#but fiddleford would absolutely not be into any of that i think

[alexthebordercollie]

it's nice to see mystery trio aus that aren't fiddlestan tbh. The amount of times I'll see one, think it looks interesting, and then it just turns into "wow Stan, you're so much nicer and cooler than your lame brother! Lets date!" And act like it's some kind of karma for Ford or something.

I definitely agree with your take that so often fiddlestan is just used as a way to express dislike of Ford, while ignoring any of Stan's canonical flaws

As a side note, since this is more of personal headcanon territory, but i think Stan would find Fiddleford too reminiscent of Ford when he was young to actually be interested.

Anyway, i always love to see Stan in his natural habitat (being a chaotic uncle)

I love the idea of the Mystery Trio. I think these three would play off each other really well. They're cute and funny together, but you don't need Fiddlestan. It feels like people treat it as a given that if offered the choice between Stan and Ford Fidds would choose Stan. Which is kind of shitty. (Low key it kind of reads to me like Ford is assumed the worse partner because he's autistic :/ even if people aren't consciously treating him that way.)

I think it's kind of presumptuous to assume Fidds would be into Stan anyway. Like physically attracted to him? Sure, obviously. If he finds Ford attractive odds are good Stan would also be nice to look at, but relationships aren't just physical attraction and it's obvious from the journals and BOB that Fidds had a very strong connection to Ford. If he's in love with an autistic nerd enough to throw his life away for him why would people assume Stans's wildly contrasting personality would somehow be more appealing?

I've actually had this comic kicking around in my mind for a while and this ask gave me a good excuse to draw it. (Though it took longer than expected)

While I don't think Fidds would ever choose Stan over Ford, I do think Ford would be a bit of a jealous and insecure partner. He's used to a lot of social rejection and struggles to maintain connections with people. Not to mention trust issues, especially after Bill who tried to sabotage his faith in Fiddleford in particular.

I wouldn't put it past Ford to get antsy seeing Fidds get along with his brother even if there's absolutely nothing going on there.

Also, I hadn't considered the suggestion that Stan might find Fidds nerdiness a turn-off because it reminds him too much of his brother, but yeah I could see it. Still, I'd buy Stan being interested in Fidds before I could really see the other way around happening. I think Stanley's tastes are bit broader but Fiddleford I imagine to have a bit more of a type. At least where romantic attraction is concerned. That said I don't think Fiddleford's actual tastes are really considered, I think he gets shipped with Stanley by people who want to see Stanley get that kind of overbearing love that Fidds showed to Ford. I do understand wanting to give him that kind of partner but Ford deserves love too, we don't need to be taking his healthy romantic option away from him and leave him with Bill. (His abuser.)

[breezeflows]

The Long Road (Stanford Pines x Reader)

Chapter 4

Y’ALL THIS ONE WAS/IS A ROUGH ONE. I had a lot of writers block with this chapter, but I think I finally accomplished fitting in everything I wanted it to have! Also just for clarification, a lot of things that happened in this chapter will be discussed more thoroughly in future chapters! (Aka Ford’s perspective.) Thank you everyone so much for your patience and continued support!! With that, here is absolutely gut wrenching chapter 4!!

Also, last thing I promise, if you want to be added to the tag list, just comment!

Themes: Lying, Arguments, Strong language, Lotsss of bottled up emotions, Fiddleford gets traumatized by the portal, Ford over prioritizing Bill and his work over sleep/his wife etc, all the fun stuff! This chapter is very sad! But we will finally be back to the present in chapter 5!

You found yourself waking in the late afternoon, your bags now packed and in hand as you make your way out of Lizzy’s apartment. And although you were a nervous wreck to return home and confront Ford about last night’s events, you were also happy at the thought you’d be sleeping in your own bed tonight. You were hopeful that Ford would have a good explanation. Maybe he was drunk out of his mind, due to your absence, or maybe Fiddleford brought the two of them there after a breakthrough in their research. You couldn’t quite put your finger on it.

You keep your thoughts running as you settle into the passenger seat of Lizzy’s car. Your mind is a flurry of hope, worry, and anxiety as you mull over all the different possibilities of what happened last night.

Lizzy hops into the driver’s seat, her gaze flickering over to you as she senses your nerves.

“Hey,” she says softly. “Everything will be okay, alright? I’m sure Ford has a good explanation for everything. At least, he better.”

You let out a nervous sigh, once again fiddling with your wedding band as you try to steady yourself. 

“I hope so,” you murmur, eyes drifting out the window as Lizzy kicks the vehicle in motion. “I really don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t.”

Lizzy places a sympathetic hand on your shoulder, giving it  a squeeze.

“Let’s just focus on getting there for now, okay? Try not to imagine any worst-case scenarios until we actually talk to him.”

You give a small nod as she drives, the world outside becoming a blur of trees and late afternoon sun.

6:00 PM.

With a final turn down the gravel path, you arrive at the place you consider home, the cabin. The familiarity of your surroundings should be relieving, yet you find yourself on edge, tugging down on the beanie that rested against your head.

You unclip your seatbelt as the car hauls to a stop, Lizzy turning to give you a reassuring smile.

“I’ll drive around closeby.” she says. “In case things go, you know, not so great.”

You nod softly, thanking her as you grab your bags from the backseat, stepping out of the car. The gravel under your feet crunches with each step, your heart beating rapidly in your chest.

Taking a deep breath, you make your way to the front door of your home, a nervous hand twisting the knob and pushing it open. As you step foot into the familiar space, you’re surprised to find Ford in the living room. He’s seated on the couch, working on what seemed to be some sort of gadget on the coffee table.

He looks up as you enter, his expression casual with a hint of excitement.

“You’re back!” He states as he stands, approaching you with a warm smile.

You swallow hard, clutching your bags tightly as you regard him warily.

“I missed you, how was your trip? There’s so much I have to tell you, Fiddleford and I had a major breakthrough this weekend!”

Ford’s words are light and pleasant, and he looks genuinely happy to see you. A stark difference from how he was the night before. He steps closer to you, looking as if he’s about to pull you into an embrace, but you take a step back, releasing your bags from your grip.

Ford’s smile falters for a brief moment, a flicker of confusion in his eyes.

“Is something wrong?” he asks, his voice laced with concern.

“Where were you last night?”

He seems taken aback by your blunt question, a brow raised as he rubs the back of his neck.

“Ah… well I was here, working with Fiddleford, like I said.” he replies, gesturing to the gadget on the table. “Why do you ask?”

Your heart twists in your chest as you clench your fists, frown adorning your lips.

“Is that all..?”

Ford looks perplexed by your question, his eyes filled with concern as he takes a step towards you, his expression growing increasingly more confused and worried.

“What do you mean? Where else would I have been?”

You go to speak, but falter, looking down at the floor as you hold your elbow sheepishly.

“Nevermind.. It’s nothing, sorry.”

Ford pauses, his concern only deepening as he watches you avoid his gaze. He takes another step closer, his voice gentle.

“Y/N, please tell me what’s wrong,” he says, reaching out to touch your arm.

“You’ve been acting strange ever since you came through the door… Did something happen? You can talk to me.”

You swallow hard, before looking up to meet his gaze.

Ford’s expression is genuine, his grip on you squeezing gently as you gaze at him for a moment. This Ford was a huge contrast to whoever you had talked to last night, this was the man you knew and adored. Maybe you and Lizzy really did have too much to drink, and you mixed it all up with some other guy? It seemed too coincidental, but the way Ford was acting now made you second guess everything. He seemed totally unphased, and there wasn’t a single thing about his tone that would lead you to believe he was lying. This was still your husband, after all.

You shovel all of your thoughts and suspicions down as you sigh, placing a hand over the one he had rested on your arm.

“It’s nothing, I promise,” you say, cracking a soft smile as you lean into him. “I just missed you a lot. It’s good to be home.”

Ford’s eyes soften at your words, and he pulls you closer to him, gently enveloping you in his arms. He holds you close, one hand rubbing soothing circles on your back.

“I missed you too,” he murmurs, his voice soft and gentle. “More than you know.”

Your ears and cheeks turn red at his words as he pulls away, just enough to meet your gaze, his eyes searching yours for a moment before he speaks.

“So, you uh, need help with your bags?”

A soft blush covers Ford’s cheeks as you smile once more, your hand reaching to cup his cheek, thumb grazing the skin underneath.

“Sure, although I wanna hear everything you wanted to catch me up on while I unpack.”

If somehow possible, Ford’s cheeks turn an even darker shade of pink as you touch his face, his gaze flicking down to your hand before coming back up to meet your eyes. He then clears his throat, voice slightly strained.

“Y-yeah of course,” he stammers, his hand coming up to rub the back of his head. “We can talk in the bedroom while you unpack.”

“Sounds like a plan.” you say with a chuckle, grabbing both of your bags and handing one to Ford, placing a quick peck to his cheek before pulling away.

A small, boyish smile appears on his lips at your gesture. He quickly takes the bag you handed him, keeping his eyes on you for a moment before looking down at your luggage in his hands.

He clears his throat once more, his voice betraying a hint of nervousness as he speaks.

“Right, let’s go then.”

Ford then begins to lead the way to the bedroom, you trailing along behind him.

As you both enter your shared room you begin to unpack your bags, Ford chatting away excitedly as he helps you with your things, pulling out your clean clothes and placing them in the closet. 

You smile at his enthusiasm, but you can’t help but notice the bed as you unpack. The sheets are just how you left them, pillows fluffed and blankets tucked into the edges of the frame.

“Did you get any sleep while I was gone?” you ask, shutting a drawer after you’ve placed a pair of jeans inside.

Ford pauses mid-sentence in his excited explanation, faltering as his glaze flicks from the bed to yours.

“Uh, well… no, I didn’t,” he admits, his voice laced with a hint of guilt. “With all the work Fiddleford and I’ve been doing, I guess I just forgot about sleep.”

You frown deeply as he moves to continue helping you unpack, your arms falling to your sides.

“Ford..”

Ford pauses again, a flicker of guilt in his eyes as he senses your disapproving tone.

“Just promise me that you’ll at least come to bed tonight. Okay? I worry about you when you aren’t getting any rest.”

His expression softens, gaze full of guilt and affection meeting yours. He nods in agreement, a sheepish smile crossing his face.

“I promise.”

Over the following nights, Ford makes a point of coming to bed, holding true to the word he gave you the night you returned from Lizzys. However, the pattern you had desperately hoped for doesn’t last long. The old habits return quickly, Ford abandoning the bedroom in favor of work in the lab for days on end. Days soon turn into weeks, weeks into months, and so on. You find yourself lying alone in bed each night, your mind filled with anger and frustration. Sometimes, you’re kept awake by the bright flashes and rumbling from below. A part of you wanted to stomp down there and give him a piece of your mind, to leave him and this broken marriage behind, but another part of you yearned for Ford. You longed for the day you’d see him emerge from the lab instead of Fiddleford, or the day he’d prioritize you again. Even just a simple acknowledgement of your presence, other than “hello, how are you”, would do. You missed how things used to be. You missed him.

But the day never came.

You were too stubborn to be the first to break the now built-up tension, after all it was Ford’s fault the two of you were in this predicament anyway. At least that’s what you told yourself, feeding into the false hope that things were going to somehow magically improve. 

The same cycle repeated itself, leaving you feeling helpless and abandoned.

Until one night.

You found yourself lying alone in bed yet again, your head laid on what was once Ford’s pillow, his scent no longer attached to the fabric. The sounds of the lab seem louder tonight as you toss and turn, grunting in annoyance. You glance towards the clock on your nightstand, the glowing numbers reading midnight. Frustration mounts within you, the lack of any attention whatsoever from Ford wearing you down.

Suddenly, an extremely loud whir from the lab forces you to sit upright, your heart pounding in your chest as your irritation gets the best of you. Finally, you’d had enough.

You throw back the covers in an aggressive motion, swinging your legs over the bed. You pad across the room, your bare feet touching the cold hardwood floor. Each step you take fuels the growing anger in you, your patience thinning.

Reaching the door, you pull on it, the sound of it creaking open adding to the building tension. With a huff, you step forward into the darkness and descend the stairway leading to the lab.

You press the button to the elevator harshly, stepping inside the metal contraption. As you descend further you hear the sound of faint yelling, along with a thud. Your stomach twists with frustration and anxiety, your mind reeling with possibilities of what the hell was going on down there.

Finally, the elevator doors slide open, revealing a blinding blue light behind the glass window of the lab. Your feet carry you quickly to the source, dashing through the entryway when all of a sudden, your shoulders are grabbed.

Your body stiffens as your eyes adjust to the lighting, revealing a disheveled Fiddleford in front of you. His fearful eyes search your panicked ones, his grip painfully tight.

“Fiddleford-”

“You’ve got to get out of here Y/N,” he states frantically, his voice shaky. “This machine will bring about the end of the world, it’s dangerous beyond comprehension. It should never see the light of day.”

The sound of your heartbeat fills your ears as you process his words. The seriousness in his voice and panicked look in his eyes were enough to send a chill down your spine. You take a moment, before stuttering out a few words.

“What? Machine? The end of the world..?”

Before you can finish your sentence, Fiddleford leaves in a rush, your frightened gaze moving to the source of the light.

In front of you stood what seemed to be some sort of portal, with your husband standing right below it.

You watch him as you stand there, dumbstruck by fear and confusion. You clench your fists before taking a firm step forward, swallowing dryly.

“Ford..?”

He stands with his back turned to you, mumbling something before yelling aloud.

“No, you know what… I don’t need anyone!”

Your legs tremble as you make your way towards him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Ford jumps violently at the contact, his head whipping around to face you. His gaze widening for a moment, before turning cold and harsh.

“What..? What are you doing down here Y/N?” He snaps, his tone sharp and defensive.

Your gut clenches at his tone, your eyes brimming with tears as you finally break.

“What the actual fuck, Stanford!” You yell, hands formed into fists as you hold them in front of you.

“What is this?! This.. this thing?!” You yell, pointing towards the portal. 

“This is too fucking far!!”

Ford’s eyes narrow, his irritation growing apparent. He stands his ground, stepping towards you and jabbing a finger towards your chest.

“This?” he replies, gesturing to the portal. “This is my life’s work Y/N! Everything I’ve dedicated myself towards for decades! Something you wouldn’t even understand the significance of, even if I explained it to you!”

His words cut through you like a knife, tears now streaming warmly down your cheeks. You grab hold of his wrist roughly, jerking him towards you.

“No!” you yell, your grip unrelenting. 

“This is some sort of doomsday device you abandoned EVERYTHING for! That you abandoned ME for!”

Your voice breaks with that last sentence, your teeth clenching as you attempt to stifle your pain.

“I’ve stuck with you through everything, Stanford! When you lost Stanley, during those horrible years in college, through this!” You say, pointing to him and then to yourself with your free hand. “When you’ve practically neglected me as your wife, all of it! I stayed with you because I’m in love with you, Stanford!”

Ford’s eyes soften at your words, a strong flicker of guilt in his expression as you list all the sacrifices you’ve made for him.

“But I can’t,” your voice trembles with each word, your grip on his wrist loosening to where it falls back to your side. 

“Y/N…”

Every emotion you’ve bottled up until now weighs down on you, your heart racing in your chest.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Your tearful gaze meets his, his heart aching at the sight.

Ford looks as if he’s been torn in two. Flashes of guilt, anger, and concern, all etching across his face as he stands there, desperately searching for the right answer. And although you never in a million years would intend for him to be put in this spot, he knows he has to choose. The person who devoted their everything to him, or everything he’s ever devoted himself to.

Ford stutters out his answer faster than he can think, sweat beading against his forehead.

“This isn’t,” he pinches the bridge of his nose, his expression heavily conflicted. “This is something monumental Y/N, something that could change the course of existence itself. I have to do this,” as Ford continues, you feel your heart snapping in two, your gaze lowering to the floor as you attempt to take in what he is saying.

“I have to finish what I started, Y/N.”

Your vision blurs with heavy tears as the two of you stand there in deafening silence. 

Your expression is filled with pure distraught as you lift your head, your gaze meeting Ford’s. Although he doesn’t return it, his eyes glued to the ground with a solemn frown on his lips. Your lip trembles as you lower your head once more, standing there for a few moments before forcing yourself to turn away.

“Okay.”

Your legs feel heavy with each step, every part of you screaming at you to stay. But deep down you know you can’t, it was time for you to choose yourself for once.

So with that you trudge on, out of the lab and out of the cabin.

The cabin you once considered home.

Thank you for reading! I hope y’all like how this turned out :)

Tag list: @karmaisacatluzi @therottenheartofscum @catr4dora @slay-thou-pookie @wow-life-love4 @missgurlsstuff @violetvsworld @inquiit @mandossillyriduur @mokikow @phirbat

[ckret2]

Chapter 43 of suddenly human Bill Cipher is pretty eager to remain imprisoned inside the Mystery Shack:

The Eclipse: Part 1

Gravity's disappearing in Gravity Falls. Bill has an explanation for what's going on that has absolutely nothing to do with him, and also doesn't make any sense. Fiddleford has an alternate theory that makes a lot of sense, and has a whole lot to do with Bill. Ford trusts Fiddleford.

####

"An eclipse," Ford repeated. "Gravity's vanishing, you're floating, and you expect me to believe that it's due to an eclipse."

Bill shrugged. "I don't expect anything out of you. Believe whatever the heck you want. That's what it is, though."

"Even if it wasn't a ridiculous notion, there aren't any solar or lunar eclipses anywhere near Oregon this summer—"

"Did I say the eclipse was solar or lunar?" Bill asked. "No. I didn't." He breezed past Ford, heading to the kitchen. "Hey, is anybody gonna eat those pancakes?"

"Mine." Dipper ran past Bill to his abandoned plate.

"Then what kind of an eclipse is it?" Ford demanded.

Bill leaned on the kitchen counter, crossed his arms, and pursed his lips thoughtfully. Finally, he said, "Gravitational eclipse."

"There's no such thing!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Dr. I Think Having A Mere Five PhDs Means I Know Everything! Please, enlighten the trillion-year-old all-seeing eye who spent a year correcting all your math with your superior knowledge of physics!"

"It's twelve PhDs and you know it."

"Oh, so what! I can still count 'em on one hand." (Dipper gave Bill's hand a puzzled look.)

"Is that how it is!" Ford huffed angrily. "Fine, great teacher—would you be so kind as to educate your student on what the devil a 'gravitational eclipse' is!"

He fully expected Bill to start spouting some absurd science fiction explanation; but instead, Bill hesitated, gaze flicking nervously toward the ceiling. Ford looked up, but didn't see anything.

"Just don't worry about it." Bill rubbed his right eye. He turned away from Ford to watch Dipper struggle to squeeze pancake syrup out of an uncooperative bottle. "Everything will go back to normal in three days. Just—don't look at the sky."

"Why not?"

"Don't worry about it," Bill repeated.  "Hey, take off the lid and stick a knife in, you're never getting anything out that way."

"I've got it," Dipper said testily.

Soos came downstairs at about the same time Stan joined them from the hallway. "Dudes, I think something weird's going on," Soos said.

Ford turned his back on his fruitless conversation with Bill. "We've noticed. Gravity's decreasing."

Soos paused. "Oh," he said, slightly deflated. "I thought I was developing super strength."

"Sorry to disappoint."

"So what's causing it?" Stan asked.

"I don't know yet."

From the kitchen, Bill called, "I just told you!"

Ford didn't look at him. "I don't know the real reason yet."

Stan asked, "Think it might be a portal thing? When it was powering up, gravity got kinda screwy. It wasn't like this, though. Any time there was a surge, gravity hiccuped for a few seconds. It never just... went down a little."

"And not for this long, either," Soos said. "It's been like this all morning." He paused; then asked, hopefully, "You sure we aren't just all developing super strength at the same time?"

Ford shook his head apologetically.

"Aww."

"I suspected the portal first," Ford said. "But I just looked it over and checked the equipment. There's no way any of it could have powered on. It's been completely disassembled since last summer." 

Stan shrugged. "What else could it be?"

"The gravity anomalies occurred whenever the portal was connected to the Nightmare Realm. All I can think is that perhaps it's something else with a connection to the Nightmare Realm that might be having a destabilizing effect on the fabric of reality. Something much weaker, but steadily regaining power..." He turned to cast a venomous look at the kitchen. "Power like the ability to float..."

Bill had been preoccupied with dipping a strip of raw bacon into a stolen uncapped syrup bottle; but at the accusation, he stared at Ford in disbelief. "What—are you kidding me?"

"Have a better explanation for why, the moment all this starts, you can suddenly hover down the stairs?"

"Sure," Bill said. "I'm better at floating than the rest of you because I've been doing it longer."

"Oh, that's stupid!"

"You're stupid."

"You're up to something," Ford snarled. "I know it."

"What could I possibly be up to!" Bill spread his hands, exasperated. "Seriously! Tell me! What could I possibly be up to?"

Ford screwed his face into a scowl, trying to think of any way Bill could have orchestrated the gradual decline of gravity while imprisoned in the Mystery Shack. "You are up to something," he said firmly.

Bill groaned and rolled his eyes. "Well if you ever figure out what, let me know! I'm dying to find out what I'm plotting." He chugged from the syrup bottle like it was a flask. And then had to keep holding it up while he waited for the reduced gravity to work on the syrup.

"Hey, Dr. Pines?" Soos held up his phone. "Just got a text from Tate. He says Old Man McGucket wants to know if you can come discuss the gravity issue?"

"I was just thinking the same thing. Let Fiddleford know I'll be there as soon as I can. Does he want me to bring anything?"

"Nope. Just your handsome face." Soos chuckled. "He—he didn't say that part, though. I did. I just think guys should compliment each other more."

Ford nodded solemnly. "Thank you, Soos."

"Grunkle Ford, can I come too?" Dipper dumped his dirty dish in the sink. "I could—I dunno—help brainstorm solutions, or something...?"

"I'd be delighted." Ford had wanted to spend so much more time with Dipper this summer. By now, he'd thought they would have had at least one hike through the mountains around Gravity Falls and maybe dug into a couple of old mysteries he'd never solved. At least this was one mystery Ford could bring him along for.

Dipper's face lit up. "Hold on, let me go get my journal." He ran upstairs, bouncing up two steps at a time in the reduced gravity.

Ford murmured to Stan, "You can hold down the fort while I'm gone?"

Stan nodded slightly. "I'll keep a close eye on him."

"Good."

When Dipper had returned and they were headed out the door, Bill called from the kitchen, "Keep your head down out there. And get inside as soon as you can."

Ford shot a dark look at Bill, but said nothing. "Let's go." He shut the door behind them a bit harder than necessary.

Soos headed into the kitchen to make breakfast. As he passed, Bill said, "Hey. Does the 'guys complimenting guys' thing only apply to humans, or what?"

"Oh. Uh..." Soos pulled his head out of the fridge to look at Bill. "You... look good in yellow? Is—is that a good compliment? I don't know what triangle demons consider a compliment."

Bill considered it. "Sure, it'll do." He dipped another strip of bacon in the syrup. "I look even better in gold."

####

A quarter mile from the shack, Ford drove over a small bump in the road he'd gone over a hundred times before.

The car bounced so high that Ford's head hit the car roof.

Somewhere, he just knew, Bill was laughing at him.

####

Dipper's knee had been bouncing for three minutes straight by the time they approached the gate to the Northwest Manor. "Dipper, are you alright?"

"Sorry." Dipper planted his foot flat on the floor. "It's just—we're driving really slow, and this whole gravity thing is kind of an emergency..."

Just nervous. "I know," Ford sighed. "I can't go any faster without losing control. Lower gravity means lower traction between the tires and the road." But it was driving him mad.

At the manor, Tate greeted them at the door with a slight nod. "Hey. Dad's in the lab."

"Thank you, Tate. I know the way."

When they entered the lab, Fiddleford was working with a soldering iron on an electronic device the size of a toaster. He looked up as soon as they came in. "Stanford, Dipper! Good timing. Come in. How's the shack?"

"Down a few rubber balls."

Ford left Dipper to drift around the lab inspecting Fiddleford's equipment and listening in on the conversation as he and Fiddleford caught up. Fiddleford had first noticed something was wrong during his usual morning post-coffee rambunctious rollick, when he leaped high enough to bang his head on the ceiling. ("All the way to the ceiling? In this house?" "Well, I was standing on the counter, you see." "Ah, of course.") He'd immediately built a vacuum chamber he could drop various tools and cutlery in so he could measure the acceleration of gravity. Usually, objects on Earth fell 9.8 meters per second. When Fiddleford first measured, falling objects accelerated by 7.9 meters per second—almost 20% slower than they were supposed to. Now, it was 7.7 meters per second. If that rate of decline was steady, gravity must have been going down overnight without anyone noticing. By Fiddleford's calculations, gravity was decreasing by around 1.5% an hour—and, if it continued at this rate, it would be gone the day after tomorrow, by early afternoon.

(Bill had said three days. That wasn't even two and a half.)

Fiddleford had done some scans and called some old college pals down in Texas to ask if they'd noticed anything strange—and it seemed that Gravity Falls was the only place in the country experiencing anything unusual, at least according to NASA's data. Fiddleford had asked Tate to drive around town dropping things; quelle surprise, the gravitational oddity seemed perfectly contained to the circumference of the town's weirdness barrier.

"If you're in communication with NASA, I don't suppose you could ask if..." Ford winced at himself, "they've... noticed any astronomical anomalies?"

Fiddleford stroked his beard. "I reckon I could, but—why?"

Ford sighed. "Bill said this is being caused by what he calls a 'gravitational eclipse.' Which sounds like patent nonsense, but—on the one percent chance he's telling the truth..."

"I getcha. That Bill's as trustworthy as a rattlesnake with rabies—but until we know what's happening, we ought to consider every possibility."

"Yes. Precisely." Ford paused. "Can... rattlesnakes catch rabies?"

"Absolutely not! Which is why you should never trust one what says he's rabid."

"Ah. Yes. I see," Ford said uncertainly.

Like Ford, Fiddleford's first suspicion was that this had something to do with the portal—a suspicion that was scuttled when Ford informed him he'd already checked the portal. Ford's own next theory was that Bill personally was somehow behind this. His gravity already seemed to be far lighter than the rest of the town. But Ford didn't know whether that was because Bill was causing the gravity-reducing anomaly, or because the gravity-reducing anomaly was disproportionately affecting Bill. And even if Bill was causing it, as yet Ford had no idea by what mechanism he was doing it.

Fiddleford had the first idea that might explain how this was physically happening: dimensional rips.

At the end of last summer, the town and surrounding woods had been lousy with small dimensional rips torn in spacetime by Weirdmageddon and its aftermath. A few had been large enough for a grown man to stumble through, but many were barely as long as a fingernail. Ford and Stan had spent the last few days of summer running through the town and the woods with the kids, armed with alien adhesive, glueing shut the rips; and then—after traveling back and forth to California to attend Dipper's bar mitzvah and to get hollered at by Shermie for disappearing and/or faking a death—they'd spent most of the next month taking care of even more rips. (Just enough time for gnomes to steal Ford's new Journal 4.)

The remains of the rips could still be seen throughout Gravity Falls: odd invisible seams in the air that seemed to make the woods behind them bend strangely, like the transition between air and water where light refracted differently. Sometimes the sun would line up just right with a gap in the leaves so that you could see a sunbeam bending in midair.

Fiddleford had two theories:

Theory one: even after they'd sealed up all the rips, the distressed fabric of reality around Gravity Falls had grown threadbare. Rather than a few huge rips tearing through to the Nightmare Realm, countless micro-rips were forming—hundreds of thousands of holes between the fibers of reality, too tiny to be seen or detected—and they were reaching critical mass. The structural integrity of reality itself was about to catastrophically fail. The barrier between here and the Nightmare Realm could shred apart at any minute, ripping open a massive maw too wide to ever be repaired, irreversibly swallowing Gravity Falls into Bill's dying dimension of madness and leaving a frothing pustule of chaos trapped inside the weirdness barrier, ready to spread across all of Earth if anything should ever pop it!

Or two: something else was happening.

Ford thought it was worth investigating. The damage was already there; maybe Bill knew it, was exacerbating it—perhaps by his mere presence—and was just hoping the humans wouldn't figure it out before his homecoming.

"You remember the wormhole detector I built last September to sense when new dimensional rips were openin' up?" Fiddleford asked. "Well, it ain't detected a thing in town since March—but if these micro-rips are real, they'd be too little to detect from any farther than forty or fifty feet. So's I whipped up a portable scannermadoohickey!" He picked up the object he'd been working on when Ford and Dipper arrived. "You can take it to the places with the most damage and wave it around to see if it senses anything!"

Ford inspected the scanner. "It says it's detecting eighteen right now."

Fiddleford waved him off. "That's fine, a few itty bitty little tears oughta be expected for the kinda damage we got last year. But if my theory's correct, there's somewhere in Gravity Falls that'll have hundreds of thousands of tears within the scanner's radius. That's what we're looking for."

"Great. And, what do we do if we find them? Such small rips would be impossible to individually seal with my adhesive applicator."

"I thought of that, too!" Fiddleford scrambled over two tables, knocking tools on the ground as he went, to grab a plastic cone-shaped object the size of a football. He scuttled beneath the tables back to Ford. "Look! I made a glue grenade!"

"A—a what?"

"Once you figure out where the micro-rips are concentrated, just pour that alien adhesive of yours into this spout here, pull the pin, and chuck it! It'll instantly seal up all the micro-rips in the area and then cover the whole town in a cloud of alien adhesive, closing any remaining rips!"

"Hmm... It sounds risky. It would use up the rest of our andhesive all at once," Ford said. "And the environmental impact could be devastating."

Fiddleford blinked. "Environmental impact?"

"Just think of an adhesive this powerful settling over the whole town and forest in a thin film. It would glue people's pores shut! They wouldn't be able to sweat! Imagine. And that's just one example of the potential consequences."

"Hm." Fiddleford scratched his head. "I could invent a body lotion with alien adhesive solvent?"

"Or, maybe we should only use the grenade once we're sure that such an extreme measure is necessary."

"Aww." Fiddleford kicked his foot in disappointment. "Hold on—let me at least whip up a spray attachment for your adhesive gun. So's you can patch up any clusters you find as you go." He darted between several tables, searching through drawers and tool chests for supplies, and then returned to his soldering station.

"Wait, hold on," Ford said. "In the space of a morning, you've built a vacuum chamber to calculate the gravitational acceleration in Gravity Falls, called NASA to get ahold of somebody to collect data across the rest of the United States, built a handheld version of your wormhole detector, and built a grenade to distribute alien adhesive?"

"I sure did!"

"And, how long have you been awake?"

"An hour and a half!"

Ford stared. "Where do you get your coffee?"

Fiddleford glanced across the room at Dipper, and whispered, "I'll tell ya later."

Dipper had drifted over to the miniature particle accelerator and was slowly circling it, inspecting all the pipes, trying to figure out how it worked. He was leaning over the trash can when Ford drifted over to join him. "Hey, Grunkle Ford? I... think there's a cat in here?"

"You don't know that!" Fiddleford shouted. "It could be dead!"

"No it's not, I can hear it meowing."

"That might be something else! You can't tell!"

"I could just open it—"

Fiddleford chucked an empty plastic spool of solder wire toward Dipper. "Don't you touch that!"

Dipper withdrew his hand from the trash can lid and looked at Ford, baffled.

"I'll explain how it works," Ford said.

While Fiddleford worked, Ford caught Dipper up on the details of the fuel they needed for the Quantum Destabilizer, the contraption Fiddleford had built to synthesize it, and the complicated way they'd tried to paradoxically (not) observe the experiment in progress. When Fiddleford came over to offer the completed spray nozzle, Ford asked, "Any progress on figuring out how to get this thing working?"

"No," Fiddleford sighed. "I've been lookin' into more stable paradoxes to replace the cat. But as far as the observer—I'd hoped usin' twins might just get close enough, but I've redid my cac'lations three times and I'm afraid the only way to get this thing working is by gettin' one person to both observe and not observe it at the same time. If we can just do that, we'd have all the fuel we need. But for the life of me I can't figure out how."

"Maybe if we had two versions of the same person from different dimensions..." Ford mused. "But that would require opening up a portal to reach another dimension, and there's the risk that uniting parallel versions of the same person might destabilize our entire dimension. It's not worth the risk."

"It sounds like one of those impossible riddles," Dipper said. "Like, 'If only a barber shaves people who don't shave themselves, and if anyone who shaves himself isn't a barber, then who shaves the barber?' Because if he shaved himself he wouldn't be a barber but since he shaves other people he has to be a barber..."

Ford said, "A second barber shaves him."

Fiddleford said, "He just don't shave at all."

Dipper paused. "I think I told it wrong."

Ford patted his shoulder. "But I think you're on to something. We need to think of this as a riddle; and every riddle has a solution. We just need to find it."

"After we save the town, right?" Dipper asked.

Ford smiled wanly. "One crisis at a time."

####

They agreed that investigating all the potential micro-rip hotspots around town would probably necessitate a camping trip—which was the only bit of good news to come out of this mess so far. Due to all of this summer's Bill bullsoup (as Stan had taken to calling it in front of the kids), Ford and Dipper had hardly gotten to see each other so far, much less do any serious paranormal investigating together. Hiking and camping while in search of the strange sounded like exactly what they'd been missing out on—and it would've sounded even better if the situation weren't so dire.

Ford and Dipper came back in the Mystery Shack as Shandra Jimenez said on TV, "Today's top story in Gravity Falls is that gravity isn't falling. Many residents recall similar incidents around this time last summer, when gravity intermittently shut off entirely, leading many to ask: could this possibly be another devastating effect of global warming? Temperatures today are—"

Ford scoffed. "Global warming. Of all things. Gravity is probably the only part of the environment it isn't affecting."

"I dunno, Ford, maybe you oughta consider it." Bill was sitting cross-legged on the couch, chin in his hand. He had his eye patch over the eye he'd been squinting that morning. "As long as you're already rejecting the real explanation to make up one you like better, why not go whole hog? Let's adopt a real crackpot theory."

"You want to talk about 'crackpot theories'? Global warming sounds at least as likely as an eclipse."

"That says a lot more about your education than it does about the theories."

Ford grit his teeth. "You know I'm one of the most educated men on Earth."

"And that says a lot about your planet's educational system."

Stan, sitting in his armchair reading the paper, folded it down to glower at Bill. "Stop antagonizing my brother."

"Tell him to stop making it so easy."

Ford grit his teeth harder, but ignored Bill. "Dipper, go pack your backpack. I'll check the basement and meet you when I'm done."

"Right!" Dipper hurried up the stairs.

Ford crossed the living room, checking the micro-rip scanner—88 detected rips, over five times higher than at Northwest Manor, but still nowhere near the 100,000 rip danger threshold. He'd see whether that remained true next to the portal. He paused next to Stan's armchair, "Stanley, do you remember where we stored the alien adhesive applicator?"

"Uhh... when's the last time we used it?"

"Last fall, right before we headed to Seattle."

Stan lowered his paper, staring at the ceiling. "I think we stored it in one of the lockers in the basement, right?"

"It's not there," Bill said.

Ford gave him an exasperated look. "And how would you know."

"Because the first day I came here, I emptied out all those lockers and hid their contents while I was waiting for the rest of you to get downstairs."

Ford smacked the back of the armchair, making Stan start. "So that's what happened to my infinity-sided die! Where the devil did you hide it?"

"Frankly, I don't think you're responsible enough to handle that kind of power," Bill said archly.

"Where's the adhesive applicator!"

"What do you need it for?"

"That's none of your business."

"Pity." Bill turned up the volume on the news.

Ford moved between Bill and the screen. "If you don't tell me where you hid it..." What threat could he make? This was the demon willing to threaten suicide if his captors didn't keep him entertained.

"Tell me why you need it."

"As if you'd give it to me if I did!"

"Maybe I'll find your cause noble," Bill said flatly. "Try me."

Oh, what did he have to lose. "Fine. I'm testing to see if imperceptibly small rips are opening between Gravity Falls and the Nightmare Realm. If they are, I'm going to seal them shut." He hoped the revelation would throw Bill off—he hoped he was close enough to the truth to shock Bill into giving something away.

Bill's eye widened, eyebrows shooting up; and then he burst out laughing. "That's what Specs filled your head with? Embryonic wormholes? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard! And you're turning to him for an explanation when you've got a being with infinite answers sitting in your living room?"

Ford scoffed. "Sure, infinite answers—and just like the infinity-sided die, whatever I get is infinitely more likely to be trouble than anything useful. Now tell me where you put my adhesive applicator."

"I didn't put it anywhere." Bill held the remote out to the side to change the channel and stared at the TV straight through Ford, as if he didn't exist. "It's still in the basement. A little adhesive leaked out, I couldn't get the locker door open."

"Ha!" Stan slapped an armrest.

Ford whirled around to glare at him.

Stan held up his hands appeasingly. "Sorry! Sorry. That's not funny. Wasn't—wasn't funny at all. How dare you, Bill."

"I know, I'm just the worst."

Ford held in a harsh sigh and stalked out of the room. He didn't have time for this—not when they were on a deadline to prevent whatever was happening. (What if it became too late to reverse before gravity even reached 0%? What if they were approaching a tipping point when the whole sky would rip open?)

He opened the vending machine and headed downstairs.

####

He had to break the locker door to get the alien adhesive applicator out. He'd have to figure out how the nozzle had leaked before he stored it again.

According to the sensor, there were over a thousand micro-rips detectable just from standing near the portal controls. The number increased as he approached the portal itself; the highest quantity the scanner detected was nearly 5,000. Over fifty times higher than on the shack's ground level. It was clear some sort of damage had been done here.

But Fiddleford had said, for them to be concerned about reality shredding, there should be hundreds of thousands of micro-rips in one location. And Ford trusted any numbers Fiddleford gave him; wherever Ford tended to double-check his math, Fiddleford quintuple-checked his.

Even at the interdimensional portal itself—the spot where the veil between Gravity Falls and the Nightmare Realm had been ripped open and stitched shut so many times, the spot where the rift that nearly ended the world had been formed—there were less than 5% of the rips they needed before they started reaching dangerous levels.

Ford looked up at the portal, frowning.

The portal's torn and crumpled pieces lay against the cavern walls where he'd left them last summer.

Never mind. There were several other places that could be hotspots for micro-rips. He couldn't draw any conclusions about what was happening here until he'd checked them too.

But whatever was happening, it certainly wasn't an eclipse.

He added Fiddleford's spray attachment to the adhesive applicator and filled the chamber with a mist of glue, until the scanner read less than 200 micro-rips; then stopped by his study to grab a couple maps of the mountains around Gravity Falls, his antique lantern, and a tent; and headed back up to the house.

####

During their past year of travels, Stan and Ford had started keeping two emergency backpacks stocked in case they needed to flee on short notice. The backpacks contained everything they'd need to survive in the wilderness or a strange city for three days; and Ford had thirty long years of experience to teach him exactly what supplies that necessitated. He grabbed his backpack out of the guest room, and then spread out his map on the kitchen table to show to Dipper.

"If our micro-rip theory is correct, there are four potential places where I suspect they'll be most densely concentrated: the place where the interdimensional rift formed; where it was unleashed; where it was suspended for the majority of Weirdmageddon; and where it was sealed."

"And you've already checked the portal where it formed," Dipper said. "What about the place it was suspended? It was floating in the sky over town. There's no way we can get up there until gravity's completely gone, and by then it'll be too late."

"I've considered that. The closest we can get is Gravity Peak, but from there we should be able to get the sensor close enough to tell if there's an unusual amount of rips." Ford circled three spots on the map, and drew a dotted line connecting them. "We're heading out late, but we should be able to hit the locations where Weirdmageddon began and ended today. We can cross the lake to camp in the cavern behind Trembley Falls, get an early start, and take the hidden cave tunnel up to Gravity Peak."

"Not the best time for a hiking trip," Bill said.

Ford shot him an exasperated look. Bill was leaning in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, smirking condescendingly. "Or maybe it is, if you're trying to avoid as much effort as possible," he says. "But I still wouldn't go if I were you. You don't want to be outdoors during an eclipse—and you don't want to be on a mountain when gravity comes back."

"Nobody asked you," Ford said, turning his back on Bill. "Now—cooking will be difficult as gravity decreases, but not to worry—" he unzipped his backpack, "—I've already prepared everything we'll need." Grinning, he pulled out what looked like a toothpaste tube with a "beef and vegetables" label. "Astronaut food!"

Dipper grimaced. "Great."

"You should have asked me," Bill said, a bit louder. "Considering that Specs is sending you on a wild goose chase. But hey, if you're that determined to waste your time, just don't say I didn't tell you so."

"You haven't even told us what an 'eclipse' is," Dipper said. "If it's not important enough to explain, I don't see why it's important enough for us to listen to you."

"Well said," Ford muttered.

"It's too important to explain," Bill retorted. "I've told you everything you need to know!"

Ford said, "Ha," and started folding his map to pack.

There were a few seconds of blessed silence; and then Bill walked into the room, leaned on the fridge, and glowered at Ford. "Listen. As far as you're concerned, the eclipse is probably harmless. It should peak in three days—"

"Fiddleford said at its current rate of decrease, it should be the day after tomorrow."

Ford expected Bill to argue; but instead, he frowned uneasily. "I—Sure, fine, whatever, he's probably done the math, I've just been eyeballing it. Did he say what time?"

Surprised, Ford said, "early afternoon, by his measurements."

Bill nodded vaguely, glancing again toward the ceiling. "Whatever time it happens—gravity will gradually decrease until totality, and then it'll come back very quickly, so—if you want to help your town so much, tell them that they don't want to be climbing trees in zero G. Otherwise, the best thing you can do is stay inside, wait for it to pass, keep your eyes shutduring totality—and do not look up."

"Why can't we look up?" Dipper asked.

Bill laughed derisively. "Would you stare at the sun during a solar eclipse? It's like I'm talking to babies!"

The last fraying thread of Ford's patience snapped. He seized Bill's hoodie by the strings and dragged him closer. "Enough!"

Bill flailed, kicking the table as he tried to back out of Ford's grip, and ended up losing his footing and landing on the floor. It was too easy to drag him around—he was so light. Ford leaned down to glare straight in his eye. "If you're so worried about how we're handling this eclipse of yours, maybe you should come with us!"

Horror bloomed in Bill's eye. "What? No no no, that's—that's fine, I told you everything you need, I'd just slow you down, I'd really be much happier in here—"

"I bet you would be," Ford snarled. "As far as I'm concerned, the fact that you want to stay inside so much is reason enough to bring you along! Either something out there scares you, or there's something in here you want to be close to during totality! Maybe something will happen at the portal! Whatever it is you want, I don't want you to get it."

"Grunkle Ford?" Dipper had gotten out of his seat and was looking uncertainly between Bill and Ford. "I'm not sure about..."

Bill's gaze snapped from Ford's face to Dipper's, and Ford could almost see the gears shifting in his head as he latched on to a more vulnerable target. "Kid. Remember when I told you there are things out there you don't want to meet? Stay inside—let me stay inside—find a good book to distract you the next couple of days, and don't worry about things you don't want to know too much about. As far as you should be concerned, this is a weather phenomenon. You don't want to dig any deeper than that. Stay. Home."

The corners of Dipper's mouth turned down. He grabbed Ford's coat sleeve and said, voice low, "Great Uncle Ford, I... I'm not sure he's lying. I've never seen Bill scared like this before. And when he told me about things in other dimensions, this gravity thing hadn't even started, so he couldn't have..."

"Unless Bill was expecting this to happen, and everything he told you yesterday was the groundwork to make us believe whatever he wants us to believe." Bill had wormed deeper into Dipper's head than Ford had realized, if it was enough to make him consider Bill's nonsensical claims. Ford should have asked more about what Bill told him yesterday. The monster could have been filling his gnephew's head with all sorts of nightmares. "Doesn't it seem a little lucky that he told you all that one day before this?"

Dipper grimaced. "I mean..."

Ford glared at Bill again. "I'm not buying it. And the more you make up ridiculous explanations like 'gravitational eclipses' and 'things from other dimensions,' the more you insist that this is somehow both no big deal and incredibly dangerous just to witness, the less I believe this is anything but a patently ridiculous attempt to keep us from interfering with whatever is about to happen! And frankly, that makes me want to interfere even more!"

Bill let out a strangled laugh. "You've gotta be... If you think I'm that suspicious, how do you know this isn't reverse psychology?! Maybe I want you to take me outside!"

"Maybe you do. That's the awful thing about you, Bill: I can second-, third-, and fourth-guess everything you say, and I'll never be sure I've figured out the truth! At some point I just have to make an educated guess."

There was a knock at the doorway. "Hey, Dr. Pines?" Soos leaned into the kitchen. "I heard furniture and anger. Is everything... uh..." He trailed off, taking in the scene—Bill on the floor backed up against the fridge, Ford crouched over him, Dipper watching anxiously. "Everything cool here?"

Ford got to his feet. "Dipper and I are going on an expedition—and unfortunately, he has to come along. Soos, do you have a spare backpack we can use for his supplies?"

"Uh, I think so—"

"Great," Dipper snapped. "This is just perfect. I've been waiting a month and a half for us to do something cool together, and when we're finally about to go on an expedition, it's ruined by him?" He gestured angrily at Bill. "He's already ruined the rest of summer!"

Bill said, "Hey, I didn't consent to this plan either."

"You shut up," Dipper snapped. "This is all your fault! You could have just left us alone, but...!" He let out a frustrated noise. He pushed past Soos out of the room and ran up the stairs.

Ah. Ford's shoulders slumped. Sometimes he wasn't quite sure where he'd misstepped in a conversation, but this time it was pretty obvious. Between this and the nearly-disastrous trip to Portland, Ford was well in the lead for Worst Grunkle of the Summer.

"Wow. You broke that kid's heart," Bill said. "Not too late to make it up to him by going back to the original plan."

Ford shot him a dirty look.

Bill shrugged. "I'm trying anything I can think of at this point!"

Ford sighed harshly, and left to follow Dipper upstairs.

Bill sat up and waited until Ford's footsteps had receded. Voice low, he said, "Questiony, listen, I need your help. Stanford's gone completely insane. You didn't see how he was ranting and raving before you got in here. Who knows what he'll do to me if he gets me alone outside the shack with only his junior sycophant as a witness—?"

Soos looked deeply uncomfortable, but he shook his head. "Not buying it, dawg."

Bill groaned.

####

Ford knocked, and gently pushed the kids' damaged door open a crack. "Dipper?"

Dipper grunted. He was sitting on his bed, chin in his hands, glaring down at his journal in his lap.

"Can I come in?"

Dipper grunted again. Ford wasn't being ignored, so he took that as permission to enter. He delicately sat next to Dipper and tried to figure out what to say next. (He was surprised at how firm the mattress was—and then realized the real reason he wasn't sinking as far into it as he expected.) "Dipper..."

"You don't need to say anything," he sighed. "You're right—Bill probably is up to something. If he wants to be in the shack so much, and won't give us a straight answer why, then... it's probably safer to keep him out of it." But he sounded so terribly resigned.

"All the same, I understand your disappointment," Ford said. "I'd far rather go hiking with you than with him."

Dipper nodded. "Yeah. It's just..." He trailed off.

"I know. I wanted this summer to be different, too." Ford sighed. "As soon as he's gone, I owe you another hiking trip."

Dipper nodded again. He mumbled, "I've never gone hiking before."

This was some way to experience it for the first time. "We could treat this like a practice round? A warm-up with lower gravity to make it easier. Next time will be a real trip—without any crises to worry about, and without Bill."

"I don't mind the crises," Dipper said. "I'm kind of used to them, actually. They're almost fun now."

In his mind, Ford knew that this was probably another thing that should earn him a Worst Grunkle award. But in his heart, he was proud of Dipper. That was an adventurer's attitude.

"It's just... I haven't been able to get away from him all summer," Dipper said. "And even when I'm avoiding him, Mabel's spending all her free time either with her friends or trying to reform him, and you're spending all your time trying to figure out how to kill him, so I barely see you two..."

And that wasn't even something Ford could blame on Bill, was it? He hadn't been spending his time trying to figure out how to kill Bill since he'd handed over the Quantum Destabilizer design to Fiddleford. He'd simply been... obsessing. Hiding and obsessing. Ford stared down at his hands guiltily. "Tell you what. As soon as this is over, we can go do—something. I don't know what yet, but we've got a couple of days to think it up. I've spent too much time underground the last few weeks, anyway. We may not be able to go on that big adventure until Bill's gone—but it's something, for now."

"Yeah, I'd like that. Thanks, Grunkle Ford." 

Ford nudged him. "And as long as you do have to put up with Bill for this trip... look on the bright side. Haven't you been wanting to get a crack at him without your sister around? See if you can pry out any more alien wisdom before his execution?"

Dipper huffed—but one corner of his mouth reluctantly quirked up. "Thanks, but I'm starting to think that's a bad idea. Every time I try, he just says stuff that gives me nightmares."

"Well—consider it an intellectually broadening experience."

Dipper gave him a weak smile.

"Anyway, with a little luck, it won't be long before you'll never need to deal with him again."

####

Soos had an old Monster-Mon backpack with cracked vinyl around the straps that he hadn't used since he outgrew it in fifth grade. "Lucky I didn't throw it out when we moved. You never know when you're gonna need old stuff!"

Bill had no idea what he was supposed to take on a forced camping trip. He knew what humans took, but humans craved all kinds of material comforts that meant nothing to him. After a couple minutes staring at the bag forlornly, he stuck in a spare shirt and leggings—he doubted he'd need extra underwear or socks, right?—and the Pony Heist bedsheet he'd been using as his sole blanket the last month, his toothbrush and toothpaste, a cider six-pack, two boxes of cereal, a kazoo, and the TV remote.

"I need some first-aid supplies. In case of emergency," Bill told Soos.

"Sure, whaddaya need?"

"Bandages, painkillers, matches, and a knife."

"You got—" Soos paused, then pursed his lips at Bill disapprovingly.

Bill sighed. "Bandages and painkillers. And cold medicine. Woods get chilly."

He glanced up as he heard footsteps upstairs. Not much longer until he was dragged outside. He grimaced. "One more thing, Jesús. This is important."

"Whoa. Full-first-name important?" He stuck a bottle of cold syrup in the backpack, hit something hard, and peered in confusion at the six-pack.

"Stanford's being petty and refusing to believe anything I say, but I know you're not that stupid," Bill lied. "So listen: this thing will peak in a couple of days and then go back to normal. It's mostly harmless to humans—but once the peak has passed, gravity's coming back like that." Bill snapped his fingers. "So anyone you want to come out of this intact needs to do two things. One, the moment gravity completely disappears, they need to anchor themselves, as close to the ground as possible, before it comes back. And two, do not look at the sky. Got it?"

Soos hesitated; but then nodded. "Y-yeah, got it."

"Understand?"

"Understood."

"Good."

"So are you like... trying to protect the town now?"

Bill laughed bitterly. "I'm trying to cover my base. When this is all over, even if all my warnings were ignored, at least nobody will be able to say I didn't try. I could have sat on everything I know! But I didn't! And I'm going to rub. It. In. Ford's. Face." He punctuated each word with a jab to Soos's chest.

Soos endured the jabbing with a patience Bill didn't deserve. "Byyy protecting the town?"

Bill opened his mouth, reconsidered, and said, "Sure! Of course I'm protecting the town! Why would I want any harm to befall the citizens of my once and future capital?"

"I mean, no offense, but you befelled a lot of harm on us last year—"

"I did not," Bill snapped. "Everyone was perfectly comfortable in my throne of frozen human agony." He yanked the backpack's zipper shut, pulled it on, and pushed Soos aside to leave the kitchen.

Stan had stopped Ford at the foot of the stairs. "But if this is some nightmare dimension thing, isn't that just another reason not to take Bill outside? What if one of those wormholes opens up and he dives through? Maybe escaping back to his dimension will give him his power back, we don't know."

"I've considered that—but if that is what he's planning, all the more reason why he should stay with Dipper and me, so we can stop him if he tries anything."

"Are you nuts? It'll be two of you in the woods versus four of us here in the shack! We outnumber him more than you do! Plus walls and doors!"

"We have the hexed bracelets, he won't be able to escape us," Ford said.

"Aww, I get to share matching friendship bracelets with someone?" Bill gave Dipper and Ford what he hoped was his most obnoxious smile. "Who's the lucky guy?"

Scowling, Dipper raised his hand.

Bill's smile dimmed. "You are the lesser evil," he admitted grudgingly. "But I'm surprised ol' Six-Fingers doesn't want to keep as tight a grip on me as possible."

"We decided that if you try to kill your bracelet partner and escape, Grunkle Ford would have a better chance of avenging me than I would have avenging him."

Bill's brows shot up. "Ruthlessly utilitarian. Was that Stanford's idea?"

Ford ignored the question, pushing on with his conversation with Stan: "And anyway, there might be more people in the shack, but none of them would be me. I know him better than anyone else."

Bill laughed hard enough that his feet momentarily lifted off the floor. "Oh do you!"

Ford's gaze shot to Bill's face, eyes blazing with fury. "You know I do. I've spent thirty years learning every trick, every lie, every betrayal that's made you who you—"

"What's my favorite food."

Ford's mouth worked uselessly. "That—doesn't matter—"

"You think you know my innermost soul when you don't even know my favorite food?"

"Favorite... human food, or...?"

"Oh, sure, I'll give you a fighting chance. Human."

Ford chewed on the inside of his mouth for several seconds. Finally, he said, "Jalapeños."

Bill crossed the entryway, leaned into the hallway, and took a deep breath. "HEY, MABEL!"

From the far end of the house (where Mabel was seeing how high she could jump in the floor room), she shouted, "YEAH?"

"WHAT'S MY FAVORITE FOOD?"

"NACHOS WITH CHOCOLATE SAUCE AND SUMMER-SHAPED SPRINKLES!"

Bill gestured down the hall, ta-da. "THANK YOU!"

"I was close," Ford grumbled. "Nachos have jalapeños."

Stan said, "You're not even out of the house and he's getting under your skin. Are you sure you wanna—?"

"I am not," Ford said, "leaving him in the house. And if you'd heard how he was fighting to stay under this roof, you wouldn't trust him in here either."

Stan looked at Bill.

Bill looked Stan dead in the eyes and said, "I don't know what he's talking about. I agreed to go as soon as he asked."

"Oh, shut your—" Ford snatched the bracelets off the coat rack, flung one end at Bill, and handed Dipper the other. "Put these on. We're leaving."

Bill scowled, but considered his odds of successfully resisting, reluctantly put his end of the bracelet on, and yelled down the hall, "BYE, MABEL! I'M BEING KIDNAPPED BY YOUR UNCLE AGAINST MY WILL! I MAY NEVER RETURN!"

"I'LL MISS YOU FOREVER!"

Ford opened the door and gestured impatiently. Bill took a couple reluctant steps closer, but stopped to look at Soos and say, "Remember what I said. Do not let Mabel be in the air when gravity comes back, you know if someone doesn't watch her she'll launch herself as high as she can—"

Ford snapped, "Either you walk or I drag you, Cipher."

"I'm coming." He stepped outside, paused, and cast a worried look at the sky; then squeezed his eyes shut, lowered his head, and walked into the sunlight.

####

(That's this week's chapter! I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts. Next week: I'm gonna do my level best to shatter your hearts. Look forward to it!)

[giddlygoat]

laughter and shared smiles came so easily between them. from where ford lay on his side on the bed, he had the perfect view: a giggling fiddleford sprawled out lazily beside him, absentmindedly twirling a lock of beard with one pinky finger. it was downright adorable - almost like a snapshot from a bygone era - and ford treasured the sight. 

a kind of soberness suddenly washed over fiddleford, and his eyes became wide. “i jus’ remembered,” he said, barely, looking down. ford somewhat fixed his lax position on the bed in the hopes of expressing his undivided attention. 

fiddleford smiled sadly. “you’d pet my back when i laid facin’ you. it relaxed you.” 

ford felt his face get warm, as if he were the same awkward college kid and not 58 years too old for that. “…yes. it did.” he said dumbly. 

“what did i do when i needed to relax?” fiddleford asked, and his cadence was just too casual for a question like that. like it wasn’t all that important. ford felt something sour curl deep within him. 

“you’d… well, i… i’m not sure. you were always anxious about something.” ford wished more than anything that he had any skill at all in saying the right things at the right times. regretfully, all he could be in this moment was honest. “you fidgeted with your hair often. and mine,” he tacked on, suddenly remembering that detail of their nightly rituals. 

“i think it soothes you when you’re stressed. i see you stroke your beard a lot these days.” ford couldn’t help but smile at the endearing little habit. 

“can’t deny it,” fiddleford said, adjusting his head to get more comfortable in the pillows. then he reached out a slender arm, scratching softly in one of ford’s sideburns. the gesture brought that sour curling in ford’s gut back, but it also brought an overwhelming endearment. he stared at the content expression on fiddleford’s smiling face and greedily committed it to memory. 

“why’re you so down in th’ dumps today?” fiddleford asked, his smile not fading but a genuine concern evident in his eyes. 

“you mean more so than usual?” ford joked, meaning it earnestly.

fiddleford pulled himself up on his elbows, incidentally bringing their faces closer together. “i can… i can smell it all over y’ like the stench of death clingin’ to roadkill. nothin’ escapes me.” 

ford frowned. 

“well, ‘cept fer most o’ my memories, i suppose!” fiddleford giggled. ford frowned harder. 

after a beat of silence, fiddleford realized that ford really didn’t intend to respond. he sighed sadly, slowly leaning back against the headboard. “i know bein’ around me is hard fer you, stanferd. i may be ruined but i ain’t so clueless-” 

“no. no, you misunderstand.” ford corrected him immediately, looking quite fierce. “i feel empty without you,” he said clumsily, unable to properly parse his thoughts in time. 

“but ya also feel empty with me, dontcha?” fiddleford looked genuinely pleading for the first time in a while, and ford’s insides curdled at the vivid pain on his face. “i’m not- things’ll never be the way they oughta, and the both of us is just two sorry suckers, right?” 

“i’m sorry-“ 

“don’t.” fiddleford interrupted sternly, and ford worried that he would start shaking from the effort of holding his outstretched finger still. “don’t go apologizin’ again, or i’m gon’ta… i’ll jus’ tear my beard out.” all the conviction left him, and he stared defeatedly somewhere below ford’s eyes. 

“i’m-“ ford swallowed. “i won’t.” 

a long pause. ford internally scrambled for the right thing to say, eager to put fiddleford’s every worry to rest, but he just wasn’t equipped for that. he had no clue where to even start. what in the world was he supposed to be if not sorry? 

“do ya think y’ could be happy with me, th’ way things are?” fiddleford asked it quietly, his normally shrill voice sounding more weary than anything. 

ford’s chest tightened. if there were one thing in this world he could be absolutely sure of, it’s that he could never leave fiddleford’s side again. “yes. i’ve never been more certain of anything.” he said, emphasizing each word in the hopes of conveying his complete and utter seriousness. 

fiddleford sighed, still searching ford’s face. then he offered the smallest smile, the uncertainty slowly trickling away from his heart. “don’t run off.” he said, turning on his side to face ford. 

“i won’t,” ford promised. he reached over and laid a hand on fiddleford’s spiny back, stroking it soothingly. “i won’t.” 

[tinfoil-jones]

Question:why is Jerk Ford like this? From what I understand nobody seemed to have bullied him at all so did he just come out of the womb and thought "I'm gonna be a menace to everyone and everything"? That would be so funny-

There's a lot of reasons why the other Fords hate Jerk Ford.

Like, a lot of reasons. You don't get called "Jerk Ford" for no reason.

But one of those reasons is that any given version Stanford Pines is going to be defined by his scientific curiosity, and interest in finding the answers to mysteries.

The frustrating thing about Jerk Ford? They cannot, for the life of them, figure out why he's such a jerk. There's no real answer and they hate that.

Nothing particularly bad ever happened to him compared to other versions of himself. Bill didn't traumatize him, he got over any feelings of betrayal from his brother, he was mean to people before they could try to bully him as a kid, and Fiddleford never started a cult.

He's not even evil. He doesn't want to kill people, take over the world, or even be renowned in the scientific community. He just wants to be a petty b***h to everyone.

And he doesn't lack empathy. No, he has empathy, but what makes him a jerk is that he chooses not to use it.

Guilt, doubt, shame, and fear are just words to him.

Canon Ford? Canon Ford hears about him for the first time and asks himself "Surely he can't be that bad? He's just another me at the end of the day." And then it turned out, he really was that bad. So I don't think they would have interacted much. I do imagine this exchange happened, however:

Canon Ford: Why are you SUCH A JERK? Jerk Ford: This can't be the first time you've looked into a mirror.

A physical fight is possible; the MAB-3L dimension from Lost Legends showed several alternate versions of Mabel interact without destroying the dimension, so we're gonna act like 'you'll collapse the entire dimension if you interact with an alternate you' isn't a thing. However, Jerk Ford is a hater, not a fighter. His mouth is always writing checks the rest of him can't cash. Canon Ford could absolutely beat his a** if he wasn't so good at getting under your skin and escaping when you're too upset to pin him down.

And Jerk Ford has always been like this. He was like this growing up. He was like this straight out of the womb. Even as a baby he was a jerk, he'd be that baby who would cry on an airplane flight just to stop as soon as the flight ended.

Stan has never known his twin brother to be any different, he knows he's a jerk to everyone except him, so he tries to minimize the damage. He insists that even though Jerk Ford is an a**hole, he does care he just struggles to show it. But no one so far has believed him, not even their family.

Hell, the reason Filbrick didn't kick Stanley out this time around is because Jerk Ford told him "You know, without Stanley around, I don't have any reason to hold back."

"Hold back? You're the biggest menace in all of Glass Shard Beach, and you expect me to believe you've been holding back?"

"Are you going to take that risk, Pa?"

(He didn't take the risk, they'd been banned from so many places already because of Jerk Ford)

[cardentist]

I'm like, 70% sure this is only an issue with the gravity falls fandom on twitter, but if I don't say something I think I'm gonna explode

there Doesn't Need to be a bad guy between fiddleford, emma-may, and ford ! we can recognize one character causing harm to another, both directly and indirectly, Without framing it like it's intentional or that it makes any of them inherently bad.

in particular, I think there's been pushback against people vilifying ford (both in general and as angst material for other characters) by just. shifting that blame over to another character instead and running with it.

so to get this out of my system:

Yes I agree that fiddleford and ford have a lot of queercoding between each other. I think it's always been there to an extent, but it's absolutely been reinforced with the book of bill and "thisisnotawebsite."

and even if you choose to read their relationship as platonic (which is fine ! a lot of people like to read ford as aroace, for instance), it's very clear that fiddleford's relationship with ford heavily put a strain on his relationship with his family and ultimately lead to his and emma-may's divorce.

and there's nothing wrong with exploring that! exploring how it hurt emma-may and tate, exploring how it's another facet of fiddleford ruining his own life without even thinking about it, exploring the complicated feelings that were happening in that cabin. and I don't even think there's anything wrong with joking about fiddleford being a cheater or ford and emma-may being rivals.

but it Really grinds my gears when people frame fiddleford as being inherently in the wrong for taking the job with ford, as if he was intentionally hurting his family or that he Genuinely went there to cheat.

1: one of the first things we're told about fiddleford in journal 3 is that he was raised dirt poor and wanted to climb the latter in the scientific community to give his family a better life than HE had.

and that's Exactly why he took the job in gravity falls ! it was someone he trusted as his good friend AND someone he trusted academically. the whole idea is that this was supposed to be a temporary job that would Both help a dear friend of his And open up opportunities for his future.

and like, this aspect of his character isn't insignificant. he is Very Much So an archetype of a poor person, and has been since his inception. it's part of what Makes him a match for ford, he's an intellectual match yes but he's also an Outcast that wants more out of life than what he has. this aspect isn't Malicious by any means, but it equally lead them to hurt people they cared about.

Yes he left emma-may and his young son, but it was Never supposed to be forever. he left FOR them, which is half of what makes what happened so tragic in the first place. in many ways, he hurt them Because he cared about them.

and Yes, I do love a queer reading of these characters (and I'll get to that), but it's Very clear in the source material that fiddleford Does care about his family. a big part of his falling out with ford in the first place was because Fiddleford thought they both needed to leave gravity falls to raise their own families, and it's something that fiddleford brings up earlier on in their stay together as well.

that doesn't excuse how he'd mistreat emma-may at all. she was absolutely in her right to divorce him (which I thought even before the book of bill dropped). but I feel like we're letting the subtext overtake the TEXT while examining these characters and their dynamic.

2: lets assume that fiddleford IS a closeted gay man (or bisexual, or that he and emma may are in a lavender relationship, or-), as I so often like to do.

while exploring the pain that could cause emma-may and tate is Very Interesting and fun, I think we're ignoring the systemic homophobia in the room.

fiddleford was born in the 1960s to a religious poor rural southern family, and emma-may and fiddleford's relationship happened in the 1980s.

I Do think fiddleford is definitely progressive for his time (and just overall a very chill dude), but his upbringing Also very clearly had an affect on him. if it's possible for a man who believes the world is a simulation to also believe in jesus then fiddleford's the one to have done it.

and this is implied directly in the text mind, whether fiddleford is still actively religious or not he gets on ford for doing things like taking the lord's name in vein. not something that someone who Wasn't affected by a religious upbringing would do.

there's also the textual (rather extreme) anxiety, and the Implied ocd (the hair pulling, the cubix cube, the moral fixation, etc).

with all that said !

YES it would be extremely painful for emma-may to be in love with a gay man who had a crush on someone else, whether fiddleford was aware of or even acted on those feelings or not.

but I do hope we can all understand why it's Not Great to frame fiddleford as being inherently in the wrong for this right? for either not realizing his feelings at all or deliberately repressing them in the wake of Probable religious trauma and Definite safety issues in the society he lived in? Yeah?

no we should not treat emma-may like she's "getting in the way" of our beautiful yaoi, but ignoring systemic homophobia to vilify a queer man being afraid of appearing as anything but straight in the 1980s is. um. Bad.

the thing that's Most interesting about this whole situation is that it's a tragedy through and through. you can't inherently blame Any of them for what happened, and trying to do so loses what actually makes the situation so complex and painful.

because fiddleford clearly DID care about them, ALL of them, very dearly. and he obviously wanted to do the right thing. and yet he hurt them all, and yet his entire life and mind fell apart to ash in his fingers.

it's Crazy, and it absolutely does a disservice to the situation to frame it as fiddleford just being a slutty lying cheater (or ford Ruining a perfectly good man by being abusive, or emma-may getting in the way of our old man yaoi).

except bill, we can vilify bill. I think he'd like that

[unreliable-narrator-2845]

massive info dump abt an au im working on below ( +art)

some doodles from an au im working on w/ some friends... it's kind of a riff off of both the portal swap au and mr bill pines au... essentially, the brothers are swapped from the beginning - stanley is seen as the smart, successful one, and ford a bit of an outcast black sheep of the family, seen as bad luck because of his extra fingers. stanley is the good, normal one, the one with all the people skills, and ford is the 'brute' slacker, and seen as far more stupid than he really is. stanley is the one who invented the perpetual motion machine - and ford destroys it on purpose out of frustration and jealousy, and is the one that gets kicked out.

ford goes down the path of crime, like stan did, but he's a little more, uh... intense about it. he can't go off of people skills, he's gotta bring actual stuff to the table, so he travels to weirdness pockets (smaller than gravity falls) and basically turns the whole criminal underground on its head by his uncanny ability to harness this stuff. people do not like him, but he's VERY useful, so he gets to live in constant fear of whether people doing deals with him are going to leave him alone after or kill him after, since he can't tell which is which.

unlike stanley, who i think would absolutely hesitate to actually do severe physical violence (past beating people up) even while during his homeless years, i think ford wouldn't hesitate as much. ford has absolutely killed people. he will kill again.

how i see it going down is that bill, doing his usual dealings and such, has one of his hosts killed by ford while he's in it after ford witnesses a crime. he goes "haha! oh shit! a witness!" and then gets his neck fucking snapped the moment he advances on him. bill is Not Particularly Pleased, until he actually gets into ford's dreams, and is... impressed.

i am a simp for bill being a simp - in this au bill doesn't bother manipulating him, he wants this rugged badass to be his husband NOW. when they make a deal, ford writes a paper contract that they regularly update. bill and ford have a very mutual deal, to say the least, and they get married - and ford is the one to take his last name, since he cut contact with the family who kicked him out, so he's mr. stanford cipher (which i think is a good au name?). stanley is the one w/ the middle name filbrick in this au btw.

behind the eye scar: ford got into some shit with the cartel. this happens after his and bill's marriage, but what bill can do is limited w/o being physically present, so he has to watch in horror as they torture ford as he tries to find a way to get his husband out. this is the inciting incident that makes him particularly antsy about getting a portal up and going.

meanwhile stanley in gravity falls comes across an interesting cave...

trivia:

bill could minorly heal the eye, but only so much. the eye is now permanently bill's, or at least in his coloration. ford keeps it closed, but it opens fully when bill is fully possessing him. their contract details that bill can come and go only with ford's explicit permission. they often have a half-possession going, where bill can enhance ford and take only mild control, if any at all.

ford has 4 depictions of bill across his body, all tats. he has lots of vague triangle tattoos also, and the portal shape on his back. bill is fond of possessing the depiction on his throat, which he can move around as he pleases

bill's priorities during the initial writing of the contract were extremely funny. ford was trying to figure out the exact details of mind access, body access, etc, and bill was just gushing about "WE NEED RINGS!!!" and "i get to take you on 4 dates before i propose hehe"

stanley went to BMU and was dormmates w/ fiddleford. they are covertly (not legally) married (because 1980s) and went to gravity falls together. stanley and ford both have an interest in cryptozoology in this. ford avoids gravity falls like the plague because he knows stanley would probably be there

^^ addition to the above: stanley's full name is Stanley Filbrick Pines-McGucket, though he is only Pines-McGucket informally

stanley also still has his mullet. sue me. also he has glasses because he needs them and he's a nerdy science guy in this one

i really enjoy the pre-portal 1980s part of the timeline. can you tell. there's so much potential here. i am frothing at the mouth.

anyways............................................. more content soon. repurposed an old empty sideblog to maybe dedicate to this au/gf content. we shall see.

[gaybananabread]

Squealing Santa 2024 - Gift for @vampiretickles

~Happy Holidays @vampiretickles! I hope this fic finds you well, and that you have a lovely New Year’s. I’ve been seeing this ship everywhere; it’s about time I tried my hand at it. This is loaded with sweet, loving, absolutely disgusting fluff. I had fun with it! Could possibly be ooc, but I think it’s alright. If you celebrate, Happy Holidays! I hope you Enjoy!~

Lee: Stanford Pines

Ler: Fiddleford McGucket

Fandom: Gravity Falls

Summary: As per usual, Ford is refusing to step away from his work and rest. Fiddleford, sick of his partner running himself haggard, decides to take matters into his own hands. Literally.

Word Count: 1,679

Warnings: none! This is a tickle fic, so if you don’t like that, scroll away!!

“Dag blast it- UGH!” Ford tossed his flaming trench coat to the ground, spewing colorful obscenities as he tried to put out the bright green fire. By the time he managed to stomp it out, his poor coat was in charred tatters.

“There goes another one…” He swore, tossing the ruined garment into his disposal bin. The smoking experiment on his table was an even greater let-down. Rubbing his temples, the scientist grabbed his ancient tape recorder and sighed into the device. “Attempt number 57 ends in…failure.”

Ford had been at it for nearly a week, trying test after test in an attempt to get the right combination. It was an experimental weirdness blocker that could—in theory—negate any powers or effects being in their odd town could bring.

The man’s reaction had been less than quiet. Fiddleford, who had come to visit his it’s-complicated-but-we’re-getting-there partner, was drawn to the room by all the noise. “Everythin’ alright in here, Stanford?”

Ford whipped around, eyes narrowed dangerously before he realized who had entered. “Oh…yes. Everything’s fine.”

“Sure doesn’t seem like it.” The old man stepped farther into the room, furrowing his brows. He’d been doing a lot better since Weirdmageddon; his beard was clean (though he preferred long, so it wasn’t cut), his clothes were clean and whole, and he was spewing less nonsense by the day. With his improved mental state, he was able to care for those around him. “You should take a break, Ford. It’d do ya some good.”

“I’m fine, Fiddleford,” Ford huffed, brushing off the advice. He knew the hillbilly was right, but that didn’t mean he had to listen.

“Uh-huh, sure. Gotta be true, what with the fire and screamin’.” Fidds looked over at the remnants of Ford’s trench coat knowingly. That quirked brow made Ford more defensive than it probably should have.

“I just need more time. A few hours, tops.” Ford poked the smoldering remains of his experiment, trying to figure out what went wrong.

The man needed a break, but he wasn’t going to take one willingly. It was up to McGucket to fix that.

“What ya need is to relax.” Closing the distance between them, Fiddleford wrapped his arms around his partner. He squeezed just tight enough so the weary man couldn’t escape.

“Fidds, come on. I’ll be done soon en- mmph!” Ford flinched, jolting in his partner’s grip. The hillbilly’s hands were resting on Ford’s hips. While that would usually be an appreciated gesture, his fingers were wiggling into the divots of the joint; it tickled, and they both knew it.

“What’sa matter, Stanford? Got a tickle in yer throat?” Fiddleford teased, knowing the silliness of it would get to Ford. The man never could handle childish teases. The effects were instantaneous.

“F-Fihidds, no! I dohon’t have time f-for nonsense!” Ford did his best to hold in his reactions, refusing to give up so easily. He didn’t necessarily need to finish his work that day, but it felt wrong to leave anything unfinished.

“Yet you’ve got time fer workin’ yerself to exhaustion, knowin’ ya ain’t got enough energy to do anythin’ actually productive.”

Ford scoffed at the direct call-out, his ears turning pink. Well…shit. Fiddleford had him pegged, and he really didn’t have a comeback for that. After a few seconds of watching the Pines gape like a fish, Fidds chuckled.

“That’s what I thought. Now, hush up ‘n lemme help ya.” Pressing a gentle kiss to one of the man’s pinkened ears, Fidds got back to work. His thin, bony fingers worked their way up Ford’s sides, digging in just enough to make him giggle.

“Fihiddlefohohord!” Rumbling, slightly raspy giggles shook the man’s shoulders as he tried not to squirm. While the tickling wasn’t exactly what he had planned for the afternoon, he couldn’t deny how nice it was to have McGucket pressed against him after feeling so stressed.

“That’s my name, yeah. You sure that experiment didn’ scramble yer brain pan?” Fidds teased him, resting his chin on his partner’s shaky shoulder.

“Behe quihihiet!” Ford couldn’t help but gasp when one of Fidds’s hands went back down to his hips, his fingers wiggling into the ticklish little divot once again.

“You should be a little nicer, darlin’. I got all ‘a my favorite spots right here, just waitin’ for some attention.” His words carried a playful threat, his other hand moving to tease near Ford’s pits. He felt the man shudder against him at the thought.

“No! Nohohoho, cohome on! Thihis is rihidiculous!” Stanford tried using his grumpy old man tone, but the constant giggling ruined the attempt at seriousness. He was forced to just sit there and squirm against his partner.

“That’s the whole point, ya old goof. Yer s’posed to be takin’ it easy; ridiculous fits the bill.” Fidds accentuated his point with a few kisses to Ford’s neck, though he was surprised by the adorably shrill noise the action received.

“KHHHHehehe! Fihidds!” Ford whined—actually whined—at the feeling, scrunching up his shoulders as much as the hold would allow. His neck was ticklish? How had the hillbilly never noticed before?

“I reckon someone’s been hidin’ somethin’ from me, hasn’t he?” With a giddy smirk, Fiddleford began kissing the back of Ford’s neck, purposefully nuzzling his scraggly beard against the flushed skin as well.

Ford gasped at the barrage of tickly kisses and nuzzles, strangled little giggles and incredibly silly noises getting caught in his throat as he scrunched up. It was an utterly adorable sight—one that his partner made sure to enjoy.

“Yer so cute when yer laughin’, Stanford,” McGucket cooed between kisses, putting a bit more of his weight on his partner to keep him still. “Daw, who am I kiddin’? Yer cute in general.”

The silver-haired man could feel his face burning from all the affectionate teasing. He could usually keep his emotions in check; the decades he spent in chaotic and dangerous dimensions taught him to be stoic on command.

When it came to Fiddleford, however, all of that conditioning seemed to disappear. He felt like a flustered teen playing wingman for Stanley again, though the feeling was a lot more intense and a helluva lot more enjoyable.

“Lohohohove, p-plehehehease! Ihi- GYEhehehe! Ihihi cahahan’t!” Ford blushed even harder just from the ludicrous nature of his own words. Gracious, he was pathetic…and he didn’t really mind it. His sides were growing quite sore, however, and he couldn’t take much more of the heavy giggling. “Fihihidds, plehease!”

The bearded man heard the difference in Ford’s tone, easing off to kiss his rosy cheeks instead. “Alright, alright, settle down. I’m done bein’ mean.” Gently, he guided the giggly man over to the small room he’d forced Ford to furnish, getting him settled on the nearly untouched mattress. “Told ya you’d need a nappin’ room down here.”

“Nohot the time toho glohohoat…” Ford huffed, snuggling up against his lanky partner. Fuck, he couldn’t work any more if he wanted to, which…he kind of didn’t. He was exhausted, his thoughts were sluggish, and he was really in the mood for cuddles. “Sneaky bastard.”

“Only fer you, darlin’.” Fidds peppered his face with kisses, running a hand through his fluffy silver hair.

Ford mumbled grievances, but it was obvious the touch was melting him. He was so tired…but he didn’t want the attention to end. “Could you…mmphf.”

“What’s that now? Gotta speak up.” Fiddleford had an idea of what the cuddly man wanted to say, but he was gonna make him ask for it. His flustered voice was just too adorable to resist.

It was absolutely evil, in Ford’s eyes.

“Just…don’t stop? I don’t want you to…you know. Lightly.”

Fidds bit his lip, chuckling softly at the embarrassed, broken request. Ford really was terrible at asking for what he wanted… Still, the attempt was the best he’d gotten yet.

“M’kay, I won’t make ya beg. C’mere.” Snaking a hand up Ford’s shirt, the bearded man began ever so gently tickling his partner’s sides, back, and neck. His hand drifted, the touch just present enough to tickle.

“Mmhmhmhm…” A wobbly smile tugged at Ford’s lips as he pressed his face into Fiddleford’s chest, giggling softly. Each small noise was little more than an exhale, gentle enough for his aching sides to rest while keeping him giddy. Fidds always knew exactly what he needed, and—better yet—exactly how to give it to him.

“Maybe I should start doin’ this every time ya refuse to rest. It’s workin’ pretty well, I reckon.” Fidds felt his heart swell at the sight of him, loving how he just gave in to the giggly affection.

“Shuhush,” Ford huffed lovingly, moving in to kiss him. His stubbly upper lip scratched Fidds’s as he blindly leaned in. Their lips met, each smiling against the other’s as they drifted off wholly into their own little world.

While he would’ve loved to keep kissing Ford for the rest of the night, he could feel how sluggish the man was getting. It was time to rest. He pulled away from the kiss, lovingly stroking Ford’s sides.

“Alright, darlin’. Time to turn in.” Wrapping his thin legs around the man’s waist, Fiddleford gently scratched Ford’s scalp to wind down. As expected, the scientist let out a sleepy sigh, leaning right into the touch. Fidds’s other hand was still stroking his sides, barely tickling. It was sweet, domestic, and made both men feel oh so loved and whole.

“Mhmmm…goodnihight, love.” Ford muttered one last endearment before dozing off, finally giving in to the drowsiness that washed over him. He felt a few light kisses on the crown of his head, reassuring him all the way to unconsciousness.

“G’night, Stanford. I love ya, darlin’.” Fiddleford held Ford close, sighing contentedly as he heard the man’s breathing even out. Finally, he’d gotten his stubborn partner to pass out and rest. The next day would bring the same challenge, but he’d be more than ready to face and overcome it.

He had love on his side, after all. And tickles. With those, he couldn’t possibly lose.

[maniacwatchestheworld]

The Aesthetics and Environmental Storytelling of the Society of the Blind Eye

This is the third post to try and make sure that we're all on the same page as to where I get my ideas and thoughts about the Society of the Blind Eye! So in the last part I discussed the Blind Eye's symbol and how it can be used to indicate that they oppose Bill Cipher. If you thought that I was pulling that idea out of my ass in the previous post, then guess what! I have further evidence of it! And that evidence is the hideout of the Society of the Blind Eye itself! Because if you pay attention, it seems that the Society's hideout was built on top of the bones of a temple dedicated to Bill Cipher!

Now it's not too outrageous to think that there was probably a cult dedicated to Bill Cipher in Gravity Falls at some point, right? It's never mentioned in Journal 3 nor the Book of Bill, but Gravity Falls is very much a place of interest to Bill Cipher, and his influence there stretches back thousands upon thousands of years. And the hideout where the Society now resides... It honestly doesn't seem like something they would have constructed themselves. In fact, it seems to have originally been a temple to Bill Cipher that the Society has since retrofitted to fit their own purposes.

The connections between Bill Cipher and the Society's hideout are evident from the very outset with trying to get into the hideout in the first place.

Now obviously eyes are a symbol and motif that Bill Cipher and the Blind Eye both share. This room doesn't necessarily hint at a connection to the hideout and Bill Cipher inherently, right? To that I say, look at image above the door and secondly, to get into the Blind Eye's lair...

Well then, that's just a Bill Cipher right there! A triangle with an eye in the middle of it? You could even make the argument that the etchings indicating the X could be a stylized depiction of Bill's eyelashes! No hat or bow tie, sure, but that's still very much a Bill within the context of this series!

Now once you start making your way into the Blind Eye's lair, it's very clear that this place is old. Very old. Much much older than the building above it.

This place is entirely made of stone with no insulation. It's lit and probably heated by fire. This place is starting to crumble and fall apart, the cracks in the walls being held together by metal brackets.

By contrast the building above it...

It's a modern building with the electricity being wired through the walls and a modern lighting and heating system that's not dissimilar to what you'd normally expect out of any other building in Gravity Falls! Sure, it looks like there might be some cracks and dents in the plaster on the walls, but it's nothing too worrying or indicative of these structures falling apart! The building's been around for a while. And given the pneumatic tubes that Fiddleford likely had to have installed both within the Blind Eye's lair and the museum above it himself, that means that this building had to have been around for ~30 years at minimum. But that's nothing compared to how old the structure beneath it seems to be. It really does seem that the hideout had to have been built first and then the museum was later built on top of it. And the Society has just not been around long enough for them to have been the ones to have built the hideout!

Besides. It's a bit of an odd fit, right? A cult built around the idea of forgetting their own pasts placed underneath a location dedicated to remembering and maintaining objects from the past...? Or maybe it's just some delicious irony. I mean, the memories that they had erased are kept down there too after all. But if this building was originally run by a Bill Cipher cult...? Oh yeah! That absolutely makes sense! Of COURSE Bill would want his temple hidden underneath a museum! He basically IS human history after all, right!? He's had a hand in so many historical people's lives, events, and is part of their cultures! A temple dedicated to him underneath a museum that would basically be a shrine full of artifacts dedicated to him? He'd LOVE that! I mean, Ford had to get his various pieces of Bill Cipher memorabilia for his shrine/home from SOMEWHERE, right!? Additionally...

What right and under what circumstances would the Society be allowed to have these ancient Egyptian artifacts!??? Why would the Society even WANT something like these!? The Society has nothing to do with Egypt and their artifacts, so why are these here!??? But if this place was originally dedicated to Bill Cipher... Well then... That ENTIRELY makes sense!! OF COURSE there would be ancient Egyptian artifacts in a temple to Bill Cipher! He was the inspiration for the pyramids!

I also want you to take note of that light and how you can see the electrical wiring that powers it coming out of it and running along the wall. That's a clear indication that this building was built before electricity would or could have been installed into this lair and that the electricity was installed later. Another indication that the hideout is likely much MUCH older than the building on top of it!

And as one more pretty definitive piece of evidence that this lair had originally been built by a Bill Cipher cult... THESE PILLARS!!!

Now do those symbols look familiar from somewhere...? Well, some of them pretty heavily feature triangles and have a very Bill-adjacent aesthetic to them... But then there's also THIS!

Here you can see that those symbols on the pillars ARE Bill Cipher symbols! It's very likely that those symbols have always been there, long long before the Society took up residence within these temple walls! From this, I think that it's pretty clear to say that this hideout existed LONG before the Society of the Blind Eye existed, and that a group of people who dedicated themselves to Bill Cipher inhabited it long before the Society became the modern, current day inhabitants of it.

... But as the modern day inhabitants of this space, it doesn't seem that the Blind Eye cares much for preserving the historical sanctity of this place.

The Society seems to have taken what was there since long before them and vandalized it to suit their own iconograpy and purposes. Just like their very symbol. The evidence that I've shown thus far could be used to suggest that Bill Cipher had influence on the Society of the Blind Eye and perhaps used the Society to enact his own desires in the physical world, but I don't personally buy that idea because A) It would be EXCEEDINGLY dangerous for Bill to do so and B) The lack of care and in fact blatant defacing of this temple's features suggests the opposite to me! Hell, they don't even keep the place clean!!

Other than the main chamber: Canisters. EVERYWHERE! Entirely unorganized as far as we can tell. Hoarded in piles on the floors, not even on the tables that seem to have just been placed in here willy-nilly! Put into crates without a care. It's a mess! And that's not even mentioning the pneumatic tubes!

The pneumatic tubes were certainly not built at the same time as this structure and must have been installed later, likely by Fiddleford himself! They curve around everything, bracketed into place along walls and columns alike! And when they do go through the pillars...

Where the tubes go through the walls and columns, the stone is cracked, holes probably having been driven into them without a care or thought about how that would effect the building's structural integrity. The sheer number of pneumatic tubes and the haphazard way they seem to have been placed everywhere is likely even more of a reflection to how much Fiddleford had damaged himself and his own mind as he desperately sought to forget. And in that state, Fiddleford probably didn't even think nor care to think about what he was doing and how it would effect this base of theirs. And besides. What would it matter? This was a temple to Bill Cipher before them. And certainly no one would remember being in such a cult after the Society was done with the town.

And so that's all I really have to say about that. The Society's aesthetic is cool! You could call it something akin to Steampunk, but I think that the better keyword here is retrofitted. Or perhaps its darker counterpart- defaced. After all, retrofitting is something that Fiddleford does all the time and is all about!

Using bottle caps to make memory guns, mattress springs and jugs to make sea monsters. And I imagine that the Society was built much the same way... But in a darker sense. Taking the remnants of a temple to Bill Cipher, destroying its previous aesthetic and purpose and making it suit his own to create a cult of his own that would wipe away people's memories from them until he himself would deface his own memories so thoroughly that he could only become a mere shadow of who he used to be. Very tragic for Fiddleford himself. But a very interesting implied history and aesthetic for the rest of us!

[legobiwan]

What is your absolute favorite gravity falls fic ? The one that completely ate away at your brain and wouldn't leave your head for days? It can be shipp-y or gen, both is fine! I'm just completely on the edge of falling headfirst into a Gravity Falls hyperfixation and I need just one good fic to tip me over the edge & you have excellent taste!

Oh boi, I think it really depends on what you are looking for! I personally really enjoy fics that don't shy away from our characters' less desirable traits, and one of the things I adore about Gravity Falls is how deep and complicated the adult characters are. Ford can be an egomaniacal asshole who will trade the world to satisfy his insecurities; Stan can absolutely be a slimy conman with Saul Goodman-levels of morals; Bill is an outright abuser, despite his total infatuation with Ford; and Fiddleford essentially leaves his wife and child for another man he can never have in the 80s, which adds archeological layers to his terrible decisions. Considering this is technically a Disney, Y7 children's show, it's pretty damn wild how complex and mature these situations are once you spend more than three seconds thinking about them.

But you asked me for my single, favorite Gravity Falls fic.

As someone who really appreciates the Hannibal levels of fuckery that is the Ford and Bill relationship, I have to say Statement Abnegation is in my top 5, probably top 3. My backup Billford (gen, but still dark) rec would be Bait & Switch, which is unfinished at the moment, but updates at pretty quick intervals. (As an aside, I should mention I only rec triangle!Bill fics, as I really am not a fan of human!Bill unless he's possessing someone for a defined purpose).

Because I can never give a single, concise answer to anything in my life (hellooo, commitment issues hahahaha) I'll also throw in my favorite sibling-fic recs. First would be By Any Other Name, which is mostly a character study of Stan, but features a lot of Ford and the extended Pines clan, as well, and doesn't shy away from the fact that both Ford and Stan are very flawed people with a metric ton of issues. Backup sibling fic is a new one I just discovered, also complete, titled Under the Ice, which explores the idea that perhaps some events are fixed points in the universe and can never be avoided. Again, it's another fic that doesn't avoid the elder Pines twins and their multitude of less-than-savory character traits, which is something I really value in Gravity Falls writing, given the ever-present threat of blorbofication, no matter the fandom.

Anyway! Long answer to a short question, I hope you enjoy at least one of these!

[stupidlittlespirit]

what r ur thoughts on fords relationship w his father?

Something something Ford-ian slip......

I'd apologise but you guys know how much I like horrible puns so you do it to yourselves, really.

ANYWAY. It really depends on what you mean by relationship because I think there are lots of answers to that question.

I think it was awful and tumultuous, and I've touched previously on how Stan and Ford both experienced extensive abuse at the hands of their father. They received it very differently but they were absolutely both abused.

I don't think Filbrick loved Ford (or Stan). I think that, unfortunately for Ford, he's been alone for most of his life and his time with his family was no different.

We're told their mother is fond of Stan especially and it's positioned as though Filbrick prefers Ford, but he doesn't. Ford isn't protected by either parent. Where his father was likely more hands on with abuse, his mother was negligent.

Stan had his mother's love (which while it isn't enough to stop him being kicked out, I know, we are told Caryn loved Stan and we know she is the only one who goes to his 'funeral'), whereas Ford isn't referred to as having a parent that 'favours' him. When Stan talks about them loving Ford, he doesn't really use any descriptors that actually inspire the idea of a loving relationship, so much as he describes a parasitic relationship.

Filbrick pushes Ford as a meal ticket. He doesn't love him, he needs him and he needs to profit off of him.

This becomes a very common theme in Ford's life. In fact, the only person (other than Stan) he meets that doesn't want or need anything from him, nor do they intend to use him, is Fiddleford.

I imagine that Ford was pushed around with a very hot-cold attitude with regards to his father and his mom wasn't really as present with him. If she was, I imagine she similarly thought of him as a way out of poverty.

People get really mad at Ford for not 'standing up to Filbrick' when he kicked Stan out, and it always bothers me because I have 0 doubt that Filbrick would have rocked Ford's shit just like he was more than likely pushing Stan (and Caryn) around.

I don't think they were close and I think Ford disliked him as much as Stan did. I think his relationship with both of his parents was strained to non-existent.

Basically, neither Ford nor Stan stood a fucking chance with Filbrick. Their entire lives are one big Saw trap of their father's making.

[alexthebordercollie]

i'm always a sucker for the take that Ford does love kids, he's just not the best caretaker. i mean, he's immediately delighted to learn he's an uncle in tale of two stans, and he loves spending time with Dipper and Mabel, he's just kind of dense.

i think aus where he gets to be a dad with Fiddleford are so cute. and so interesting to see how he'd handle it. people always seem to forget what a softie he can be

Oh yes! It kind of bugs me how a lot of people act like Ford is cold when he really isn't. There are lots of little examples of him being an absolute sweetheart. He talks a big game about being logical and suppressing fear etc, but he's a deeply emotional person, and that comes through in his more personal journal entries. He's not some heartless robot. He loves sharing his joy and excitement with the people close to him. He craves human connection even though he's bad at it. He gets attached to weird little creatures like Shifty, he loves his niece and nephew and is genuinely happy to meet them. Not to mention Ford loves weirdness and creativity and kids are the weirdest most creative demographic of people out there.

I don't think Ford dislikes kids at all. I think his lack of emotional intelligence and tendency to be lost in his own world makes him a questionable caretaker. Not through apathy or malice, he's just kind of bad with kids. Making him a father is really interesting for this reason because I'm confident he'd love the shit out of his kids, but learning how to respond appropriately to their needs, keep them safe, and pay attention consistently when needed, would all be things he'd struggle with.

Ford also says as much in his journal that he didn't want to settle down and "start a family". I don't think he ever saw kids of his own as part of his future nor do I think he'd ever consciously choose to have them. That said these are the words of a young Ford with grand ambitions that children would have potentially gotten in the way of. I also think the way he shuts down the idea of "starting a family" is a response to the social pressure to get straight married which is also not something he would have wanted. I mean look how well that worked out for Fidds :/

But Ford's whole character arc is about humbling himself. Learning to let go of this fantasy of some grand destiny and find joy in just living life with the people he cares about. He learns to accept the love of others and to love himself without needing to prove anything.

Pictured above, is a combination of sleep deprivation and those little moments when you're a new parent and it dawns on you yet again that suddenly you have this tiny little human who's who world depends on you. That mix of fear and awe and overwhelming love that hits you in waves and turns your brain into mush for a moment.

Nik and Newt force Ford to put someone else over himself, forcing him to reassess his priorities much sooner.

Also I know this one wasn't really an ask but I really wanted to draw something for you because it was soooooo good seeing a real ask in my inbox. I would absolutely love to answer any asks people have about this AU. I'd love to draw more of Ford, Fidds, Stan, and the twins but it gets hard to decide what to draw with so many ideas in my brain. By all means, send me asks or suggestions for drawings and I'll do my best to respond to all of them.

[fannishstuff]

FIDDLEFORD PSA!!!!!!

OKAY, THIS HAS BEEN DRIVING ME ABSOLUTELY BONKERS FOR A WHILE NOW.

Dear Fiddleford McGucket fanartists:

First of all: draw how you want. The following is not intended to be judgmental, just educational. <3

On to business:

Here is how you fingerpick a banjo.

This is three-finger. There are more styles, but this is how I play. (I did not include fingerpicks because Fidds doesn't use them in the show and they're a pain to draw; you can also play just fine without them, although they are useful.)

Fingerpicking is usually done on a five-string banjo. Old Man McGucket's theme sounds like it's fingerpicked to me. Please note that your pinky and ring finger are planted on the banjo itself, next to the strings.

The first two images are to show posture, the third image is what it would look like to draw:

When I'm just holding my banjo and not playing it, my pinky and ring finger just naturally rest this way because it's comfy.

Here is how you play clawhammer style.

This is just an approximation; I almost never play clawhammer. The big thing is that your fingers curl in in a "claw" and you pick with your thumb.

Here are the tuning pegs on a five-string banjo.

In the show, Fiddleford has a four-string banjo, not five-string. (We see two banjos; they are both four-string.) Honestly, that surprised me. I'm not sure what the folk scene looked like in the 80s, but most players you see today have five-strings, so I think they were just streamlining the design.

EDIT: I was wrong! His banjo has a disappearing and reappearing fifth nut!

A four-string banjo has four tuning pegs at the top, like any other instrument. The fifth tuning peg is about a third of the way down the neck.

BONUS: Nobody gets into this much detail, but clever eyes will notice that the string widths look funny. If you have played a bass or guitar, you're used to the top string being lowest and thickest, the bottom string - which is the "first" string - being highest and thinnest. A four string banjo is tuned like this, but with a five-string banjo, the fifth string is the same diameter as the first.

Anyway, there are plenty of great banjo video and image tutorials on the internet if you want to get into the weeds, but I got the impression that a lot of you have literally never seen a banjo being played often enough to even realize how different it is from a guitar. Some people absolutely do strum banjos like guitars - in fact, I think that's more common with four-strings - but the McGucket music we hear is very obviously not being strummed.

There! Now you may freely choose to draw his hand however you want to, and it won't be from a place of ignorance. <3

(Oh, one last thing: that round thing that comprises the body of the banjo is literally just a drum. Drumming it is fun. You can and should draw Fiddleford tapping his banjo with the tips of his fingers like I do.)

[whatt-the]

Gift for @single-eutanasia

Don't gotta tell me twice‼️‼️ on it boss‼️

Young Fiddleford x reader

I do think it would be interesting. To be a new citizen at gravity falls and quickly growing a connection to the nerdy looking country man that got a hold of your heartstrings. He was funny, relativelly charismatic (it may just be you alone standing on that hill- he's.. passionate let's say. I wouldn't call it charismatic by any stretch of the imagination), shy in a way that made flirting with him absolutely delightful, and, most of all, incredibly smart. What was there not to love?

Though things got weird when you questioned why he was often gone for long periods of time on certain days of the week- it would be a perfectly reasonable response to say that he is simply working on his research, crafting something- something more prone to exploding, which he wouldn't want you to be around, thus explaining away your concerns for him. But he can see the pain in your eyes. He may be shy but he's by no means oblivious: he knows you've been through things you'd rather never have gone through. Everyone has.

And who is he to deny you the peace of mind you so clearly deserve?

So he comes somewhat clean; tells you all about how he invented something truly revolutionary, how it could change lives in seconds, improve things years of work wouldn't come close to doing, how it's saved his life much more than once, and how it's been by far his best creation.

A memory wiper.

You were taken off guard, though you let him continue: he tells you about how he knows you've been through so very much, how he knows you could reach your full potential if you weren't held back by your past experiences, he holds your hand as he rambles on and on about how wonderful you are, how much better your life would be if you gave his invention a chance, how happy you both could be, you with your new, more capable mind, and him, with the peace of mind of knowing that you felt safer than you ever felt before.

It was a tempting offer.

You allow him to take you to one of his meetings: a cult, clearly, but you wouldn't tell him that. He was much to excited to have your trust. If you didn't want to have your traumas wiped away, he'd simply delete the memory of the whole encounter off your mind, and everything could go back to normal.

Though things didn't go as he'd planned, they don't tend to go his way in most occasions.

He felt deeply comforted by having your belief in him- you were the only person he truly considered himself to be close to that never hurt him in any way, you were someone he could rely on for any of his social needs, and, you were someone he was immensely attracted to, despite how immoral it felt to be that way, even moreso to admit to it.

Everything about you got to him, really. Your glances at him, your hands on his, your care for his wants, your hugs, your smell, your sleeping face-- gods how he loved to have you on top of him, even if he knew (thought) you'd never do it while fully conscious.

And that brings us to his fantasies, which are just as frequent as your encounters. The kisses you'd never shared, the intimate touches he could only ever crave. It all led him to be head over heels for you, lost completly in all that is you.

And to know he was going to bring you the peace of mind of not even knowing of the horrors of this world that you'd seen? It brought him pride, joy, butterflies to his stomach. He was going to make you truly happy.

He didn't think he'd be the one with his brain emptied by the end of the night, he never thought it possible. But his fantasies were brought to life! Everything he'd ever wanted: your approval, your sweet words, your appreciation, your trust, your touch, your love. All given to him on a silver platter. All he had to do was make a choice.

Throw away his morals, do everything he's been yearning for so desperately, ignore his family back at home. You didn't want him to forget about his family, no, you wanted him to live with the fact he'd betrayed their trust to have yours. That you were worth more to him than the woman he's had children with.

How he was brought to this predicament he knows all too well: you caught him as he spiraled down a rabbit hole of increasingly sick thoughts about you and him, saw him in his most vulnerable state, nearly cowering before you as he begged for your forgiveness and attempted to hide how hard he was, all for you.

Your sickeningly sweet tone betrayed your offer, it was worded virtually in the same way as his offer to you. Live his best life, do everything he's been holding himself back from doing, you know he's been through a lot, a lot you didn't want him to bother himself with: ditch the ring, have his dreams.

And he couldn't deny you, he was most definetly not god's strongest soldier when it came to matters regarding you.

And he let you ruin him- defile him, do as you pleased with him: and he begged you to not erase your memory of this. To not erase his, even. He needed to remember this. He needed you to remember it, he wanted to commit every single detail about the night to memory and never have it go away. Oh how he held onto you like you were his only tether to reality.

And this scenario of him begging for you to keep your memory of this repeated itself for every other time he needed you. And let me tell you, you'd come to hear his desperate sounding voice as he pleaded with you much more often than you'd expect.

HAHA 2 SKETCHES THIS TIME! HOW GENEROUS OF ME

[bugsinshoes]

ok so i just watched @fordtato and @hkthatgffan 's respective videos about their interview with THE alex hirsch and i wanna just say OH MY GOD like SERIOUSLY

im gonna put my thoughts under the cut so theres no spoilers if you havent seen it already (BUT GO WATCH THEM NOW PLEASE !!!) + its gonna be LONG so BEAR WITH ME

ok, so i have MANY thoughts so sorry if none of this is coherent 😭 (this is not in chronological order of when the questions were asked, just me spewing out my totally normal thoughts about this interview so apologies for that)

starting off:

THE BABY IS SHERMIE?!?!?!? IM SO SO GLAD WE FINALLY HAVE CONFIRMATION WE CAN FINALLY LEAVE THIS TO REST !! I WAS RIGHT THOUGH SO HA !!! ACTUALLY SCREAMING !! TIMELINE BE DAMNED (also another thanks to hana, your timeline video is genuinely awesome. i never shut up about it. ever. any time i talk to my friends abt gf and i need to refer to the timeline i go: "IN HANA'S VIDEO-") anyways, i do understand it was a last minute decision on the writer's part of "oh. dipper and mabel need a grandfather, its not ford, and its sure as FUCK not gonna be stan sooo... third brother?" and i do understand alex being like, "oh, this is about ford and stan only having eachother" so i think making shermie younger was a GOOD THING? like, stan and ford had 18 years of just them so shermie wasnt in the picture, so stan and ford technically grew up on their own so ig it works? also, when stan got kicked out, he never got to see shermie grow up, probably only saw him at events when he had to pretend to be ford (post-1983) and as for ford himself, he was too busy in college and gravity falls to really visit the family so... it works! (despite everything)

that aside, lets talk about THE CRUMBS??? like i have some quotes here because i have a LOT to say:

"theyre both so damaged and they desperately need each other" - alex hirsch (talking about stan and ford)

LIKE SUIUHUSHUSH i HATE these brothers SO MUCH (LIES) i cant actually properly express my thoughts because WOW like its clear that they both have their own trauma and they NEED to address it but theyre both too STUBBORN to do so. theyve both been alone for 40ish years so of course they need each other. they grew up by the hip, so theres no surprise that they both need each other (whether they like it or not)

"[ford's] grateful for the forgiveness he thinks he doesnt deserve" -alex hirsch

ford thinks so lowly of himself at times it HURTS. like the lines in the journal about "only then would the freak return a hero" or about his guilt with bill and everything its just so important to his character im so glad we got so much ford content in this interview. like i am EATING ALL THIS UP RN

"[ford] has to always have a mission in front of him, because if he doesnt have a mission in front of him, hes thinking how have i treated people in my life?" - alex hirsch

ford distracting himself with things instead of facing his problems. probably something he had to do a lot, especially with his time in the multiverse. but it really hurts because i can imagine in the 60s, they never had any great coping mechanisms? so i can assume ford was just conditioned to distract himself from stuff so he never learned how to deal with things. and i KNOW in the journal hes like "i meditate!" and im sure that does help somewhat, but it doesnt address the issue itself soooo... sorry ford, but you cant just breathe your way out of everything

ALSO alex calling ford and fiddlefords falling out a "BREAKUP" (air quotes used) BUT A BREAKUP??? this is just adding fuel to my fiddauthor-infested brain rn. i CANT

and alex saying mcgucket is thinking like, "oh i gotta be a better partner" is HEART SHATTERING like the whole talk about fiddleford being "the building guy" who is kind of just there to make machines and please ford. its honestly so heartbreaking because fiddleford loves ford so much he'd leave his wife and child to go to absolute nowhere, oregon and the fact ford is too arrogant to see fiddlefords admiration and overall love for him its just IUIUAHHAS

and i do wanna say, i KNOW bill played a big part in this, by stroking fords ego and buttering him up with his kind words because he knew exactly what ford wanted to hear and that really affected how ford and fidds' relationship was like but THATS A TOPIC FOR ANOTHER TIME. all i know is that ford isnt entirely to blame, but he still is a massive arrogant asshole and he wasnt the best person to fidds at times (love him tho <3)

but im actually so happy because this interview sheds SO much light onto FORD bcs we BARELY got to know him, and hearing it from MR HIRSCH HIMSELF is just so good because we KNOW its a reliable source because its coming from ALEX YK??? like he wrote ford so he probably knows "oh yeah, that man is guilt-ridden as FUCK" and im so glad we get some crumbs of this guy i cant get enough of him !!! (impatiently waiting for the book of bill)

ANNNDD THE TALK ABOUT MAYBE GETTING A SEA GRUNKS SPINOFF/MINISERIES??? I WOULD EXPLODE GENUINELY ANYTHING WITH MY FAVOURITE OLD MEN PLEASE !! i would genuinely love to see more of their dynamic and how everything is after weirdmaggeddon and like dealing with trauma and UGHHH i would kill for stan/ford content PLEASE

also...

hippie ford.

hippie. ford.

i am never getting over this (im internally SCREECHING)

ANYWAYS THAT WAS MY RANT ABT MY FAV THINGS FROM THE INTERVIEW THAT WAS A LOT GODDAMN

im genuinely so happy with all the questions that got answered, as well as getting some deeper insight into characters and stuff. IM NEVER GETTING OVER THE AMOUNT OF FIDDAUTHOR CRUMBS YOU GUYS

im gonna end this by saying another MASSIVE thank you to hana and hk !! you both put so much effort into your respective videos and it was super super cool !! this was totally worth the wait !!! :D

[littleoneamanda]

GF: Stanford Pines

Well, probably one of the fastest drawings I have been drawing xD

The original art style is pretty easy to work with, but I think I will keep doing it in mine after Fidds. Unless you want to see me draw more in the original style. Let me know! :D

Now to my thoughts on the book of bill and Stanford as a character. (SPOILERS)

The missing Journal Pages in this book are probably the ones that I found the most interesting and disturbing. We learn more about Ford as a person and what kind of friendship he had with Bill.

I just wanna say this, I really don't see how so many people saw them as "lovers" which I (imo) found very problematic and disturbing.

I think it is pretty clear Bill only uses Ford for his own gain. His property. Ford was the perfect human for his plans.

Take everything Bill says in the book with a whole spoon of salt.

"Even his lies are lies"

-Code from TBOB

"The ego of a king. The insecurity of a circus freak. And totally isolated from anyone who might steer him clear of my plans "

-Bill, TBOB

Ford has very low self esteem, isolates himself, bad at social interactions and even had a shotgun pointed at him. He describes himself "six fingerd freak".

So when a god like figure shows up in a dream one day, tells you how great you are, you will change the world, ect, You would buy it. Especially when others around you have made you feel like an outcast through your whole life (except for Stanley and Fidds).

Bill is basically love bombing Ford. Making Ford feel very special and reminding him of the project that will change everything.

Now there is a difference between self esteem and self confidence. (I'm adding the links if you wanna know more :) ) Ford absolutely have a strong self confidence. He believes strongly in his research. He belives he CAN achive and complete his research. This is also something Bill takes advantage of. He knows Ford is desperate. This is where is self confidence turns a little bit more to narcissism (again caused by Bill by manipulation). Bill does everything to make sure Ford continues the work.

As soon Ford realizes the betrayal, Bill shows his true colors.

He takes over Fords body multiple times. Takes his body on top of the roof in the middle of the winter, taped a rattlesnake into his journal, recorded a video of him being in Fords body "Puppet Hour with Bill" and will cut to something more disturbing scene. Left a lot of polaroids of him humiliating and torture his body in different ways.

Scaring Ford with one scene where he pretended to call Stan that he was gonna kill himself. This part of the book was probably the one that made me actually shiver. Think about it, You see video and pictures of yourself doing all of this, knowing that this is not you doing all of these things. And having no memory of it at. Too scared to fall asleep because you have no idea were your body is going to be next. That would make any person as paranoid Ford was at the end.

Fidds and Ford.

There is a lot of things that I wanna talk about when it comes to these two, but I will save most of it to the Fidds drawing.

Fidleford is Fords only true friend during this time. He is very supportive but also honest with Ford.

Ford haven't had any other friends during his early life. Stanley was his only friend, and the one who protected him until that one mistake that separates them. When Fiddleford comes in to the picture, (a person who also seemed to have problems making friends) he's probably the first person who doesn't even notice at first that Ford has six fingers. I really wish here we had some more backstory of their college years to know what their friendship looked like, but it seems they were very close.

"I am overcome with emotion. The sight of my old classmate upon my doorstep this morning filled my heart with such joy and gratitude."

-Stanford, Journal 3

Ford was obviously very happy to not be alone anymore in his home. To have his best friend (who also left his family behind) to work with him on this massive project. Now comes the question, what does Ford see Fidds as? I think Fidds shows some kind of feelings towards Ford escpecially when it comes to giving presents (Not only in TBOB but also in Journal 3). I think Ford does deeply care about Fidds, but his mind at this point is so focused on the project (and Bill making sure he is) that he pushes away a lot of feelings. Probably a lot of feelings that are necessary to have as well.

Something I do notice tho is when Bill isn't present, Ford becomes more like himself. Decorating the portal to make make Fidds happy after the failed family reunion (which I don't think he normally would have done if Bill was present during the holidays).

After Bill torture and threatening Ford in the nightmare, the only man he could think of in that moment who could help him was Fiddleford. When he went through Fidds notes for any hints of where he was now, he finds the 5 failed knitted 6-fingered gloves and the ripped photo of them. I can't imagine what that must have felt...

The closest person he had in his life at that point, who has tried to warn him. Tried to give Ford another option for success in his research instead of the portal. The regret of not listening to his warnings.

When they reunited after Weirdmaggedon, seeing how Fiddleford lived now and what the aftermath of the portal incident did to him, must have been a punch in the gut.

"...but when I saw that he was living at the dump, it became clear how deeply I had hurt this man that I had once held so dear."

-Stanford Journal 3

So...Is Ford a jerk? The question and discussions that I've seen so many times here xD

Honestly, this man is complicated. Especially when it comes to understand his thoughts and feelings. However, Stanford is a type person that I personally have encountered irl. Sometimes too smart for his own good, sometimes not understanding how others may feel about certain things/topics and a person who constantly try to prove to themself and to others. A man lost in his own insecurities and very isolated. He his the main character in his life. Now that doesn't exscuse his negative actions at all. But more like a explanation to what might had led to the certain events.

Alright, this took way longer to write than actually make the drawing xD But did wanna share somethings that has been on my mind. When trying to search for analyses of the characters, it has been difficult to find one that is a middle ground. It's either: Stanford is a jerk and doesn't deserve anything good or Here is why everyone is wrong type of stuff. I'm not here to tell how we should think about certain characters. This is just how I look at all of this. The only problem I have with all of this is the thing between Ford and Bill. Maybe it's just me, but I really don't see any type of romance there. I know a lot of people went off on the "one thing led to another" part. I do not know what to say to that honestly. That page was super hard for my eyes to read for some reason lol. And i know, Yes, I did a video of Fidds being cucked by a triangle. I don't mind some of the jokes around it...I mean i did myself xD

I think the reason Bill is a bit obsessed over Ford is because after so many attempts with making deals with other humans to help Bill build a portal, this one was sooo close to success and ALMOST succeeded. He had all the tools and the right human to make it, but failed. He must feel so bitter.

Anyway, that's it for now! Next is Fiddleford :D