#dude this is exactly why Bradford was handled so badly

[gamingstar26]

I always hated how when anyone in the show questions scrooge and his methods they get made fun of for disagreeing with Scrooge and his methods, like Donald and Bradford for example. And the whole: family is the greatest adventure of all message was overused to hell and lost its meaning.

Adventure in the show is so one sided it’s mostly about the Scrooge treasure hunt type (while they do try to say that raising a family is an adventure it fails cause it gets shadowed by the “real” adventures), cause adventures have all sorts of meanings, like going on a safe trip is an adventure, same with a dangerous one, etc. adventure is flexible in its meaning.

Bradford was a legitimate threat cause of his manipulative and business man nature, and he knows Scrooge and how he works really well. He didn’t need to have magic or anything. since he never really had to do any dirty work to get where he is, he’s a vulture he sits and watches while letting others to the dirty work for him. (And the family splitting themselves apart cause of adventures is cruel irony in his eyes) He knows what makes Scrooge tik and uses that to get his way, he watches like a vulture. And he hates adventures cause of the trauma it caused him from his grandmother. So he has good reasons to hate it, but goes in the deep end to achieve his impossible goal. In a sense there a tragedy in there.

I could go one but I’ll just be repeating myself. But I agree with pretty much everything.

Also re: status quo being king and the supposed inherent virtues of Adventure™, I think Bradford’s fate really exemplifies Ducktales’ weaknesses in those regards.  When you have an antagonist challenging the validity of your protagonists’ values, even if those values are something as postcard-shallow as “family is the greatest adventure of all!”, then you kinda need to address that challenge in a meaningful and even-handed way.  Even if the writers wanted Bradford to be totally wrong about the status quo — if they wanted to say that yes, the Duck’s wacky adventures and the chaos they spread are an absolute net positive in the world — there was a pretty obvious way to show that without giving him a gratuitous kill count and a weirdly horrifying fate.  Just let him become the cartoon villain he keeps denying he is and then integrate him into the status quo.  Don’t make him a “lame” villain that even other villains make fun of and then trap him indefinitely as a mindless animal, that’s just mean!  And lazy!  And doesn’t address his surface-level concerns or his deeper motivations at all!!

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