sass-o-matic asked: If you don't mind me asking, what's your take on Donald having "The Worst Luck (tm)"? Every time I see it in a comic getting played for laughs, it reads as cruel or depressing to me. So I was wondering (since you don't generally laugh at misery, as far as I can tell!) what it meant to you/how you see Donald's "anti-luck"?
who gets stuck with all the bad luck? poor poor Donald- well, I’ve always seen it as one of the reasons I love him so much more than Mickey- who I do love! But the thing is Mickey is an everyman in the sense that he can be any role, can be any level of competent, can be at the top or the bottom of the pile. With Donald, he always always has failings; he’s angry, impatient, he gets struck by misfortune, whether or not he cheats- and yes, he does sometimes cheat! Donald isn’t even always the good guy, because heck, when everything always goes wrong, who would be? Donald is absolutely a fallible, down-trodden, ‘oh my god I have been there buddy’ buddy. He isn’t cursed, but it certainly can feel like it sometimes; the world seems to turn against him at every opportunity, and while in a wider perspective you can see humour in it- as with everyone- when you’re the one who’s the joke, all you want to do is wind your arms in a circle and do the Donald angry FIGHT ME dance. His ‘anti-luck’ isn’t what makes his personality, however, it’s his reactions to it, and his dogged determination to keep living and keep trying to win despite it all (and perhaps more importantly his occasional desire to give up and actively exhibit despondency, until someone like his nephews or his friends pick him up again) are what make him such an enduring, realistic, relatable and compelling character.