#this is licensed merch for the movie so i suppose this makes it “canon” in a way even if its logic is kinda bananas

[bikkue]

I love how in the book Dorothy's journey from the Munchkin Country to the Emerald city following the yellow brick road is pretty much a straight line - practical and efficient

And then you get to the map of Oz for the 1939 movie and ?????

[mursduckproblems]

I'm sorry the guy going everywhere with smoke bombs was not a theater kid?

Okay so here's the thing, I just can't really get behind DT17 Darkwing being a theater kid. I know this is like, the popular fan-headcanon that everyone has accepted as canon, but it just doesn't work for me. Like, at all. It feels forced? I've got several reasons, actually!

- So if we're going by the show saying that LP's birthday is 1987 per the original show airing (on his license) we can say that DT17 Drake's birthday is probably in 1991. Which meant that he'd be in high school in the early to mid 2000s. The mid 2000s were pre-nerd culture being cool, including superheroes and anime. And even if they weren't pre-nerd culture being cool, Drake openly says he was SUPER bullied growing up.

He's the SUPER NERD comic book kid, and if original Darkwing was supposed to be a crappy niche live action show, we can say he's the kung fu kid. The Kung Fu kid in the early-to-mid 2000s is probably what you'd consider the equivalent of the Naruto Kid. He's acting stuff out, he's making up his own routines, he's doing parkour up and down the stairs, he's dressing up like Darkwing, he's copying lines from the show, and everybody hates him. Not to mention that one of his main gags from the new show is being forgettable and nobody remembers him.

- Nobody is going to pick the kid everybody hates for a school play, let alone even let him be tech. That implies that he's liked enough by both the theater teacher, that people are willing to listen to him, AND the other kids to be considered for a role in the theater program. And even if he did get picked, everybody knows he'd be trying to make things more dramatic, or be the kid who knew everybody else's lines that the teacher hated, or want to add fog machines and revise the script to add more danger, and... yeah it would just be a disaster. Also like, theater has its own cliques too? And I can't see him fitting into any clique haha.

- Furthermore, I don't think Drake had the privilege that would make him able to be a theater kid. He was totally a start-working-as-soon-as-you-turn-16 kid. If he's got an after school job, he's totally not doing theater. He can't be taking the late bus if he's getting out of school at 5PM when he could be punching a clock at 3PM and working til 9 or 10 for some extra cash for all that sweet Darkwing merch. Plus, he'd probably think every job is training for Darkwing stuff. (This goes doubly so for if he has a crappy home life or if he is a foster kid. No way his parents would pay for him to do theater stuff, and he would want to save money for moving out. Extracurriculars are EXPENSIVE yo.)

- Also he seems like he's trained for Darkwing for a very long time. Now I've worked in [entertainment park redacted] with performers who did a role that was basically a stunt role for several years. It was a super cool role imo, but definitely less demanding than Darkwing. To get that role, they had to do multiple fitness tests, and a "boot camp." All of them were athletes. Some of them would legit just go to the gym between their sets. Sure, they loved acting, and a lot of them adored the characters they were playing, they gave them personality and made awesome stuff happen! But I think most of them were more focused on raising the number they could bench than remembering lines from Hamlet. Not because they wouldn't want to, but because they wouldn't have time. A lot of them were get-up-at-5am-to-go-running type guys.

- I bet if Drake was trying to model his life after Jim Starling, he was trying to train himself to do all kinds of stunts, to withstand any amount of pain, and to be able to never cut, since "Jim Starling Never Cuts." Maybe he even developed a strict training regimen for himself where he did get up early and go running before school, and he'd practice Darkwing moves after school. He's gotta learn pyrotechnics, gymnastics, martial arts, and to use all sorts of spy gear, after all! (And probably memorized lots of Goose Lee movies too~)

I swear I'm missing more stuff. But yeah, that's a few of the reasons I just think Drake in 2017-verse is more of a Naruto Kid (but with Darkwing instead of Naruto) than a theater kid. I'm also a big fan of the Drake-had-lots-of-part-time-jobs headcanon.

Obviously everybody is free to enjoy their theater kid headcanon, but this is my alternative!