Kat

very often i see people portraying della as some overconfident airhead who does not consider the feelings of others... and that is far from who she actually is!!! admittedly she is arrogant, however thats because she doesn't have a healthy understanding of her worth and place in the family (hmmmm... sounds like a certain duckling who wears a green hoodie and i'll get to that in a minute)

1) della struggling with her self worth and her place in the family has been a thing even BEFORE she returned home from the moon

if u really want to understand della and why she is the way she is... you really have to understand her relationship with scrooge

she obviously has idolized this man to the ground ever since she was little (the entirety of the first adventure.... her dedicating herself to taking down santa even though she didn't understand why he was a bad person) so his validation meant a lot to her!!! but as shown in new gods on the block, scrooge was never really the best at giving validation or showing that he really cares. because he sucks at communication :/

scrooge does give the kids validation when they do something significant in adventures, but he's bad at showing his love for them outside of that. we can assume that this lead to della doing major things in adventures in order to get his validation, which then turned into her centering her self worth around adventuring.

so how does that end?

bam.

della thought that she had to be an amazing adventurer in order to prove herself to her family, because again atp she has centered her self worth around adventuring. so when she had the boys she thought that she had to "give them the stars" (aka do something very adventurous and risky) in order to gain their love and prove herself to them.

2) nothing can stop della duck!

when della returns back from moon, she tries to do "normal mom" stuff! like baking and telling her kids bed time stories. and yk she obviously isnt the best at it

she then says this, and this quote will be important when i get to louie

(remember that shes conflicted on how she can be a part of the family. ok? ok)

anyways, how does she try to solve this?

yep. she resorts back to adventuring. notice how she says "prove my worth" here,, she really thinks that adventuring is the one thing that gives her value

anyways yall know how the episode ends, she realizes that learning her place in the family takes time and its really sweet<33 (i adore this episode SO MUCH). but yeah shes starting to realize that hey,, maybe being a good adventurer doesnt equal being a good mom

3) louie and della!!!

so season 2 centers around louie, what's the conflict? him being insecure about himself and how he fits into the family! do you already see the connection here?

what is he good at? what makes him worthy enough to be a part of the family? that's what this episode sets up

aha! scrooge notices something

scrooge showers him in validation for this ability, even going as far as to say that its an ability that both himself and his mom have (both who louie looks up to) showing that its something incredible to possess

so that lights a lightbulb in his head, this is what makes him worthy! so what does he do with this new information?

yeeepppp he milks it out... just like della did with adventuring

fast forward to timephoon. he's doing his thing with louie inc and schemin himself treasures by using the time tub. and how did he come up with this? you guessed it! using the very same talent that scrooge praised him for: seeing all of the angles and shortcuts

this is important because it sets up a parallel between louie in the present and della in the past

both della and louie find something that they're good at that gets them praise and validation -> they become reliant on that talent to the point where they center their self worth around it -> they start doing big risky things with that talent without considering consequences, because they are convinced that those talents are powerful enough to get them anything they want

this episode is not discreet about this parallel (que the famous line)

it will always be so funny to me how the only thing some people got from this episode is that della is a hypocrite. what do you want her to do? encourage this behavior like scrooge did with her, and have him potentially hurt himself and the family like she did? she never claimed that what louie said about her was wrong, so how is she a hypocrite? (i think she very much agreed with him honestly LOL)

anyways yeah! in my eyes, this episode was "rewriting history" by having della correct scrooge's past mistakes with her. there's this AMAZING meta on the parallels between della and scrooge in this episode (here) which further shows that della and louies relationship is a parallel/redo of scrooge and della's

4) glomtales

OK ONE LAST POINT... remember when i brought this quote up and told yall to keep it in mind

well in glomtales she says this

be a part of this family

i'm bringing this up because everyone seems to think that she said this just to make louie feel bad about himself, when really she was just projecting onto him!! was it uncalled for? YES! does this episode's resolution suck? absolutely! but people seem to miss that della punished louie and said this because she didn't want him to end up like her and feel isolated from the family, not because she actually wanted to isolate him from the family

she knows what its like being good at something and becoming reliant on it to the point where it leads her to do big stupid things, she doesn't want him to get to that extreme

and for funsies, my ideal glomtales: everything is the same, della still says that line BUT she apologizes for it at the end and talks it out with louie!! she explains how being dependent on adventuring and getting on the spear of selene really affected her and how she doesn't want the same thing to happen to louie. that would've been lovely and we wouldn't have the notorious amount of people who constantly mischaracterize her :heart:. also i think it would've been wonderful if della emphasized to louie that she doesn't love him because of his ability to see the angles, and that she loves him for him awaa