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just-a-random-cipher · 4 years ago

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!Theories about Gravity Falls!

Enjoy Reading:)👁

I recently came to the understanding that some people in the Gravity Falls fandom are slightly confused as to what little the fandom knows about Bill Cipher’s past. Everyone who watches the show knows he comes from another dimension known as the Nightmare Realm, which is decaying and fated to be destroyed by its very own mechanisms. However, given the release of Journal 3 by Alex Hirsch and Disney, and a rather interesting and hidden page on the Disney XD site (found here), Bill’s background is obviously not as simple as him being a megalomaniacal, dimension hopping villain.

Let’s start with the Axolotl.

Most people know this amphibious being from the last few seconds Bill is alive. He says something close to, “Axolotl, my time has come to burn. I invoke the ancient power that I may return.” If you want to hear it yourself, check out any of the YouTube videos on the subject. However, this seems to point out that Bill knows of, or somehow personally knows, the Axolotl. This is where the hidden link comes into play. Below is a picture of where the link leads to.

Take note of the first highlighted section. Dipper is asking what the Axolotl knows about Bill Cipher. Now, seeing as the Axolotl resides in the “time and space between time and space,” it could have the ability to see and know all of what happens in other places of time and space. This would give the Axolotl a distanced, somewhat unbiased view of what happened in Bill’s original dimension.

The riddle that is boxed gives some insight into Bill’s past from what the Axolotl knows. The first two lines refer to Bill - proof of him being an equilateral triangle due to the three sixty degree angles the Axolotl describes.

The third and fourth lines explain what happened to Bill’s dimension. The dimension burned, and he misses it. The “can’t return” at the end of the fourth line seems to hint that he is trying to get back to his dimension, or is trying to undo its destruction. Also note that Bill watched his dimension burn, meaning he was likely already outside of his dimension. Say this was his first time dimension hopping, and his first time leaving his dimension had some kind of effect like Weirdmageddon did on Earth - only, instead of there being weirdness waves that changed the environment, it was something much worse which basically rendered the entire dimension uninhabitable or entirely wiped it from existence.

Moving on, the Axolotl implies that Bill is lying to himself about being happy, and possibly other things. “Blame the arson for the fire” could have several meanings at this point. Was there someone else who actually destroyed Bill’s universe? Should we be blaming Bill because he is the arson? Does Bill blame someone else who is the true arson? Seeing as the word “Blame” is a mere imperative verb that is ordering a person or thing to do something, and there is no other person or personal pronouns given in the sentence, it is hard to say who the Axolotl is ordering. If it was “blames,” then it could be derived that it means “Bill blames” since “You blames,” referring to Dipper and likely the only other person the Axolotl could be thinking of in this context, doesn’t make grammatical sense.

The seventh line seems fairly obvious, and the only questions left are: who is Bill shirking the blame to, and what blame precisely? He has supposedly committed hundreds of atrocities and probably broken all the laws in every universe just to say he did, so is he putting the blame for all of his actions on someone else, or just a singular time where he was to blame?

The eighth line likely connects to Bill’s last moments in Stan’s mind. As stated before, Bill says “Axolotl, my time has come to burn. I invoke the ancient power that I may return.” Notice how Bill uses Axolotl’s name, and later says invoke. Kinda obvious connection there. But also note how Bill says “my time has come to burn.” Now, we do see literal fire taking over Stan’s mind, but we never see him actually burn. Of course, this could also point toward a more metaphorical description or that he just needed to rhyme, just as the Axolotl did in answering Dipper’s question, in order to truly invoke the Axolotl.He could also be referencing that he is dying, and that he probably should have died ages ago with the rest of his dimension which burned, but hey. I look for double meanings everywhere. Especially with Bill Cipher.

As for the last two lines… The fandom can only speculate on it. Bill can only liberate himself by doing one singular thing. And apparently a different form and different time are involved. That could have many different meanings. “Different form” could be physically or mentally - Bill could be a different shape, could be reborn as another species somehow, could reaffirm himself and admit the truth, or he could simply get some kind of interdimensional cold and be “out of shape.” The other half seems pretty obvious: “a different time.” It could be the future, the past, the present, the in between times, or even the second or third or hundredth time he tries to make amends.

A different form and time could also refer to a different universe, which holds a different form and different times, or himself entering Gravity Falls’ dimension and gaining a physical body (new form) and trying to start a new reign in another dimension that (this time) won’t just collapse someday without warning.

Basically, the Axolotl states that (in my own opinion) Bill possibly had a hand in the destruction of his home dimension, but likely tried to stop said destruction and failed. He misses his home and can’t return, but is still trying to find a way back to it. He’s lying to himself and someone is definitely to be blamed for the destruction of his universe, but he won’t admit to it. Bill needs the Axolotl in order to put the blame on someone else, and there is only one way, in another time and another form, that he can free himself from the blame.

Alright. Onto The Oracle. Finally.

In the Third Journal, Ford explains what exactly what happened for those 30 years he was missing. After getting attacked in a 2-D Dimension, he met The Oracle in Dimension 52. She knew all about him and his “mission” to defeat Bill. She was the one who helped Ford get a metal plate in his head. She also was the one who told Ford about Bill’s past.

The first few things I want to go over is the page in which Ford depicts The Oracle. She stands, staring with crossed arms partially obscuring an amulet, in front of what seem to be tapestries of the Axolotl. Bubbles and/or orbs seem to be hanging from the ceiling and rising from the floor in front of the tapestries.

The Third Journal does show that some people in the multiverse know of the Axolotl and the Oracle seems to have some kind of psychic power, evidence when she knew Stanford’s name, his purpose, and what he was destined to do. So perhaps that isn’t as interesting as it first appears. The amulet is also rather intriguing… Could it be in the shape of an eye?

But what about the bubbles and orbs?

I kinda feel like I’m looking too deeply into this, but the only other time when bubbles seem to be important is during Weirdmageddon when Bill uses a bubble to trap Mabel and unleashes weirdness bubbles on the town. It seems somewhat weird that the person who gives Ford all the answers seems to have some kind of connection to Bill - albeit a stretched connection with just these pieces of information in hand. It just seems too much like he’s being used again, which I’ll get into later.

Ford, on some level, seems to notice the connection between the Oracle and Bill. The symbols underlined above the circled Axolotl can be decrypted to read, “The opposite of Bill.” This seems to make sense with what little we know of her. She seems to know all, but never tells Ford that she is indeed psychic or omniscient - notice how Ford states, “Whether she was psychic or had just read my wanted poster is hard to say,” implying that he doesn’t know how she knew about him. She is also noted to be “calm” when talking about her desire to end Bill’s reign. However, Bill seems to believe himself to be omniscient due to his ability to peer into all realms from his Nightmare Realm. But he constantly doesn’t foresee issues - Mabel knocking the safe’s code out of his hands in Dreamscaperers and outsmarting him in Sock Opera, the Weirdness Containment Bubble around Gravity Falls, the dino-arm pulling his eye out, the Stans swapping clothes. He also is known to be rather hotheaded and, as many people in the fandom point out, likely to be insane.

Now, you might be wondering where all this comes into play, right? Well, if you look at the second page, where Ford details their encounter a bit more, he says that the Oracle told him that Bill was power hungry, which caused him to burn his dimension and everything and everyone in it.

That doesn’t sound like what the Axolotl said, right? Which is why people are conflicted on what, or rather who, to believe.

But why would she shape her words into something that Ford could easily misinterpret? Well, first things first: she’s an oracle and prophecies can be easily misinterpreted. But that seemed to fit a bit too easily, so I looked a little harder at the wording of the document and came to one conclusion:

She wants Bill dead and out of the picture.

My reasoning? 1) Look at the line “She spoke of him without anger, but with a calm, steely, clinical resolve to see his reign end.” Pretty straight forward. Ford can tell that she doesn’t like Bill’s reign and will not stop until he is stopped. 2) “She… said I had the face of the man who was destined to destroy Bill.” She said destroy Bill, not Ford’s constant “defeat” that he mentions throughout the series. Destroy means to utterly annihilate, reduce to nothing, ruin emotionally and spiritually, to kill. If this is what she said to him, then she obviously wasn’t just messing around. 3) Ford and her spent the entire night partying after she revealed this. They were partying about someone’s death. Kinda harsh

There is one other point that really hammers it into me that the Oracle was manipulating her own words: her own name. The first paragraph reveals her name to be Jheselbraum the Unswerving. The Unswerving. Which means that once she’s dedicated to something - like destroying a dimension hopping demon by the name of Bill - she will not stop until she succeeds.

Seeing as Ford mysteriously found himself in another dimension after he and the Oracle partied together, it’s pretty obvious that she didn’t tell Ford about him being destined to defeat Bill until that last day. You’d expect someone whom could pull someone out of another dimension into their own, whom knew who Ford was way before they met, whom already had a difficult surgery in mind to aid Ford, and whom was obviously invested in taking Bill down to simply tell Ford that he was the multiverse’s savior, right?

She instead kept it all a secret until the last day, at which point Ford was even more resolute to kill Bill instead of just defeating him and keeping him out of his dimension.

So who do you trust more? Or do you trust no one? On one hand you have a mysterious being that answered Dipper’s question with a riddle instead of a straight answer, and said riddle could be seen in a variety of lights. On the other, you have an equally mysterious Oracle who might have manipulated her words to ensure Ford’s resolve against Bill.

It's just my opinion! So you don't have to say anything about it! :)))

#gravity falls #gravity falls theory #gravity falls bill #axolotl #dipper pines #mabel pines #digital art #drawing #bill cipher

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fancysasquatch · 1 year ago

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Update #4, I've finished season 1 and I have a lot to go over, including an entire symbolic language that I translated in one sitting (save a few letters).

I'm going to try and go over things on an episode by episode basis, starting with episode 16, the body switching carpet one.

When they find the secret room in the shack, there's a calendar on the wall from 1982 where the date July 4th is circled, which is presumably going to be important so I'm writing it down so I don't forget. Below the calendar are the glasses from the wheel in the intro that Stan(?) was wearing when the twins travel back in time, which current day Stan immediately pockets and later looks at thoughtfully. During the episode we seed a coded message in a puberty book, when run through the caeser cipher is says "Puberty is the greatest mystery of all. Also: Go outside and make friends" which is a harsh dig against me personally, because since moving I've spent most of my free time watching cartoons instead of going out and making friends.

Moving on to the next episode, the one with the boy band. At one point the register on the gift shop shows the number 618, which is one of the many times that I've seen that number show up. I don't know what it means but I figured I should mention it at some point. Also, the message during the credits of this episode say "Happy now, Ariel?" That wasn't a reference to a line from the episode, but after learning my lesson from Aoshima I tried looking through the credits for the answer. One of the names credited for "additional voices" is Ariel Hirsch, who's most likely related to the show's creator Alex Hirsch (my guess is sister, possibly daughter).

Skipping past the dinosaur episode, we're now on the first part of the two part finale, which is a lot. When they show the deed for the mystery shack, two things pop out to me. One is the address, yet another instance of the number 618. The other is the signature on the bottom is for Stanford Pines, which shows that that's not just something Gideon calls him but is supposedly his real name, so the "Stnlymbl" license plate on his car does seem odd.

When Gideon is looking in Journal 2 for instructions on summoning Bill Cipher, I noticed the indication of surprise that the glasses are one of the "Zen symbols." To me, this suggests that Stan (the one that wears those browline glasses) had possession of the journal at some point, either as the original author or just annotated it later on. Speaking of symbols, when they meet Bill later on he refers to Soos, Mabel, and Dipper as "Question mark, shooting star, pine tree" indicating that those are indeed their symbols.

When Dipper looks in his journal for information on Bill Cipher, he sees this blood splattered page. Notice that caeser, atbash, and a1z26 (the three codes used for ending credits so far) have been crossed out. Also, the name Bill Cipher has been written over the top of a series of yellow characters which will be relevant later. Those codes shouldn't be written off just yet though, because when they go in Stan's mind the word "mystery shack" above the door to the mystery shack is written using the caeser cipher.

When they show the memory of Stan in a Colombian jail, he has browline glasses. This means regular glasses Stan has the memories of browline glasses Stan. They've established that clones have the original's memories, so that seems to indicate that the Stan we know is in fact a clone of the original Stan, rather than a twin. Also, again, note the 618 on his prison jumpsuit. However later on we see further memories of his past, and when he was in school he had standard glasses, but when he was a teen he had browline glasses, so I'm not sure what to make of this.

I didn't take a screenshot but when Gideon mentions Stan's name to Bill, Bill's body shows a flash of Stan's face (I can't for the life of me tell if the glasses are browline or standard) and a flash of a symbol that looks like Stan's back tattoo that you can sometime see poking out from under his shirt.

Moving on to the finale, at one point they show a fragment of Journal 2 with this "reset binary sequence." It doesn't actually mean anything in binary, at at 42 characters it's not even the right length for a real binary message (which are in strings of eight). It also doesn't seem to translate into morse code either.

Later on, we see a page in Journal 3 which shows partial blueprints for what turns out to be a StarGate, with this in the bottom left corner. The binary means nothing once again, but the block of text seems to be written in a symbolic alphabet. These are hard codes to crack, but not impossible. The first clue is that the backwards E symbol is a word when it's be itself, which means it has to be either an A or an I. The line above has a three letter word starting with the symbol, which is most likely going to be either and, are, or its/it's since those are some of the most common words in the English language. It's most likely "and", because if it it were "its" or "are" then the final symbol would either be E or S, which are two of the most common letters, and that symbol doesn't show up enough for that. The single most popular word in English is "the," and there's only two three letter words that show up multiple times. One starts with the diamond, which I already have being the letter N, so it's probably the one that starts with the box and dot. That also fits because the downward pointing arrow is too common to be H but common enough to be E.

The last word on the first and fourth lines are both missing the same symbol, with one being _hen and the other being ne_. The only letters that make sense there are T (which is already assigned) and W, so now that letter is W. At this point I started transcribing the message by hand into a pocket sized journal I bought 8 years ago and naver used. While doing that I was able to find other easy to solve gaps in words. T_ has to be "to," if _n isn't "an" or "on" then it has to be "in." As I went on and more words became fuller then it became easier to guess the letters that only appear once or twice like the F in In_inite or the V in Uni_erse. By the end of the transcribing process I was able to just sight read, only occasionally consulting the book. The final result was the message "The portal when completed will open a gateway to infinite new worlds and herald a new era in mankinds understanding of the universe. Plus, it will probably get girls to start talking to me finally."

With most of the alphabet translated (the letters J, Q, X, and Z aren't in that message so I still don't know them), I decided to go back to the yellow message under Bill Cipher's name in Journal 3. It reads "Liar monster snappy dresser." Later on we see a journal entry for a squash with a human face and emotions, with the symbol cipher message "Don't eat him." I tried looking back through old screenshots but didn't see any more symbol cipher messages.

During the end credits they showed a close up of Journal 2. The black string of numbers doesn't mean anything, but decoding the red numbers with the A1Z26 cipher you get "Reverse the ciphers."

The final coded message from the end of the credits is another number code. When you use the A1Z26 code you get "Eswfup rif dps vlojtsys." That doesn't mean anything by itself, but when you "reverse the ciphers" by run it through the second cipher (Atbash) and then the first cipher (caeser) is says "search for the blindeye."

Don't know what that means but it sounds spooky.

I've decided to watch Gravity Falls, and I want to see if I can figure out the various mysteries without looking up any answers. I'm going to catalog my efforts to do that here on tumblr.

Going into this I've only seen two episodes back in like 2013 (the pilot and one where there's a pig) but I'm not totally in the dark about the show because there's a few things I've gleaned from cultural osmosis on tumblr. Namely, the bad guy is a pyramid man named Bill Cypher and also Grunkle Stan either has a twin or a clone, I'm unclear which.

I'm currently two episodes in and I've already discovered and cracked one secret code, and am keeping my eye on a couple other things. During the credits of episode one I noticed a string of garbage text, pictured below

Knowing this show's reputations I figured this might be a coded message, probably either a substitution or transposition cipher (since this was a code meant for children and those are "Baby's first cryptography" material). I put it in an anagram finder and got back 48 results that all contained the word "fjord" but none seemed like an actual message, so it probably wasn't a transposition cipher.

If it was a substitution cypher then there were three options that seemed the most likely to me. It was either a shifted alphabet (each letter in the message is shifted a certain amount up or down the alphabet, so A becomes B becomes C, or A becomes C and B becomes D, et cetera), a reverse alphabet (every letter is mirrored back to front, so ABC becomes ZYX) or a keyed alphabet (where every letter's replacement is randomly determined by a secret key).

If it was a keyed alphabet then I was out of luck for now, I would have to wait until either they reveal the key or I collected enough messages to brute force it. I tried a reverse alphabet first but it was still garbage text. So it was down to being one of 25 different shifted alphabet keys (unless it was multiple codes, like a reverse alphabet and a transposition, but I'd finish dealing with single codes first).

I could have tried each of the 25 possible shifts first, but that's a lot of work, so instead I focused on the two letter word. One of those two letters has to be a vowel, and there's only six vowels so that means 12 possible options. Only two of the options were real words. Shifting back two letters turned "wr" into "up" but the rest of the message was nonsense. Shifting it back three letters turned "wr" into "to," and applying that to the whole message made it read "Welcome to Gravity Falls."

With that code cracked, I moved on to episode 2. I hadn't paid much attention to the intro during the first episode but this time I paid closer attention, and noticed a few things (and then went back and confirmed they were the same in the first episode's intro).

In Dipper's title card there's some symbols on the wall that look like runes, but the only real rune is the third symbol. The others don't seem to appear in any actual runic or pseudo-runic alphabets I can find online. I'm going to be writing this off as purely decorative for now, but I'll keep an eye out in case these keep popping up as a symbolic alphabet, like the alien alphabet from Futurama.

At the very end of the intro this pops up for a split second. That guy in the middle is Bill Cypher, I already know he turns up later. I recognize several of the symbols surrounding him as being from the show. The shooting star is on Mabel's sweater, the handprint is on the cover of the book, the tree is on Dipper's hat, the lobster claw is on Grunkle Stan's hat, and the question mark is on Soos' shirt.

To the right there's a string of text which, when translated using the same alphabet shift code from above, reads "Stan is not what he seems." It also has the Konami code, which I'm just taking as an easter egg.

On the left there's a few possible number codes. In red it looks like something in binary but it's doesn't actually mean anything in binary. But if you convert it to morse code it could be either "sror" or "oksk." Using the same -3 shift, "sror" becomes "polo," which means nothing for now. Reverse alphabet shifting does nothing, I used an online tool to test every other alphabet shift but nothing came up. I don't even know where to begin working on the other two possible number codes.

The credits for the second episode had another hidden message. Using the -3 shift, it becomes "Next week: return to Butt Island."

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tuiyla · 4 years ago

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So I finally watched The Owl House

I wish I’d do this with every show I watch but it seems like only a lucky few get the She-Ra style rant of love treatment. Well, I finally watched The Owl House after my dash having been flooded for the past couple of weeks and I have some thoughts. Slight spoilers below.

First off, I love the whole vibe. I had a faint idea that this show would be about magic but I didn’t know much before watching - except for one thing, we’ll get back to that. The way it builds its world and deals with magic, though, is so refreshing. And I just have to mention here that I laughed out loud at all the Harry Potter jabs, they were hilarious. I expect we’ll learn much more about magic and its users as the show goes on but as far as the first season goes the introduction was really solid. It strikes the right balance between leaving things to the imagination but being more than “wave wand and magic happens”. It’s colourful, it’s creative, and I even like the ovens and school tracks, despite knowing that the story is about not conforming to those. It makes the Boiling Isles unique and make me want to learn more about the world even beyond the characters and the main plot.

TOH also presents a world that’s much more macabre than I was expecting from the Disney Channel, not that that’s a bad thing. I found myself thinking of Adventure Time at certain points and pondering, at scary moments, how kids would react. I think kids love this, though, and besides, nothing can be more scarring than Courage the Cowardly Dog was. It’s not that terrifying, of course, just daring enough to stand out. Overall the show has what I would classify as more of a Cartoon Network vibe than a Disney Channel one, but I admittedly haven’t really been following many Disney shows. In any case, I dig it. I dig the weird creatures and the beautiful backgrounds and I appreciate how alive the Boiling Isles feel. It doesn’t take long for TOH to immerse you in its world so I’m for one am hooked.

I make a big deal of loving the world itself because rarely does it happen that world-building stands out to me so soon in a series. I do love carefully constructed fantasy worlds but for the most part I’m more interested in the characters themselves. Here, I’d say it’s close to being a 50-50, which is something that even Avatar can’t say with its elemental masterclass in world-building (which is mostly because the character depth there is unrivaled but still). So yeah, kudos to The Owl House for achieving this. From Luz’s glyph magic to the covens and the titans, I’m excited to explore this world more.

Now, the characters. The real meat of any story. Starting with Luz, I have seen some criticism that she’s a generic hero so far, the “I’m a weirdo”, heart of gold, upbeat variety. I don’t think this makes her bland, though I do admit that being told over and over again that she’s weird makes me less engaged, even she’s also shown to be weird. I like the message of her arc and that the chosen one trope was deconstructed almost right away. I like that she’s relentlessly enthusiastic and kind to people and I like that she doesn’t have to get more bitter in order to get development. Instead, she learns from her mistakes but keeps being herself and brings her unique spirit to the Boiling Isles. We need protagonists like Luz, not just because she’s latina and bisexual but because her learning process doesn’t involve cynicism. Sure, there is a lot she needs to learn but her heart is presented as an asset and a sort of source of magic. I’m excited to see where her story goes, for sure.

I’m gonna write briefly about the other characters before I get to my favourite one. Eda is super cool and I quickly got over the fact that she’s not Beatrice Horseman, lol. She embodies such a youthful energy but the show also allows her to be a middle-aged woman comfortable in her own body - well, owl curse notwithstanding. Also, her relationship with Lilith is one of my favourite parts of the whole show. Eda subverts so many of the mentor’s traditional tropes and I’m here for it. I kinda thought she was the villain based on her design and when I didn’t know anything about the show but hey, happy she’s not.

I don’t think I’d even seen a picture of King before starting to watch the series and at first I thought I’d get tired of him real quick. He’s the type of character who can get really annoying instead of endearing really fast if he’s not given any depth or charm, both by way of writing and voice acting. Luckily, I ended up liking King and his antics. His design is indeed adorable and Alex Hirsch is a genius. The only time I felt like he went too far was, perhaps surprisingly, in the book writing episode, “Sense and Insensitivity”, but even there going too far was the point. So yeah, King’s also great, there’s much potential in his backstory and general character.

Alright so really quickly, other characters: Willow and Gus are generic best friend characters and though they already have other things going on, I expect more development as the series progresses. I like that Willow is actually super powerful, just not in the way people expected her to and Gus is clearly also talented despite being younger. I’d be happy to see more of the other kids, get more familiar with Hexside. Edric and Emira are fun characters but they were really shitty in their first episode so I was kind of surprised they weren’t more of a nuisance to Amity later on. I’m all for supportive siblings so I wouldn’t mind a good relationship between the three but I feel like it’s more complicated than that with the Blights.

Finally, I also have to mention that Hooty is... well, quite something, isn’t he. Much like with King, I thought he’d be much more annoying but somehow the show is self-aware enough that it makes Hooty tolerable. I’m almost always torn between feeling sorry for him and being thoroughly weirded out, and I think that’s the intention? It’s fitting that he’s the titular character as he embodies the tone of The Owl House well in my eyes. He’s there for the comedy but there’s just enough there to hint at something more. Very bizarre, strong CN vibes, here for it.

Now that I’ve written a paragraph more about Hooty than I expected to, let’s talk about Amity. Listen, no other character stood a chance to be my favourite as soon as I learned Mae Whitman voiced Amity. That woman gave me Katara so now I have a quasi Pavlovian response to her voice. I’d also say that I knew more about Amity going into the show than I did about any other aspect of TOH. I heard somewhere that she started out as an antagonist, I knew her parents were abusive, and the reason the show blew up on my dash and my general online bubble is the Grom episode. Lucikly I only saw stills of Lumity beneath the crescent moon but the pure Sapphic energy of that was enough to gay migrate me to this show. I’d like to note it here though that The Owl House is a good show in and of itself, the queer rep is just a nice extra. I’m gonna spend the next couple hundred words going on about Amity and her crush on Luz but I don’t value only that. The Gay Migration is great and rep is great but I’m also grateful to have a solid show behind it. That being said.

I’m a total dyke for Amity Blight. I was very biased before even being introduced to her character but I genuinely find her to be fascinating and she has great potential. She’s developing quite quickly, like much of The Owl House, but an arc not being stretched out for several seasons before getting a rushed conclusion is refreshing. The progress hits all the beats and the only note I have is that I want more. She starts out as a generic bully but the opportunity to be more is there from the beginning. We find out early on that she used to be friends with Willow, we see that she works hard and values honest work. When she becomes Luz’s rival, it doesn’t last long before Amity shows that she’s open to new perspectives. That’s not to defend or even justify her earlier and nastier moments, Amity was rude to both Luz and Willow. But through all that, she becomes a complex character who does bad things but isn’t a bad person and grows when she gets the space to. I think that’s neat.

Luz’s decision to befriend her might be cartoon logic but as someone who subscribes to the “kill them with kindness” ideology, I can totally relate. Amity’s softer side doesn’t take long to show and “Lost in Language” is such a great episode to show how complex people can be. Again, I was already biased when it came to Amity but she’s consistently shown to be capable of self-reflection and growth when others give her the chance. I think her past and potential future friendship with Willow is a great way to explore many different topics and I’m trusting the show to do it justice. I also can’t wait to meet the rest of the Blights, if only to get me some angst and further develop Amity. I half expected Grom to take the form of her parents. Too dark for Disney? Well, we don’t know Amity’s dynamic with her parents, exactly, but there’s so much subtext and potential. I love what we’ve already seen from her but I’d also say that she has one of the greatest potentials in the show.

Another way in which this potential manifests is Lumity, of course. Again, they’re developing quite quickly but that doesn’t mean it’s rushed. I’d love to explore Amity’s crush more and what Luz means to her. The Grom episode surpassed all expectations, still and gifs don’t do the stunning dance sequence justice. The animation is so smooth, the colours are amazing, the music is on point and the Sapphic vibes complete the picture. Poetic cinema, truly. Molly Ostertag and Noelle Stevenson are really out there giving wlw animation fans everything we ever wanted, huh. It also warms my heart that the crush is made very clear, not just by Luz’s name being on the note but by the delightful gay disaster that is Amity in “Wing It Like Witches”. I never thought I’d ever see such a relatable useless lesbian in animation so kudos to Dana Terrace and the whole crew. Wow, how far we’ve come.

So yeah, Amity is a funky little lesbian and I’m a 100% here for her gay disaster moments, but I also love where Lumity is going thematically. They’re great as foils and I’m hoping that they won’t get together at the very end. Look, I love me some Bubbline, Korrasami and Catradora, but it’s time a wlw relationship had the chance to exist onscreen and not only in the last episode. The Owl House has a great chance to do that. I know the creators don’t want romance to be the main focus and I respect that, I think the world they created deserves to showcased and explored to its full potential. Lumity could be a great subplot though, as representation on the one hand and as a thematically interesting dynamic on the other. Plus, Luz and Amity are just cute and sometimes, it’s as simple as that. Oh, and also the whole Little Miss Perfect thing? One of the best fandom discoveries I’ve made in a long while. Not only is the song truly perfect for Amity, I love that Joriah Kwamé went on to write Ordinary as well. This right here is why fandom is beautiful.

I think that’s about it for season 1 initial thoughts. The moral can be a bit on the nose at times, especially in the early episodes but the show is ultimately for kids and I appreciate its message. Interesting world and magic system, good characters, great potential for later seasons, just a well put together show that I’m really glad I started watching. I’m kind of sorry I didn’t keep up with season 1 as it was coming out but I would not have been able to wait between episodes. The pacing is good overall, deffo moves fast but I wouldn’t call it rushed, and the “filler” episodes still add something to the story. I’m not sure if I would still feel like the show moves at a fast pace if I hadn’t binged it but in any case it isn’t rushed, the necessary beats are all there and have time to sit. I’m going to watch as it comes out from now on so hopefully season 2 will arrive early next year.

Oh, and: I’m very new to the fandom, barely just found out about Little Miss Perfect, so any and all tidbits, fun facts, and fic recommendations are welcome. Also if you just want to chat my inbox is always open!

#the owl house #toh #amity blight #lumity #luz noceda #my thoughts #down another rabbit hole i go

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wrestlingisfake · 4 years ago

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AEW Fake Rankings, 5/16/2021

Men's singles division - babyfaces

Darby Allin

Cody Rhodes

Orange Cassidy

PAC

Hangman Page

Christian Cage

Lance Archer

Sammy Guevara

Dustin Rhodes

Jake Hager

Men's singles division - heels

Kenny Omega (AEW men's world champion, Impact world champion, AAA mega champion)

MJF

Miro (AEW TNT champion)

Brian Cage (FTW champion)

Matt Hardy

Shawn Spears

Anthony Ogogo

QT Marshall

Powerhouse Hobbs

Nick Comorotto

Unranked: Alex Reynolds, Christopher Daniels, Colt Cabana, Danny Limelight, Dante Martin, Frankie Kazarian, Lee Johnson, MT Nakazawa, Wardlow

It feels premature to rank Darby Allin so highly. But given that Chris Jericho's hurt, Kenny Omega's a heel, and Jon Moxley's chasing the tag title, I can't argue any other babyface is ahead of him. Cody's clout and presentation goes a long way, but that only goes so far when he's been barely been on TV and feuding with QT's band of trainees. AEW deserves a lot of credit for giving Allin the ball and letting him run with it. Even though he just lost the TNT title to Miro, his chase to get it back ought to be even hotter than his run as champion.

A lot of the key fueds right now involve factions--Cody's Nightmare Family vs. QT's The Factory, Jericho's Inner Circle vs. MJF's The Pinnacle, and the Hardy Family Office vs. the Dark Order, Orange's buddies vs. Pac's Death Triangle--not to mention Team Taz and Kenny Omega's group running around. As a New Japan fan I dig it, but it does make it kind of tough to decide where one faction's minions rank relative to another's.

Men's tag team division - babyfaces

Jon Moxley (IWGP United Stats champion) & Eddie Kingston

Santana & Ortiz

Best Friends - Chuck Taylor & Trent Beretta

Lucha Bros. - Penta El 0M & Rey Fenix

Jurassic Express - Luchasaurus & Jungle Boy & Marko Stunt

Evil Uno & Stu Grayson

Varsity Blondes - Griff Garrison & Brian Pillman Jr.

The Gunn Club - Billy Gunn & Austin Gunn & Colten Gunn

Matt Sydal & Mike Sydal

Alan Angels & Preston Vance

Men's tag team division - heels

The Young Bucks - Nick Jackson & Matt Jackson (AEW tag team champions)

FTR - Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler

Scorpio Sky & Ethan Page

The Acclaimed - Max Caster & Anthony Bowens

Private Party & Marq Quen & Isiah Kassidy

The Butcher & The Blade

TH2 - Jack Evans & Angelico

Chaos Project - Luther & Serpentico

Cezar Bononi & Ryan Nemeth

Unranked: Sonny Kiss & Joey Janela

(Names not listed on the AEW website's roster are noted in italics.)

With Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian disbanding their team, the top title contenders on AEW's official rankings are Garrison and Pillman. However, the team that's actually getting a title shot at the May 30 pay-per-view is Moxley and Kingston, because they trashed the champs' dressing room. Just in case you were wondering why I bother doing this when AEW does it every week.

Women's singles division - babyfaces

Hikaru Shida (AEW women's world champion)

Thunder Rosa

Tay Conti

Kris Statlander

Ryo Mizunami

Big Swole

Red Velvet

Leyla Hirsch

KiLynn King

Women's singles division - heels

Britt Baker

Nyla Rose

Jade Cargill

Abadon

Penelope Ford

Diamante

The Bunny

A year ago I was griping that AEW wasn't doing enough with the women's division. They're still not giving them enough time on the main show, but it definitely feels like Shida, Baker, and Statlander are more important to the product now than they were back then. I wanted them to bring in more women and give them a chance, and that paid off big time with Thunder Rosa. Swole, Conti, Abadon, and Velvet feel underutilized, but I'm confident that will change. Cargill is going to be great once they decide she's ready for more than simple squash matches. Granted, There are others on this list that seem to be just...there. But it's amazing how much less frustrating that is when more than two women on the roster are getting pushed.

No matches in over 30 days: Awesome Kong, Emi Sukara, Karl Anderson, Leva Bates, Doc Gallows, Mel, Peter Avalon, Riho, Shanna, Shawn Dean, Serena Deeb (NWA women's world champion), Yuka Sakazaki

Same old story with Riho, Shanna, Sukara, and Sakazaki (travel restrictions), and with Kong and Mel (no idea). Deeb is booked for the May 19 show, which is probably a relief for the NWA, since they can finally book some title matches again.

When the AEW/Impact storyline started, I expected a lot more Impact wrestlers to appear on AEW programming than just Gallows and Anderson. As it turns out, even Gallows and Anderson haven't wrestled much on AEW lately. I'm really starting to wonder what the point is for all of this.

Part-time/semi-retired: Dasha Gonzalez, Paul Wight, Rebel not Reba, Sting, Tully Blanchard

I feel weird having Tully here but hell, he's probably had more ring time in 2021 than everybody else in this list put together.

Inactive

Anna Jay (right shoulder - dislocation)

Brandon Cutler (orbital bone - unspecified injury)

Brandi Rhodes (pregnancy)

Chris Jericho (right elbow - dislocation)

Kip Sabian (right arm - storyline injury?)

John Silver (right shoulder - dislocation)

Ricky Starks (neck - fractured vertebrae)

Darius Martin (knee - unspecified ACL injury)

Miro "injured" Sabian's arm recently, and Sabian announced on Twitter that he's getting surgery. So is he just playing into the storyline on social media, or is the storyline designed to cover for an actual injury? Either way I don't expect him back in the ring for a while.

In contrast, Jericho's arm injury is legit but he's still appearing on TV and trying to get a match like it's no big deal. MJF challenged Jericho to a Stadium Stampede match two weeks from now, but Jericho reportedly needs 4-6 weeks to recover. So either the reports are overestimating how hurt he is, or Jericho's going to have to creatively avoid doing anything physical...or they'll have to postpone the match right after setting the date. I'm not sure what they're thinking with this one. (Maybe Jericho could call his new buddy Mike Tyson?)

#aew #fake rankings

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anistarrose · 5 years ago

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reasons why “The Intruder” is my favorite Owl House episode yet:

“even demons have inner demons”

Willow’s little cameo at the beginning when she’s saving all her plants from the rain and pulls down the window shade with her teeth!

this:

King’s continued insistence that Luz needed to learn about the Snaggleback, which convinced me that a Snaggleback was absolutely going to show up later in the episode — which then ended up being completely true, but my expectations of how it would happen were completely subverted!

on that note, “oh no! a twist!” I love the Snaggleback so much

the way the silhouette of the “intruder” had just enough elements of Eda’s hair to make me suspicious without the reveal being completely obvious

just... monster!Eda’s whole appearance!!! the creature design has always been on point in this show but holy shit, this particular episode blew me away! the wings, the eyes, the ears that are almost batlike, the legs and the walking animation...

the phone camera flash and the change in monster!Eda’s eyes foreshadowing how to change her back!

Luz learning the “light” spell first because her name means “light”

all the adorable moments between Luz and King and especially this particular screenshot:

the potential upcoming plot point of Luz searching for the symbols associated with other spells so she can master those too!

the sound monster!Eda makes when King pulls out the shiny clicky pen

that whole scene where Luz fills Eda’s room with lights and Eda telling the others about her curse

King calling Hooty’s voice horrific even though they’re both voiced by Alex Hirsch

when Eda fell asleep and looked at a memory hidden behind a door I literally yelled “THIS IS SOME DREAMSCAPERERS SHIT” out loud

I get the feeling we haven’t seen the last of Eda’s cursed form and I’m hyped beyond belief!

have I mentioned I love the Snaggleback?

In conclusion: the best Found Family Friday yet IMO! and next episode is Covention, which also seems to be promising in terms of Eda backstory reveals!

#the owl house #the owl house spoilers #luz noceda #the owl house eda #the owl house king #long post

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smilesthroughfandoms · 7 years ago

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Star vs. the Forces of Evil episodes in One Sentence (Season 3 edition)

Star Comes to Earth: Princess Cinnamon Roll that Could Kill you comes to earth and meets Misunderstood safe kid.

Party With a Pony: Spoopy Wardens hunt for the glitter pony while Star gets ice for Marco’s sweaty back.

Matchmaker: In which we learn it was probably a bad idea to give Star the wand in the first place.

School Spirit: Star misunderstands football and Marco tries to get Ferguson to blow his whistle not in that way.

Monster Arm: “Not my bowels! I love my bowels!”

The Other Exchange Student: Star is jealous of the meatball man from Bakersfieldville.

Cheer Up Star: “It’s supposed to be ironic!”

Quest Buy: Very accurate depiction of what it is like to work in retail.

Diaz Family Vacation: Both Marco and Star see new sides of their dads but that’s not necessarily a good thing

Brittney’s Party: Star and Marco party with someone who hates them while Ludo hijacks a bus

Mewberty: Star gets horny and snares boys in her web but not in that way

Pixtopia: Marco messed up and Alfonso marries Ferguson’s rebound

Lobster Claws: “… You can’t eat children.” “Really? Not even the annoying ones?”

Sleep Spell: “Camera Phooone!”

Blood Moon Ball: We’re suppose to ship them now, right?

Fortune Cookies: Love is never the answer kids

Freeze Day: Father Time offers Star and Marco some mud before riding away on his wheel-mobile pulled by giant time-hamsters I am not making this up.

Royal Pain: King Santa Claus destroy mini-golf

St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward Princesses: Princess Prison sure is a nightma–OH MY GOD ARE THOSE CLUBS?!

Mewnipendence Day: No wonder monsters hate Mewmans so much.

The Banagic Wand: Star still doesn’t get Earth and like all of us, Marco is always hungry.

Interdemensional Field Trip: Miss Skullnick fears the “Big Change” while Marco sends Jackie cat memes

Marco Grows a Beard: Ludo is out, Toffee is in, and Marco will probbaly be terrified of beards forever

Storm the Castle: “SURPRISE!”

My New Wand!: DIP DOOOWN

Ludo in the Wild: Wait, since when did Ludo become badass?

Mr. Candle Cares: “Star and I have recently become smooch buddies… On the lips.”

Red Belt: Marco searches for a meaning in life and Star searches for hammer.

Star on Wheels: *epic remix of Marco saying Star is in trouble*

Fetch: Marco can’t open juice and Star runs away from her problems and sending thank you cards

Star vs. Echo Creek: Star gets high and destroys a police car

Wand to Wand: Both Ludo and Star are terrible at magic also major ship tease

Starstruck: Star and her idol Sailor Super Saiyan destroy a park and Marco is 100002% done with this shit

Camping Trip: King Butterfly has a mid-life crisis and tries to control an eagle

Starsitting: They’re gonna be great parents some day.

On the Job: Buff Dad is best dad and buff babies are adorable

Goblin Dogs: “You might think this line is long, but listen to my goblin song!~”

By the Book: Ludo and Star still suck at magic and Glossaryck is a bigger troll than Alex Hirsch

Game of Flags: Queen has no patience and legs.

Girls’ Day Out: Janna is back and is still awesome btw

Sleepover: “TRUTH! STAR HAS A CRUSH ON MA–” *cube gets crushed*

Gift of the Card: R.I.P. Rasticore Chaosus Disastorvayne… He couldn’ get his fucking chainsaw to work

Friendenemies: Star becomes one with Christmas tree while Tom and Marco go on a date and sing a romantic pop ballad.

Is Mystery: Meatfork is apparently a family name and Ludo is really starting to freak me out tbh

Hungry Larry: “He’s still hungry…”

Spider with a Top Hat: He tries and he is awesome and that’s all that matters

Into the Wand: SPAAAAADESS!!!

Pizza Thing: Marco is OCD about mushroom and Pony Head buys skinny jeans

Page Turner: Glossaryck is awesome and how did Moon miss Lizard-Loki in the orb?!

Naysaya: Tomco friendship confirmed and Marco finally asks out Jackie while Star the supportive noodle armed friend cheers on

Bon Bon the Birthday Clown: Starco fans cry, Jarco fans rejoice, and Ludo now has the book god dammit Nefcy

Raid the Cave: Glossaryck is the true neutral asshole.

Trickstar: Weird Al is a treasure and I’ll mes up anyone who makes Marco cry!

Baby: *glances around nervously* So… Star is similar to Eclipsa, huh? *Nervous laughter* Great…

Running With Scissors: Marco gets a new edition to his shipping harem and she is so cute!!!!!!

Mathmagic: Don’t worry Star, I can’t math either.

The Bounce Lounge: Marco is definitely the mom friend.

Crystal Clear: The Chancellor guy is amazing and Rhombulus just needs a hug and wAS THAT ECLIPSA IN THE BACKGROUND?

The Hard Way: “SURPRISE!” 2.0

Heinous: Oh, so that’s how Marco got all that money.

All Belts Are Off: “Jermey is the biggest dick…. around!~”

Collateral Damage: Marco how do you not know what a possum is?

Just Friends: I’m fine! *blows up sign to prove just how fine I am*

Face the Music: Moon=Badass, Star=Why?, River=Loving Husband, Marco=Shocked, and we got to meet Ludo’s family so pretty cool episode overall.

Star Crushed: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH–remember when we though Bon Bon the Birthday Clown was the end of the world?–AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

BONUS ROUND! BATTLE FOR MEWNI EDITION!!!!!

Return to Mewni: This is… just an exposition filler. Not much else to say….

Moon the Undaunted: B4! B4! B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4!

Book Be Gone: “I hate that fucking book!” -Ludo, at some point probably.

Marco and the King: *Party music intensifies… and then slowly dies down*

Puddle Defender: They’re bonding and getting so big and I am so proud–Star you idiot don’t go alone!!!!!!

King Ludo: The mime stole the show.

Toffee: I can’t…. I just… how do you want me to react?! To much happened and I mean…. what do you want me to say? I’m still processing just…. What do I say? *slowlys ponders how I will survive until November*

Scent of Hoodie: Huh, so Ponyhead can be written as likeable, who would’ve thought?

Rest in Pudding: Ish da Glossaryck! And he’s Globgoring all over da place!

Club Snubbed: I literally yelled “Phrasing!” whenever they dropped the title

Stranger Danger: "Something like that” whY WOULD YOU SAY THAT IF YOU WERE ON THE SIDE OF GOOD?!?! SERIOUSLY GUYS THIS BUGGED ME FOR WEEKS--

Demoncism: Tom is a wonderful baby boy and Ponyhead is written as likeable, part 2!

Sophmore Slump: *sobbing* Jackie deserved better, dang it!

Lint Catcher: Introducing a Lavaboe! He’s pure and wonderful and deserves a raise and did I mention I love him?

Trial by Squire: I think the writers were all like” You think these guys will ship anyone with Marco?” and decided to test that theory.

Princess Turdina: I got more lore out of this episode than I thought I would.

Starfari: Welp, she makes me uncomfortable.

Sweet Dreams: *Sailor Moon-ing intensifies*

Lava Lake Beack: Proof that this fandom will ship anyone with Marco at the slightest inclanation

Death Peck: Rich Pigeon is my new favorite birb and Ponyhead is written as likeable for the third time

Ponymonium: Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Night Life: The writers made so many new ships they had to get rid of an old one!

Deep Dive: “Chicken butt”

Monster Bash: ........ Well, that explains the cheekmarks.

Stump Day: I think they just made an episode based around a picture from that bookcover, not that it was bad.

Holiday Special: *insert every cheesy Christmas/Holiday episode trope here*

The Bog Beast of Boggabah: The title is fun to say and the episode is average at best.

Total Eclipsa the Moon: Seriously, I’m supposed to think she’s an ultimate villain.

Butterfly Trap: In which we are all Sean, don’t lie we were all him at the end

Ludo, Where Art Thou?: Dennis is best brother, hands down.

Is Another Mystery: *sniff* I got more emotional over this episode than anyone else did and I’m not sure how I feel about that

Marco Jr.: I... I just... Why? What’s the point?

Skooled!: Epic advertisment fakeout combined with wonderful character development and lore with a shock ending makes a 10/10 episode.

Booth Buddies: Old Man McGucket ships Starco, proceed to react accordingly

Bam Ui Pati!: Ponyhead is kinda likeable in this episod--nevermind she’s back.

Tough Love: Oh man, it’s happening! It’s happening guys here we go!

Divide: We are going to war everybody--And they’re all dead. That was quick.

Conquer: So Glossaryck has upped his trolling antity and turns out Eclipsa’s probably evil, Meteora’s a baby again, and Globgor is her husband and imprisoned in crystal... Idk about you guys but I’m going to go scream into the void...

#star vs the forces of evil #svtfoe #svtfoe2 #svtfoe3 #battle for mewni #updated #don't repost without my permission #after ultron #sorry this took so long

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advocatewrites-blog · 6 years ago

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Into the Unknown Part 4 Chapter 4

Into the Unknown

Fandom: Undertale, Coraline (book), Over the Garden Wall, Paranorman, Gravity Falls (season 2)

Characters: Frisk, Norman B., Dipper P., Mabel P., Coraline J., Wirt, Greg, the Cat, the Frog; Sans, Toriel, Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, Asgore,; the Other Mother, the Beast, Agatha P., Bill Cipher, Asriel D., Chara D.,

Pairings: Not the focus. Alphys/Undyne, with mentions of Papyrus/Mettaton, sans/Toriel/Asgore, and Wirt/Sara. Due to the nature of Undertale and the dating segments, there is also interpretable Papyrus/Wirt, Undyne/Mabel, Alphys/Dipper, Napstablook/Norman, Mettaton/Norman, Mettaton/Mabel, Sans/Dipper, Sans/Norman, and Sans/Greg.

Rated a high +K for violence, mild language, horrific elements that may be disturbing to younger readers, mentions of child abuse and bullying, character death that is sometimes permanent, and mentions of suicide that may be triggering. These elements remain relatively unchanged from their source material, which most all are for children, but discretion is advised nonetheless.

Disclaimer: Undertale was created and owned by Toby Fox. Coraline was created by Neil Gaiman and owned by Bloomsbury and Laika. Over the Garden Wall was created by Patrick McHale and owned by Cartoon Network. Paranorman was created by Sam Fell and Chris Butler and owned by Laika. Gravity Falls was created by Alex Hirsch and owned by Disney. Any other work mentioned or homage are property of their respective owners. This is a fan-made, nonprofit work that only seeks to entertain. Please support the original franchises.

Chapter 4

“OHHH YES! WELCOME BEAUTIES…TO TODAY’S QUIZ SHOW!”

Spotlights engulfed the lab. Two disco balls dropped from the lighting fixtures and engulfed the three into multicolored lights. Confetti fell from somewhere. Dipper knew that he was not going to like whatever happened next.

“OH BOY! I CAN ALREADY TELL IT’S GONNA BE A GREAT SHOW!” said the robot. “EVERYONE GIVE A BIG HAND TO OUR WONDERFUL CONTESTANTS!”

A fake, monotone clapping noise echoed from the robot’s soundboard as more confetti poured onto them.

“NEVER PLAYED BEFORE GORGEOUS? THE RULES ARE SIMPLE. ANSWER CORRECTLY.” said the robot. “OR YOU DIE!!!

Mettaton attacks.

“LET’S START WITH AN EASY ONE!!” said Mettaton. “WHAT’S THE PRIZE FOR ANSWERING CORRECTLY?”

“Uh…” said Dipper. “A new car?”

“THAT IS INCORRECT!!!”

A lightning-bolt shaped bullet shot from Mettaton’s microphone and collided with Dipper’s Soul.

“Are you okay?” Mabel asked.

“I’m fine,” said Dipper. “Not sure how many of those I can take. We’re gonna have to be smart about answering them.”

“Alright,” said Mabel. “Making things up is my specialty!”

“GLAD TO HEAR IT GORGEOUS!” said Mettaton. “HERE’S YOUR PRIZE: WHAT IS THE KING’S FULL NAME?”

Dipper actually remembered that one. Papyrus had said it, Undyne had said it, and the turtle that sold them things had said it even though he insisted on calling him “Ol’ King Fluffybuns”.

“Asgore Dreemurr!” said Dipper.

“CORRECT! WHAT A TERRIFIC ANSWER!”

“I was going to say Doctor Friendship…” said Mabel.

“NOW ENOUGH ABOUT YOU. LET’S TALK ABOUT ME! WHAT ARE ROBOTS MADE OF?”

“Metal and magic!” said Mabel.

That one had come pretty quickly, but Dipper figured that it was easy to guess.

“HERE’S AN EASY ONE FOR YOU: TWO TRAINS, TRAIN A AND TRAIN B, SIMULTANEOUSLY DEPART STATION A AND STATION B. STATION A AND STATION B ARE 252.5 MILES APART FROM ONE ANOTHER. TRAIN IS IS MOVING AT 124.7 MILESPERHOURTOWARDSSTATIONBAND TRAINBISMOVING-AT253.5MILESPERHOURTOWARSSTATIONAIFBOTHTRAINSDEPARTEDAT10:0AMANDITISNOW10:09HOWMUCHLONGERUNTILBOTHTRAINSPASSEACHOTHER?”

“32.058 minutes!” said Mabel.

Dipper had no idea how he could even solve that one, let alone Mabel.

“NEARLY RAN OUT THE CLOCK THERE, GORGEOUS! BUT THAT IS CORRECT!”

“You spent the entire time asking the question!” said Dipper.

“DO YOU WANT ME TO TAKE BACK YOUR CORRECT ANSWER?” Mettaton asked.

“We’re good!” Both the twins said.

“EXCELLENT! BECAUSE FROM HERE ON OUT THEY’RE ONLY GOING TO GET HARDER FROM HERE!” said Mettaton.”NEXT QUESTION: HOW MANY FLYS ARE IN THIS JAR?”

“54!” said Mabel.

“WHAT MONSTER IS THIS?”

“Mettaton!”

“BUT CAN YOU GET THIS ONE? WOULD YOU SMOOCH A GHOST?”

“Heck yeah!”

“WHAT A GOOD ANSWER! I LOVE IT!!!!” said Mettaton. “NEXT QUESTIONS: HOW MANY LETTERS ARE IN THE NAME METATTON NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN…”

“56!”

“That is correct!”

“How are you getting all of these?” Dipper asked.

“Alphys is telling me,” said Mabel. “But the smooch a ghost one was all me!”

Alphys froze.

“ALPHYS…” said Mettaton. “WERE YOU HELPING THE CONTESTANT?”

“U-u-uh, I was—” Alphys stammered.

“THAT’S ALRIGHT,” said Mettaton. “I’LL GIVE THEM AN ANSWER YOU’RE SURE TO KNOW THE ANSWER TO! WHO DOES DOCTOR ALPHYS HAVE A CRUSH ON?”

The two twins froze.

“Could we…not answer that one?” Dipper asked.

Entry no. 34

During our game of multi-dimensional chess, Bill mentioned something interesting. A Kingdom of Monsters. He seemed hesitant to discuss more; although it seemed more out of ignorance than ill-will. After some prying, he managed to bring up some key points. Sometime before Gravity Falls was inhabited, humans lived with monsters. A war broke out between the two races, leading to the monsters becoming imprisoned underneath a magic suppressing barrier. Bill mentioned that he had tried to enter the kingdom several times to look for someone to help him build the portal, but he kept being chased out by some “annoying dog”.

Whether or not he meant to, Bill has just made a phenomenal breakthrough with my research. Is this Kingdom of Monsters the source of all weirdness in Gravity Falls? Or even the world? Maybe there can be a direct link between the monsters in the forest and the monsters underground. Furthermore, if Bill really wanted to find a scientific mind in the kingdom of monsters, there could be someone else working on a portal right now. Someone else I could compare notes with!

I expect the portal will be finished by tomorrow. Perhaps once Bill can enter our dimension, I can welcome him to Earth properly with a little hike.

It was much later, after the quiz show and after a cooking show and after a news show, when sans made himself known and invited Dipper to dinner.

“where’s that sister of yours?” he asked.

“Well…”

“‘A tragic tale of two lovers, torn apart by the tides of fate’…” Mabel read off of the poster in front of her. “That sounds right up my alley!”

She ignored the fact that 75% of the poster was Mettaton’s face. It would be nice to see him actually acting, and not just the elaborate set pieces he set up when he wanted to kill them. She would have to make a mental note to come back and catch it once Mettaton had calmed down a bit.

Mabel was so lost in thought that she did not notice where she was walking next. She stopped as she noticed she was on stage.

“Oh,” said Mabel as realization dawned on her.

“OH? COULD IT BE…” Mettaton’s voice echoed through the stage. “MY ONE TRUE LOVE?”

Mettaton descended down the fake balcony with all the grace of a vacuum cleaner. The song’s opening covered most of it up. He dropped the hem of his bright blue ballgown and began to sing.

That was when Mabel knew that this was really right up her alley.

“guess it doesn’t really matter,” said sans. “so, what do you know about a talking flower?”

The atmosphere grew suddenly very heavy. Dipper swallowed before he spoke.

“We found it in the Ruins,” said Dipper. “It’s this little gold flower named Flowey—“

“really?” said sans. “couldn’t think of a better name?”

“I didn’t name it!” Dipper said. “It calls itself that!”

“alright. tell me more about flowey mc flower face.”

“Well, when we left the Ruins, he talked about a lot of weird things,” said Dipper. “Stuff like how he was the one that would inherit this world...and how we weren’t the ones he was looking for…sans, how many humans have been in the Underground before us?”

“haven’t you heard undyne, kid?” sans asked. “there’ve been six humans in the underground. not including you two.”

“And is that where you got the lamps?” Dipper asked.

sans fell silent.

“Look, if we’re going to work together, we need to be 100% honest with each other,” Dipper said. “I won’t…judge you if you did something bad. Just be honest with me.”

Sans did not say anything for a moment. Just when Dipper was about to speak up again, he chuckled lowly.

“don’t judge anyone, you say? kid, that’s a good one and you don’t even know why yet,” said sans. “alright. there have been a total of 12 humans in the underground. i’ve seen six. just not at the same time.”

“So there’s a way out of the Underground then?” Dipper asked.

“sure there is. but that’s not what i’m talking about,” said sans.

“Well, what do you know about the other humans?”

“i’d say most weren’t older than you,” said sans. “all came from the ruins, all left through new home. all came at about the same time. don’t know what happened to them. don’t think they knew why they were here, either.”

“Well, do you think that flower might have something to do with it?” Dipper asked.

“don’t know. never seen ‘em before,” said sans after a minute. “well, if nothing else, this run’s been good for information. anything else you need to know?”

Dipper opened his mouth for a minute. But there was not anything else he could think to ask.

“great,” said sans. “if you get to the castle, i won’t stop you. but try and think about what you’re getting into, alright?”

It was only when sans got to the fichus in the corner that Dipper found what he wanted to ask next.

“What do you mean, ‘this time’? You keep talking about ‘this time’ and ‘these runs’, like you’ve already seen all this before!” said Dipper. “What are you trying to hide? I won’t be able to help you if you don’t tell me everything!”

“listen, kid,” said sans. “it’s not gonna matter. even if i do tell you everything, you’re just gonna disappear again. and there’ll be another kid waiting for me at my station. or maybe something worse. i’ve given up trying to change this.”

Dipper’s mouth hung open as he tried to think of what to say. Everything that sans said ran through his head. And then he realized.

“You’re a time traveler?”

The light in sans’ eyesockets went dark. He did not say anything.

“Why didn’t you just say that?” Dipper asked. “Maybe we can help you! Are you with the same agency as Blendin? Is there actually a Time Baby?”

“well,” said sans. “you’re close. if there’s a time traveler, it’s not me.”

Dipper probably had more experience with time travel than the average person, but it was still limited. There was stuff in the journals and the science fiction books he read, but most of what he really remembered came from the 80’s movies Mabel watched. There was one he remembered quite well, about the crabby man who was stuck in the same day repeating over and over.

“Oh,” said Dipper, because he was not sure what else he could say.

“if that’s all you have to say, kid, then i better head out,” said sans. “it’s almost papyrus’ bedtime, and he gets cranky without a bedtime story.”

“We’ll find a way to fix this,” said Dipper. “Mabel and I. We have, uh…experience with this kind of thing.”

“i mean, you probably won’t,” said sans. “but thanks anyway.”

He walked past the fichus in the corner and disappeared.

It took Dipper longer to leave. Too much was going through his head, not just about what sans had said but how he looked when he said it. He was going to have to set things right. There was no way around it.

When he did stumble out, he was surprised to find Mabel.

“Hey Dipper!” Mabel said. “I just finished up Mettaton’s play! How was your date with sans?”

It barely fazed Dipper to hear it called a date. His mind was on too many other things.

“Do you remember what the Journal said about time travel?” Dipper asked.

“Hmm…I’m not sure about the Journal, but there was that Blendin’ guy,” Mabel said.

“That’s what I was thinking too,” said Dipper. “No matter how we get back home, we need to remember to find a way to contact him.”

“Sounds like a plan!” Mabel said. “I’ll make a note of it in this cool notebook I bought from the turtle!”

#fic #Into the Unknown #Undertale #Gravity Falls #Mettaton #Dipper Pines #Mabel Pines #Alphys #sans #featured

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mythomagically-delicious · 7 years ago

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Siren Song

So on June 17th I realized I forgot to celebrate Stanley and Stanford’s birthday (June 15th) and that I would miss celebrating my first June 18th (Alex Hirsch’s birthday) as a fan of Gravity Falls in America. So I wrote out something in honor of the two days.

Siren Song

Stan has never told Ford what he hears when they’ve heard the siren’s call. (They’ve both heard it. Ford set the course on autopilot with an unchangeable time lock, then time lock bonded himself and Stan to the rails of the ship, where they could not escape to be dashed against the rocks and eaten, but still hear the call. Ford thought it important they both experience the call together, and Stan has a hard time saying no to as tame a scheme as that from his brother).

Ford was gushing about his visions as soon as they were released from the spell and in safer waters. He went on and on about how they showed you truth about yourself even you may not realize. He talked about how they peer into passerby’s souls and lures them to their sands to die by singing what they long for most to come true. Sometimes (according to myths) by showing you alternate paths your life could have taken. Or sometimes just showing more and better than what a sailor already has. If you examine it you can discover your weaknesses post spell-state, and understand fundamentally who you are, what you’re made of. (As well as get to steady the siren in-depth!)

Ford talked for three hours about all this and more before he finally asked Stan what the sirens sang to him.

Stan looked at Ford for a moment (a hard, searching look that was gone so quick, Ford thought he’d imagined it) and answered, “Nothing much.”

Ford was dumbfounded momentarily, but he regained his voice quickly. “What?! Stanley, come on, tell me what they said! This is an amazing opportunity to study how they’re able to tailor their songs to multiple individuals, even ones similar as us. I’m surprised they didn’t confuse our frequencies, actually, for…” and Ford got sidetracked on the theoretical likelihood of only half of a set of twins surviving a siren attack because of the way their bewitching works. Stan ignored almost all of it and started mending some nets on board. He was great with knots.

When Ford finally circled the conversation back to Stanley, Stan was prepared to resist nonchalantly.

“Come on, Stanley, talk about it.”

“What, am I not allowed at least four secrets left, Ford? Besides, who has time to figure themselves out fully? I’m good just skating by the next few years already knowing just enough to be alright. It’s worked so far.”

Ford brought up several counterpoints that Stan shot down, sometimes with words, usually with grunts, shrugs, and pointed looks. Finally Ford got fed up with his lack of cooperation and stalked off to make is own notes and observations about the experience. [and scientific-related queries]

Stan took to the deck to start plotting their next course. He tried not to think about all he’d seen and heard from the sirens, but it was no use. The song stuck to him. Their words had changed and rippled and layered over each other until all he could make out were key phrases that were sung together.

The less he tried to think about it, the stronger the memories became until they overwhelmed him again, and his mind was cast back to the whole affair.

You have much to regret You would rather forget Your brother loves you not He left your bones to rot

The pain is all too much Your pain is all too much Your fire dies and ashes rise Your true form comes forth

Rise and see Rise and see A world where you and he were separate, and happy

And visions came of Stan having a better life where Ford wasn’t in it, from childhood through to high school. Never being bullied, never being second best. Always well-liked, a natural athlete, top boxer, good enough grades to go to college. Getting married, having kids, having grandkids. Having a huge family that loves Stanley—not being forgotten, hurt, abandoned and crushed by the world the way he was.

Stan had shook his head, tears falling at this vision, shouting, “No, no, I want my brother too!”

And the sirens heard and changed their tune…

Rise and see Rise and see A world where everything was as it should be…?

A new vision had swept over Stan and he was relieved to see Stanford there. It was the night before Stan got thrown out, Stan and Ford on the swing sets, talking and laughing. Ford making plans to go adventuring with Stan, not even mentioning the stupid school.

The brothers take on life together—Ford does go, but Stan goes with him. Eventually Ford gets famous for his tech and inventions. Stan is with him every step of the way. They adventure around the globe on a grant Ford had from the school. Eventually they settle back in California as a home base. Stan gets married, has kids. Ford is a good uncle, they tease his kids together. He has grandkids, and again as the brothers grow older they tease and confuse their family. Stan has everything.

But still he is shaking and raging against his bonds on the boat, crying “No, no, I don’t deserve it. That didn’t happen—Stan Pines is DEAD!” and again their song shifted…

Rise and see Rise and see Say goodbye to painful memories

Stan, soon after pushing Ford into the portal, branded and distraught, runs into town, starving and half mad. He runs into a man with a strange red cloak who promises he can help. Stan follows the voice blindly, ignoring all the warning signs he’d learned on the streets.

He is hit by the memory gun. He forgets everything.

Everything about “Stanford Pines”

(for how could what was left of Fiddleford’s mind differentiate between Stanley and Stanford?)

His wound is taken care of and they feed him, give him some money, and leave him in the shack. When Stanley wakes up, all he has are disappointing memories of a (friendless) terrible life, and schemes for making money boiling in his brain. He checks out his surroundings and decides to use the most of this opportunity by setting up a tourist trap with all the weird stuff in the abandoned house.

It makes big money, for years and years. Eventually his father tells him he was wrong to kick him out. (That was a GOOD DAY for Stan. Vindicating. He sent Filbrick packing). Stan didn’t work thirty years day and night to save Ford. He enjoyed his financial success. He made other goals. Got back in touch with Shermie, and got to be part of his nephew’s life—and later his great niece and nephews lives too.

It was everything Stan wanted—family, success, happiness. No guilt, no shame, nothing hanging over his name.

(And Ford died defeating Bill in the Nightmare Realm, torn to pieces as it collapsed at Bill’s death. Dimension 47’\ never even knew).

Stan still cried and struggled against his bonds, the song, their visions. So the sirens changed their tune one final time…

Rise and see Rise and see The world grows dim It’s you or him

Stan is sitting in his car. He’s 23. Crying silently, staring at two objects in his lap. One, the picture of him and Ford on the Stan O War. The other, a six-shooter he picked up at a local pawn shop using the ten finger discount.

He’s at one of the lowest moments of his life. He flips the picture over and writes down a couple short sentences on the back of the picture. Then he picks up the revolver, loads a single bullet, cocks the hammer, and—

ends it all.

Blood splatters the inside of the car, and all over the picture he kept. Written in mess script has this message: “I’m sorry brother. You’ll be better off in a world I’m not in. Sorry I couldn’t do this for you sooner. –Stanley Pines”

Ford gets the news and cries for two weeks straight. Stan watches as his family all reacts in different ways. Pa dies a few months later, and no one can prove it as related, but the guilt ate him away until he was nothing but bones. Ma raged and sobbed. She lived to see her great grandchildren born, though, and all the way to fifteen. Shermie punched a wall, said he should’ve found him and helped, the consequences be damned! Reb cried and Sam wasn’t old enough to know why.

Ford never got over it.

But he also never fell into Bill’s trap. He became a world-renowned scientist, along with Fiddleford McGucket, for their ground breaking work in anomalies. He grew closer with Shermie and involved in his brother’s kid’s life. When Mabel and Mason were born, he was there, and he cried. Gave them advice. Watched them for a couple of summers.

Ford did well for himself, lived to the old age of 94, and died of natural causes. But he never forgave himself for Stan’s death. He kept the bloody picture that was the last thing Stan had seen before he died.

Stan sobbed. But he stopped fighting the visions and songs. As they were about to pass outside of the siren’s reach, they called to Stan one last time…

Rise and see Rise and see Like a puppet with no strings Come and spend forever with me

And blue fire filled his vision as an insane laughter filled his mind. The siren’s song clashed over the laughter, repeating REGRET…FORGET…PAIN…FIRE…BROTHER…DIES…

RISE AND SEE RISE AND SEE

As the laughter got louder and Stan’s vision overwhelmed with blue fire, the sound of a gunshot going off over and over again—

everything was cut off.

All the normal sounds of the sea returned. Birds calling, ocean rocking the boat, slapping against the sides. Stan opened his eyes and stared at the deck beneath him. He was still tied to the railing. He saw the ship steer them out of the fog and on towards the nearest port.

Stan was exhausted. The emotional upheaval was enough to kill a guy. He looked over to Ford to make sure he was alright. His brother was grinning from ear to ear, ecstatic, eyes closed. Stan had sighed and let himself rest until the time locks opened and he could forget the ordeal with the sirens ever happened.

Except Ford wouldn’t stop pestering him. He’d approach it different ways, but Stan knew every trick in the book. He knew when he was being pumped for information.

Over time Ford gave up and moved on to other projects. Stan was relieved. He didn’t think he could live with how close he came to that fourth vision…and how much better things would’ve been for everyone…

Stan shoved the thought from his mind and resolved to throw wax in his ears and punch a siren first chance he got.

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marypsue · 8 years ago

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@blogg-saron Just remember: you asked for it.

Reincarnation Blues (95,096 words, published April 2, 2015, completed September 26, 2015)

This fic was the product of an idea that absolutely would not leave me alone. I’ve mentioned before that originally Rosa was the centre of the piece, with Ian as a supporting player and partner in crime in her bid to take over the world by being adorable and popular. Rosa Darling, Taylor Swift’s Evil Twin, crawled fully-formed out of the first time I heard Delta Rae’s ‘I Will Never Die’, at least two months before I ever wrote a word of Reincarnation Blues.

Ian didn’t actually have a name until I decided to write a short fic based on these characters who just wouldn’t get out of my head; he was a generic, grinning-evil Devil Went Down To Georgia reference with a fiddle but no name playing backup in Rosa’s band and lending her supernatural firepower when necessary. As originally conceived, he knew exactly who he’d been and used it to his full advantage. I decided on 'Ian’ after considering ‘Liam’ as a name that referenced ‘William’, but not as obviously as a ‘Bill’ or ‘Will’, and then deciding that would give the game away too soon. I also just plain didn’t like the name ‘Liam’ as much. It was only later that I found out that the man responsible for the absolutely stunning art direction on Gravity Falls is named Ian. And I just found out now, looking up Delta Rae to see when ‘I Will Never Die’ was released, that one of the band members is named Ian. This is...typical of the experience of writing this fic.

Mira came into the picture after I gave up on finishing the fic I was working on at the time before giving the RB characters free rein on my imagination, and decided to write just a short one-shot, just to introduce them. (Hah.) I’m not sure, exactly, when or why I ended up deciding that Ian shouldn’t have any knowledge of his previous incarnation (I think it was somewhere between Brown Bird’s ‘Blood of Angels’ and the short burst of Alex!Bill popularity), but it ended up being a good decision. It would’ve been around that time that I decided I needed to put him into Alcor’s path in order for his previous incarnation to come out, and that the best way to do that was to put him into the orbit of a Mizar. Deciding to have them date was purely a ‘hey, wouldn’t it be funny if...’, with an added touch of ‘oh man, Dipper would hate that’. Mira basically started out as an amalgamation of Mabel traits and fashion that I like, and a lot of her arguments with Dipper came out of my trying to figure out just what the heck was going on in her head. (Also, her social media presence is a little bit based on Manzi, who Alex was dating at the time, because I followed her on here for a short while before realising we had practically no interests in common and she posted a LOT of stuff that wasn’t cosplay. )

And now that the stage is set:

Chapter One

This began life as a one-shot that was meant to exorcise these characters from my head. Ninety-six thousand words later, we can all see how that turned out.

I wrote a good chunk of this chapter from Mira’s perspective, but it just wasn’t working, and I realised around the point where Dipper flips out that if I wanted to keep it as a short, I needed the readers to know whether Ian was really evil and scheming like Dipper suspected, or if he was just as clueless as Mira was. Now, I think I might have stuck with my original plan and left that ambiguous, because that would be a nice, tight little horror story. On the other hand, ninety-six thousand words later...

Given the opportunity to do a complete rewrite, though, I would adjust Mira and Ian’s introduction as a couple. Their first interactions seem really, really stilted and forced to me now.

Chapter Two

I actually wrote a short fic for the TAU blog based on a prompt about Ian and Dipper learning to tolerate each other and Ian pitching a show based on Dipper and Mabel’s experiences in Gravity Falls before I decided I was going to expand the, at the time, one-shot into a full multichapter fanfiction novel. It actually was part of what convinced me that I still had a lot of stories to tell about these characters, and that it should be expanded. That short fic also introduced Ian’s prosthetic eye, which he didn’t, at that point in Reincarnation Blues, have. I got to answer a couple of asks with axolotl gifs and feel like a real creative mastermind.

There were a couple times while I was writing the climax that I actually considered killing Ian off, because it seemed more likely with the state of each of the characters and also just so that the Toby plot could still work, but because I had made this short fic of events taking place after the events of RB and Ian was still alive in it, I decided that meant I’d made a tacit promise that he’d survive. I didn’t really want to kill him off anyway, so it made a good excuse when I was weighing my narrative options and they all seemed to be sliding towards Death.

A lot of this chapter was influenced by the surge of human!Bills in the fandom at the time, and especially of human!Bills (and human-shaped!Bills) who had flashy, obvious, fire-based powersets. I felt like Bill Cipher’s real power lay in misdirection - the flash and the fire, in canon, always only distracted the main characters from Bill’s real objectives, and, arguably, what he was really getting out of their interactions. To my way of thinking, it was far more likely that a human Bill Cipher would have some kind of mentally-based powerset, if they had a ‘powerset’ at all, and weren’t merely very quick cogitators who could think big and put themselves one step ahead of everyone around them. At the time, there were precious few authors and illustrators who seemed to have come to the same conclusion - none that I ran across, anyway. (There still aren’t, but the flood of billdip-based Cool Human Bills With Fire Powers seems to have slowed to a trickle.)

It also came in response to Toby, who was invented by the Transcendence AU’s very own Mod Z and exploded in popularity almost instantly. He was a sweetheart, a genuinely good, kind, little kid, who was facing enormous cosmic retribution for a millennia-long previous lifetime as a liar, monster, and snappy dresser. Toby is great, his creator manages to milk all the hilarious irony out of the situation, and there are some authors who’ve done really good and clever things with him. I’ve just never been all that interested in purely Good characters who just keep getting kicked in the teeth by a cruel world, and it struck me that Toby was the perfect setup for Bill to sneak in close to Dipper and do...something vicious. (I don’t think, at this point, that I knew exactly what Bill was planning to use Ian for, but I definitely knew that Bill was planning something, and it was going to blow up spectacularly in everyone’s faces.)

With those things in mind, I tried to imagine some realistic flaws or weaknesses that a near-omniscient, immortal demon forcibly bound to a decaying, imperceptive meatsack might potentially develop. Ian’s anxiety and nihilism(-lite?) and self-destructive tendencies all come from there. I settled on the feelings of insignificance and impermanence as the two major issues Ian had to face mostly because those were two things that Bill had never had to consider, would never have had to consider if he hadn’t ended up human himself, and would never have been able to satisfactorily reconcile with his own omniscience and indelible influence on human history/trail of destruction across several dimensions. It was not long after I settled on this and really committed to it (I believe it was a few chapters later than this, though) that Alex did a twitter Q&A where he talked to a fan with anxiety and...basically laid out that he suffered from very similar fears, and had developed very similar coping mechanisms to the ones I’d decided to give Ian. I initially only made Ian look like Alex for the sake of the joke, but as the fic progressed it became more and more clear to me that, by writing a version of a character who Alex Hirsch had once gotten in a ‘which character are you’ online personality quiz, I had inadvertently tapped a vein of similarity that was only gonna get wider.

If you’re reading this, Mr. Hirsch: I am so sorry, and I swear that I did not and do not stalk you. I know my icon of cartoon Dana Terrace kinda makes this harder to believe, but still.

Chapter Three

The first Mira-POV scene! Also the first appearance of Rosa!

I think this was the chapter that really cemented for me that I was doing this, that this 'short one-shot' was now a fully-fledged multichaptered fic and I was in it for the long haul. This is the first chapter that starts to set the plot in motion, and the first chapter where I really knew that there WAS an overarching plot thread and where, in a more specific sense, it was going. I believe this is also the chapter where the fic got its title (the previous two oneshots had been posted without titles).

...her punk-bluegrass act, the Savage Peace...

Oh yeah! I never mentioned these guys again. This was the duo that Ian and Rosa played together in, before Ian left to go into animation and Rosa went solo. The name is a riff on the Civil Wars, another excellent bluegrass duo who split up due to differences of opinion on their future direction. I love the Civil Wars.

I searched last.fm for 'punk bluegrass' after this chapter, because I had a very specific idea about what Rosa's music sounded like (like Delta Rae but with more electric guitar and bass, pretty much) and I wanted to see if anyone else had made it a reality. I did not find what I was looking for, but I did find Wood Spider, a band that plays bluegrass music with screamo vocals. I recommend 'Is It Strange?' because it is a very, very Ian song.

In case you hadn't noticed yet, a lot of the making of this fic was heavily influenced by music. I really need to make another playlist for it at some point.

Also, there's been some confusion amongst TAU peeps regarding Rosa's hair. I intended it to look like P!nk's blonde fauxhawk. Word Of God has spoken.

"He knows what I like and don't like, what matters to me, even things I don't tell him. He pays attention to what I say and do, and he remembers. He just does nice things for me sometimes when I'm least expecting it, and it's always exactly what I didn't even know I wanted."

This line was meant to show how Bill's 'ALWAYS WATCHING!' shtick might, under a very different set of circumstances and put to a different use, actually be a good thing. Post-Escape From Reality and Mabeland, it also takes on a vicious irony which I really appreciate. Successfully predicting what'll be ironic in the most painfully angsty way before canon even gets there: The Mary P. Sue Advantage!

I think this scene is where Mira actually coalesces into her own character for me, rather than 'a Mizar who is dating an r!Bill'. This is where she gets to show some of her own strengths and values, and to oppose and conflict with Dipper on her own terms, rather than because of Ian. I made a conscious effort to make sure this fic passed the Bechdel test, but I feel like even though this was a conversation with a dude, it was equally important in giving Mira a voice and an interior life separate from the men (well, okay, man and demon) in it. It also shows off the two sides of her - she's picked up a lot from Dipper, as evidenced by her nonchalance about cult-busting, but she's also still empathetic and compassionate, as shown by how she handles the kids. She's stuck between Dipper and humanity, and this is the first place where that's really shown, rather than talked about. It's one of my favourite scenes in the fic for exactly those reasons.

The last scene in this chapter is also where Mira and Ian start really feeling real to me as a couple, too. I really think this is just the chapter where I found my stride and all the pieces started to come together.

Chapter Four

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this chapter. It mostly exists to set the scene for what comes later, to get the reader more familiar with the characters, to set the cogs in motion. I am very pleased with Ian and Rosa’s friendship in the first couple scenes, though - I think it’s pretty natural.

Rosa looked up at him, her expression completely neutral. “Beale, I am goin’ to steal your girl.”

At the time I was writing this, there had been - I remember it as several, but it really must’ve been like, three - Gideon reincarnations (and preincarnations) in TAU who had gotten weirdly possessive about Mizars and had caused All Of The Plot in their respective fics by trying to make her their own. We’d also - if I recall correctly - received an ask basically proposing that Gideon’s soul would always do that, any time it came into contact with a Mizar’s, no matter what else might be going on. I...wasn’t a fan of that idea. I believe I’ve mentioned in a previous thing-where-I-talked-too-much-about-RB that Reincarnation Blues’ major theme is determinism versus individual identity. That was why I felt like this was the perfect place to kind of deconstruct that idea that there could be no r!Gideon who wasn’t an epic jerk. Right from the beginning, I intended for Rosa to get fixated on Mira, to set events in motion by doing a bunch of stuff that was beyond the pale to try to ‘steal’ her from Ian, and then to have to face the consequences of her actions. The goal was to see if she could grab a clue, if knowing what was going on and what she had done would give her a chance to look at her life, look at her choices, and make better ones the next time.

That’s right. I was redeeming Gideon before it was canon cool.

(There’s a whole lot I could get into about what I’m meaning when I say ‘redemption’ versus ‘apologism’, but...I won’t, here. Suffice it to say that I wouldn’t have wanted any kind of redemption plot for Gideon - or, indeed, any character, anywhere - that didn’t acknowledge that they started out in the wrong, and, though I usually disagree, I completely understand people not wanting to see certain villainous characters get a second chance.)

“... So - noose joke. Think that can ride, or are the censors gonna flip?"

I made a Mistake here. I was referencing the cut storyboards from Scary-oke where Dipper finds Ford’s ‘Zombie Survival Kit’ and all that’s in it is a noose. It was a suicide joke. (Well, I mean, suicide wasn’t the joke, but - well, whatever.) I should have referred to it as a suicide joke, or chosen a different deadly weapon. Instead, I referred to it as a ‘noose joke’ and it became a meme on the TAU blog, that Ian would be hiding nooses in the backgrounds of scenes all the time.

It was only, like, a month into this that I realised what the noose has historically, in the States, been a symbol for, and that without the context of a cut storyboard presented at a con (which might not necessarily be widely known) and then taken out of the context of a scene where the character is making storyboards (thereby removing the storyboard reference link)...yeah. I have to apologise for this one. Nobody has said anything to me about it, but in hindsight and with some consideration, I would word this differently if I were to rewrite the fic today.

I had a loooot of fun writing sleep-deprived Bill-like Ian here, and I hope to do more of it at some point.

Chapter Five

The introduction of Sun-mi! Sun-mi was a last-minute addition because I realised Mira had no female friends and panicked, and also because NWHS came out and I fell even harder in love with the character of the Author, and figured that tossing an r!Author (we didn’t at the time know that he was named Ford) into the mix with an r!Bill would be fun. This...is why Sun-mi’s role is small (though, I think, still important enough to justify her inclusion) - it was added to the plot post-outlining.

While I was writing Sun-mi, I was thinking of her with a voice much like April on Parks & Rec. This is not particularly relevant information to anything, I just see her as being very deadpan in that same way.

“So, not that one. How about Tam Lin?”

The mention of Tam Lin - one of the Child Ballads, in which a girl rescues her fairy lover on the night his soul is to be sent to hell as a tithe, and restores him to humanity, by holding him fast, and fearing him not - was a blatant nod to how the fic was going to end, and nobody picked up on it. It is also just a great, classic fiddle tune, though, and apparently it's not widely known that it's in the same time and key as St. Anne's Reel and so the two can be played together?

(I also answered a question about what each of the characters would have on their iPods, and said that Mira would have the Kerli song ‘Chemical’ on hers. If anyone had looked it up, they would have found out that it’s got a refrain that goes ‘This love is more than chemical’, which also directly references how the fic ends. I took every opportunity to hide spoilers for this fic in plain sight. It was so much fun.)

Stamped into the starry void around them like an artificial horizon was a massive ring, parallel lines glowing red like gashes cut into the dream to reveal an inferno on the other side. And between those lines, all around the horizon, burned familiar symbols.

Most of Ian’s nightmare is based on what I thought Bill’s experience of the Mystery Shack, from the mindscape, must have been like. This bit, though, is based entirely on a nightmare I had which involved Bill Cipher. I was practically contractually obligated to include it here.

Chapter Six

I have to preface any comments I make about this chapter with a disclaimer. Normally, I loathe miscommunication plots, especially ones where characters who ostensibly love and trust each other just flat-out refuse to listen to the other's explanation of a situation that looks bad. However, that's...exactly what I've written here.

I feel like the saving grace of this first scene is that, one, it doesn't constitute the entire plot, and two, it's more of a symptom of larger, deeper problems that they're having, rather than manufactured drama so that there can be some conflict and a tearful reunion in the third act. Sure, things end up hinging on Mira and Dipper trusting one another, but things are already strained between them, and this one miscommunication isn't the only problem they face, it's just the straw that broke the camel's back. Clearing up this one particular misunderstanding also doesn't magically solve all of their problems. I could, of course, be totally wrong and this miscommunication plot could be exactly as painful as every one I've ever seen on a made-for-TV romcom.

Had this whole thing been a colossal waste of time?

And here we see the product of Rosa's machinations! My thinking behind her slightly-absurd recruiting of Sun-mi to investigate Ian's past lives in an earlier chapter was that she thought that, any negative information Sun-mi turned up, she would share with Mira, and it wouldn't look like Rosa herself had deliberately sabotaged Ian and Mira's relationship, so she'd still have a shot with Mira. Devious.

(It occurs to me that both of the two characters who were the initial inspiration for RB started out as evil masterminds in concept, but ended up being sympathetic characters who got redemption arcs in the actual fic. There's some kind of irony about this.)

Trying to work out how the historical record might represent the Shack so far in the future was also a lot of fun. I know that the worldbuilding on this fic isn't sufficient for something that's meant to take place a full thousand years in the future, that the rate of change is so rapid that the society - and even the landscape - of the world Ian and Mira live in ought to be near-completely unrecognisable. On the other hand, I just wanted to write a fun story about character interactions, and I couldn't really set it any earlier or I'd risk 1) Dipper still having a clear thread of niblings around to anchor him, 2) things not having progressed far enough to actually have something like preincarnation testing, and 3) it being too early for Bill to have recovered from his 'defeat'.

(Also, I'm pretty sure that this, here, is the first use of the word 'preincarnation' in the TAU.)

He was still himself, more or less, he wasn't like Bill - !

Dipper is a little (or a lot) less human in this fic than in some of my others, but the thing is, he isn't really aware of that. This is the scene where it gets hammered home. It was a lot of fun constructing the scene where he eats Ian's nightmare so that it could be deconstructed here, to put all of the pieces of his real motivation and plans on display and show just how much like Bill's his modus operandi has become. (It also explains how he's able to get into Ian's head to offer the deal he does right at the end of the fic.)

Chapter Seven

aka "Shit, Meet Fan".

If you asked Dipper what seeing the future was like, he'd probably say it was like a beach.

I lifted this metaphor from Terry Pratchett's The Carpet People, a book which I strongly suggest for anyone who is interested in high fantasy, slightly deconstructed, and set among a race of teeny-tiny people living in the hairs of a carpet. He wrote it at seventeen and then came back and edited it as an adult. The result is...not quite A Terry Pratchett Book, but also not your average Extruded Fantasy Product Tolkien knockoff. He deploys the metaphor a little differently, and I can't remember how exactly he phrased things, but the concept of seeing possible futures as grains of sand on a beach came from him initially.

"I'm Alcor and I was wrong

I'm singing the Alcor Wrong Song..."

Dipper's apology is, of course, based on the Stan Wrong Song, which I thought was a nice touch to show that he was still thinking of Mira in terms of his life with Mabel in Gravity Falls. You gotta give the boy credit, though, he's trying.

I also think that Dipper will never be over his fear of puppets, partly because of Sock Opera, but also partly because we never got the Labyrinth episode. Until Dipper and Mabel have a siblinghood-affirming adventure in a giant, glittery maze with a mess of Muppets and a David Bowie guy, Dipper Pines will forever fear all puppetry.

"Well, we're all going to die."

Ian is really, really, profoundly bad at being comforting. (Unless you're worried about having embarrassed yourself or messed up your future, in which case, your ultimate insignificance in an eternal and uncaring universe and the inevitable certainty of your eventual complete eradication can sometimes be comforting.)

Ian hummed along as he turned on the faucet. "Dream a little dream of me..."

Annnnd here we go.

I decided that Ian would like folk and bluegrass music, partly because of the initial character concept and the Rosa connection, partly because I thought it was a genre that would remain resistant to introducing synthesised music even in the hypothetical future, partly because then I could make 'The Devil Went Down To Georgia' jokes. I decided he should also be into jazz music mostly because of the incredible His Name Was Billy Mischief, which is probably one of my favourite GF fics of all time and also highly recommended for anybody who liked RB. The author's inclusion of 'Someone To Watch Over Me' was both inspired and led to me looking up more jazz music, which led to finding a surprising number of songs that could be easily read as referring to Bill. It's not jazz, but Alex's inclusion of 'We'll Meet Again' in the finale still made me kick my feet in vindicated glee.

This scene was in the works from chapter 2 onwards, and it's another of my favourites - I think with good reason. I've had a lot of feedback from people that this was the most viscerally effective scene in the whole fic, and somebody drew me fanart for it! It was a little challenging to get into initially, because I was so excited to write it and I had to restrain myself somewhat to keep it taut and tense and simmering, instead of just explosive from word one. I think - I hope - that it succeeded.

Chapter Eight

“I’ll be looking at the moon,

but I’ll be seeing...you!”

I found Billie Holiday's version of 'I'll Be Seeing You' somewhere around chapter three or four and I instantly knew I had to write this scene and use it as a backdrop. I'd love to see this on film; Mira looking through the empty apartment, the slight and subtle wrongnesses adding up as a sinister bass note slowly builds from under the song to nearly drown it out, only to vanish on the final line as the camera overlooks the sink abandoned in the middle of a task and the phone left docked on the wall, letting Billie's voice echo, alone, over the unnatural stillness, before the song ends and all is left in perfect, fragile, ominous silence -

Anyway. Sometimes my mind is unnecessarily cinematic, and sometimes I profoundly regret not being able to score and soundtrack my fics.

“Do y’all mind?” Rosa asked, holding her phone away from her head. “Can’t hear a word my friend’s sayin’.”

This scene was originally even longer and more obnoxious. I really wanted to give people a reason to like and root for Rosa. Okay, so I also thought it would be badass. Thankfully, I have long trained myself to sacrifice cool awesome character stuff when it needs to be sacrificed for the sake of the story.

Are you done laughing yet? No? Okay, I’ll give you a couple more minutes.

Please ignore literally everything I had to say about the wards, because it is all bullshit. I think I said that anything less than an SS-class demon would be bounced back from Mira's wards, and that Ian, once 'active', shattered one of them completely on his way out, but that Dipper could go past them without having any effect on them at all? Which would require him to, like, probably use his powers to recreate them after he passed through...? I don't know how any of that was supposed to work.

I am, however, very, very pleased about opening a scene with Dipper missing Mabel's absolute faith in him, and immediately taking it into Mira accusing Dipper of murdering her boyfriend because Dipper's just such a demon. Juxtaposition!

The 'highlight reel' is equally if not more bullshit than the wards. I think this chapter is where I just gave up on trying to give Dipper a balanced powerset and decided to just go with whatever best served the emotional, character-arc thread. Sometimes you just have to play to your strengths.

Dipper didn't like other people knowing things he didn't. ... If he wasn't that guy, then - well, what was he?

A good brother! A real scrapper with a heart of gold and a will of adamantium! A sarcastic little shit! Dipper's focus on being The Smart Guy getting deconstructed and his realising that that isn't the be-all end-all of who he is was a wonderful good awesome character arc, even if it ended up being kind of understated in comparison with some of the more in-your-face character development that, say, the Stans got. TAU kind of does a similar thing with Dipper's arc, giving him All The Knowledge but making it come at the price of his family, which makes him reconsider its value...but it doesn't address that particular thing in the same way as canon, so I can see Dipper still getting hung up on this even thousands of years later. (Also, there are a lot of interpretations that indicate he may be kind of mentally frozen at the age he 'died', which I kind of love and subscribe to.) Hence, this line!

(I bet Dipper haaaaaaates when, like, The Slang and memes change. He has all kinds of arcane knowledge, but just what exactly the kids are talking about when they say something that looks like a random combination of syllables is beyond even his eldritch comprehension, and he can't figure out the nuances of how the new words are used, and - argh.)

"I tried to set things up so you'd find out something awful about Ian and break up with him so I could date you instead!"

There was a beat.

"That's it?" Mira asked, carefully.

One, I personally still think this is hilarious.

Two, this is the thing about Gideon - in a world of supernatural, outsized threats, he's really quite mundane! His whole shtick is something that can and does happen in real life! And he's the second-worst antagonist in the whole show! I front-loaded the redemption arc in this fic and gave Rosa a little more self-awareness and a quicker leap to recognising that what she was doing was shitty, so how funny the mundanity of 'I want you to be my girlfriend and I don't care what you think' as compared to 'a literal demon is going to try to blow up the whole of reality' is can really shine, but, like...it's still terrible, and giving it outsized supernatural consequences doesn't make it worse or better than it is when it happens in reality. Do any of these words make sense? Who knows.

My one explicitly lesbian character in this fic being manipulative and predatory in her affections? Mmmmmmaybe not a choice I'd make again. But I do like how this storyline played out.

Chapter Nine

I'm still not entirely sure who knows what about Bill and why. That was another thing that I'd change, given a chance to do a rewrite - I'd solidly establish Bill's position in history, myth, and public consciousness in this particular future right up front. That way, it might actually make a lick of sense when the characters react to hearing his name when there's not...like...any evidence that they have any idea who the fuck he even is.

Don't set your stories in a future where magic has been real for a thousand years if you don't have a lot of experience or interest in worldbuilding, guys.

This is the chapter where Mira is just completely fucking done with absolutely everyone's shit, and I love it.

"...They used to have to take my pulse manually every time. ..."

I decided that Ian wreaks havoc with medical technology because his Ooo Weird Demon Soul Energy is, like, an actual electromagnetic weirdness that hangs around him. This is also why the viewscreen for the peephole goes all fuzzy on him in chapter seven and why, in some extracanonical material, he can't get his storyboard files from his tablet to talk to literally any other piece of technology. It's also why Rosa can tell his energy's 'weird' and why Mira's mom thinks his aura's like a hole.

"... Remember Paloma Heart?"

... "I don't."

I should have mentioned Paloma earlier. That's all.

Brown really did think that he had Ian figured out, that he knew Ian back to front, just because he knew Bill Cipher. ... He wasn't expecting Ian Thomas Beale.

Ian, here, is thinking he's making Brown nervous, making Brown think that he's up against some semi-omniscient, potentially-omnipotent extradimensional being who knows more than he does and can do more than he can, in hopes that Brown will get scared and angry and slip up, give away information that Ian doesn't actually have yet (like how Bill sent Ford that nightmare in the beginning of TLM that really had no purpose except to send Ford running scared for his defenses against Bill, and which also led to the brainwave-encryption machine being destroyed and Ford taking Dipper into his confidences and growing closer to him and ultimately seeding the rift between Dipper and Mabel that ends with Bill getting the rift...). Just how in control is Ian of his own actions here? Debatable, since what he ends up actually doing is getting Brown scared and angry enough and believing enough in Ian's 'powers' to, eventually, let Bill out. Oh, the irony.

Area 51! For someone who's never been big into aliens, I sure have put this dang place into a lot of fics.

(I also wanted to give Mira a chance to one-up Dipper in the Smart Guy department. And do something nice for Dipper. He deserves a bone thrown his way.)

Chapter Ten

Mira is one of the only people - if not THE only person - in this entire fic who has exactly zero ulterior motives. She does exactly what she means to, goes for exactly what she wants to, directly and without hesitation. I kind of love that about her, it's a breath of fresh air.

Here, however, it does probably make her immediate job a little harder.

"It just kills you, doesn't it?" he said ... "Not knowing?"

#getrektIan

I am unreasonably proud of the jet-skate Ladies of English Lit roller derby team as a method of mass destruction.

This scene originally had Dipper taunting Mira about killing mooks lead into the 'mooks' turning out to be magically mind-controlled people, which Mira found out very graphically and horribly when she wrenched the helmet off the guy who tried to choke her out to jam her fingers in his eyes and saw the sigil on his forehead - but that dragged me down a rabbit hole of Is Mira Actually A Good Person etc, and it was both too late to introduce this thread and would have muddled the plot. I might revisit the idea sometime, but then again, I might not.

Chapter Eleven

Janice!!! Janice is one of my favourite backgrounders and I almost wish I hadn't killed her off so quickly. Almost.

I have a boatload of headcanons about how the Society of the Blind Eye worked, how it was originally a secret society designed to stop Bill but Bill used Fiddleford to co-opt and disable it and then used Dipper to destroy it, most of which ended up finding a home in Raising Stakes. This is one of them. There's just no way, in-universe, that the Blind Eye is so deliberately similar to Bill's in design just by chance. (Out of universe, of course, it makes perfect sense for the gravi-team to maintain a consistent aesthetic, but still. My convoluted headcanons can still be supported by textual evidence!)

There was a circle in the middle of the room.

Goodbye, Ian. It was nice knowing you.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and his outstretched wings flickered with stars, surveillance footage, images of the fight that had just happened, an apple tree in a forest of pines, a blueprint, a wide-eyed alien-looking creature...

Dipper's wings flickering is meant to parallel Bill's face flickering in Dreamscaperers, and, like Bill's face flickering in Dreamscaperers, it contains spoilers! The surveillance footage refers to how he and Mira eventually find Ian (through the central control room, on a security tape), the apple tree in a forest of pines is a reference to Henry's antlers and his tree over his grave in Gravity Falls and also a metaphor for him being part of the Pines family, the blueprints refer to the wards on the structural components of the facility, and the alien's just a reference to the fact that it's Area Fifty-freakin'-one.

"For the love of - are you actually twelve?"

Nyahahaha.

I love the bounce castle. I love Mira and Dipper's dialogue immediately post-bounce-castle. I think I have Dipper rip the doors to the soul tree room off their hinges and then later have Mira say she should've closed them, whoops.

I have nothing particular to say about the last scene except that I'm very proud of how it turned out.

Chapter Twelve

The summer Ian had turned fourteen, one of the artists his mother represented had gone triple platinum, a record-breaking heatwave had hit the West Coast, and Ian had tried to kill himself.

I like this scene too. I like montages, bullshit experimental purpley prose, and expressing emotion through place. I also like that this nods to what they're trying to do to Ian - they can't bring Bill back proper, but they can dredge up all his memories, theoretically creating a powerless, more controllable human with all of Bill's borderline-infinite knowledge and no requirement of making a deal or dealing with demonic senses of humour to get at it. All of Ian's own memories bubbling to the surface is part flashback, part the spell dragging up something old and dead and long-buried and dislodging Ian's memories as it rises.

I also should've established Ian's father's death earlier, I think, though now that I'm staring it in the face again I don't dislike it as much as I did just considering it as a concept. I could've mentioned it more concretely earlier on, but bringing its full impact on Ian out here, where everything he's tried to forget is being dragged out of him and everything he is is being stripped bare, is not the worst narrative decision I've ever made.

The soul tree (or ‘tree of knowledge’, as Janice calls it, because haha, it bears apples and it’s a research project) is a product of me looking at what they’re doing to Ian and trying to work backwards, to see what kind of other things they might be doing to research souls, if this is how they decide to deal with Ian. It was also a nice opportunity for a great big hunk of angst, and a good excuse to give Dipper the powerup necessary for all the heavy magical lifting he’s going to have to do. Three for the price of one cool-looking plot device!

“We’re not going anywhere,�� Brown said, taking his hand away from his earpiece. “We’ve still got -”

Janice gave him a pitying look. “It’s Alcor,” she said.

Janice is...probably a little bit of an Alcor fangirl. (Not the Twin Souls kind. The watches-doumentaries-about-serial-killers-on-her-days-off kind.) She is perfectly aware of, and starstruck by, the fact that he can kill her with barely a thought. She would just love to get him under a scalpel or energy blade of some description, but she’s also not a complete idiot. No one who’s ever tried to summon Alcor for anything like the kind of research she does has ever lived to tell the tale. She probably just has a wall of newspaper clippings all about Cool Shit Alcor Has Done.

“Wanna know what your future has in it?” ... He blinked, once, slowly, deliberately, and said, “Exactly three minutes!”

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It also probably wouldn’t have worked if Ian hadn’t already played at being Bill for Brown earlier. BAM. PLOT.

Ian glanced over at the timer as Brown brandished the tablet. The last few seconds drained away just as Brown pressed a finger down on the screen.

The house from Ian’s nightmares crashed down around him.

This is another one that I can see as a scene, animated or filmed; the room beyond, the ‘real world’ with the circle and the magitech and the terrified people suddenly vanishing from Ian’s viewpoint when a wall drops in front of it, no, slams down in front of it, shaking snowglobes and pine-tree trucker hats off the shelves and putting huge cracks between the boards, settling slowly into place like it was just dropped by a tornado even as blue light starts to spill up through the floorboards and the cracks start to widen as gravity fights for every board and nail...

Man, I wish I could make the moving pictures. (Though I guess if I’d put my time and energy into learning to make the moving pictures, maybe I would know less about making the words go. And, like, I’ve managed to just blither some seven thousand words about Making The Words Go. So I might actually have some modicum of skill at that by now.)

Chapter Thirteen

Mira hadn’t said anything since they’d left the room where Henry’s soul had been imprisoned, and Dipper was starting to worry.

TAU’s creator and Mod Z mentioned to me after this chapter was posted that I could’ve held off naming Henry as the owner of the soul until Dipper is forced to admit it, out loud, to Mira, and I’m still kicking myself that I didn’t think of that before posting the chapter because it’s a great suggestion and would have been very effective.

“See, at least we just kill people.”

Yeah, I’m glad I didn’t get into the ‘moral dilemma of Mizar’ aspect in this one any more than I did.

“You’re my best friend, you know? And I don’t want to lose that.” She glanced down the hall, back the way they’d come. “But if this is going to work, then sooner or later, you’re going to have to trust me.”

WHOOOOA THESIS STATEMENT

Everything from Mira and Dipper breaking into the control room straight through to Mira landing in the hospital was pretty much written in one straight shot, without stopping. This was the part I'd been itching to write since, like, chapter two, and it was GREAT to finally have it all fall together. The reactions I got to Bill's appearance - even though I think everybody was kind of expecting it by the time we got to this part - were all awesome and priceless.

I do want to make sure it's clear - the whole Bit in Area 51 was set up to approximate the circumstances under which Dipper became demonized. We had 1) an enormous, elaborate spell being worked, 2) ancient spells in the foundation of the building which had been in place for more than a thousand years, 3) all of which were destroyed, releasing all that pent-up power while 4) demonic energy and knowledge was being forced through and into a fragile puny human with an intrinsic tie to the physical plane.

It seemed like it made sense at the time, okay.

"AND PUBERTY! REMIND ME TO GIVE THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS THAT DREAMED THAT ONE UP A SWIFT KICK IN THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST!"

I love writing dialogue for Bill. That is all. Most of my favourite lines did actually make their way into the fic, but I still ended up having to scrap some that I really liked, just because I couldn't make the dialogue work with the plot and the other characters. A shame.

I honestly don't think I could be happier with how the scene with Bill in the centre of the circles with Mira turned out. Choreographing it was a bitch, though.

"Give Ian back, you son of a -"

"AH AH AH, LANGUAGE!" Bill interrupted, with a wink. "TRYING TO PRESERVE THAT Y-7 RATING HERE!"

this is my favourite fucking joke in the entire fic

can you imagine how much funnier it would've been if I actually had kept the entire fic Y-7 rated

"Why does everyone keep forgetting I'm Mizar?"

#getrektbill

Chapter Fourteen

I really don't have anything more to say about the rest of the scene in Area 51. I think the writing actually says exactly what I want it to say, how I want to say it. It all flowed easily and beautifully, and I barely had to edit it at all. I was and still am pleased as punch about how it came out.

Everything was floating.

This fucking scene, on the other hand.

I rewrote this entire scene from scratch no less than three times (and it was probably actually four). This scene was a righteous pain in my ass. I had one goal with it - I had to get Dipper to offer Ian the deal that would remove all outsiders' memories of Ian being an r!Bill, in exchange for eating all of the Bill-memories left in Ian's head. Usually, that's a good thing. Usually, knowing the purpose of a scene makes it pretty easy and straightforward to write.

This motherfucker, though. This scene was like pulling teeth. I'd get about halfway through Dipper explaining the deal to Ian and why it was important, and then I would just stop. I couldn't go any farther. It was like I was on the end of an imaginary rubber band of Actual Ability To Make The Words Go that I could stretch only so far, but no farther, and only with a great amount of struggle, before I'd be snapped back to the beginning and have to try to start again from there in a direction where maybe I could make it to the next scene before I ran to the end of my rubber band again. I tried over and over and over with no luck, no success, and no small amount of frustration.

I don't know what tipped me off to the fact that, one, I had to actually deal with the demons I'd pulled out of Ian's head, and two, there was so much more I could do with the mindscape than the literary equivalent of talking head panels, but once it clicked into place, it was like that imaginary rubber band just vanished and I wrote the whole thing all the way through in forty-five minutes without stopping. It also required minimal editing, and it is now one of my favourite scenes in the entire fic.

A little while after I finished this chapter, I saw a quote (from Clickhole, so obviously fake, but) attributed to Haruki Murakami, which basically said, "If you can set a scene in the basket of a hot-air balloon, do." It was a joke, of course, but I also, since writing this, think it's genuinely excellent advice.

Also, I managed to sneak in references to used-car-salesman!human!Bill, stylised-skinny-smirky-pretty-boy!human!Bill and how I felt he was kind of a caricature and a lot of versions of him that looked like that also flattened out the depth of the character, and to the apocalypse tapestry, which I actually don't think I've seen mentioned anywhere in the fandom since Escape From Reality aired! Huh. Too bad, it was cool.

Chapter Fifteen

...and the forest outside with all of its eyes is burning, burning -

I just really like this line, I don't know.

The news story about the Nordwext group that's playing when Ian wakes up for the first time is, one, yes, a reference to the Northwest family, and two, a callback to the girls in the factory who Dipper hadn't been able to help back in chapter five. This is him trying to do something that will actually help them and make a difference in their lives, instead of just lighting people on fire from inside out and getting them in trouble for summoning demons.

"... another such facility located under the former Ellens Air Force Base in Idaho."

Ellens Air Force Base is entirely fictional. It was invented for an episode of the X-Files, Deep Throat, where Mulder actually sees a UFO up close and personal (before having it wiped from his mind by the government). I couldn't resist.

I actually researched eye removal for this chapter. It took a lot of psyching up and then realising I could probably start with Wikipedia and click though to their sources without ever having to brave the minefield of Google Suggested Images.

He'd never seen this ring of trees (aspen? Birch?) in his life...

When I wrote this, I had the clearing where Gideon first summons Bill in mind. I also deliberately used descriptors, when Ian looks over and sees he's holding hands with himself, that could apply to either Ian or Bill.

"Oh, demons ... We can deal with demons."

I love Mira's parents.

Guess whooo put in a Twin Peaks reference without knowing basically anything about Twin Peaks!...okay, I could not pass up the opportunity. Besides, you know Ian watched Twin Pines at a formative age, and nearly flipped when he found out they were resurrecting it as Twin Pines: The Returnening.

He’s also a big fan (and friend) of Lauren Mephistopheles, but there is absolutely nothing that will make him actually watch more than ten minutes of Friendship is Prestidigitation. Sorry, Lauren. Some things are too terrifying even for an ex-demon in human skin.

And here we have the culmination of the Rosa Darling Redemption Arc! Ian telling her that Bill played all of them is, as she correctly deduces, a test - if she took the out as offered, played off her own responsibility, he’d know that he really couldn’t trust her to recognise what she’d done wrong and try to fix it. At that point, he probably would’ve had to ask Dipper to remove her memories, too. It’s a lucky thing for both of them that she got a clue!

“State-of-the-art prosthetic.” Rosa clasped her hands behind her back. “This model’s so new it’s not even on the market yet. Which, uh, would mean that technically you’d be part of a clinical trial -”

“A guinea pig,” Ian said, softly.

Just like Bill made Dipper into! I’m a genius.

“You’re not my father,” Ian says at last.

Ian’s father shrugs. “Does it matter, if I’m right?” He puts his glasses back on, light hitting the lenses just so that Ian can’t see his eyes. “Does any of this matter?”

Ian thinks.

“Yes,” he says.

Hi, my name is Mary, and I love Terry Pratchett’s writing.

“You know what,” Ian said, still looking up at the ceiling, at the hoist that dangled over the bed and the dark bulb in the reading lamp, “it’s been - three days? Four days? A couple days since we narrowly escaped death and you haven’t kissed me even once.”

“You haven’t kissed me either,” Mira said, with an affronted look, but there was a hint of laughter in her voice.

Remember how I said they started out forced and stilted? Yeah. I think that was just inexperience and a lack of familiarity with the characters. Let this be a lesson unto me: write the whole damn thing, then go back and rewrite the first, like, until it starts sounding natural again.

“Mira, don’t call me nerdface,” Alcor grumbled, coalescing out of the dark and fussing with his cufflinks.

“Okay, dorkbreath,” Mira agreed, just to hear Alcor’s long-suffering sigh.

Case in point.

Epilogue

Toby!

Everybody loves Toby. I guess I’m no exception. I am a sucker. Also I really wanted to show how the whole Ian thing affected Dipper’s relationship with Toby, while not actually causing it to deviate at all from what had already been established as TAU canon.

“Fragile neurological attachment, huh?” Dipper said, under his breath, and then, loud enough to hear, “Well, now you’ve got me.”

That’s all, folks!

Some more RB-related song recs, before I go:

- The Garden, by July Talk (This ain’t Johnny Carson/I got thoughts that ain’t my own/I’m talkin’ black souls dressed in red and things that I shoulda never known)

- I Run Roulette, by Boots (I’ve been tricked into a thousand different ways/to slide myself away right down the drain)

- Better Not Wake The Baby, by the Decemberists (make your moan of your lot in life, split your mind half-crazy/gouge your eyes with a butter knife)

- Tic Toc, by Mother Mother (the Sandman told me, there’s no use in listening)

and because shush, it’s a great song and I had it on repeat for writing a decent chunk of the middle bits

- Out Of The Woods, by Taylor Swift (but the monsters turned out to be just trees/when the sun came up you were lookin’ at me)

#chatter #reincarnation blues #holy hell why am I so long-winded and opinionated #blogg-saron

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