an insufferably arrogant dick. Even BEFORE getting his luck, his first apperance, which I own in trade and read earlier this year, has him trying to take Donald’s house and kick him and the nephews out on the street over a drunken wager to take a polar dive, which Donald fials because life hates him and he’s a coward. Thankfully Daisy rushed in and saved the day because she’s great sometimes ,and turned things on him wiht his own drunken crap, but still, it says something when your first apperance is trying to force three ten year olds and your own cousin out into the cold. 

He .. did not get any better once his super luck came into play. Instead he just flautned it all the time and tried to constnatly win Daisy over from donald.. which had varying sucess based on how much of a shallow dick she was being that story, and in general was just unplesant. He really only works for me in comic in those aformetioned softer times: when a writer makes his luck ruin his love life or add actual depth instead of him just being the raincloud on donal’ds parade. The original ducktales and the going quackers game are the only places I can think of he showed up otherwise, prototype in the old disney shorts nonwithstanding, and Ducktales Classic made him a nice guy from what i’ve heard. Thankfully frank and crew knew exactly what to do to adapt him perfectly: He still retains some aspects from the comics: Donald and Scrooge still hate him, Donald for Gladstone always winning and always having it easy while Donald.. is donald and thus utterly miserable half the time and on fire the other half, and Scrooge because he’s a lazy asshole who gets whatever he wants with the least effort, which didn’t change. What did change was his attitude. While he still is proud of getting whatever he wants in life with no effort and being “the best at getting something for nothing” he dosen’t lord it over everyone else. Sure he’s proud of it but he dosen’t rub Donald’s nose in how much better off he is on purpose, and genuinely loves his family, something I really coudln’t say about most versions of comic Gladstone. While he’s self serving he’s perfectly happy to share his luck with whoever else: He can always get more money whenever he needs it because of course he will. The other factor helping is , as with this entire reboot, the voice acting, in this case the marvelous Paul F Thompkins of Bojack and so much other stuff fame, who really sells the “Sleazy vegas layabout” vibe this series gives him, updating his old aristocratic asshole vibe to something more fun to watch and really being a treat anytime gladstone comes up. Gladstone singing in season 2 was entirely something Paul Improvised during his first apperance they made sure to use eventually. He’s a delight any time he shows up and a total 180 from his utterly agrviating original version. 

As for why he’s here.. said luck. is gone. After being hit by some weird energy, Gladstone suddenly, since he didn’t see it hit him, finds himself living normally: going to a restraunt offers no free meal for being 100th custmoer or anything, his wallet dosen’t magically have 20 dollars in it, and the atm gives him 20 dollars.. which would seem normal except it’s actually usually a sack of rubys.  Naturally Gladstone having coasted his entire life on his magical luck, has no idea how to function as a normal human being and is utterly hilarious as he breaks down. Admitely he’s not the biggest part of the plot, he’s mostly here for comic relief and COULD have been eaisly cut.. but he’s so hilarious and seeing him utterly fail at being a normal person and whine about things as simple as walking or going up stairs is just groovy.  As for what weird magical bolt took it, Violet being violet figures it out quick: The Phantom Blot! For those unfamiliar, he’s a charcter from the mickey mouse comics, though I know him from one episode of house and mouse that adapted those comics that I need to read more of, a master schemer and old school villian par excellence and Mickey’s greatest foe. I was ecastic to see him come here and in the capable hands of Giancarlo Espisto. While I haven’t watched brekaing bad i’ve heard nothing but good thigns and he does his best with what little he’s given. But here instead of a master schemer he’s an infamous magic theif and is obviously the one who drained gladstone.. and unforutntely for scrooge the boys and presumibly everyone else... we see him in action using his fancy infnity guantlet esque magic draining gauntlet to drain the portal they took. Ruh Roh.  It gets worse when he mistakes Lena for magica, and charges after her, though Webby is able to hold him off with the axe she grabbed on the way to the door earlier, and damages his gauntlet. he retreats.. but it’s obvious he’ll be back and both Webby and Violet come to the conclusion Lena needs to grasp her magic in order to survive.. and both have the same unfortunate relization: They only know one person who can do it and Lena, once she realizes what hteir thinking, wnats nothing to do with her, and neither do they. But they have no options: they have to go to magica.  So they journey to her house on Dagobah, with Gladstone tagging along because they need a wacky comedic sidekick to help lighten the mood what with the serious, grim hunter wanting to murder a teenage girl inf nront of her tweenage girlfriend and kid sister, and their only resort being going back to her abuser for help.  Magica however isn’t all that helpful at first. Being Magica her first move is to make a grab for the Amulet to get her power back, which her running crew thwart quickly but naturally Lena still wants nothing to do with her and Magica just insults her for not using magic and because she’s a terrible person. SHe does however end up changing her tune when she hears the blot’s involved. She whisks them inside while we get a cutaway to FOWL headquarters where blot is working on his guantlet more on him in a minute.  We soon get the Blot’s backstory which is actually really inttresting and invovled even if it’s not a lot like who he is in the comcis or house of mouse: A long ass time ago before meddling kids got in her way, Magica took over a small vililage with the threat of destroying it and eveyrone in it outright unless they gave her tributes.. and when those got boring she just did it anyway. Problem was, as happens a lot when evil sorecerers calously destroy hometowns, one of them survivied. It’s even lampshaded by Magica as she points out Blot wasn’t the first. The problem was.. he was persitant. The blot never gave up, coming up with better tech to fight her magic each time and coming back stronger and likely more determined. I like this verson: While he’s not the bwahahah mastermindk, he’s still an utter threat, a force with an unyielding hatred and a burning mission to take out the target of his hate and anything like her. He reminds me a lot of toffee from star vs but if htey actually gave his backstory on screen. A meancing, somehwat quite, or mostly silent in the blot’s case, immortal menace who’s deterimiend to wipe out those who wronged him and anything related to them and has warped from what was once probably a decen tperson into a human engine of destruction with one goal and one goal only. He’s a good enoguh villian for the episode, I just hope if he comes back they give him better lines. his dialouge is really what dosen’t work for me as whiel his backstory and aura of meance work, Giancarlo is given nothing to work with line wise. He dosen’t need to be a chatty cathy or anything, just give him one or too really cool lines. Sometimes tha’ts all you need. Watch how the pros do it. 

I do like this verison, I jsut think they could do more, but given the show has a good track record for only getting better with their villians with every use, I have no worries about that and he’s still a cool enough threat. I also wish we got more of fowl or why he’s working with them. just a small scene with one of them was all I asked, because we’ve barely gotten fowl this season. It’s really one of the season’s only real problems so far: 8 episodes in and while FOWL agents have shown up twice, adn one of the episodes did advance that plot by showing off heron and steelbeak, we really haven’t seen any progress on their plans to both take the missing mysteries or kill the Clan McDuck. HOpefully this changes as we go and again, it dosen’t ditract from the episode itself, jsut the season as a whole.  Anyways, Lena is still relucntant because Magica is terrible and keeps slipping in how much she wants to take the amulet every five minutes. I love the show and catherine tate’s take on magica: just as hammy and nuts as before but when she does have magic, she’s the utter threat she was before too times ten.  But yeah while Lena’s relunctant.. neither of htem really has a choice> Magica needs her amulet secure to get her magic back, and Lena needs to not die. So they relucntantly agree to work together among more hilarous sniping.  Cue a training montage set to a hell of an 80′s tune. The show really has a good habit of making good incdental music to use in bits like this. Lena trains, uses gladstone as the training dummy, and it’s funny as it is creative and we even get some karate kids bit and the obvious star wars refrences. Meanwhile the blot approaches ever closer..  We also find out something important from Magica as she chastises Lena for having fun with her friends while training after Lena uses blue magic instead of purple: Turns out much like spellcasters in say owl house or my little pony each caster has a specific color to their magic, a Colur of magic if you will. Magica’s, and lena using hers is purple while the blue magic we’ve seen from her is her own powered by friendship and love. It’s a nice advancement of what we’ve seen so far: We’ve seen her magic powered by webby is stronger than her other stuff, and we’ve seen it come out during times their bond, or in the case of kilmotor hill her bond with everyone, is strongest. We knew something was diffrent with the magics and it’s now given a though and clearly well thought out explination why: Magica’s magic is hers and Lena was just borrowing it.. the blue stuff is hers and hers alone.  Magica does try to get her to master it by having one of her friends shoot her.. Webby of course strongly objects so Violet takes it up since it is for study after all and her sister can take a hit. Lena also wonders how she can even do magic without the amulet, but as Magica makes clear, and as I outlined above, the amulet is just help. The blue magic is her. Lena fails to use it though to deflect in time.. and to make matters worse the blot shows up after plopping gladstone down and wants to kill them  both.  We then get easily the best laugh of the episode.. as Magica tries stage magic and the blot wonders what the hell he’s looknig at. I mean this is his mortal enemy, the monster who killed everyone he’d ever known or loved... pulling out a bunch of colored rags and asking him to pick a card. It’s amazing. Lena attacks from the side and Webby and Violet quickly asist, with Magica joining in to use the rope to bind him and Lena’s magic kicking in, turning the rope into chain and summoning a snake.. but in a show of badassery the blot easily shrugs it off: he absorbs the magic, escapes and knocks them around while Webby asks the snake for help.. can she speak snake? She hopes so. 

Then things get dire as The Blot starts absorbing the magic.. and killing lena as she starts to fade away. Magica of course can’t even feign dispaointment in anything but loosing her magic. And that’s also something I really love here: The show makes no attempt to make magica better or turn around because it just isn’t who she is and even if she did after all the abuse she did, Lena would have zero reason to forgive her. It’s nice that they DON’T try redemeing her or shoing a brighter side: she’s a bad person, a worse caregiver and they only came to her because they had no choice. 

But as the magic’s absorbed magica does tell her to find the source of the power and we get a great scene: She first thinks of all the abuse magica’s done to her and it’s a harrowing montage to watch. But webby, breaks through that, since that obviouslyf ails and reminds her of where HER magic comes from: Her and webby. and we get an adorable,a nd shiptastic montage as we see more clips from past episodes.. but this time we see their adorable fistbump from “Beagle BOy Birthday Massacre”, their hug from “Jaw$!” and Lena’s return to the world and hug with her lady and future sister from “Friendship hates magic”. IT’s her friends, her sister and the love of her life who are her real source of power, and her magic connects to htem as lena ccccchanges.  And I mean entirely, her outfit changes and she gets these.. weird bright blue eyes. Like I like the rest of her outfits, a white and blue attire to show her change with a badass cape, looks like a superhero so naturally I love it.. her eyes just look really off. Like when Milo Muprhy’s law tried to give characters colored irses. Because no one else in ducktales has them it just loosk.. weird.. Otherwise though I like it. We then get a beam struggle, but with adde dhelp from her friends and her new power, Lena eventually beats the blot, as her sheer power overloads the guantlet and sends him running. However in the confusion the amulet was lost.. and Magica gets it back. Lena whollops her easily, pointing out her magic’s purpose is to protect the world from people like her. It’s a nice development too: Lena realizes MAGIC isn’t inherently evil... it’s how it’s used. Star Vs could’ve maybe taken this lesson, but regardless, it’s a nice bit of character development realizing that magic is a part of her IS Her, and she shoudln’t have to give up something in her nature because of her abuser. Magica, while repowered, is force dto lookf or her staff while Lena gladly floats team magic home. Also with the guantlet broken gladstone is back, as a rain of 20 dolalr bills he uses as tissues confims, and the portal returns, and with Lena you know, havin ga whole superhero outfit, glowing blue eyes and her hair streak now blue, they know something clearly happend and the episode just kind of ends. Still a good one.  Final Thoughts: This was a good one as I just said. While I had my nitpicks here and there as I also said, Lena’s strong character, and the game performances of Espisito, Thompkins, and Tate really add to our usual trlo, and as I mentioned before it’s nice ot see team magic get their own episode now their a full team. IT’s just a good romp and a good way back. I”ve made my complaints clear but their drowned out by good jokes, good character stuff, and good worldbuilding that makes this an utter thrill and a great one to come back to and i’tll also be intresting to see where Lena goes from here.  But wherever she goes she’ll have webby. They can be whot hey are, independent together, if theyt ry. And yes that’s my shiping song for htem and yes I have one. 

Quick bit before I go I dind’t get to, Gladstone flirts with magica when she lands in his arms, a little something for the shippers and a nice gesture on frakn’s part. Whle she rejects him and he dumps her in the sludge with a shrug. I mean.. their probably going to bang at some point. Gladstone’s powers mean he’ll likely find her when sh’es super horny and more than willing, and he’ll be like “eh why not boobs”. I mean I thought about this: I figure his powers allow him to find a willing partner, any gender or none at all I see him as pansexual, who happens to probablyb e loaded and diseased free, whenever he happens to be into it who naturallyw orks out perfectly because if he gets money whenever he wants it, why not sex? It’s not even a concious thing as we’ve seen things just work out for him so of course he probably gets laid, and as we see here it’s only if the other person consets. Good for him. Hope to see him again sooner. I want to see more of him and della interacting and see what she thinks of him. Freshe eys andall that. 

But yeah this was great to come back to. If you liked this i’ve reviewed the rest of the season up to this point and will be reviewing each episdoe every monday till they stop again, so keep an eye out for that.  You can check the tabs on my blogs for more reviews, come back this weekend for regular loud house coverag,e follow for more reviews or shoot me a pm if you’d like to comission me to do an episode. For just 5 bucks i’ll review any episode of any animated show of your choosing, and as i’ve only covered one season 2 episode of ducktales, there’s over 40 left ot choose from if you have any you want to hear my thoughts on. Until then stay safe, quack hard, and Go Team Venture! Play us out Steg .. and Co. 

#ducktales #the phantom and the sorceress #weblena #lena saberwing #webby vanderquack #violet sabrewing #scrooge mcduck #gladstone gander #magica despell #the phantom blot #giancarlo esposito #reviews #animation #disney #disney channel