#I’ll definitely go into more detail in AtLotG eventually

[korkorali]

Alright, it’s time for more headcannons!

Today, we’re talking about how Della Duck bonds with her kids.

For both Dewey and Webby, she bonds with them over adventures, but for different reasons.

With Dewey, she bonds over the excitement, the death-defying stunts that they both pull. Sure, it terrifies her at times just how much Dewey’s impulsiveness reminds her of her, but that just makes her even more desperate to build a good rapport: to cut off the possibility that he’ll lose himself at the bud.

With Webby, she bonds over the mystery, the exploration of it all. They bond over ‘firsts’: from being the first people do step foot in an ancient Mayan temple over centuries, to being the first in their family to reach the Cloudslayer/Sunchaser in their escape from said temple.

But more importantly, they bond over their love for the unknown. They bond over the addiction of the chase, the moment before all the answers click into place. (And sometimes Huey will join them, his interests in documenting everything lining up nicely with theirs)

She bonds with Huey over video games, and the Junior Woodchucks.

The video game part is something of a constant learning experience for the both of them, each learning how the other prefers to take their fantasies, and where they line up.

Take Minecraft, for example: Huey is a builder, and a farmer. He enjoys taking his time making complex structures and watching his crops grow, knowing that he’s making someone else’s life easier. Della, on the other hand, is a miner/explorer if there ever was one. She constantly goes cave diving, looking for mineshafts and strongholds, and killing monsters. She takes pride in the fact that she’s making the world a touch safer, and that she is practically unbeatable in PvP. (They are both absolute gods with redstone though. It’s one of the only things that Della will spend time on building. The allure of secret passageways and duplication is to much for them to bear.)

The Junior Woodchucks was an insanely pleasant surprise for both of them. Both of them had grown up with everyone around them kind of... criticizing them for it. Or if not that, then just not really getting their excitement about the whole thing. But then they had each other to talk to about it, and they ab-so-luetly took advantage of that. Huey had someone who actually understood what he meant when he described the proper way to set up a tent. Della had someone to give all the secret tips and tricks she’d learned to. They would eagerly go on any camping trip possible.

As for how she bonds with Louie? Well, that one took some time to find out. Not for lack of trying, on either of their parts.

They tried TV shows at first. It didn’t really work, for a few reasons: Della would end up spacing out and then missing most of the plot, and Louie would get annoyed trying to explain it a bunch. In the end, they found out they also had wildly different ideas of what made good television as well.

Chess was next, and actually lasted for a while. They were both pretty damn good at it, and found it nice to have a challenge for once. In the end though, they were both so silent while playing, and tight-lipped about their different strategies afterwards, that they would just never talk while playing. They both desperately tried to reason with themselves that they were bonding, but they ended up giving up chess as a tool for bonding, in the end. (They still continued to play chess together, though. It just wasn’t the thing that they had been looking for.)

They both realized that adventures wouldn’t work, as Louie didn’t actually enjoy any of the parts that Della did. And video games wouldn’t work either, because Louie didn’t really play them in his spare time. As a competition? Sure, but not for fun.

In the end, they discovered how they bonded best by accident. They were both awake, late at night, and one thing led to another, Della’s lack of a filter on her mouth leading to her releasing some thoughts/feelings that she normally wouldn’t talk about, and Louie related to them.

So they found it: they bonded by, simply, talking to each other. They would spend late nights where they were both plagued by insomnia in the kitchen snacking, having conversations. They were usually slightly morbid, like discussions about anxiety (thinking about every. Single. Thing. That could have/should have/would have happened on the adventure the other day, other people and their unpredictability, etc.), past trauma (they don’t even realize the fact that they’re talking about trauma at first, the experiences so deeply ingrained in them.), and feelings of body dysphoria (both feel as though their bodies aren’t exactly what they should be, for different reasons, mostly. But the result is the same (never taking of the hoodie/jacket)). But they would also talk about how much they loved their family, and try to discover together why they didn’t feel they showed it well.

Della Duck bonds with all her children differently, but she wouldn’t give them up for the universe.