To me, the Disney comicbook universe is its own self-contained universe. Barks and Rosa are canon as well as stories from other artists if I like them and they do not contradict those two directly. E.G. I like the first stories with Duck Avenger and can accept the idea of Donald taking this persona for a few times. But Scrooge being born in Alaska on the same day as Rockerduck, many relatives who only appear once or all characters becoming superheroes? Just no. And the Duck and Mice universes are more like the 40s-60s instead our early 21st century.
But I like the idea that all current (2010s) Disney cartoon shows and movies are set in the same world. NewDuckTales (which is a seperate continuity than the comics, in both the offical version and my view), Star vs the Forces of Evil, Tangled, Zootopia, Frozen, TaleSpin, Gummi Bears, Darkwing Duck etc.
Yeah, you're definitely in the minority. But I've considered the filter-theory as an alternate reading once in a while, and there was no doubt in my mind that the Duck family (and Mickey) were just short — significantly shorter than the Beagles or Gyro. 1m50 to Pete or the Beagles' 1m80? Something like that.
I'd say the "filter" works for the vast, vast majority of Duck and Mouse stories set at Lumper-Splitter Level 3 or above, as long as you ignore the fact that the Ducks are commonly referred to as "ducks", and Mickey as a mouse (e.g., "richest duck in the world", "I'll show that duck!", "That meddlesome mouse"). The characters' species plays absolutely no role in the plot in most stories, although there may be the occasional throwaway joke about feathers, webbed feet, and laying eggs. Well, I guess Rota's "From Egg to Duck" and that bizarre story about Donald and his imaginary twin brother hatching from eggs that Grandma bought at the market to make an omelet out of would be exceptions. Even in the cartoons, the characters' species rarely comes into play (which is markedly different from Looney Tunes).
No surprise: I'm an extreme splitter on this scale. Comics and other Disney worlds do not mix (exceptions noted below). Duck universe and Mouse universe are separate, only Duck universe is "real" to me. I'm fine with the Ducks reading Mouse comics.
Where I differ from BBJ, as regards the Duckworld: (1) I have a less thoroughgoingly "realistic" view of the Duck universe. More willing to allow some magical and fantasy elements. That's not a huge difference, though, because as BBJ has acknowledged, Magica's sorcery and even some of Gyro's sci-fi inventions are fairly fantastical. Plus, the unicorn, the Larkies and the dragon, the Peeweegahs and the Menehune and the mini-Arab-ducks shrunk by the sun, Barks' and Rosa's aliens, etc. Still, like Rosa, I tend to think of the Ducks as essentially humans who just happen to look like ducks.
(2) Due to my childhood experience of comics-reading, I allow a few cartoon/movie characters into my Duckworld, because they were integrated into Duckburg in the comics where I first met them. Chip 'n' Dale do live in the woods near Duckburg, though as for MEAS level, I haven't always been consistent on whether I'll accept their speaking to the "human" characters and being understood by them. I think nowadays my headcanon has them only speaking to other animals. Mim also lives in a cabin in the woods near Duckburg. I encountered her in comics, interacting with Beagles and Ducks, before I ever saw "The Sword in the Stone," so she was established in my mind as a comics character in the Duckworld. I do not think of her as being the same character as Mim in the movie. For one thing, she's a much more sympathetic character than the movie villain, especially in the stories that I most liked as a child and in the stories that I most like which I've found in adulthood.
Oh, and Ludwig Von Drake exists in my Duckworld, too, as he did in the comics I read in my childhood, where he interacted with Donald, HDL, Daisy and her friends, Scrooge, Gyro, etc. And Panchito and José are also real in the Duckworld, thanks to Rosa. There are no Ontological Issues complicating the integration of these three characters into Duckburg's comics reality (as there are with Mim and Chip 'n' Dale).
Though I did encounter in childhood some of the comics stories that brought random Disney movie characters into contact with the Ducks, none of those convinced me. Possibly because they weren't written very well, and were usually one-offs that just felt strange. Despite their repeated appearances there, the Cinderella mice do not live at Grandma's farm. Not to mention Dumbo!
Yeah, you're definitely in the minority. But I've considered the filter-theory as an alternate reading once in a while, and there was no doubt in my mind that the Duck family (and Mickey) were just short — significantly shorter than the Beagles or Gyro. 1m50 to Pete or the Beagles' 1m80? Something like that.
I'd say the "filter" works for the vast, vast majority of Duck and Mouse stories set at Lumper-Splitter Level 3 or above, as long as you ignore the fact that the Ducks are commonly referred to as "ducks", and Mickey as a mouse (e.g., "richest duck in the world", "I'll show that duck!", "That meddlesome mouse"). The characters' species plays absolutely no role in the plot in most stories, although there may be the occasional throwaway joke about feathers, webbed feet, and laying eggs. Well, I guess Rota's "From Egg to Duck" and that bizarre story about Donald and his imaginary twin brother hatching from eggs that Grandma bought at the market to make an omelet out of would be exceptions. Even in the cartoons, the characters' species rarely comes into play (which is markedly different from Looney Tunes).
What if WE are all ducks, mice, dognoses and such, and the Duckverse IS the REAL world but that is masqueraded by those "filters" you mentioned which trick us into believing to be "regular" people instead of "anthro"pomorphic animals, because "THEY" do not want for us to know the truth for whatever reason? Did you ever hear of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave"?
Matilda, what do you think of the filter approach? I would guess that you agree with it, since I remember you saying that the Ducks were human to you as well, and you don't see them laying eggs, for example (like me, and like Rosa). I suspect Robb might be an extreme splitter as well (or at least has a headcanon at lumper-splitter Level 4), but he has in the past said he believes all Ducks should have quacky voices, so I'm not sure if he subscribes to the filter theory. Another probable extreme splitter is drakeborough (who hasn't been on these forums for a while).
EDIT: Just reread your last post where you once again state that the Ducks are human to you, so by definition, you have essentially adopted the "filter" approach as well.
What if WE are all ducks, mice, dognoses and such, and the Duckverse IS the REAL world but that is masqueraded by those "filters" you mentioned which trick us into believing to be "regular" people instead of "anthro"pomorphic animals, because "THEY" do not want for us to know the truth for whatever reason? Did you ever hear of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave"?
You might be on to something there. There are definitely times I feel like a pig.
I've hear about "Allegory of the Cave" during a lot of political discussions recently. On both sides. A very versatile argument!
Matilda, what do you think of the filter approach? I would guess that you agree with it, since I remember you saying that the Ducks were human to you as well, and you don't see them laying eggs, for example (like me, and like Rosa). I suspect Robb might be an extreme splitter as well (or at least has a headcanon at lumper-splitter Level 4), but he has in the past said he believes all Ducks should have quacky voices, so I'm not sure if he subscribes to the filter theory. Another probable extreme splitter is drakeborough (who hasn't been on these forums for a while).
EDIT: Just reread your last post where you once again state that the Ducks are human to you, so by definition, you have essentially adopted the "filter" approach as well.
Yes, they're definitely human, in the sense that they act and think as humans do, with no discernible species-based distinction. They go to school or hold jobs, they live in human houses, they have human familial relationships, they have fully human desires and goals. I cannot believe they hatch from eggs because of the humanity of their familial relationships. Human nature is deeply shaped by the long dependency of infants/children on the adults who care for them, and that just doesn't fit with the egg scenario in my mind...though I suppose you could argue for some way that human-like lifelong bonding between parent and child could occur post-hatching.
I still don't know that I entirely understand your filter approach. Is Duckburg a place you can imagine visiting, through some inter-universe magic? If you were in Duckburg, would the Ducks look like anthropomorphic ducks to you? That is, does the filter operate in-universe, or only in our universe and our accounts of Duckburg?
If I were able to visit Duckburg, the Ducks would look like anthropomorphic ducks to me. I choose not to try to imagine their sex lives or childbearing in literal ways, but those aspects of their lives would somehow have to be very close to human, since the Ducks are psychologically indistinguishable from humans. I realize this is a difficult position to maintain with intellectual consistency. In truth, we are all psychically shaped by our corporeality, and if the Ducks' corporeality were truly as different from humans' as it appears to be, they *wouldn't* be psychically indistinguishable from humans. But hey, child-me thought they really do look like anthropomorphic ducks, and I'm stickin' with it. They are (as I think Rosa has put it) humans who just happen to look like ducks...but they *do* actually look like ducks. Modified ducks. With human hair on their heads. But feathers on their torsos (here I differ from Rosa) and webbed feet.
On the issue of size...I mentioned on another thread that I dislike it when the Ducks are depicted as only a third the height of (dognose) humans, as in Rota's later work. I was surprised that a couple of people responded that they actually like that. Part of my dislike for this is probably due to how human they are to me (not to suggest that little people aren't fully human!). But part of it is due to all the practical problems it raises in my mind. Do the Ducks have houses, chairs, cars, tools and utensils specially built for them to accommodate their size? The late-Rota Ducks are too small to drive your average car. If they have specially built Duck cars, why do their cars look like the other cars on the road? Why does Donald's house seem to be the same size as Neighbor Jones's? Late-Rota Ducks couldn't comfortably sit in the same chairs as dognose humans, or use the same refrigerators.... Besides, aren't there times when HDL are shown interacting with dognose kids of the same age, who are about the same size they are? How could this be the case, if the adult versions of Ducks and Dognose Humans are so radically different in size?
What if WE are all ducks, mice, dognoses and such, and the Duckverse IS the REAL world but that is masqueraded by those "filters" you mentioned which trick us into believing to be "regular" people instead of "anthro"pomorphic animals, because "THEY" do not want for us to know the truth for whatever reason? Did you ever hear of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave"?
You might be on to something there. There are definitely times I feel like a pig.
I've hear about "Allegory of the Cave" during a lot of political discussions recently. On both sides. A very versatile argument!
I prefer to stay away from political discussions. Especially BECAUSE, nowadays many people like to turn everything into a political discussion and then pretend like there are only the right and left. But yeah, the Alt-Right calls newbies "red-pilled" and Social Justice Warriors see themselves as "woke".
Well, instead of marching with tiki torches or making up new genders, I just hope that I am a spacegendered demisexual otherkin 1-metre-high cartoon duck who is married to Webby Vanderquack and currently imprisoned in a Matrix rip-off by Donald Trump the Phantom Blot.
According to Donaldistic research, the people in the Duck universe are humans (homo sapiens polymorphus) but they have something called the "morphotel" (morphing substance) on the outside of their bodies which makes them look a bit like certain animal species (ducks, mice, dogs, pigs etc.), so they are not humanized animals but more like animalized people. Though characters like the Cinderella mice and Dumbo are sentient animals, which is why they cannot integrate into mainstream society.
Yeah, the author of that article assumes that and most other Donaldists too. Because the people in Duckburg still celebrate their birthdays and nothatchdays.
I still don't know that I entirely understand your filter approach. Is Duckburg a place you can imagine visiting, through some inter-universe magic? If you were in Duckburg, would the Ducks look like anthropomorphic ducks to you? That is, does the filter operate in-universe, or only in our universe and our accounts of Duckburg?
If I were able to visit Duckburg, the Ducks would look like anthropomorphic ducks to me. I choose not to try to imagine their sex lives or childbearing in literal ways, but those aspects of their lives would somehow have to be very close to human, since the Ducks are psychologically indistinguishable from humans. I realize this is a difficult position to maintain with intellectual consistency. In truth, we are all psychically shaped by our corporeality, and if the Ducks' corporeality were truly as different from humans' as it appears to be, they *wouldn't* be psychically indistinguishable from humans. But hey, child-me thought they really do look like anthropomorphic ducks, and I'm stickin' with it. They are (as I think Rosa has put it) humans who just happen to look like ducks...but they *do* actually look like ducks. Modified ducks. With human hair on their heads. But feathers on their torsos (here I differ from Rosa) and webbed feet.
My idea of the "filter" is that it is a lens that applies when we view the Duckverse (and Mouseverse) from our universe, causing the inhabitants to look like ducks, dognoses, pigs, mice, etc. despite the fact that they are all the same species, i.e., humans. When Jones looks at Donald, he doesn't see a beak, feathers, webbed feet, or a lack of pants, and when Donald looks at Jones, he doesn't see a black nose or floppy ears ... they see each other as humans, the way we would see each other. The filter applies to us when we look in on them, but not when they look at each other. So it operates when the Duckverse is viewed from an outside universe, but not in-universe. The fact that, as you point out, the Ducks have the same-sized houses and drive the same-sized cars as the much bigger dognoses supports this contention. It's rare that the Ducks' diminutive size is ever really an issue in the stories; if the size discrepancy were real, it should be coming up all the time.
To make an analogy to The Simpsons ... all the characters in that universe see themselves as humans, despite their grotesquely bulbous eyes, massive overbites, yellow skin and four-fingered hands. And we, looking in on Springfield, recognize them all as humans despite the fact that they bear little resemblance to the actual humans in our world. Despite its cartoonish portrayal, most of us could easily imagine Springfield as a real town with real inhabitants. Real-world celebrities visit Springfield all the time, and are portrayed as "Simpsonized". I'd imagine it would be the same if we were to visit Duckburg; we would look like a duck, pig, dognose or some such to someone looking in from the outside, but appear as ourselves to the other inhabitants of Duckburg, and we'd see them as the humans they are (this is probably the hardest part to wrap one's head around but it's a natural extension of my interpretation of the filter theory).
I didn't know about this topic, or forgot about it!
I'd be closer to level 4. Many of the classic animated shorts would be canon to it, but the Ducktales series would each be its own continuity (maybe sharing it with other Disney Afternoon shows).
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.. do you mean you would exclude a story that had Jaq and Gus (the Cinderella Mice) on an adventure with Jiminy Cricket, for example?
If he's like me, no; what he mans is that unless there was a preexisting story where Mickey meets Shere Khan, we wouldn't assume that The Jungle Book could exist in a Mouse/Duck story just because it's Disney. Indeed, though they are few, there's a couple of Walt Disney Classics which are considered null and void on the Wiki for that reason — not even a cameo in House of Mouse or anything like that to argue for a connection.
Out of everything in this thread, this is the comment that rings most true to me. I've been busy again lately trying to puzzle out the scope and chronology of the 'Don Rosa universe', and this question of the legitimacy of cross-referencing is a very tough one. Though maybe that's a discussion all its own.
1. Rosa literally copies some panels from Barks comics as flashbacks (Forbidden Valley, The Golden Helmet, Back to the Klondike). Can we assume the Barks stories played out as they did in the Rosa history?
2. Rosa creates a direct sequel to a Barks story (Return to Plain Awful, Escape from Forbidden Valley). Can we assume the Barks stories played out as they did in the Rosa history?
3. Rosa re-uses Barks one-shot characters (the professor from The Mysterious Stone Ray in Cash Flow, the museum director from The Golden Helmet in The Son of the Sun, John D. Rockerduck in The Raider of the Copper Hill). Can we assume the Barks stories they appeared in played out as they did in the Rosa history?
4. Rosa makes a reference to a detail from a Barks story (oolated squiggs, the Barks wanted poster, a treasure from a specific story, something Scrooge mentioned about his past once). Can we assume the Barks stories they appeared in played out as they did in the Rosa history?
5. Rosa writes a story that is not a direct sequel, but a spiritual sequel to a Barks story (Super Snooper Strikes Again). Or perhaps he writes a story in the vain of a specific Barks genre (nephews playing hooky in Metaphorically Spanking, general treasure stories in Treasure Under Glass). Can we assume the Barks stories they appeared in played out as they did in the Rosa history?
6. Rosa uses common (Barks or otherwise-created) Disney characters in recognisable settings (Gus Goose, Grandma Duck, Ludwig von Drake, Huey Dewey and Louie). Can we assume their origin stories played out as they did in the Rosa history?
Me, I used to be at 2 or 3, but I've slipped down to 4. Going through the Don Rosa Library as we speak to collect the last bunch of references I missed, and then it's on to the final compilation. There's a lot of mental gymnastics involved -- especially as Rosa-as-writer was easy to pick out certain elements of stories but dismiss the rest of the tale! I find it difficult to say what's canon and what's not. I grew up with the "forest animals" universe from the Dutch comics, which puts everyone from Br'er Rabbit and Fox and Bear with Zeke Wolf and the Three Little Pigs, and if you blink you'll find older stories that add in the Seven Dwarfs and Madam Mim and Chip 'n' Dale and even Donald Duck! It's an all-purpose European fairy tale forest, where Br'er Fox has the same name as Reynard the Fox from the Middle Ages, even though they're not supposed to be the main character.
For my part, I'd like to acknowledge the existence of the 1930s cartoons that laid the groundwork for the main Duck and Mice characters. Those are as real as anything in the comics -- if in a roundabout, finicky Roger Rabbit kind of way. [NOTE: this should not be taken as me taking Roger Rabbit on board in my headcanon. The smoking baby and the redhead bombshell and clearly more at home in Looney Tunes and Tex Avery universes.] Back in the day, publicity writers would treat the cartoon characters as 'regular Hollywood actors' -- something backed up in the Los Angeles-area locations in the cartoons, and the occasional crossover (Mickey Mouse in Hollywood Party, Hollywood in Mickey's Gala Premier and The Autograph Hound, Stokowski in person in Fantasia, etc.). From the Alice Comedies to Song of the South to Mary Poppins Returns, Disney has always had a healthy interaction between cartoons and real-life people. (Speaking of which, where are my gosh-darn Alice Comedies comics? Why just Pete? Bring back Julius the Cat!)
Now, I have too much respect for the integrity of a fictional universe to collapse everything into one. Some Disney Classics proudly display exactly where and when they are set, and we should respect that even if it's horribly misguided. (Seriously, 1910 is the weirdest setting for The Aristocats given the type of music being played, but so be it.)
Instead, I offer a different solution -- though maybe not a satisfying one. Where traditional fanfiction creates a single universe to contain all the characters in, this usually pertains to following the vision of a single Master (George Lucas - Gene Roddenberry - Arthur Conan Doyle - Hergé). But Disney works in the opposite way: it has never been auteur-driven, and its variety of visions is arguably its greatest asset. What Carl Barks' psychology of Uncle Scrooge and company is vastly different from Don Rosa, is vastly different from Romano Scarpa's, vastly different from Vic Lockman's, vastly different from Daniel Branca's, from that guy who created Uncle Scrooge and Money, from DuckTales (whichever version), from the Paul Rudisch Mickey Mouse shorts, from Mickey's Christmas Carol. And yet you can't deny that they are ALL authentic versions of Uncle Scrooge and company. It is the character who prevails over the setting, whether it's Gus and Jaq at Grandma Duck's farm or Mickey Mouse in Dante's Inferno.
So I'd like to invert the premise of this thread and say that it's all true. You may not be comfortable with Della's absence being explained away as her being an astronauts (there WERE no gosh-darn astronauts in 1937!!!), with the biology of ducks (no, Glittering Goldie doesn't have breasts -- she is a bird), with the behavior of a certain character in a certain story (Scrooge as African colonialist? Oof!). This is fine. Some things are true at some times (when reading comic X) and not true in other comics (when X is being contradicted). Does Scrooge have a twin brother in the Wild West? Does Gideon exist? Does Rumpus? Does Mathilda? Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it's no.
I have many headcanons. One of them is a Rosa-purist headcanon. Another consists of my own unwritten adventures of young Scrooge. Another is wondering aloud what the future of the ducks is going to be, and wondering whether Gyro would make a good TV science educator. Sometimes these overlap. Sometimes 'canon' solidifies, as one artist's interpretation catches on with others (Rosa essentially invented what Della looks like, huh?). And sometimes you get the ten "My First Million" series. To each their own.
Of course, there is a way in which it all fits together. There's one Disney character, hidden at the heart of it all, who is the keeper of the Greatest Secret In All The Multiverse. One whose godlike powers outweigh even that of Gladstone Gander, Yen Sid, and Kevin Feige. But that is a story I'd rather keep to myself, for now...
Of course, there is a way in which it all fits together. There's one Disney character, hidden at the heart of it all, who is the keeper of the Greatest Secret In All The Multiverse. One whose godlike powers outweigh even that of Gladstone Gander, Yen Sid, and Kevin Feige. But that is a story I'd rather keep to myself, for now...
Hah! I KNEW Hard Haid Moe was protecting a BIG secret with that blunderbuss of his.
Of course, there is a way in which it all fits together. There's one Disney character, hidden at the heart of it all, who is the keeper of the Greatest Secret In All The Multiverse. One whose godlike powers outweigh even that of Gladstone Gander, Yen Sid, and Kevin Feige. But that is a story I'd rather keep to myself, for now...
Hah! I KNEW Hard Haid Moe was protecting a BIG secret with that blunderbuss of his.
I would have guessed Doctor Einmug or Eega Beeva myself. Maybe the unlikely O.K. Quack? Or even Professor Triplex (who said that someone with such a power would be on the side of good)?