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cravingpepsimax · 2 days ago

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do you think ford could get abusive if he was just a little bit more morally unhinged? he seems to teeter that line in a lot of stancest content (not judging!) i know you've talked about truly canon stans vs the stans in fics, hcs etc. how close do you think canon ford is to being thay way? (if you're not actually into this, feel free to delete this ask, and i hope i haven't made you uncomfortable.) if not abusive he at least displays a lot of controlling tendencies in a lot of fancontent. how 'canon' would you say this is? thank you for answering in the event that you do, your blog is a gift

Thank you!! 🩷🩷🩷

That doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all! In fact, I find this a deeply interesting subject! Anon, you’re about to get a big answer... a full essay, more like 😭

How should we perceive this guy, morally speaking? How close is he of the darker guy fandom makes him be?

I think it depends on a lot of factors.

Is canon Ford abusive? No. Was he ever intended to be? Also no. Could he be, if he was “a little bit” worse? That depends, I think, of 1) how harsh or how lenient you are on Ford’s questionable canon choices in general, and 2) who do you personally want Ford to be. The second thing does matter, anon, because we often tend to shape our canon evidence to our perception of characters, not the contrary! Human beings are, I fear, extremely biased. No exceptions.

First I’ll analyze fandom culture, then I’ll analyze Ford’s canon morality or lack thereof, then I’ll analyze Ford’s relationship with Stan. I WILL answer your question, I promise. I will get there. I’ll just yap a lot first!

There are many flavors of darker!Ford: from possessive and/or overprotective (when the overprotectiveness becomes condescending or controlling) to physically/emotionally/psychologically abusive. We see hints of behaviors in canon that, if exacerbated, and only if exacerbated, could make canon Ford that person in darker fics—but would that be fair to Ford? After all, what kind of person would you become if I took all your worse traits and exacerbated them? I personally don’t think I would become a very good one.

That said, Ford is a morally gray character. That is pretty much a fact! 😭 But... Stan also is! Minor criminal activities (such as petty theft, scams, tax evading, etc) aside, he canonically drugged and kidnapped a person in Little Gift Shop of Horrors! These two are truly the perfect match, hahah! You’d be right to point out we see considerably more dark!Ford content than dark!Stan content, though. So... is Ford just worse? Do people just hate him?

I think there are many factors that could explain that preference.

One, the dynamics between Ford and Stan in canon. Their relationship is unequal for the great majority of their shared history. Ford holds power over Stan, both in subtler ways (emotionally) and more obvious ways (physically). More on that here. For an abuser to be able to abuse someone, they obviously need some sort of leverage or power over the other person. (See: Bill with Ford.)

Two, the personal preference for bottom!Stan (if you’re a stancester) and/or personally identifying with/relating to Stan more than to Ford. Bottom!Stan is the most popular option in this corner of the fandom; I’ve seen three polls so far, one here on Tumblr and two on Twitter, and in all three of them bottom!Stan or omega!Stan (one of the polls was an omegaverse one, and if you’re familiar with omegaverse rules I don’t think I need to explain how the two things are related) won. I think that, among the many other different reasons for people preferring bottom Stan, is the fact that they want Stan to be taken care of. I think a similar desire could be relevant here, with abused!Stan: the desire to see Stan victimized due to stangst/whump/horny reasons, hahah. Especially if people happen to personally relate to Stan. There was a poll on the gen side of the fandom recently asking which character was better, Stan or Ford, and Stan won. So we can assume Stan is more popular than Ford. The more popular and beloved a character is, the more likely they are to suffer in the fandom’s hands, ironically 😭 When it’s about Ford being obsessive and/or possessive and/or overprotective (even if in a controlling, condescending way) it might be related to wanting Stan to be the focus of Ford’s attention; wanting Stan to be desperately desired. (I dislike misleading generalization, so please understand I’m saying this might be the case with some people, not all.)

Third, Ford’s specific brand of darkness vs Stan’s specific brand of darkness. That’s a pretty interesting one! When people think of dark!Stan, they usually think of a more pragmatic sort of villain, or a cunning, Bill-core conman; this guy has potential to be a mob boss or something similar. Meanwhile, with Ford, you have the potential to make him a questionable “mad scientist” of sorts; he’s fascinated with weirdness, anomalies; he scoffs at society rules; he is the Author of the Journals, he knows a lot about magic; he can actually invent things such as mind control ties if he so wishes; he has more potential to be turned into a creepy weirdo.

Stan is more tethered to societal conventions than he is, I feel. I’m not even talking about incest! But, for example, the fact Stan absolutely refuses to cry in front of anyone without making up an excuse to cover up the fact he’s crying. When Ford cries (more rarely than Stan), Ford... simply cries. He even mentions it in his journal. When everyone is bothered by Ford’s terrible smell at the library, Ford tells himself they’re actually smelling science; when everyone stares at him for wearing a tinfoil hat on his head (blacklight version of Journal 3), Ford tells himself they’re just jealous. I don’t think Stan has achieved that level of “idgaf” yet 😭 And, if you’re talking about post-portal Ford who went through hundreds of dimensions during thirty years, there’s even more reason for social indifference. After years of being bullied for his lack of social skills and his extra fingers, Ford was apparently forced to learn how to shield himself emotionally and relish in the fact he’s weird, different, special.

Now, to dive in the darkness/abuser potential of Ford, I believe there’s a very, very important thing we should consider first. And that’s the genre of the media! The fact that Ford is a cartoon character. If GF was a live-action TV series, for example, my analysis would be very different. But as a character from a cartoon for children with a heavy humoristic tone, Ford is meant to be exaggerated. A lot of things in cartoons are meant to be comic relief, classic slapstick humor, etc, and shouldn’t be taken seriously. They’re just that: funny. I can think of many cartoon characters that would be cancelled, so to speak, if people stopped to think about the implications of the things they do. When I watched GF as a kid, a lot of the darker things went straight over my head, and honestly I think that’s the way we’re “meant” to consume most cartoons.

Now, we’re watching it as adults, and so we want to make it deeper! Darker! More interesting and complex! And that’s a very understandable urge, of course. GF has a lot of potential to be made darker, because it often covers how fucked up or angsty something truly is with humor. For example, young Stan ending his rant about how he was a homeless criminal and went to prison in three different countries and had to chew his way out of the trunk of a car with a comment about the fact he’s got... a mullet! Oh no! The horror! Or Ford having a nightmare about a six-fingered hand squeezing his brother to death and then being like, “ugh, puns! I hate puns!” And above all... Bill. Oh, man, how much Bill is made softer/more relatable through humor! Just remove all of Bill’s jokes and sarcastic quips and charisma from TBoB and what you get is an utterly terrifying villain and abuser who ruined Ford’s life. More than Bill in general, the things that Bill does—Bill messing with Ford’s brain so that every time Ford attempts to say “burden” he says “sea otter” instead (blacklight edition of Journal 3) is very funny, but when you stop and remove the humoristic layer and realize the implications of this... the extent of Bill’s control over Ford’s mind...

Ok, so now that we have cleared that up, we can focus on a second thing: how is Ford meant to be perceived? What were Alex’s intentions when writing him? We have the behind-the-scenes commentary on The Last Mabelcorn:

“[...] Dipper briefly believes that Ford is evil. And there was a lot of fan speculation when we first meet Ford. Generally, when television shows introduce a new, mysterious character late in the game, they turn out to be a villain. [...] We could have made Ford evil, but I always felt this would be less interesting [...] I thought that if I’m Stan, I’d be more frustrated if Ford is actually a good guy.”

There you have it! Alex thinks he’s a good guy! The flaw that Alex loves to attribute to Ford is pride/arrogance, that is, the fact Ford is full of himself and believes he’s a special snowflake. Outside of that Achilles’ heel, though, Ford is clearly meant to be a likeable member of the Pines family.

The character of Shermie was also specifically created so that Ford wouldn’t be made hateable or irredeemable by abandoning his own kid(s), according to a somewhat recent interview:

Um, and so, I look at this always through the lens of character and I asked myself, “what would it mean if Ford was their grandfather?” and I thought, “well it would mean that Ford, you know, had children,” and if Ford had children and abandoned them, then he’s a much harder to redeem character.

And he probably wanted to make Ford at least likeable enough or sympathetic to the audience for them to root for the Stans happy ending together, hahah. In the same interview:

I’m like, I’m in the story mines, like I’m in a boiler room with the pipes, where I’m like, “Oh no! Ford’s not likable, okay we need to add this. Oh shit, Dipper’s making a choice that’s out of character!” and then someone is telling me there’s a timeline that needs to be fixed!

That doesn’t mean you have to agree with him! Sometimes, the creator/director/author of a piece of media fails to portray the dynamic/vibe/context they envisioned and/or to convey their true intentions through canon. As a Word of God girlie who always read lots of interviews from creators, I’ve lost count of how many times I was really surprised by the gap between what a scene was meant to express versus what the majority of the fandom interpreted the scene to express.

“Bunny, I don’t care about it being a cartoon nor about Alex’s wishes! Is there canon evidence for Ford being craycray?”

Oh, plenty. Actually so much that I don’t even know where to begin 😭 I even commented with my friends how easy it would be to answer this ask just listing everything Ford did that was ever questionable, which wouldn’t be fair to Ford due to many reasons (the fact that Stan is also morally questionable, that Ford is a cartoon character, etc), and how similarly easy it would be to defend Ford by using Word of God or shifting the focus to Stan’s or Fiddleford’s actions.

Remember how I said that Ford’s morality depended on who you personally want Ford to be and that human beings are naturally biased? I once read a fascinating article about why very intelligent, reasonable people ended up believing crazy things. It argued that them believing crazy things didn’t indicate a lack of intelligence at all, because their intelligence was being employed in justifying what they already wanted to believe to themselves! So, basically, they often choose to believe in something based off their emotions, desires, etc, and once they settled on a conclusion they very much wanted to believe, their intelligence became a tool to justify that/find further evidence for that. It mentioned a study by a social psychologist saying that when humans want to believe something deep down, they ask themselves, “Can I believe it?” while when they don’t want to believe something deep down, they ask themselves, “Must I believe it?”

So if I want Ford to be a darker character, for example, I can ask myself, “Can I believe that Ford could be that dark? Can I find evidence for that?” And of course I can! I can twist a lot of canon moments into evidence against Ford, in the same way I can use canon moments to (at least try to) defend Ford. So if I go on a quest with the specific goal of finding proof for the interpretation of Ford’s character I personally want to believe, I will. It’s very similar to the phenomenon of looking at canon with shipping goggles, hahah. I already have a conclusion in my mind and I’m just trying to find something to support that.

And what would I point out if I wanted to accuse Ford?

First, that according to Alex (still in the same interview I mentioned earlier), Ford can justify pretty much anything:

Here’s the thing. When I think about what you just said about me and Rob [Renzetti, coauthor of Journal 3], it’s so funny because what to you comes across as “Oh, Rob understands Ford’s ridiculous recklessness,” to me comes across as “Rob IS Ford and Ford does rationalize.” That’s what he does. One of Ford’s greatest powers is rationalizing. So you’re seeing Rob as Ford rationalizing Ford’s bad decisions.

In that moment, I think what’s being revealed is less Ford’s recklessness, and more Ford’s ability to justify anything.

Interestingly enough, what I just explained about humans using their intelligence to justify their beliefs could easily be applied to Ford!

We see proof of this behavior in canon. One of Ford’s favorite excuses is science and/or logic.

“Logical. That’s logical.” (Notice how Stan is also there with him! He’s the one who has the idea in the first place! The morally questionable twins...)

“I’m doing a public service by removing them.”

“But my crimes had a noble purpose [...]”

“[...] but it was all in the name of science!”

Sure, Ford. Whatever helps you sleep at night, hahah.

“Science” is, amusingly to me, Ford’s knee-jerk favorite/default excuse to the point he uses it even when it’s about him reeking:

Perhaps you might be thinking, “but the only crime Ford seems capable of committing is thievery!” Stealing radioactive waste, stealing the parts to build his quantum destabilizer, etc.

Except Ford is described in his multidimensional bounty poster as “armed and dangerous,” something that Stan, as a fellow thief and criminal, was never described as (in his own bounty posters).

And he has straight up lied to his journal before! A good example:

“I have not sampled human blood.”

I have seen a lot of people finding this amusing because hahah, every person has sampled human blood, like when your baby teeth fall! But that’s not the point. The point is that Ford was in the middle of writing something, stopped, realized it didn’t sound very socially acceptable (probably because the means he had used to taste said blood had not been very socially acceptable; notice that he compares it to animal blood, which means he had tasted it as well) then rectified it by crossing it out and directly lying to the reader.

That established, I very much doubt stealing parts for his quantum destabilizer was the only crime he committed to become an outlaw in entire dimensions 😅

And other people have pointed it out before, but Bill’s offer to Ford in Weirdmaggedon is telling. “No more restrictions! No more laws! You’d be one of us. All-powerful. Greater than anything you’ve imagined!” As someone who knew Ford pretty well and had been literally inside Ford’s mind, he thought that was something that could possibly tempt Ford.

Can you blame him? After all, this is the kind of thing Ford says in TBoB:

Now, all that is just about Ford as a morally gray character, in a very general way. When you’re talking about Ford being abusive to Stan, specifically, things are different. Why? Ford loves him deeply. I wrote an entire meta on the little details people miss that are proof of Ford’s love.

We see Ford (and Stan, again, as his partner in crime) doing questionable choices for their family. Such as threatening the bus driver with an actual gun and brass knuckles so that their niece’s pig would be allowed to enter the vehicle. (See how much darker things can get if you remove the comical layer of the cartoon genre?)

Earlier on, Ford was fully willing to doom the entire universe to save three people, including Stan (again, his family):

But Ford using such morally grayness against his family? That’s a different thing. So here I start the third and final part of this analysis, Ford’s (possible mis)treatment of Stan, whom he loves.

Remember how I said in the beginning that Ford’s worst traits could become abusive only if exacerbated, which wouldn’t be fair to him?

We know that Ford can be jealous towards a loved one of sorts (if you consider Bill to have been a loved one back then), canonically:

(Bunny Opinion Time: I can easily see Ford getting possessive, because to me possessiveness entails at least some measure of entitlement. Ford does feel entitled to Stan’s help, at least—“I’m giving you a chance to do the first worthwhile thing in your life, and you won’t even listen!”—so considering the very codependent nature of their relationship as boys and the fact Stan has always treated Ford like the center of his life, it’s not a stretch to imagine Ford growing to feel entitled to Stan’s love or Stan himself, period. They’re twins -> Stan is his other half -> Stan belongs to him subconscious pipeline.)

That he can be condescendingly protective (not just simply protective) towards his loved ones, canonically:

Remember when I said it depended on how charitably you want to view Ford? You could look at this and think, “how cute! he cares so much!” 🥺💕 or you could focus on the condescending/patronizing vibes (Ford thinking Stan was an overgrown child unable to handle Bill; Ford wanting his grown friend to lose even though it was a choice Fiddleford made because he would be supposedly unable to handle it) and think, “ugh, Ford being Ford” 🙄😤 or “hahah, Ford being Ford” 😂 even, “ooh, juicy, Ford being Ford” 😏🔥 This could be either canon evidence of his caring personality or canon evidence of his controlling personality, depending on what I would be trying to convince you of.

Anyway. We also know Ford can be physically aggressive towards Stan even when completely unprovoked:

To make things worse, he was initially supposed to make Stan bleed with the force of his punch:

However, we have to keep in mind that the original scene was modified for a reason! Very probably because Alex was actively trying to make Ford somewhat likeable and/or redeemable. He must have (correctly) assumed making Stan bleed would be Too Much for the audience. We don’t have to consider this as extra official material or anything—it would actually be unfair to the Ford we did get.

Our Ford actually felt bad about it later, as he writes in Journal 3:

(Bunny Opinion Time: I personally don’t think our Ford has much potential as a physical abuser—compared to all other kinds of abuse—even if that tendency of his was indeed exacerbated, despite how aggressive and violent he can be towards actual threats in general. As we’ve already established, canon Ford is good at rationalizing his bad actions, and doing physical harm to Stan wouldn’t be something easy to justify to himself because the damage would be quite visible. Physical harm, out of all kinds of abuse, is the one taken the most seriously by people in general. He loves Stan, and there are probably limits he wouldn’t cross even if very angry, especially because—when it comes to a Ford who is stronger than Stan—he knows he’s physically stronger than Stan. Only more reason to hold back.)

Back to the matter at hand.

We also know Ford can verbally humiliate Stan:

I think it’s fair to say that this is the worst thing he ever said directly to Stan in canon!

But as I’ve mentioned in a previous meta (yes, I’m straight up copying and pasting my own words):

Don’t get me wrong, I do think Ford looked down on Stan—on people in general. There’s plenty of evidence for that in both Journal 3 and Word of God, if you count Word of God as evidence. Ford himself admits to that after Weirdmaggedon. But the thing about Stan proving his worth specifically—that’s probably also related to Ford’s need to be in control at all times. If Ford admits to himself he is not in control, that he needs help from other people, that he is really that desperate... Well. He can’t admit that! So he rationalizes his way out of that conclusion by convincing himself he would be the one doing Stan a favor (offering him the chance to prove himself to Ford), and not the other way around. He doesn’t need Stan, he doesn’t need anyone. Stan is the one who needs him and his forgiveness! Phew 😮‍💨

The other times he roasts Stan are not said directly to Stan’s face, so I think it wouldn’t be fair to count them.

Still, Ford’s most questionable/morally gray moment when it comes to Stan might be the possession tie incident.

STANFORD!

And in this case, the comic relief/exaggeration typical of a cartoon doesn’t work very well as a shield, because they made 12-year-old Dipper acknowledge out loud how dubious it was:

And Ford not only shrugs it off, but phrases it in a way that leaves no doubt about the true power of his invention:

This moment becomes even more interesting, imo, if you think about the fact Ford knew from experience exactly how terrible it was to lose his own bodily autonomy. After all, that’s what Bill did to him! I’ve once read a very well-written dark!Ford stancest fic that made Ford darker because, and not in spite of, Bill constantly possessing him—as long lasting damage from sharing literal head-space with a demon, Bill messed with his life views and worsened his morals.

Even if Ford were directly controlling Stan like a puppet with this tie, though, it still wouldn’t be a “Bill controlling Ford” situation. Ford isn’t sadistic. I think canon Ford is very, very distant from controlling Stan with the intent to harm him or to make him pay/suffer, especially because, again, Ford does love Stan. He would have to be fully convinced that it was for Stan’s own good, “brother knows best” style, perhaps out of condescending/patronizing protectiveness (a tendency of his we just mentioned). He let Dipper borrow the tie not so Dipper could embarrass or humiliate Stan publicly, but so that Dipper could help Stan get elected, because he thought Stan would ruin his own chances by just being himself.

When Alex was asked, nine years ago, at the New York Comic Con, who was the older twin between the two Stans, he not only said it was Ford, but that Ford felt naturally superior because of it. He has also mentioned in the behind-the-scenes DVD commentary that a thing Ford liked about Dipper is that Dipper easily obeyed him 😭 One thing is for sure: Ford is bossy, and you can’t even blame him for that. He probably grew up having his “knowing better than Stan” status validated again and again by the adults in his life.

In conclusion, anon, I don’t think canon Ford is close to becoming abusive if you make him just “a little bit” more unhinged—as if he’s just barely non-abusive in canon or something; that wouldn’t be fair to him at all—but I do think he has control issues, and that if you 1) remove the typical cartoon humoristic layer, 2) consider his questionable moments in canon as seriously indicative of his character, 3) take his worst traits and run with them... you’d naturally end up with a very controlling, very entitled, possibly possessive kind of guy. Logically, the more you exacerbate such traits, the worse Ford gets. All along, though, you’d have to keep in mind that Ford only gets as far as he can rationalize and/or justify to himself. He cares about being a hero, after all.

I definitely think there are limits to what our Ford could believably rationalize to himself (especially regarding his loved ones, for sure), but like I said before, you don’t necessarily have to obey such limits in fanfiction 😉

#stancest #YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU GET IT

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