#**tldr Olive is pretty severely mentally ill but she has her good days especially after Aggie moves in with her

[hexarcana]

Relativity Falls Thoughts aka Bones breaks it down

I can’t do a perfect 1:1 translation so Aggie inhabits Olive’s role as the child, and Olive takes over Aggie’s grandma-from-the-backstory role, but to keep her connected to the story I’m borrowing elements from McGucket for her.

(Cutting the post to preserve the dash)

Olive grew up with Dipper and Mabel, and was always closer with Dipper despite her and Mabel being “the girls.” Olive was big into the nerdy shit thanks to her academic parents, who divorced when she was young which led her to spending a lot of time at her friends house when he dad travelled. (Her mom never came back.)

When Mabel does whatever thing she does to “ruin” Dipper’s Life, Olive isn’t there. She was visiting her dad. She came back from her trip to one less friend and her remaining one was PISSED. She only ever really got Dipper’s side of the story, which naturally put Mabel in a negative light.

Olive could have probably gone to any ritzy school in the country (She was a real scholarly type) but she ended up going to BMU, following Dipper. Her reasoning is that BMU offers curricula which can get you multiple degrees (How else would Ford have so many PHDs) but really she’s worried about Dipper being on his own and she (Mirroring Aggie and Stan in canon) has had a crush on him since she was a kid, so she wants to keep him close.

Since Olive is a girl and I’m imagining the dorms werent co-ed, they weren’t roommates but instead lived above/below each other’s rooms. They’d tap out messages in morse code on the floor/ceiling.

Taking inspiration from a lot of college fiddauthor headcanons, they DO come together at some point and have something of a relationship, though they’re both so swamped with school it’s a very??? Non committal thing, which suits Dipper fine but Olive is ever pining for him.

I haven’t quite figured out what makes them split up after graduation- Olive probably has her own endeavor she’s looking for and after years of on and offing with her best friend she thinks maybe she can try to move on. Reflecting Aggie’s time in NYC, that is where she goes, and where she is when Dipper Calls her for help.

During her time in New York, (pretty early on) Olive had her son, who she named David after a famous German mathematician. David’s biological father is, as Olive Recalls, “The only one who got the math joke I told at a bar.” (Basically it was a one time thing and she honestly doesn’t remember much about him at all! Oops!)

Initially, she was a pretty good mom. A little scattered and overwhelmed being single and trying to get her feet underneath her- Having a child sort of slowed her career to a crawl. But that wasn’t David’s fault. He’s pretty young still when she gets the call to come to Oregon and she drops EVERYTHING go do it bc one she has no prospects and two she’s still burning a candle for Mason (She started calling him that at some point during college.)

She arranged for her dad to look after David while she was away, not thinking she would be gone all that long when in reality, she’d never return to New York.

(note my friend Lye helped me come up with and fix this next part!)

She joins Mason in Oregon and fully throws herself into the project. She’s dedicated and hard working, a real workhorse type. Here’s where there’s a big shift, I don’t think Olive would form the blind eye society, so in order for that to exist I would say that the other McGucket stand in (Pacifica probably) is also working on the project. When the incident occurs, Olive helps pull Pacifica out of the portal . She quits after the incident, but Olive doesn’t. She wants to see this through with Dipper. Her dedication is enough for Bill to take an interest in her. He can see how hard she works and how dedicated she is so he’s keen to keep her around. With this funky little scientist around the portals getting done much faster than he’s hoped!

However a wrench is thrown into things when her son of all people shows up in Oregon. Her dad couldn’t keep looking after him so he arranged to have him sent to her. Initially she’d called and kept in touch but as the portal progressed and Olive became more and more exhausted, her communication skills slipped. By this time, David is really starting to resent his mother, and is incredibly unhappy to be there. Olive struggles to balance reconnecting with her son and working on the portal. To keep David away from the work she used what meager savings she had to buy a scrap of land in the woods where originally, an old camper sat, and that’s where David spent most of his time. Understandably he became extremely bitter and hateful towards Olive, and she was quickly losing her grip on reality.

Around the time David showed up, Bill started to talk to Olive, wanting to get her on his side the way he had with Mason. Trouble is he kind of gave her too much too fast. Instead of pleasant jaunts into the Nightmare Realm, Bill exposed her to the destruction and chaos he has planned, just hitting her with the big madness all at once. He appears in many of her dreams, and he always seems to be whispering to her to keep working. When she starts to have doubts he flips the script, choosing to threaten her instead.

He obviously knows how she feels about Mason, and he uses that to his advantage. If Olive quit, Mason would be building the portal alone, and who KNOWS if he’s even be able to actually get it built without severely injuring himself? Olive is sturdier, more solid. Dipper NEEDS her to help finish the portal or he might not live to see it activated. In addition, Bill makes threats against her son and although she’s losing a lot of her sense of reality and self she knows that she can’t let her not be hurt. I’m sure there’s some possession and some more mild mind-breaking activities but in the spans of a few weeks Olive is barely herself anymore, she just seems to exist to work on the portal.

She didn’t even notice when David finally ran away.

She isn’t herself, and I think her deterioration plays a role in Mason starting to question things. Once he understood Bill’s real goal he tries to figure out exactly what Bill did to her but she can’t articulate it, she can hardly articulate anything at this point. He gives Olive one of the journals to hide, and explains that he called for further backup.

When Mabel arrives she hardly recognizes Olive, since she’s definitely not the confident spunky girl she once was. She’s a somewhat haunted shell of herself. She is too freaked out to go down to the basement with them, so she sits alone upstairs. When the portal activates and the anomalies start up, Olive is terrified and is overcome with horrible visions and hallucinations- a total psychotic break. When Mabel finally finds her upstairs and she’s nearly catatonic. Mabel is able to shake her out of it but Olive is like an injured animal, initially desperate to know where Mason is and when Mabel tells her, and begs Olive to help with the situation, Olive becomes very aggressive and frightened and before Mabel can really stop her, she runs off. The two wouldn’t speak again for a good long while. Mabel doesn’t even known Olive is still in the area, frankly.

Mabel goes on to set up the Mystery Shack. She’s heard rumors about there being a woman in the woods, and she does eventually investigate and confirms it’s Olive. She once again tries to get her help but Olive inset interested and she threatens Mabel with weapons. By this point most of Olive’s “bunker” has been built from scrap she stole from the dump. (As an aside bc I forgot to mention it, Olive did end up hiding the journal, and it’s the one that the boys find when they visit.)

Olives reputation as madwoman only grew with time, she’d make wild claims about the end of the world as well as being abducted by aliens. This is how she sort of??? Processed her trauma? Like she was very plainly explaining what happened to her she didn’t keep it bottled up but it made no sense and seemed so insane that no one really pays her much mind. This goes on for a good while.

Mabel eventually gives up on Olive, and resigns herself to rebuilding the portal herself. The two have virtually nothing to do with each other for some time until someone shows up at the Shack, looking for Olive. It’s David, (Who Mabel never met) looking for his mother. Mabel doesn’t initially believe him but when she sees the kid he’s got with her she knows he’s serious. Little Aggie is about five or six years old, and a pretty spot on lookalike for the little girl Mabel knew as a kid. She agrees to help David get to Olive.

She leads him out there, and then opts to stay back, not wanting to scare Olive. As she’s heading back home she sees David’s car leaving, but the little girl isn’t in the car anymore. Mabel looks back towards the bunker in the woods. She gets a weird spooky feeling so she leaves.

From there, there’s virtually no contact apart from extremely random chance encounters. Olive seems less afraid/angry at Mabel but she still doesn’t stay around her for long. Mabel does eventually ask about the little girl and Olive DOES assure her that Aggie is fine, and thanks her for asking. At some point when Aggie starts venturing out, she ends up at the Shack a few times just exploring. Once the boys show up and befriend her, she’s there alll the time :))

So that’s most of Olives story, but there are some details that Mabel doesn’t know about (David related) and neither Yearling will talk about but I will talk about it!!! Just not now on this post bc I have a few kinks I gotta work out.