#and adding to this

[shmisky]

What do you think was Stan's fate in the Better World Timeline?

Ooh, very interesting question! Thanks for the ask and sorry in advance for the enormous answer you’re about to get, hahah ❤️

So, to begin answering that (I promise I will eventually!), I have to first point out that what always caught my attention in Ford’s Better World description in the journal is that not once he meets his parallel self. On that hangs my entire analysis.

Instead, he gives us a reason why they didn’t meet: parallel!Fiddleford explains that he had been leading a portal expedition to a certain dimension, but one of the security officers ran into his parallel self and as soon as they touched hands, the entire dimension started to warp and fizz with static. Fiddleford and his team barely escaped alive!

But that’s the thing: as soon as they touched hands, only! Not as soon as they saw each other, or as soon as they were in the same room together, or as soon as they talked to each other, like you sometimes see in fanfic! No, it very much required actual skin-to-skin contact. You would think that Professor Stanford Pines, celebrated star of the scientific community, founder of the International Institute of Oddology, and our Ford, 12 PhDs (or a few less PhDs at the time) would have enough sense and self-control to... just not try and touch each other? Or, for security reasons, stand at least a few meters away from each other? If they feared an accidental touch so much, they could have talked through a glass panel or some kind of physical divide. I do believe every Ford must be a deeply curious individual, and you’re telling me that parallel!Ford, known genius, wasn’t capable of creating a way to enable himself to interview his parallel selves safely? Wouldn’t you be very curious to meet your parallel self? I think it’s more likely than not that other versions of Ford would end up pushed through the portal, so our Ford might not even have been the first Ford to visit that dimension.

But instead Fiddleford goes so far as to detain our Ford and hold him captive without even attempting to explain things first! A bit overkill, no? You could say, “but Bunny, Fiddleford just didn’t want impulsive, reckless Ford to go and run to his parallel self upon seeing him for the first time!” But herein, my friend, lies the crux of the matter: even after Fiddleford explains things to our Ford, even after our Ford understands he couldn’t touch his parallel self... He still doesn’t meet or talk to parallel!Ford. Wasn’t he trusted enough/allowed to do so, even then?

My Doylist explanation (that considers what led the author to choose a certain path) to that is: the writers just didn’t want the two Fords to meet and wanted to leave it ambiguous. It’s really not that deep 😭

My favorite Watsonian explanation (in-universe headcanon) to that is: Fiddleford didn’t want them to meet 😏

Now, would Fiddleford ever lie to Ford? Yes. In fact, he already did, in our original timeline! Ford asked him to destroy the memory gun, Fiddleford apparently agreed. “He was crestfallen by my advice, but after some discussion he came to see the wisdom in it. He said that he didn’t want to risk forgetting his wife and son. I ordered him to destroy the gun, and he did.” (“Ordered”... Oh, Ford, never change...) Reality: Fiddleford hadn’t destroyed it at all, and in fact used it on Ford to erase his memories without Ford’s consent or knowledge.

So even though I don’t think this was, necessarily, either Alex’s or Rob Renzetti’s intentions, I like to think parallel!Fiddleford was bullshitting our Ford a bit. To which extent, I don’t know. The thing about the parallel selves touching and causing a dimension to end might very well be true (in fact, according to Alex’s Word of God, it is! he has said on Twitter that parallel selves really can’t meet in their home dimensions, but can meet in the in-between spaces!) BUT because of the reasons I explained above, it’s my headcanon that it wasn’t the main reason why Fiddleford didn’t want the two Fords meeting.

I just love, love the vibes of A Better World. I love how utterly smitten with that world our Ford is. He describes himself as “drawn” towards the Institute “like a moth to a flame,” and mentions his desire to “revel in [his] parallel self’s success.” He’s utterly smitten it with it despite never once meeting his parallel self. He imagines his parallel self as the happiest man on Earth despite never once meeting his parallel self. He leaves that dimension sighing wistfully despite never once meeting his parallel self. I love how parallel!Ford is just... shrouded in this very ambiguous mystery. It all sounds a little bit ominous to me. Is he happy? Is he satisfied? Does he like what he accomplished?

Our Ford, of course, imagines that he is. Our Ford doesn’t even wonder about parallel!Stan, because that’s who Stanford Pines is: self-centered as all hell, hahah. His brother doesn’t even cross his mind, since he’s too busy being dazzled by his apparent great success and the fulfillment of his dreams! I think he subconsciously assumed parallel!Stan must have been fine.

What do I think happened to parallel!Stan? Oh, well, he’s very much dead 🪦💐 And parallel!Ford, the man Ford believes to be so lucky, is actually miserable. Fiddleford was merely protecting our Ford from the truth.

If you want to get a bit darker, just look at this excerpt from the Not What He Seems script:

Meanwhile, in the Lost Legends comics, Ford is saying shit like this:

We stan an insensitive king who is utterly and blissfully oblivious to his brother’s dangerously low self-esteem and borderline suicidal thoughts ❤️

Before TBoB, I might have been reluctant to think something so dark could happen in GF, since it still is, after all, a cartoon for kids, and Stan’s a main character! But then TBoB went and revealed to us that Dipper and Mabel died horrible deaths in all the other timelines! 😭 And while I do take that with a grain of salt because it was revealed to us by Bill Cipher and Bill is not trustworthy but a professional liar, just the fact Alex acknowledged and played with the possibility of the two protagonists dying horribly is already pretty telling in and of itself...

I think that once parallel!Ford called Stan after a decade, unwittingly gave him hope, and then ripped it out from his hands... Yeah. We know how Ford is important to Stan. Reconciliation with Ford might very well have been what was pushing Stan forward. Stan can be very, very stubborn—working on a portal for 30 years—when Ford is involved. But having no Ford at all...

Parallel!Ford might have planned to call Stan back, but by then it was probably too late. So yeah. I like to imagine that parallel!Ford would be, ironically, so, so jealous of our Ford’s happy ending with Stan.

Actually, as I type this, the funniest idea occurred to me. The real reason Fiddleford didn’t allow the two Fords to meet is that parallel!Ford, upon listening our Ford praise his accomplishments and shit-talk Stan (“I can’t believe Stanley listen to you! He’s so stubborn, so selfish, he never listens!”) would disregard all reason, all training, and all self-control just for the precious chance to punch himself in the face. Dimension ending catastrophe? A minor detail.

[m0thmancore]

suck, and i cannot stress this enough, my cock to the fucking base

[caramelizard]

tomorrow im really gonna give it my nothing

[elbiotipo]

Also I've said this before but advertising is an industry that should be considered as pointless and harmful as fossil fuels.

[pookapufferfish]

[robyn-i-guess]

liking someone platonically is so embarrassing like. yeah i admire you. yeah i think about you all the time. yeah i look forward to every time i see you even if it's only for a minute. yeah it's all platonic and yeah i couldn't explain this because it'd sound romantic. fucking hell

[humming-fly]

was thinking about that one blind professor post earlier today and how well it applied to the aptly named Team Dark

(really 'Team Dark' just sounds a lot cooler than 'Team Saves-On-Electricity')

[hansoeii]

the honda odyssey, huh?

[crystaltoa]

And now for something completely different.

This is the ADHD Teapot. I made it in a ceramics class a few years ago. I use it to explain executive dysfunction to people who haven’t come across the term before (and those who think of ADHD mostly as Hyperactive Eight Year Old Boy Syndrome).

So, most people’s brains are like a regular shaped teapot with a single spout. Let’s say that your time, energy, focus etc is the liquid you have in the teapot. Your executive function is the spout, that directs the tea into the specific cup you want to fill-aka the task that you’re meant to be doing. Spills happen occasionally, but generally most of the tea goes in the right cup.

If you have executive dysfunction, (a symptom of ADHD, trauma, autism, schizophrenia etc.) you have multiple spouts going in different directions. You can try pointing one of them at your chosen cup and you will probably get some liquid in there, perhaps you will even fill it right up (finish the task). But meanwhile, tea is also pouring out of several other places and not going where you want it. If you have another container nearby, perhaps some of it will end up in there. But quite a lot of it is going to end up on the floor and accomplish nothing.

And at the end of the day you’ll have filled one or two cups ( or sometimes not even one) compared to the five or six that somebody with the same sized teapot (but only one spout) has filled, and everyone wonders why you’re so bad at getting tea poured, and why you make such a mess in the process.

One day I’d like to spend more time learning pottery and create a really technically good fucked up little adhd teapot. But that’s a long way off since i currently live in the outback and the nearest pottery workshop is some 400km away. But I figure that for now, it might be a useful or interesting metaphor to somebody even in its rough draft form.

This post is the cup I filled instead of cleaning my house btw.

[anistarrose]

Disability is not a punishment, but I think the world would be genuinely improved if every person involved in writing or regulating ingredient labels was mysteriously inflicted with at least one food allergy falling under each of the following categories: "natural flavors," "modified food starch," "artificial flavors," "spices," and "color." Down with ingredient labels so vague that they defeat the entire fucking point.

[ilynpilled]

i love characters who do the “i worship the myth i make of you” and in turn dehumanize and get wrong the object of their devotion and love. yes project a thing that does not exist onto a pedestal and kneel at it like it is your altar. this will surely not blow up in both of your faces eventually

[kiwi]

as a former escape room host i highly recommend doing an escape room as a first date. its a great way to learn how ppl react under pressure and how well they collaborate with you right off the bat. also more than once ive seen people enter an escape room as a couple and exit broken up LOL its a fantastic litmus test

[ravenkings]

while being depressing, this is also sort of fascinating to me bc there’s something so…inauthentic here. what i mean is that if you saw something like this back in say 2001 (which you probably wouldn’t, at least for carl’s jr. but i digress) it would seem tacky but in a “sex sells” sort of way.

seeing this in 2025, it’s clearly purely a political statement and you can tell partially bc the image itself is so oddly sexless. it’s like there’s more titillation in the prospect of “owning the libs” than in the image of the scantily clad blonde white woman itself.

[girlypopz123]

The pills meme but it's things i wish i had

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

that article going around abt firefox's new ad program is annoying bc it's phrased as though "mozilla has finally TURNED on its people and is SELLING YOU OUT for cold hard cash!!" when. that's not what's happening. it is specifically being implemented to discourage tracking behavior, and literally all the data they are giving to advertisers is aggregate and anonymized, which is like, the opposite of what that post wants you to worry about, lol