We'd like to try and address the Doofania issue, because we're very sure we've not done a good enough job of signposting our narrative.
...I don't.
I don't usually want to consider myself egotistical enough to have detailed responses to GM posts.
But, ah. Considering that this post specifically makes overtures to a lot of my points, I think it's best I give it a shot this time.
For a while now, I've been arguing for, I think, the way I
want Doofquest to be, more than the way it actually
is. This was halfway a lack of understanding of what the GMs were going for, true, but it was
also halfway a criticism, and a secret third halfway a request. I came into this topic, all those literal years ago, with the idea of a Doof that succeeds, is competent, is petty and grandiose and devilish
and yet is benevolent and personable, and - and who really
isn't all that different from the Doof we see in the original Phineas & Ferb series. Not the one at the end, or in Milo Murphy, who exists post-character arc, or in the middle of a new story. "Curse you, Perry the Platypus!" Heinz Doofenschmirtz.
I think Doofquest is funnest, and funniest, and most interesting to me, when it's about a man who calls himself evil, and does constant cartoon supervillainy, and is extremely petty and more than a little scatterbrained... somehow
stumbling into being a force for good.
Keeping Danville as Doofania enforces this narrative. Un-seceding does not.
I'm aware of where Doof's plotline goes, in the Phineas & Ferb's multiple timelines. A force for good, a happy family man, Professor Time, a schoolteacher, all these things. I just... don't find any of them to be what I came here to play Doofquest for?
But.
Things do change, don't they? That's sort of the point of them being "things".
It's like. Phineas and Ferb is a show about constantly and deftly maintaining the status quo. Not merely "aggressively" so, but
unshakeably so, on the level of the laws of physics. There's 104 days of summer vacation, except there's actually a lot more, and also, when you look closely, all of them are actually kind of the same day?
That's perfect for a non-serialized comedy cartoon. Leaning into that is for the best. And the funniest! But was it ever gonna work for a long-running "actual" story, with consequences and everything?
No. No, of course not. We had to stop being a cartoon eventually.
I think the honest truth is: I wouldn't have written all of this, this way. I would have found a different way to solve the problem of Moving Doofenschmirtz Forwards. But the other honest truth is: I'm
not writing Doofquest. No matter how many omakes of Janna being everyone's favorite I trick the GMs into making canon, I never have been.
The cards have all been laid on the table. I understand what the GMs are saying, I think, and they understand me, I hope. At this point, it's really just a matter of personal preference.
So - I concede. Danville forever.
...buuuut I don't want to hand Doofania back willy-nilly. I still prefer narrative over mechanics, and so, I'd like to vote (metaphorically) that we, the topic, hold off a little bit longer. Sometime soon, there's going to be an in-universe push, I feel. A moment where Doofenschmirtz doesn't just stare the
facts in the face, but the
feelings attached in the face. At some point, he's going to do something or other that makes me think:
"Okay. He's changed. He feels differently now."
And that's when I feel like I'll be comfortable with getting those sweet sweet government opinion points.
