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One thing that irks me about the Gravity Falls fandom is how differently they treat Ford's canonical trauma to others'.. more.. hypothetical ones, I guess (by that I mean AUs and stuff). Like, as much as I love seeing role-reversal AUs, one of the things I noticed was how the characters who take Ford's role in the narrative often have their traumas taken more seriously by the fandom than Ford does, even though Ford went through the same thing canonically.

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The hate that Stanford gets low-key feels like people who hated Mabel growing up to hate Ford ngl.

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What we can’t woobify, we vilify. What we can’t vilify, we diagnose. And sometimes, in the Gravity Falls fandom, we do all three.

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I will forever hold the belief that Ford said “Grammar, Stanley.” as a sort of revenge for making him say “Thank you.” in front of everybody.

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Guess who got csp ex :))))))

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Fair warning: This comic deals with child abuse and it does get pretty graphic, so I’m putting the rest of it under the cut.

Keep reading

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What's your stance on Ford as a person? Honestly, I believe that for thr majority of canon he is a bad person. But I believe he grew. Still not great though XD

(Love him anyways obvs)

I disagree entirely! I think he's equally as good a person as any of the other main cast.*

*Except Mabel, who, as we all know, is always right about everything.**

(**This is a lighthearted joke. For the love of god, I don't want Mabel discourse in my inbox.)

His biggest sins in the show:

After telling his brother that he was thinking about changing their shared life plans, and then discovering that his brother had gone to the high school that night for no good reason and gone to the science fair for no good reason and messed around near Ford's science project for no good reason and broke it and didn't tell Ford about it... Ford believed Stan did it intentionally and held a grudge for it. You know what, it WOULD be pretty damn hard to believe it was an accident.

Hilariously ill-equipped to cope with Fiddleford's mental health. A guy who responds to "I have anxiety" with "have you tried yoga, it helps me" isn't a bad person, he's clueless. "Character cheerfully enacts a bad idea while a loved one in the background goes NO PLEASE DON'T DO THAT" describes half the episodes of Gravity Falls.

Was successfully manipulated by a professional manipulator into believing his best friend wished him ill. Man, what a terrible person Ford is for being manipulated by a manipulator and saying cruel things to somebody he'd been genuinely convinced was trying to harm him.

??? Didn't say thanks to a guy he was still mad at after the guy fixed a problem he himself had caused. This is a solitary example of stubborn bad etiquette, jesus christ. There's half a dozen different reasons why it makes perfect sense Ford wasn't in the right mindset to feel grateful, this is not something worth indicting his entire character over.

He had high ambitions, which everyone seems to lambast him for, but high ambitions that wouldn't have required doing anybody harm! (Until the professional manipulator started manipulating him into harming the people around him, but we are going to demonstrate some reading comprehension and not blame Ford's underlying morality as a person for things he never would've done if not for Bill's bullying, con artistry, and outright lies.) Like, what is it that he wanted to do with his life? Use his talents to get rich and famous? Shit, that's exactly what Stan wanted to do with his life. It's what Dipper fantasizes about doing with his life. Even Mabel, who thinks about her long-term future the least, dreams big with her art & performances and is already making big money off cheap-ass commissions. What terrible people they all are, for—let me check my notes here—uhhh... unrealistically fantasizing about achieving success in life by doing the things they're good at.

When their dad accuses Stan of lying as a child, Ford puts his entire summer on the line to defend Stan even though he knows Stan is a habitual liar and has no reason to believe Stan is telling the truth this time.

When his new college roommate he barely even knows gets laughed at for proposing an outlandish scientific theory, his first emotion is outrage at this injustice and he drops everything to convince his already-despondent roommate that he was right and help him prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

When he moves to a new town, he tries again and again to befriend his new neighbors, and fails not because he's rude or a jerk, but because he's awkward as hell, tells terrible jokes, and sucks at identifying phoenixes.

When Fiddleford gets hurt around him, he cares about it, feels guilty about putting him in that position, doesn't want it to happen again, and tries his best to help even though he's bad at helping.

When he gets kidnapped by a weird holiday folklore creature, he concludes without even thinking about it that he's now in charge of protecting and rescuing the kidnapped kids. Yeah, then he immediately starts hollering at the folklore creature for trying to impose his religious beliefs on Ford and the kids—but like, Ford was right tho, he just had bad timing.

When he discovers that the Northwest family committed atrocities against their poorer neighbors a century ago, his first instinct is to march up to their house, find the first Northwest he can locate, and give them a piece of his mind for it. Like, this won't even FIX anything. He's just THAT OUTRAGED over the injustice.

When he sees what he thinks is a fortune telling fraud conning the people, he attempts to debunk her because he's mad to see someone cheating other people with lies—and when he can't debunk her, he just leaves her alone rather than harass her about it. Typically, if assholes think somebody's doing something wrong but don't have any proof of it and fail to get proof when they look, they decide they're right anyway and keep giving that person shit. Ford doesn't give her shit. That's the opposite of an asshole move.

When he discovers his Portal To Knowledge (And Fame & Fortune) is actually a Portal To Doom (But Still Possibly Fame & Fortune, Maybe Even Godly Power), he isn't tempted for a second to keep working on it anyway. There is no moment where Bill manages to tempt him. No matter what Bill offers, no matter how long Bill offers, never, at ANY point, does Ford have a SECOND of "but what if I did make a deal with the devil?" the way so many heroes in similar situations often do.

You ever notice that? So often moral moments in the show are presented as choices the characters make. Will or won't Dipper give Bill a "puppet" in exchange for knowledge. Will or won't Stan fight a pterodactyl to protect Mabel's pig. Will or won't Mabel hand Bipper the journal. Ford is never given a "will or won't he" moment over Bill's threats, offers of friendship, or offers of infinite power—he steamrolls straight past them without a second of consideration—because, to him, the selfish, cowardly, easy choice ISN'T EVEN AN OPTION. He doesn't even SEE it as making a choice because the possibility of doing the wrong thing is invisible. A character who wavers first before turning Bill down would look more noble for "overcoming" temptation—it's harder to notice just how much stronger Ford's moral compass must be to not even feel temptation in the first place.

Greed and pride never tempt him to join Bill's side. Exhaustion, despair, and fear never tempt him to give up. He bears up under weeks, possibly months of extreme sleep deprivation, physical torture, psychological torture, emotional torture, threats of death, threats of brainwashing, threats to his family. He doesn't hold up so that he can pat himself on the back for being a hero—if that was all it was he would've gone "screw it, this isn't worth it and nobody would know I'm the one who gave up" a week in—he does it because he simply knows it must be done and because he's so isolated (half because of Bill's influence!) that he believes he's the one who must do it, all alone.

Thinking he has to do it by himself isn't egotism or pride; it's helplessness. He thinks no one else stands a chance. He thinks he's alone.

And, when he discovers his Portal To Knowledge is a Portal To Doom, he immediately feels guilty. No trying to deny the situation to protect his ego. No shuffling the blame off to someone else. No "maybe the apocalypse could have a silver lining!" No locking the door and trying to ignore the problem. He blames himself for being fooled—he IMMEDIATELY takes full responsibility for his actions—and he CONTINUES to take responsibility FOR THE NEXT THIRTY YEARS.

He takes more responsibility than is even warranted—he treats himself like he's an idiot for believing in an APPARENT GOD who's been practicing manipulating humans for thousands of years and who had never given Ford reason to believe the portal was anything but what Bill said it was. He beats himself up to no end every single time his past with Bill comes up. He even keeps beating himself up thirty years later when he's shoving warning notes to future readers in Bill's evil unkillable book!

When he falls into the multiverse, he dedicates his entire life NOT to finding a way to rescue himself, but to finding a way to permanently stop the CHAOS GOD who's still at the threshold of destroying Ford's world and countless others. He makes himself a hated criminal in the process, just to stop Bill. He's ready to spend the rest of his life trying to protect a world he doesn't think he'll ever see again. He does it because, as he sees it, somebody has to stand in between the children and the obnoxious folklore cryptid menacing them, and he's the only adult in this damn cave with the skills and knowledge for the job.

When he gets home, he doesn't tell his family about Bill and his quest because he's afraid that doing so will get them involved and endanger them too—and because he's too deeply ashamed of himself and his mistakes to stand the thought of his family knowing about the horrible things he's done (AGAIN, WHILE BEING MANIPULATED BY THE GOD OF MANIPULATION).

He loves his great-niece and great-nephew the second he lays eyes on them; he nevertheless tries to steer away from them to keep them safe from Bill; and yet he caves to the very first temptation to emotionally bond with his great-nephew he gets, because in spite of his noble "keep them safe" intentions, he wants so so badly to be close to his family.

As pissed as he still is at Stan and even though neither of them can look at each other without hissing like cats, he still makes an attempt to start bridging their divide by inviting him to play DD&MD.

When the apocalypse happens, he immediately puts his life on the line to try to kill Bill.

And when he's captured, isn't fazed for a second by Bill's offers or threats... until his family is threatened. The exact thing he'd been trying to avoid & prevent from the very start.

And when he's reunited with Fiddleford, his immediate reaction is to point out that Fiddleford's well within his rights to hate him—which isn't a new revelation, it's not like Ford had to do any soul-searching to reach this conclusion, he'd concluded that 30 years ago the instant he realized Bill had played him and that he'd been lied to about Fiddleford.

And then he tries to kill Bill again.

And then he's ready to sacrifice his own life to kill Bill—and the only reason he doesn't is because he has a metal plate preventing him from making the sacrifice... but, Stan doesn't have a plate. If Ford hadn't had the metal plate, he would have gladly done the exact same thing Stan did—and he would have thought it was right for him and only him to make that sacrifice, because it's VERY clear he feels (and has felt from the start) that this is all his fault and he's obligated to fix it.

Over and over and over, these are Ford's two defining character traits: getting so pissed off at injustice that his common sense shuts off and he goes into terminator mode until he's righted this wrong as best he can, even when he can't actually do anything about it; and feeling like he's Atlas, weighed down with the full responsibility of fixing everything he's done wrong and made to believe that, for everyone else's sake, he has to do it all alone. Even when doing so puts himself in harm's way, even when he has to put his entire life on hold for it, even if it might cost him his life. Scrape off his awkward social skills, his loneliness, his nerdiness, his endless curiosity, his zealous love of the strange, his starry ambitions, his yearning for recognition and success—scrape his personality down to the bone and that's what you're left with. A man who believes in defending the exploited so strongly that it makes him a little stupid.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that you probably don't think Stan's fundamentally a bad person, and that you probably think that isn't even worth questioning. Stan's made a whole career out of swindling people, conning them out of as much money as he possibly can, stealing, lying, committing a long list of goofily-named crimes, and attempting douchy pick-up artistry on women; and to cap it all off, he held the safety of the entire universe hostage to demand a goddamn "thank you." Don't send me any "But he had reasons—" "But it was only to—" I don't need it, I don't want the essay, I'm not arguing that Stan's a bad guy, it's fine.

But. You can look at Stan's moments of cruelty and unkindness, his uncharitable thoughts, his character flaws, and think, "that doesn't define him. He's more than his cruelest moments and worst mistakes. He's imperfect, but he cares so much and his heart's in the right place, and beneath all the flaws his core is good."

And if you can't do the same for Ford, it's not because he's a worse person. It's because we got two seasons with Stan and five and a half episodes with Ford—and while we saw Stan yearning to fish with the kids or encouraging Mabel to whoop Pacifica's butt at minigolf or crying over a black and white period drama or punching zombies to save his family, we only saw Ford at the worst moments in his life and under the stress of a prolonged apocalyptic crisis—and, it so happens, all the moments he was pissed at the guy we spent two seasons learning to love.

Ford's got moments of cruelty and unkindness, uncharitable thoughts, and character flaws. But, at his core, he's a good person, and he always has been, and he still is.

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you see the thing about ford is that he doesn't necessarily believe he is better than everyone. he believes he has to be better than everyone. and the fact that he holds himself to such a ridiculously high standard is arrogant in the sense that obviously he wouldn't be holding himself to a higher standard if he didn't see himself as more capable, but it gets realized more often as self-loathing than self-aggrandizing.

notice how when ford pushes people away, his reasoning is almost always doubt that they genuinely want him around. he starts with "there's no way this person is actually just being nice and enjoying my company, they must want something, they must have ulterior motives," and then moves on to "they'll just drag me down anyway, i don't need them, i don't need anyone."

and how he makes excuses to spend time with his family. the cycloptopus. fixing the light. the apprenticeship. bill's funeral. clearing up the aftermath of weirdmageddon. if ford isolates himself because he thinks other people aren't worth his time, why does his behavior suggest it's the other way around? shouldn't he be prancing around like the other pineses should be grateful for his presence? why would someone who isolates himself out of a (real) belief in his own superiority feel the need to overcompensate like that?

it's like that post where it's like....he would fucking say that but he would say it as part of a façade that he obviously doesn't actually believe and you guys are interpreting it way too unironic and genuine. ford thinks the only options are that he's isolated either because he's above society Or he's isolated because he's unworthy to be included in society so of course he'd rather tell himself it's the first one.

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The Death of Mr. Jekyll

Like a fine wine, I devour the poison, A lusty, sweet dance with the devil inside. No longer can I Hyde the voices within, They beckon like sirens to darkness, a beautiful song. Endless heartache leaves me nothing to gain, Until all that's left is blood on these sinner's hands. My death is imminent, I fear the beast within, I must shed this skin, this mask, like a diamond under pressure, To reveal my truest self, in all its glory. Goodbye, my former self, you will not be missed, Jekyll.

*Inspired by The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Copyright Notice: © 2024 Peyton Coonfield. All rights reserved. Creative Commons License Notice: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Enfield said Hyde "carried on...like Satan" in the first chapter, and then the maid says he "carried on... like a madman" when he killed Carew. The way it changes connotation from "this guy isn't human" to "this guy is one of us gone wrong" at the exact time the boundaries between Jekyll and Hyde started to blur. The way that seemingly insignificant change of words completely changes the nature of what Hyde is-- from satanic spawn to regrettably human. I hate you robert louis stevenson you make being an author look easy.

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I've only been in the Jekyll and Hyde fandom for a few months, but one thing I've noticed is that most of the people I've seen who dislike/hate the book often say that it's because "It had an amazing idea, but it's executed terribly," or something along those lines. And while I think it's totally okay for someone to hate/dislike any book or media for any reason or no reason at all, I never really understood what they meant by this because I personally think it was executed amazingly. I think it might be because of people just misunderstanding what the idea is, but I could be wrong. I'd love to read why people think the book was poorly executed, maybe I'd add in my thoughts to that as well

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“This then, is the last time, short of a miracle that Henry Jekyll can think his own thoughts or see his own face (now how sadly altered!) in the glass" “ He went down to the cellar to fetch a bottle of his favorite burgundy, uncorked it in the kitchen, and suddenly cried out to his wife: what’s the matter with me, what is this strangeness, has my face changed? - and fell on the floor. A blood vessel has burst in his brain and it was all over in a couple of hours. What, has my face changed? There is a curious thematically link between this last episode in Stevenosn’s life and the fateful transformations in his most wonderful book.”

— The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson/ The death of Robert Louis Stevenson described in a foreword by Vladimir Nabokov

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Hyde as a metaphysical anomaly. He shouldn’t exist. Hyde as an infohazard. You will never understand him or describe him. Hyde as a hole ripped into the fabric of reality, a bending of physics and biology. He carries outliers with him. Coins fall on their edge. Cats hiss. Milk curdles. Hyde as a supernatural entity in all but name, making you doubt what the true limits of science are. A fae of the modern era, a spirit of the laboratory, a spell conjured not by magic but reason. Jekyll as a willing vessel of a knowledge so troubling it’s corrosive, the poisonous influence of Hyde and the distortion he brings onto natural law seeping out of him and peeking out not with life of its own but a mockery of it. His fingers brush the Bible, and the paper withers.

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what part of Light Yagami being an attractive Japanese student that is preppy and kempt are ppl not fucking grasping? 😂 the whole thing about Light’s character is that he’s an attractive highly intelligent young man and it matters in the way that he is “attractive”, as in he’s the last person you would ever suspect of being a killer. He’s supposed to be extremely charming and seemingly approachable, which is exactly why so many people trust him with little to zero effort on their part.

it’s like.. a huge part of his character that cannot be fucked up or else he won’t be believable. He is not meant to look rugged or like some kind of loner lol. You can’t just cast any guy you personally think is hot and assume that they will work for the character 🤣 especially not a damn white guy

Light’s entire character is “how could a good boy like me possibly be Kira uwu” lol. Literally no one believes he could be aside from L because he is completely unassuming and the Chief of Police’s perfect son

“Charlie Heaton should play Light!” “Joe Keery should play Light!”

WRONG!

REN NAGASE 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️ 🔥🔥🔥🔥

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This is something that only comes up briefly twice in the final statement, but it would be interesting to discuss what ideas everyone has about Jekyll's father and their relationship based on those lines.

The first mention of his father is when he has changed back into Jekyll after murdering Sir Danvers —

The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot. I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had walked with my father’s hand, and through the self-denying toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening.

The next reference is during his final days as Hyde engages in destructive behaviour, which Jekyll describes as if Hyde is a separate entity who hates and harms him —

His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin.

There's a lot of room for interpretation, as it's very little information to work off, but my personal reading is that Jekyll had a complicated relationship with his father where he loved and adored him as a child, but his father may also have played a role in his repression and perfectionism - the childhood moment is evoked both as a starting point of life in the context of the horrors and alongside memories of self-denial in adulthood - that led to his choosing to turn into Hyde and everything that followed; so when Hyde destroys the portrait, it's both Jekyll's unrestrained self lashing out at his dead father and a form of self-harm borne out of self-hatred perceived as Hyde hating Jekyll for resenting him.

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So it ends like this. Your contorted cold body is not even touched, barely grazed by disgusted eyes. Stretched out, lay on the floor, described with the words you'd use not for a human cadaver, but for the carcass of a vermin. Utterson simply inspects it close- overturns it, watches your lifeless face twitch- and after the cause of death is ruled, they look for you, the real you, the one that was loved and wanted, somewhere else.

RIP EDWARD HYDE

1883-1887

“Everybody hated him.”