Musing Museum

DT17 Dewey gives me such Epic the Musical Telemachus vibes

Like for any Ducktales fans who haven't listened to Epic, first of all GO LISTEN TO IT, but if you don't want to, just listen to Legendary, Little Wolf, We'll Be Fine, and Can't Help but Wonder. Dewey is such a Telemachus, both because of his longing for adventure and that he wants to connect with a parent who he never got the chance to meet! (Odysseus for Telemachus and Della for Dewey)- If you think about it I guess Dewey's Athena equivalent would be Scrooge? Idk lol

Della's obviously the perfect character to play Odysseus, what with the whole ten-year quest to return home to her family including children she's been separated from since infancy, and the boys can collectively be Telemachus. Donald and Scrooge best fit the roles of Penelope and Laertes, but it's debatable who fits which one better. Both of them sort of do something akin to Laertes going off to mourn in the countryside, and they each fit a different aspect of Penelope- Donald for being the one to raise the boys, and Scrooge for being the one who has the wealth and power the suitors would be after. I think Donald makes more sense for Penelope and Scrooge for Laertes, but they could go either way. Hortense can be Anticleia, fitting as she's generally presumed to have died at some point before the show starts much like how Anticleia dies before the Odyssey starts. Aside from the boys and Hortense, the relationships between the Ducktales characters are different from the Odyssey characters, but I picked them for how they fit the narrative role, not how exactly they're related to each other.

Conveniently, the family has the same number of non-related (more or less) household residents that Odysseus has household servants (well, slaves, really- ancient Greece was not a nice place to live) who aid the protagonists. Beakley and Webby can be Eumaios and Philoitius- I don't think it really matters which is which, though I'd be slightly inclined to make Webby Eumaios on the basis that she spends a lot more time with the boys, much like how Telemachus and Odysseus spend a while with Eumaios in the poem- and Duckworth can be Eurycleia.

The gods present an interesting wrinkle here. Some of the Greek gods do actually exist as characters in Ducktales. They could theoretically just play themselves. However, in most cases, there are other characters better suited to the roles. Except in one of those cases, that other character is a different Greek god. I think Selene is the best choice for Athena, as a divine mentor to Della/Odysseus who then goes on to offer aid to Dewey/Telemachus. I'd go with Goldie for Hermes (because thieves), and Zeus can just be Zeus. Ironically, the Odyssey is actually one of the more reasonable portrayals of Zeus, even among its immediate contemporaries (Iliad Zeus is every bit the petty, vengeful asshole we know him as today), so Ducktales Zeus isn't all that great a fit, but I can't think of any better characters for the role, so it might as well just be Zeus as himself.

The suitors (who are presumably not actually seeking Donald's, or even Scrooge's, hand in marriage here- though I'm also in favor of having Storkules show up among them completely unaware of what the others are after while he is actually trying to marry Donald) can be made up of various villains. I think the best choice for Antinous, their leader, is Glomgold. Admittedly, this would work somewhat better if Scrooge was Penelope, but Glomgold still works and I have other plans for any villain who might fit this role better. Most of the suitors are pretty well interchangeable and could be any villain not otherwise assigned, but I'd go with Bouncer Beagle, arguably the most reasonable of the Ducktales antagonists, as Eurymachus, the most reasonable of the suitors. Additionally, Bradford, as one of Scrooge's associates who turned against him, can be Melanthios.

Nestor and Menelaus don't have major roles in the Odyssey, but they do show up as the people Athena sends Telemachus to in order to seek information about Odysseus. I'd make them Quackfaster and Gyro. Nestor is the most reasonable and levelheaded of the Achaean kings who fought at Troy, and while "reasonable and levelheaded" doesn't exactly describe Quackfaster, it comes closer to describing her than Gyro. Menelaus, meanwhile, is the guy who called the Trojan War in the first place, since it was his wife Paris and Aphrodite made off with, so it makes sense to cast him as Gyro, the guy who designed the Spear of Selene.

In the Odyssey, the only crewmates of Odysseus who have any significant role are Eurylochus and Elpenor. Polites and Perimedes get like two lines each, and no one else is even named. Therefore, I'm only going to bother casting Eurylochus and Elpenor. There isn't really a great fit for Eurylochus, considering Della's whole thing in the show was being alone, but Penumbra sort of works, and I can't think of any other role that would suit her better, so I'll go with her. Elpenor's whole thing in the Odyssey is being forgotten, so the obvious choice for him is what's his name, that purple guy- Drake Mallard.

Or logan making quick-witted quips because as much as patton loves dad puns logan is good at them because of what he is. As much as he thinks its silly its actually also part of what he is to be able to do that like Patton does. Its cute!

you can play that scene seriously. it is inherently kinda funny but you can so easily play that scene dead serious so if he cut it so it could be a more “serious” film then that’s stupid

“it’s not possible to work it in” so you cut the entire cyclops section? because why have an odyssey movie if your gonna cut big sections of the big long journey

“yeah the Big Long Journey movie was too long so we had to remove some of the journey :(“ shut tf up

I have never seen another allergy that has been so viscerally hated and mocked by people working in education like nut allergies. I’ve seen fellow teachers cringe that their classroom was the “nut free” classroom that year. Support staff that are trained and willfully don’t follow cross contamination protocol in the lunchroom because it’s too “tedious” or “time-consuming”. Full preschools + childcare centers that refuse to accommodate nut allergies. Schools where the only free lunch is a PB&J. Before/after school programs and summer programs whose food curriculum has nuts and doesn’t provide an alternative activity.

Allergy discrimination is so so insidious and prevalent. It’s happening behind their back and it is everything from the exposure joke to possibly causing someone to go into anaphylaxis from willful ignorance.

I was not downplaying this. The stigma is real, and people are 100% willing to let people with allergies die.

When my mom tried to enroll me in preschool, the school principal refused any basic accommodations like asking everyone to wash their hands after lunch before re-entering the classroom, not bringing straight up peanuts to snack time, etc. There was no such thing as a nut free classroom at the time. The principal told my mom and me (I was 4 at the time and definitely in the room when this happened) “if she’s so sick, she belongs in a bubble, not at school.” THE FUCKING PRINCIPAL! My mom had to threaten legal action under the ADA to get them to comply.

Look, I was on a 504 accommodation plan under the ADA for the entirety of my formative education (elementary thru high school). That’s all 12 years!!! And yet I have had teachers hand me items I’m allergic to as a “reward”. I have had other kids intentionally try to send me into anaphylaxis. One girl in 3rd grade asked me why I “wasn’t dead yet” when she had put on a lotion with almonds in it and then held my hand. I’ve had other parents write letters to the school saying what a terrible inconvenience it was to them to not be able to send their kiddo to school with PB&J, demanding I be Removed to a special education only class if my “needs” were such a “burden” to others. During elementary school “parties” held in the classroom on holidays and for student birthdays, I was always sent to sit out in the hallway or go to the library, because even though parents were only supposed to bring safe foods into the room (they had a list of all my allergies) they never once got it right. Administrators fought me tooth and nail for the right to carry my epi pen and other meds on my person at all times. Why they thought I would start dealing benadryl on the playground, I do not know. At lunch, I was always sat at a specific segregated table labeled the “Nut Free Table” alone because who the fuck is going to sit there with the literally segregated outcast? But ONCE notably I was sat on one side of a line of blue masking tape down the table top with the rest of my class on the other. One side was the NUTS side!!! As if allergens would respect that tape barrier. (Spoiler alert: they do NOT!)

Literally from preschool to my senior year of high school, I was “the peanut kid”. Other parents gave my mom books about how to “cure your child’s food allergies from HOME” by micro dosing with things they are allergic to (please never ever ever even attempt anything like a food challenge with a known allergen outside of the care and supervision of a medical professional, holy shit that’s so dangerous). My mom joined the PTA in my last year of high school so that I could maybe participate in all the senior-focused events like pool parties and breakfast at school on the first Friday of the month. The number of times another parent either (a) decided it wasn’t worth it to care or (b) intentionally brought peanut products to an event to spite either me or my mom??? I literally could not count. It happened constantly.

College was better, but I still occasionally had people BALK when I asked them to please not eat a Nature Valley bar with whole nuts in it right the fuck next to me in lecture, thanks. Work parties and catered lunches were always impossible. A few conferences I went to as an undergrad were SUPPOSED to be nut-free, but always fucked up the catering. At one, they set up snack tables by every exit of the conference auditorium so that when people left after the talk, they all congregated around the exits and opened macadamia nut cookies and granola bars. When I had subsequently had a massive allergic reaction and needed help getting home (I’d walked) after taking like 200mg of benadryl, the staff offered me a stack of napkins and a lukewarm apology.

Food allergy is a disability which touches literally every aspect of a person’s life. Everytime I share with someone new about what it was like growing up with my allergies, they have never heard anything like it in their lives. They’re always like “holy shit, seriously??? People did that??? Kids tried to kill you??? Parents wanted you kicked out of the classroom????” Yeah, man. Yeah. My own brother (who doesn’t have any allergies at all) doesn’t understand why I don’t “eat more adventurously” and why I won’t travel internationally. So, saying it REALLY LOUDLY for people in the back:

When on the flight Amy was fed bread that contained multiple things she was allergic to. The packaging was completely unlabled and she was never offered an allergy warning before or during the 13 hour flight. She had an allergic reaction and had a very hard time breathing and had to take the ONE epipen she had access to for this whole trip that day. She would not be able to get a new one. The flight attendants did not give a singular fuck about what happened to her and the position she was put in because of their carelessness.

Fast forward to the end of the trip. Luckily Amy had no further incidents during the trip. We get on the plane for the flight home and Amy asks about the food for the flight and if she can have the ingredients list. She also makes it clear to the flight attendants that this is really important because she has already had an incident and no longer has her epipen.

Do you want to know what the flight attendants did?

They kicked her off the plane. They kicked a seventeen year old off a plane and left her behind in an unfamiliar city because they would rather not deal with her disability. She delayed the flight for several minutes begging and crying for them to not leave her there. She told them she had no way of accessing a new epipen here, but they said she couldn’t fly without it. Me and my friend who were sitting next to her held her and argued with the flight attendant to keep her on the plane. She sobbed as she said she could just not eat anything, or that she could eat what she brought aboard. They still kicked her off. Bless the chaperone that chose to stay behind with her so she wouldn’t be alone.

You want to know the most fucked up part after that? The flight attendant who kicked her off was amused about the whole thing like it was some funny joke. Another one complained that “In all his years of working this job he had never been so disrespected.”

Amy and the chaperone ended up sleeping at that airport over night before they could get on another flight. I don’t remember if she was able to get another epipen for the flight home but I think she was.