Doing so to excuse authors is one thing; it is another to do so in order to conserve a coherent canon, without pretending that that's how the authors meant it.
But what coherent canon are we trying to preserve by insisting that Fethry is Donald's first cousin? Has that been established in any story? As far as I know, the only place it's been shown to be the case is the Rosa family tree. Why does that tree, created by a man who only grudgingly included the character on it in the first place, trump the word of Fethry's creators, who appear to have meant him to be a "distant cousin" in the traditional sense of the word?
Besides, there's no evidence that Fethry lives far away from Donald, is there?
Yeah there is. Or, well — he probably moved back to Duckburg at some point during or after the Kinney/Hubbard run, but — his introduction story has him arriving to Duckburg by aeroplane, and Donald hasn't seen him since their youth. (This is, by the way, nicely congruent with Eider Duck sending Donald the falcon through the mail, rather than ever visiting in person.)
I totally agree. Fethry has lived far away for some time, in some Brazilian stories he lives in a pension, a type of lodging chosen by those with little money and has just arrived in the city and wants to stay there for a long time.
Doing so to excuse authors is one thing; it is another to do so in order to conserve a coherent canon, without pretending that that's how the authors meant it.
But what coherent canon are we trying to preserve by insisting that Fethry is Donald's first cousin? Has that been established in any story? As far as I know, the only place it's been shown to be the case is the Rosa family tree. Why does that tree, created by a man who only grudgingly included the character on it in the first place, trump the word of Fethry's creators, who appear to have meant him to be a "distant cousin" in the traditional sense of the word?
Well, firstly, the Wiki treats all sources equally as long as they are intended to give information about the Disney comics universe, whether that source resembles what we traditionally call a "story". Don Rosa's (or anyone's) Duck family tree is as valid as a comic story, or a video game, or a Dutch webcast, or a late-1970's interview with Carl Barks.
Secondly, I'm really, really not convinced that Kinney wrote the "Why did Uncle ever teach him to read?" line with the intent that "Uncle" was not literally Donald's uncle but a more distant relative. I think it overwhelmingly more likely that Kinney either forgot, didn't particularly care for continuity, or changed his mind. Rather like Carl Barks's flip-flops about how Gladstone is related to Donald. So if we care about authorial intent, even within Kinney/Hubbard's output taken on its own term, I think there is a contradiction.
But what coherent canon are we trying to preserve by insisting that Fethry is Donald's first cousin? Has that been established in any story? As far as I know, the only place it's been shown to be the case is the Rosa family tree. Why does that tree, created by a man who only grudgingly included the character on it in the first place, trump the word of Fethry's creators, who appear to have meant him to be a "distant cousin" in the traditional sense of the word?
Well, firstly, the Wiki treats all sources equally as long as they are intended to give information about the Disney comics universe, whether that source resembles what we traditionally call a "story". Don Rosa's (or anyone's) Duck family tree is as valid as a comic story, or a video game, or a Dutch webcast, or a late-1970's interview with Carl Barks.
Secondly, I'm really, really not convinced that Kinney wrote the "Why did Uncle ever teach him to read?" line with the intent that "Uncle" was not literally Donald's uncle but a more distant relative. I think it overwhelmingly more likely that Kinney either forgot, didn't particularly care for continuity, or changed his mind. Rather like Carl Barks's flip-flops about how Gladstone is related to Donald. So if we care about authorial intent, even within Kinney/Hubbard's output taken on its own term, I think there is a contradiction.
How is the wiki relevant to this? Also, if every story and every source is to be treated as equal, then the German trees by Grobian Gans, Ed van Schuijlenburg, and Volker Reiche, where Fethry is Donald's fourth cousin, is also equally valid.
Well, I agree that it is indeed likely that Kinney did not care for continuity as much as us nerdy fans do. It is also likely that he did not remember the first line when writing the second line. I guess you could call this a contradiction. But the way I see it, in order to salvage continuity, we have three options:
1) Use Occam's Razor (the simplest explanation is likely correct). Donald and Fethry are indeed distantly related, and Donald's "uncle"-line was just shorthand for "Why second cousin once removed ever taught him to read I'll never know!" (or whatever their true relation is). 2) Donald and Fethry are indeed distantly related, but Donald's uncle was the one who taught Fethry to read. 3) Fethry is such a confused character that he thinks that his first cousin is further away on the family tree (which Donald doesn't correct, by the way. Maybe he is also a confused character?), so therefore we can never ever trust anything Fethry says.
By the way, how did Carl Barks flip-flop about Gladstone's relation to Donald? They were always cousins, right? I mean, I think I recall the nephews referring to him as "cousin Gladstone" at some point, but that was probably because he is Donald's cousin.
How is the wiki relevant to this? Also, if every story and every source is to be treated as equal, then the German trees by Grobian Gans, Ed van Schuijlenburg, and Volker Reiche, where Fethry is Donald's fourth cousin, is also equally valid.
It's relevant for two reasons. First, I'm the driving force behind the Wiki's canon policy, so describing its policy is describing my opinion, to a large extent. Secondly, it's the only preexisting formalized system I know of for fitting all Disney comic stories together, as we are currently attempting to do between Don Rosa's stories (but not Tree) and the Hubbard/Kinney material. So I thought the way it does things would be a noteworthy point of reference.
And — yes, they are. But in cases like this, as both things can't be true, we go with the position that's most consistent with other stories/authors' opinions on the matter. In the case of Fethry, it's true that if we just had Hubbard/Kinney to work with, the "uncle" line and the "distantly related" line would be equal in validity and we'd probably pick "distantly related" as the true one, with "uncle" being explained in one of the ways you suggest. But, since we have Don Rosa's tree (and popular belief) on the "first cousin" side, that's the one we'll pick.
As particularly concerns family trees, our explanations for why the trees are so confused is that the various trees exist in-universe as various, varyingly-confused genealogists' brave but often misguided attempts to reconstruct the genealogy of Scrooge McDuck. There is a story which establishes the Don Rosa family tree as existing in-universe in this fashion, and several others are themselves presented as if they were in-universe. So it solves a lot of headaches to assume the same is true of all of them.
Within this scheme, that means that any info which is contradicted by too many directly-narrative sources is probaby false, but any original info coming from the tree could still be true.
3) Fethry is such a confused character that he thinks that his first cousin is further away on the family tree (which Donald doesn't correct, by the way. Maybe he is also a confused character?), so therefore we can never ever trust anything Fethry says.
It's not that we can never trust anything Fethry says, but rather that we really shouldn't be surprised when what he says is otherwise known to be false.
And my idea wasn't that he was confused about how Donald was related to him, per se. My idea was that he didn't understand the correct meaning of the phrase “distantly related”.
As for why Donald doesn't correct him, that's easy enough. Go back to my earlier theory based on my misremembering of who said what in the Kinney/Hubbard panel, and assume that Donald is only too glad to let whoever they're talking to believe that he's not too closely related to that buffoon in the red hat.
By the way, how did Carl Barks flip-flop about Gladstone's relation to Donald? They were always cousins, right? I mean, I think I recall the nephews referring to him as "cousin Gladstone" at some point, but that was probably because he is Donald's cousin.
In Race to the South Seas, Barks laid down the relationship that Don Rosa later built on between Gladstone and Scrooge — describing him as "Scrooge's brother-in-law's sister's son", in a comical contrast to Donald's "I'm his nephew" as both ducks attempt to flaunt their close relationship to Scrooge.
However, in subsequent stories, Scrooge refers to Gladstone as his nephew and considers him one of his potential heirs alongside Donald, suggesting he's much more closely related. To fit this new vision, Barks's homemade family tree had a complicated story of how Gladstone, originally the son of Luke Goose (later retconned as Gus's father) and Daphne Duck, had been orphaned and then adopted by Scrooge's sister Matilda McDuck and her husband Goosetave Gander.
However, when Barks made a second family tree at some later point, the one which Don Rosa most closely based his tree on, Barks had apparently remembered the original Race dialogue and once more made Gladstone the son of a maternal aunt of Donald and a Mr Gander, without Matilda going into it (Matilda isn't even on that version of the tree).
It's appropriate for HD&L to call Gladstone their cousin. He's not their uncle by any means. He's the first cousin of their mother. According to Google, a first cousin once removed is "a child of one's first cousin, or one's parent's first cousin".
And I don't think one can really say that Barks flip-flopped on Gladstone's place on the tree. Scrooge was always Gladstone's "mother's brother's brother-in-law", i.e., Gladstone is the son of Grandma Duck's daughter Daphne. Whether Matilda adopted him or not (the part of the story Barks changed, but only unofficially, never in one of his stories) doesn't change that. Why Scrooge considers Gladstone one of his heirs I don't know, but he calls him a "distant nephew"; if Gladstone had been legally adopted by his sister Matilda, he wouldn't call him "distant". So at least in his stories, Barks never contradicted himself vis-à-vis Gladstone's relationship to Scrooge.
If we move Fethry and Whitewater away from being Eider's sons, then that leaves Gladstone as Donald's only first cousin (at least per Rosa's tree; I know Gladstone has brothers per some other Duck genealogists). That just doesn't seem right. Surely there's someone else who could be Eider's offspring? How about that Fred Duck character who was mentioned earlier, would he fit here or is he also described as a "distant relative"?
If we move Fethry and Whitewater away from being Eider's sons, then that leaves Gladstone as Donald's only first cousin (at least per Rosa's tree; I know Gladstone has brothers per some other Duck genealogists). That just doesn't seem right. Surely there's someone else who could be Eider's offspring? How about that Fred Duck character who was mentioned earlier, would he fit here or is he also described as a "distant relative"?
He's not described as anything, but he doesn't look much like Donald (he frankly looks like a goose), so eh.
Mind you, there are plenty of other characters who are cousins of Donald. You're forgetting Whitewater, for example. And as for one-shots, there's also Flink Duck, Cosmo Duck, Mehitabel Mudhen, Dora & Dexter Duck…
And I don't think one can really say that Barks flip-flopped on Gladstone's place on the tree. Scrooge was always Gladstone's "mother's brother's brother-in-law", i.e., Gladstone is the son of Grandma Duck's daughter Daphne. Whether Matilda adopted him or not (the part of the story Barks changed, but only unofficially, never in one of his stories) doesn't change that. Why Scrooge considers Gladstone one of his heirs I don't know, but he calls him a "distant nephew"; if Gladstone had been legally adopted by his sister Matilda, he wouldn't call him "distant". So at least in his stories, Barks never contradicted himself vis-à-vis Gladstone's relationship to Scrooge.
Over two hundred years ago McTavish Duck from Augusburgh, Scotland, was related to Scrooge’s grandfather. His motto was ‘Frugality’ and he was poor all his life. His daughter married a Lochbert Gander, ancestor to Gladstone (Castle Heirs W DD 42-01 ).
So we know that Gladstone is distantly related to Scrooge, probably Nth cousins, the other links with Scrooge described are more vague, more of the bonds of courtesy than family ties. I think that Scrooge exploits these pseudo-kinship (you can put a nephew to work for a misery according to the philosophy of McDuck), after all there are stories in which Scrooge deceive people making them believe that they are relatives for self-interest.
If we move Fethry and Whitewater away from being Eider's sons, then that leaves Gladstone as Donald's only first cousin (at least per Rosa's tree; I know Gladstone has brothers per some other Duck genealogists). That just doesn't seem right. Surely there's someone else who could be Eider's offspring? How about that Fred Duck character who was mentioned earlier, would he fit here or is he also described as a "distant relative"?
Fred is simply described as Donald "cousin", and we don't learn his last name in the story he appears in. Ramapith mentioned in the earlier topic that he was originally intended to be Fethry Duck, with Fred hastily being created a a replacement to fill the role, so Fred is certainly not an important or irreplacable character in that way. If I were to put him on the tree, I'd probably say he is the son or grandson of Donald's uncle Rumpus McFowl, which would make him Donald's cousin, and "Fred McFowl" sounds a lot nicer than Fred-Duck, for sure .
But yeah, nearly all of Donald's cousins besides Gladstone, Gus and Fethry are rather insignificant and generic one-shot characters. Although there are exceptions, of course; two cousins who immediately do come to mind as interesting and funny characters are Hackney McWebfoot ( inducks.org/character.php?c=Hackney+McWebfoot ) and Bugs Duck ( inducks.org/character.php?c=Bugsy+Duck ).
If we move Fethry and Whitewater away from being Eider's sons, then that leaves Gladstone as Donald's only first cousin (at least per Rosa's tree; I know Gladstone has brothers per some other Duck genealogists). That just doesn't seem right. Surely there's someone else who could be Eider's offspring? How about that Fred Duck character who was mentioned earlier, would he fit here or is he also described as a "distant relative"?
Fred is simply described as Donald "cousin", and we don't learn his last name in the story he appears in. Ramapith mentioned in the earlier topic that he was originally intended to be Fethry Duck, with Fred hastily being created a a replacement to fill the role, so Fred is certainly not an important or irreplacable character in that way. If I were to put him on the tree, I'd probably say he is the son or grandson of Donald's uncle Rumpus McFowl, which would make him Donald's cousin, and "Fred McFowl" sounds a lot nicer than Fred-Duck, for sure .
But yeah, nearly all of Donald's cousins besides Gladstone, Gus and Fethry are rather insignificant and generic one-shot characters. Although there are exceptions, of course; two cousins who immediately do come to mind as interesting and funny characters are Hackney McWebfoot ( inducks.org/character.php?c=Hackney+McWebfoot ) and Bugs Duck ( inducks.org/character.php?c=Bugsy+Duck ).
Well, it's a matter of taste which cousins are more interesting than others (I refer to those that appeared only once) I find funny Smorfio de'Paperis with his grumpy and pessimistic behavior. I like the name "Fred McFowl", sound very good.
I personally don't really like the idea of Cornelius as Donald's ancestor, by the way; Donald being a direct descendant of the city's founder would probably give him somewhat of a celebrity status in Duckburg, which is at odds with Donald's everyman persona. Also, it was never Barks' intention, so I'm curious as to why Rosa decided on it.
A separate but related problem arises from Rosa's decision to make Clinton Coot the founder of the Junior Woodchucks. This results in the unavoidable scenario of HD&L being mini-celebrities within the Woodchucks because of their lineage, rather than their abilities. Indeed, we sort of saw this in Rosa's own "W.H.A.D.D.A.L.O.T.T.A.J.A.R.G.O.N", where HD&L are initially not thought to be Woodchuck material, but are then quickly inducted when the fact that they're descendants of the organization's founder is revealed. It seems very un-democratic. Like Donald in Duckburg, HD&L should be "everymen" in the Woodchucks.
Maybe Fred could be Shamrock Gander's father and Gladstone's secret brother? It certainly would explain why he looks goosy! ...that being said, I prefer the name Fred McFowl to Fred Gander.
Post by Baar Baar Jinx on Jan 5, 2019 18:23:36 GMT
"Fred McFowl" sounds good, but he couldn't be Eider's son with a last name other than Duck, unless of course Fred's mother remarried and took her new husband's name, passing it on to her son. That "Bugsy Duck" with a criminal past, though, looks like he could very well be Eider's progeny. I mean, to be honest, Uncle Eider scares me a bit, he looks like a tough, mean, abusive and potentially violent jerk (Rosa clearly meant for Whitewater to take after him). I always felt bad that a fundamentally kind, sensitive, emphatic, artistic person like Fethry suffered a miserable childhood, raised by such an uncaring, borderline-sociopathic father, always on the verge of erupting in a drunken rage. Another reason why I'm only too happy to move Fethry somewhere else on the family tree. Wouldn't surprise me if Eider were in jail somewhere serving a life term, which is why we don't see him at family gatherings and Grandma never speaks of him, the child she thinks she failed, the one she is deeply ashamed of, agonizing over where she went wrong. Although I guess he treats his falcons well, I have to give him that.
Maybe Fred could be Shamrock Gander's father and Gladstone's secret brother? It certainly would explain why he looks goosy! ...that being said, I prefer the name Fred McFowl to Fred Gander.
If Gladstone and Fred were brothers, it probably should have been mentioned. I believe he was referred to as both Donald and Gladstone's cousin, wasn't he? Oh wait ... you said "secret brother" ... how do you propose that be the case? Another Scrooge-Rumpus type situation?
Maybe Fred could be Shamrock Gander's father and Gladstone's secret brother? It certainly would explain why he looks goosy! ...that being said, I prefer the name Fred McFowl to Fred Gander.
If Gladstone and Fred were brothers, it probably should have been mentioned. I believe he was referred to as both Donald and Gladstone's cousin, wasn't he? Oh wait ... you said "secret brother" ... how do you propose that be the case? Another Scrooge-Rumpus type situation?
To be honest, I don't know anything about Fred except for what he looks like. I was only half-joking with the Gladstone-connection, but I kinda like it. I didn't even know that Gladstone was in the Fred-story. With "secret brother" I only meant that we haven't been introduced to the father of Shamrock before.