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I’ve been pondering this question ever since I first encountered it on Zebreca’s Darkwing Duck page. I have since become obsessed with finding an answer (along with a picture of Michael Bell, but that’s beside the point). So far, all I have gotten out of it is more confused.
OK. So, according to “Clash Reunion”, Drake has his high school reunion in 1992, right? Right. But it never specifies which reunion, leaving you room to guess. Judging by the bell bottoms and afros, he was in high school in the 70’s. That would make it a 20 year reunion, making him 38 in 1992. That would make him nearly as old as JC (just had to slip him in here somewhere ^_^). But let’s analyze the facts. A 38 year old, skulking the roof tops in search of evildoers to tha-wart. My Dad could barely do a push up at 38, much less DW’s patented back web-kick. Maybe if Drake appeared to be more in shape I would be more willing to swallow it. But he’s not in any better shape than most citizens of St. Canard.
Then again, if it were a 15 year reunion, he would only be 33 in ’92. This is a little more feasible.
But let’s back up to another episode. In “Paraducks”, Drake and Gos are taken back to a time when he was known as “Little Drakey”. Judging by the style of music and clothing, it is sometime in the 50’s. He appeared to be approximately Gosalyn’s age, suggesting he was born sometime between 1940 to 1951. This would have made him somewhere from 41 to, dare I say it, 52. This does not seem at all likely, as I’m guessing that a 52 year old would have a little trouble catching villains.
In "Ghoul of My Dreams", Morgana was stealing to pay off her student loans. Since you have 10 years to pay them off, one would assume that she is 32. One would also have to assume that Drake isn't much older than that.
Another spin to the question is the fact that, however old DW is, Megavolt and Negaduck are the same (assuming Negs is from the Negaverse). Even more unlikely. And DW and Megs would have been going at it for, at very least, 22 years (going with the 15 year reunion theory and assuming they are still battling each other to this day), and, at most, 41 years. As Gos said: “Don’t you think you should have won by now?”
“No, strange is learning that your wife is an Elvis impersonator from the Bermuda Triangle. This place is down right bizarre.”
Darkwing said it in “Twin Beaks”, and ever since I first heard it, I’ve wondered:
Did this comment have any relevance?
What does Gosalyn do when DW and LP aren’t home?
Sometimes she tags along on a case, but what do they do with her when she’s not with them? I know Drake isn’t stupid enough to leave her alone at night. That would spell certain disaster. But, does she have a nanny? Does she go over to the Muddlefoots'? Or perhaps she stays with Morgana.
If the first were true, wouldn’t we see the nanny? And how exactly would Drake pay her? With banana bread? (Sorry, I couldn’t resist) And wouldn’t she get suspicious as to why she had to stay with this man’s child only at night?
As for the second theory, I know that Binky isn’t that stupid. Herb, yes. But Binky…eh, she’s certainly ditzy at times, but she would catch on eventually.
And if she were to stay with Morgana, what did she do before Morgana was introduced?
It just doesn’t make sense.
Why did Triton turn Ariel into a human?
After she deliberately disobeyed him, then endangered both her life and his, he rewarded her by turning her into a human.
Most would say that it was out of unconditional love, but I have to disagree. My parents have the same love for me, but if I were to do something as stupid and irresponsible as that, I would have been grounded for life and certainly would not have gotten what I wanted for a long time afterwards. And I would have done the same if I had a daughter who acted in that way.
But Cindy seems to have a different view point. "King Triton wanted to get rid of Ariel. He probably thought, 'Now she's someone else's problem!'" LOL.
I’m going to do this differently this time. This is a discussion taken from the Darkwing Diaries Message Board, where I go by Diane. I found it easier to leave it in a message-like form (read-I was to lazy to write the essay myself).
Hey Diane… by Draca
I think I have a good question for your 'toon pondering' of the month:
*How can people in the Darkwingverse eat meat?*
I mean, think about that. They are all animals! Steelbeak is a rooster, yet people in the D.W.verse eat chicken. Tarus Bulba may be a criminal mastermind, but he's still a person. Where do they get the meat for Hamburger Hippo? Are there two kinds of 'animals': the people and then the livestock? They're still the same species . . . weird!
(Yes, I _know_ it's 'just a cartoon', but that's the whole point of the toon pondering of the month! And this one is driving me crazy! *g*)
What'd ya think?
Re: Hey Diane… by Voodoo Doll
Well, it's kinda like that one question Gordie asks in Stand by Me: 'What the @#$% is Goofy?' Pluto's a dog, so what's Goofy? Maybe there are two types of creatures, I don't know.
Just my thoughts.
Re: Hey Diane… by Diane
Thanks! Much better than the one that I had for next month. I'm running out of ideas! Maybe I just haven't been paying as much attention to little details as I usually do.
Steelbeak in Drumstick boxers (to Draca's meat eating query and other paradox)
by LL
Steelbeak is a cannibal. He's always talking about sending the chicken salad. And he has drumstick boxers. I mean human skull boxers but drumsticks, that is ghoulish.
And what about the whole anthropomorphized/nonanthro issue. There are real dogs like Licky and then there are non-anthropomorphized dogs. How does that work?
Anthropomorphic Identities
by Lady J
Lots of animals eat each other. As far as the whole anthropomorphic thing I think it comes down to 'person-hood' in the moral rights sense.
A person has ten qualities the most important is rational thought. So a talking coffee cup can be a person if it is rational and so can a duck or a Homo sapien but a non-rational fish couldn't be.
From a bio side I think most sapient creatures- walk on 2 legs, opposable thumbs, are either intrinsically mammalian/monotreme in biology, although the ducks and lizards and frogs and suck could have evolved from dinosaurs like the race in the Super Mario Bros. movie.
Well we've heard them say they're human. I think the ducks are monotremes, warm blooded, milk giving, egg laying. Even though they share phenotypic characteristics with their ancestors (we're rather monkey like) they are evolutionary removed enough that it's not that weird to eat other birds.
All organisms have this set of genes that is the same between humans and flies and birds and dogs. We are composed of similar protein structures, and comparative physiology wise it doesn't take much imagination to have a bird or a dog walking erect. < snip – sorry. There was nothing excessively inappropriate there, but I’m not sure how that would be received by some >
I have to see if I can find it. I've lost a lot of material but I had very large Punnet squares showing how the dominance/co dominance of toon phenotypes change when, for example a purple duck, like Ricia, has children with a rodent like Megs.
Punnet Squares by Draca
Cool! I remember those little square charts that list dominant/recessive traits and how they're passed on. I'd love to see that cartoon one if you find it! *g* If they had taught it that way in 8th grade, I would have found it twice as interesting.
Re: Steelbeak in Drumstick boxers (to Draca's meat eating query and other paradox)
by Electra and Zippy the Wonder Pest
Electra: It's actually pretty simple if you look at it from an Evolutionist point of view--
Zippy: *giggles* She's put a LOT of thought into this theory.
Electra: Yes I have. Anyway, as I was saying, It's a like humans and monkeys. Humans eat monkeys and, also, coexist with them. The way I see it, the anthropomorphized animals are like humans and the non-anthros are the monkeys.
Also, in 'Extinct Possibility,' one of the dinosaurs mentioned that a colleague had found some monkeys trying to use tools and had exterminated them. *pause* Or something like that, I forget the exact wording. *shrug* Now, while I realize that it was just a joke, it did help me with my theory.
In the anthropomorphized universe (aka, the Darkwing Duck universe), the monkeys that humans evolved from were stopped from evolving, thus giving the other animals a chance at it. This resulted in no humans, but a wide variety of other creatures capable of walking, talking, and (in some cases *laugh*) logical thinking.
Of course, like with humans, the animals they evolved from still exist. So, like I said above, when the anthroed animals eat non-anthros, it's something along the lines of humans eating monkeys.
*takes a deep breath, grins* And I thought I'd never get to share my theory.
(Oh, by the way, I apologize if I've offended any Creationists. *smile*)
Aquatic Monkeys theory (by Piers Anthony)
by LL
That's nothing. I made a pictorial essay once about why ducks were more fit to evolve into sentient creatures than apes. I'll have to find it...
According to researchers on evolution a few years back it said that one of the reasons that humans evolved and Neanderthals and apes didn't was that humans were aquatic. They didn't get the bubonic plague and all the apes died out. So if in an alternate world, any aquatic animal could conceivably fill in the carnivorous ape niche occupied by our ancestors.
Let's say when the ice flows melted (and ducks had frontal eyes) they started eating insects fish and other meat. As the food source moved to the land the ducks would grow stronger legs, and eventually lose their wings and develop arms.
If people came from the water, why couldn't ducks? If ducks had frontal eyes, they could become predatory, strong hind legs, they don't get the bubonic plague and since they can hop from the ice flows they are much more resilient then monkeys.
Continued apologies to creationists or people that consider the DW universe just some silly cartoon.
Inherit The Wind by Draca
Those theories are both great. I believe in both Creationism and Evolution (read the play 'Inherit The Wind'; it is possible to believe in both), so no offense there! And there can't be a person on the board that considers Darkwing Duck a 'silly cartoon'.
July/August's Question
Why did they have him keep a towel in his lap in “Dances with Bigfoot”?
He never wears pants anyway, why did they make certain that the towel stayed here? Why can he be naked from the waist down only as long as he has a shirt on? Mom seems to think that it’s because you don’t think of him as being naked until he takes his shirt off. Maybe so, but the original Chip and Dale were just as much of characters as he and they didn’t wear anything. Neither Bushroot nor Liquie wear clothes. Perhaps it’s simply familiarity: if DW hadn’t worn anything to begin with, it wouldn’t have been a big deal.
And another thing: in “Disguise the Limit”, Nega takes off his DW costume to reveal a pair of skull boxers, then puts his normal outfit back on, and they’ve disappeared! How did he do that?!
What would have happened to QJ and Megsy if they had been left in the future?
In “Time and Punishment”, Gosalyn, Quackie, Mr. Banana Brain, and Megs are taken to the future where, bittered by the loss of Gos, Drake has become...dum dum dum (dramatic reverb)…Darkwarrior Duck!
At the and, upon climbing into the Time Top to return to the present, Gos is faced with the decision as to whether or not it would be a better idea to leave the monomaniacal miscreants there in the future. She ultimately decides to take them with her (“I don’t know how to drive this thing!”)
But, what would have happened if they had stayed? When Gos went back, the future that had involved Darkwarrior was erased and a new one was created in its place. So, if Gos left them, would they cease to exist as of the time they left and their memory live on? Would they disappear from all the records? Would they simply reappear in the show like nothing happened (as in the cases of most cartoons)? Would they mysteriously pop back up again in future St. Canard in present condition twenty years in the future? Or better yet, did that version of the future become a parallel universe, much like the Nega one and they continued to live out their miserable lives in Darkwarrior’s prison? And was Gosalyn in this universe?
Will we ever know? Will it torment poor, curious souls such as myself for the next millennium? Does anyone else care?
This month’s pondering is going to break the most basic rule in the MiSTie Code of Conduct. I am sort of ashamed, but I’m also out of better ideas. So, your question, ladies and gentlemen.
Do the bots even have to eat?
I have seen several occasions were they do eat, or talk about eating, at least, but do they really need to?
In Gunslinger, for example, Servo sends a letter to Joel asking for a peanut butter and dijonase sandwich and a Snapple for lunch. Moments later, Crow and Gypsy ride up with the message, and Joel feeds Gypsy a carrot. Well, actually, he puts the carrot in Gypsy’s mouth and it bounces around for a short while before falling out. Pumaman shows Mike and Gypsy leave the bridge to finish off some left-over pasta of some sort, and Crow and Servo follow. And after Joel escapes in Mitchell, Crow suggests raiding his Mallow Cup stash. TV's Wisecracker is also seen eating a sandwich in Gunslinger, and Pod People, and The Brain/Head that Wouldn't Die. And who has a cup of coffee in the later? It isn't Mike, I can tell you that.
Anyhow, my point is that we can be pretty sure that they eat, but the question of need still remains. Servo is the only one who appears to have any room for a stomach and, though he did some amazing things with them, I doubt Joel would have felt the urge to include a digestive tract in the design (note: this statement assumes that he made some sort of plan before building them, although I’m not convinced myself). But if they didn’t have to eat, I can’t see either of our hosts feeding them from their precious food supply.
Maybe they only eat specially formulated bot food made of oil and fuel or something. I don’t know. All I have for now is this mantra: It’s just a show. I should really just relax. It’s just a… Hey. Does that sound like some kind of mind control, secret cover-up thing to anyone else?
While watching the guy who plays the flute in the pit orchestra during “What’s Opera, Arnold?”, I began asking myself:
What would woodwind instruments look like in the cartoon world?
Since most toons only have four fingers, they would have a heck of a time playing, for example, a high “Eb” on a flute in this universe, there would have to be some serious altercations in the design of the instrument. Fewer keys would alter the pitch drastically, resulting in totally different notes, and the whole of the instrument would have to be remodeled. So, beyond the mouthpiece, the entire thing would look totally different.
Yakkanne has this point to add: "In my humble opinion, I think that all the wind
instruments' mechanisms would more closely resemble
those of a bassoon, since bassoons have more than one
key for the thumb. I just figure that way there won't
be a big change to the look of the instrument, just
the keys."
Though this is a very, very nit-picky point, it is one that interests me. Then again, dried glue interests me for short periods of time.
I saw X-Men over Thanksgiving break and have since been watching the series and wondering:
What would the child of two mutants’s powers be?
I don’t know if this topic was ever address of not, as I’ve only been watching for a short time, so, if it has, please, someone tell me. I’ve got a backup pondering.
So, would the kid receive both powers? Would they have their own, unique ability? Would they even be guaranteed to be mutants? If two “normal” humans can have a mutant child, can’t a mutant couple have a normal kid? Are there dominant and recessive powers? Is it just the luck of the draw? Taking into consideration the fact that mutations are formed when a cell has a problem in mitosis, could the power depend on environment rather than genetics? And can mutants even have children? I think it’s pretty safe to say that Rogue CAN’T, but what of the others?
Lily Potter seems to think that it has to do with dominance and recessiveness. If so, I’ll be making Punnet squares soon.
