Everything I draw ends up wearing a bow-tie

Anonymous asked: Pardon my asking, but how old are Goosetave and Daphne when they meet in The White Balloon? Asking for reasons

good question! I think they are about 16/17- young enough for Goostave to be deeply under the thumb of his parents but on the verge of going to college and really starting to be able to break away and be independent. I imagine they met, then went their separate ways, but kept touch as pen pals for all the time they were apart and eventually met back up in their twenties.

anthrotmnt asked: I just read the last page of the comic and I have so many feelings. It's probably one of my fave pieces from you (and that's saying a lot because I love like everything you do and especially the Magicstone works) now. One thing though that hit me when I reread part 2 was that, timing wise, Goostave's argument was the last time he spoke to his mother and just kind of cements further the difference between her and Elvira, who didn't even get any 'final words' with her daughter. Just, so many feels

yeah, I also wanted it to be more unstandable why we never hear anything about Gladstone’s relatives from the Gander line- after that argument I figure they, and he, practically cut themselves off from one another. He kept his Gander surname because it keeps him connected to his father (and also prolly a little out of spite).

it’s a mixture of canons and my own take on it- this from the Disney Wiki entry on Gladstone;

- while no duck canon is ever truly solid (there’s just that much of it that conflicts!) it just made sense to me to blend these options. As Don Rosa’s more recent family tree is generally accepted as canon (especially as it is used in the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck), I decided to keep his canon that Goostave and Daphne are Gladstone’s true parents along with adhering to the visual he gave them. It made sense, however, that Gladstone’s parents are no longer part of the scene, as they never appear in any stories outside of the past. I also felt that this sort of tragedy fitted with the psychology of Gladstone, and explained in part why he didn’t know about the Triple Distelfink for a long time.

For those asking about why I made Goostave the way I did (and being very complimentary! thank you?! glad you all love him too), there’s literally only one picture of him and that’s the grouchy portrait in Don Rosa’s family tree poster so I was like, do I go the bad-grumpy-too-stern-dad angst route? but I decided against that because a) Daphne’s luck would prevent her from marrying a total grump and b) wouldn’t it be nice to tie in how Gladstone is like both his parents by making one of them grouchy on the outside but soft on the inside?

This ‘white balloon’ story will eventually be followed up by another about Gladstone’s childhood after this event, where he went and how Ludwig Von Drake became a significant figure in his life. :Tb