#i actually do ship dolly x senape a little | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

esepoimipullula · 3 years

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BIG spoilers for Fantomius: L’inizio e la fine by Marco Gervasio

Can I just... rant a little bit about how freaking HAPPY the last two episodes of this series made me?! Oh, whatever, I’ll do it anyway. It might just be my love for unlikely protagonist/antagonist team-ups but I LOVED the temporary (or not-so-temporary) alliance we ended up with.

First of all, I really liked Pinko going from “bumbling minor adversary/enemy who’s comically uptight and a bit arrogant but a good person at heart” to “stone-cold badass” in like two lines. It actually fits very well, all things considered.

(”I could have left like Lord Quackett and his girlfriend did! But I’m not a coward, I don’t run away!”

“If injustice is law, it is our duty to oppose it!”)

On the other hand, I also liked him going back to planning to catch Fantomius and his team as soon as the Glomgold emergency was solved and the situation went back to normal. Pinko is not a cold man, but he puts his duty above all else. And his duty is not to any mayor or to any law, but to Duckburg and its citizens. He has to defend them from Wrong and make things Right for them. To him, stealing is Wrong, whether you’re stealing from the poor or from conceited or dishonest nobles. To make things Right, you have to catch the thieves. Likewise, exploiting those who are defenseless against you for your personal gain is Wrong, whether you’re a criminal or someone in a position of power. To make things Right, the one who’s doing the exploiting must be brought down and exposed, by any means necessary. These two thoughts can and do coexist, one doesn’t cancel the other out. Not even if the thief helps catch the shady powerful person in the act. I can appreciate a character with such strong convinctions and ideals.

Then... there’s Lady Senape. (A small side note: did any Fantomius stories with her ever get officialy translated? Because I’ve seen people on here refer to her with her original name and I can’t help but wonder... do you guys know it literally means Lady Mustard? Like, because she’s kind of a foil to Dolly Paprika? Paprika... Mustard...?)

Anyway, I really, really loved her in this one. Seeing her go from the usual petty but cunning and ruthless enemy to unlikely ally ro actual friend was extremely satisfying, even if most of her character development happened offscreen.

Now, this is probably an unpopular opinion, but... I’ve always liked her as a character. Because she’s a foil to Dolly but she’s not just some Clingy Jealous Ex or a shrew who can’t actually manage to do anything on her own, because she’s kind of a foil to John, too, because I have a fondness for friends/lovers to enemies situations, and because I was utterly charmed by her first appearance. The mystery, the tension, the whole Chinese theatre thing with the symbolic colours... it all made a big impression on me, y’know? So, that’s why I was pretty disappointed when it looked she was never going to get any real character development. In any direction, I mean. Had she turned out into something like a Big Bad to rival Glomgold, I would have been just happy that she got a little something more to do in the Fantomius stories.

And that was were I thought her character was headed to when I began reading L’inizio e la fine. I mean, she WAS getting the chance to seriously mess up everyone’s future, right? And well, she did, pretty much...

But the prologue of L’inizio e la fine came with a little article on Lady Senape herself. Probably just to recap her previous appearances for forgetful or occasional readers, sure. But between explaining why she wanted revenge on Fantomius after Fu Man Etchù, comparing and contrasting her to Dolly, and showing Gervasio’s studies on her character, the writer slipped in a bit of backstory that... I don’t really remember if it had ever come up before, honestly.

“Jen Yu comes from a family of Chinese farmers and she’s a descendant of Ching Shih, the nom de plume of the lady pirate who terrified the Chinese Seas at the beginning of the XIX century,” the article said. And being fascinated by lady pirates, Ching Shih herself, AND the idea of Jen Yu having a backstory offering all kinds of possibilities and parallels (did she go from downtrodden peasant to ruthless thief, unlike John who went from dissatisfied nobleman to gentleman thief? Did she discover her ancestry and immediately decide to emulate Ching Shih to take revenge on society for a difficult upbringing, kinda like early days Paperinik? Was a secret diary involved? Were her parents honest folks or was Ching Shih’s glory reduced into a family of petty thieves and crooks, and either way, did Jen Yu ever want to commit great and daring crimes to make her pirate ancestor proud? Did...) I couldn’t stop reading too deep into it. Though in the end, my main take from it was... “Wait, is she getting an actual backstory and an article all about her because she’s gonna be... important?? Sympathetic??? Someone the readers will be supposed to root for at some point????”

Nevertheless, I tried not to raise my own hopes too much. For all I objectively knew, Senape was just gonna be petty and vindictive and have her backstory never actually mentioned or referenced in-story and...

And then, Distopia and La fine e l’inizio happened. And the only thing that didn’t make me absolutely giddy about her was the lack of “Well, you know, one of my ancestors really was a pirate!” lines during the whole “boarding Glomgold’s ships” sequence.

Of course, I did spend the week between those two stories theorizing how Senape would turn out to be secretly working with Glomgold and spying on the group even as she pretended to have become their friend. Or betray everyone and ally herself with Glomgold as soon as things got too tough for her liking. Or help take down Glomgold but then immediately try to steal the golden mask again and turn back to the asshole I knew and loved (even as I longed to see something more done with her...). Needless to say, I didn’t (dare hope to) think the change would stick or even bring about any significant character development. And yet, what did I get?

Senape working together with Dolly and Copernico for a whole year without ever selling them out. The three of them being actually a good team. The three of them becoming actual friends. Senape and Dolly giving up on their “Lol your boyfriend used to be my lover don’t you feel sooo jealous when you think about it?” “Bitch you broke his heart and you’re an asshole and I want to punch you in the face” dynamic to... become an honest-to-goodness adorable duo? And Senape becoming a permanent (?) member of the team because Dolly asked her and Copernico vouched for her and she was all for it because she liked working with them?? Dolly defending Jen Yu from John’s objections and John giving in even if he rightfully doesn’t trust his ex completely???

*squees*

Btw, I’m also just so happy about Dolly having what seems to be shaping up as a regular female friend that is also involved in her criminal life. She deserves that. <3

If it doesn’t all go back to normal in the next Fantomius series with a sudden backstabbing, that is. I’ll be very sad for Dolly if that happens. Hope they just keep being besties.

#disney comics #duckverse #fantomius #i actually do ship dolly x senape a little #i mean just look at that last panel #'we have a lovely guestroom... ;)' 'are you asking me to stay? ;))'#honestly if i can lowkey ship dolly and john with copernico i can be open to other poly possibilities right?#maybe even an ot4...

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