#ford calling stan his hero will always get to me

[artsymeeshee]

Got emotional about them (for the millionth time)

[shmisky]

Since you are the only person that I trust to ask this question—What do you think are Ford and Stan core characteristics? What makes their characters be themselves in the canon sense, meaning without any headcanons or sort of additions that are not present in any of the canon material?

Woah, I’m so flattered by your trust!! 🩷

But that is a very difficult question, anon, and I’m not even sure I understood it correctly, since you were not more specific. Their characters can’t easily be labeled. If you want me to talk about something in particular (for example, Ford or Stan’s canon levels of certain traits) you’re welcome to send another ask!

That said, I’ll try to answer to the best of my ability in a more general way.

I think Stan and Ford have so, so many traits in common. Both of them love fiercely, get deeply attached to people, and value family above all else when push comes to shove. Both of them are prideful in their own way, and both of them can be petty and immature. Both of them are incredibly determined and stubborn. Both of them yearn to be loved. Both of them are extremely reckless and self-sacrificial. Both of them are traumatized and damaged. Both of them are self-loathing and/or insecure to some level. Both of them can be kind of jerks and very self-centered. Both of them have lots of toxic masculinity. Both of them are adventurers. And the list goes on...

What changes is how these traits manifest, how they act on them. Ford’s pride is more obvious than Stan’s, for example, while Stan’s toxic masculinity is more obvious than Ford’s. Ford’s determination is shown through his goal of killing Bill, Stan’s determination is shown through his goal of bringing Ford back. Old Ford is overall braver than old Stan (I’ll elaborate on that in a future meta) except when family is involved. Ford’s yearning to be loved is better hidden than Stan’s, who wears his heart on his sleeve.

Not that they don’t have unique traits to call their own. Ford has his insatiable curiosity, his fascination with weirdness, his thirst for knowledge. Stan has more people skills, more charm, more pragmatism.

If I could choose one trope to describe Stan, I would choose Jerk With A Heart of Gold. His priority is family, and he would do anything for them. That’s what he is, a family guy! And yet he’s always hiding (or at least attempting to hide) his more sensitive side with his abrasive personality, with his apparent greediness, his penny-pinching. Alex has mentioned in the DVD commentary that even Stan in his charismatic role as Mr. Mystery tries to get from the public the affection he never had from his family and lost from his brother. Ouch!

Ultimately, though, I think Stan introduced him perfectly in Not What He Seems, with a line that might as well summarize Ford’s character: “The Author of the Journals... my brother.” These are Ford’s two lmost important roles in the narrative.

Ford is definitely more difficult to pin down, because a lot of his personality is just subverting classic tropes. He’s a nerd, but not your typical nerd—strong, agile, and always down to fight. He seems like a classic wise mentor (to Dipper) at first—until you realize he’s not wise at all. He’s the responsible, rational sibling, meant to contrast against Stan’s chaotic, reckless personality—but wait, he’s just as bad as Stan!

Ford is also an amalgamation of tropes you don’t often see combined together! The ambitious mad scientist with the badass sci-fi adventurer with the tragic hubris-filled Greek hero! Something I find very refreshing about him!

First, the Author of the Journals. All about the weird, the bizarre, the anomalous. This is how Ford introduces himself in Journal 3, the first thing he considers worth mentioning: “Who am I? To put it simply, I am strange. I was born strange, I am attracted to the strange, and the strange has always been attracted to me.” The side of Ford that considers himself special, that fuels both his arrogance and insecurities, which in turn fuel his mistakes. The side of him that is curious and knowledgeable, that attracted Dipper so much.

This is how he ends up defining himself by the end of it, though: “If I’m totally honest, I must admit that he’s a hero and I’m... a hero’s brother.” A hero’s brother. Stan’s brother. The second, no less important, side of him.

Ford’s character was pretty much molded around Stan’s. People who’ve followed me for a while must be tired of me quoting this interview by now, but again, because it’s undeniably related to what we are talking of:

Ford was very much us building backwards. The same way you know a black hole is there by the light warped around it, it’s like, you know the damage someone’s family has done to them by all of their weird tics and behaviors. So who is the character who would result in Stan being this hurt and needy and mad and also longing?

Followed by another highly important trait of Ford’s:

He’s aloof, and distant, and he’s too perfect. And it’s like, “oh! I think he’s also aloof and distant from himself.”

I think he is, uh, deeply deeply hiding from his real feelings about things, because at some point early on, he decided that he could run from hurt by achievement and by creation, and has dug that hole so deep that he has no relationships.

I can’t stress enough how much I love the expression “distant from himself.” I couldn’t phrase it better. Ford is distant from himself! Yes! Exactly! His character is drenched in his tendency to repress his feelings, his cognitive dissonance and rationalizing. You can’t take the things he says at face value.

Stan lies to others, Ford lies to himself.

But of course he forgave Stan, of course his “Trust No One” era had an ending. After all, Gravity Falls is about family. That’s the theme of the show. That’s why Stan’s the hero. The narrative rewards loving and caring for your family members.

You also said “without any headcanons or sort of additions that are not present in the canon material,” and to me the way Stan and Ford’s characters are the most modified by fandom culture is through their jerkiness levels, so to speak, hahah. In my opinion, both of them are jerks. The difference is that 1) Stan is upfront about it and admits to being a jerk (word for word in Little Gift Shop of Horrors: “That’s right, I’m a jerk!”), even taking delight in it (as Alex mentioned in another episode commentary) while Ford, wanting to see himself as a great man, is painfully hypocritical about it (which makes Stan more sympathetic in the eyes of the audience), 2) Stan is treated as comic relief by the narrative, while Ford is taken more seriously (I will also elaborate on that in the future), and 3) Stan is a better brother than Ford is, not necessarily a better man, but in a show that is about the importance of family and rewards characters that value it, the two often get mixed.

If you take away any headcanons or additions, you’d also take away the romantic flavor of their relationship (if you’re a stancest shipper, that is; I just assume you are because my blog is mainly about stancest). I certainly don’t believe stancest is canon or implied to be canon! Not in a Doylist sense, anyway. However, you don’t take away the fierce love, obsession, and devotion they have for one another. They, quote unquote, “desperately need each other,” and that’s not even me who’s saying that, but Alex. I do believe they’re each other’s most important relationship, since they shaped each other, and are perfect foils at that.

[zephrunsimperium]

It takes a very special kind of strength to spend three decades working on something you can barely comprehend just to bring back someone who didn’t treat you as well as they should.

What kills me is just how uncertain everything would have been. Stan had frighteningly little information to go off of, yet staggeringly unshakable faith. The way he talks to himself while he’s working on it just twists my soul about because he has no idea what’s going to happen when he turns the portal on. He has no idea if Ford is even still alive and I think at this point, the idea of all his work being for nothing would actually destroy him.

Imagine if Ford didn’t come through the portal. The implication that you spent 30 years on something and it didn’t mean anything, that you probably killed the only person who ever believed in you because you’re just That Incompetent and they were all right about you, you were never going to amount to anything because you are the scum of the earth, you are nothing more than a Stan Co. knock off of the real thing and even though you deserve every bad thing that’s happened, it just hurts and the fact that no one cares makes it that much worse.

Ford calls Stan a hero, but I worry that that epithet is too vague to really impact him. Because sure, Stan may have untold trauma from living in the dregs of society, but Ford has blood splattered journals and a rivalry with a demon. That’s what heroes look like. They don’t look like tired old charlatans who run a tourist trap.

But strength - especially the kind of strength it must have required for Stan to even get up every morning - isn’t always flashy or even visible. Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is continue to love when the world has given you absolutely no reason to.

[ckret2]

“Bill Cipher was innocent. Dipper was his witness; Dipper, honest goody hero type, could verify that Bill not only repeatedly told them both to stay away from the thing in the sky, but also warned them to anchor themselves right before totality. Everyone at the shack knew he'd protested, knew he'd warned them, knew he'd begged to stay home. There was no possible way Bill could get blamed for this.”

I like how naive Bill is! Everyone would definitely blame him for Ford's death. This whole idea of "Say what you want to happen like it already happened" doesn't always work

I mean, they'd resent him for Ford's death. They'd initially assume it must be Bill's fault. There would be a lot of shouting. It wouldn't quite be as cut and dry as he's making it out.

But he was begging and pleading not to be taken outside during this whole event because it was Too Dangerous; MINUTES before totality he was throwing an absolute tantrum over the fact that Ford wouldn't go back to the cave; SECONDS before totality he warned Dipper & Ford to take cover. And every step along the way Ford called him a liar and pushed on with doing exactly what Bill said was dangerous. Soos believed Bill's warning, Dipper half believed it, and even Stan clearly thought Ford was acting irrationally as he left the shack. The only reason they'd have to think it was Bill's fault would be if Dipper lied out of spite—and that'd break his sister's heart.

So do you think Soos would blame him, after seeing Bill terrified of Ford's threat to drag him outside and after Bill told Soos information that could keep the whole town safe? Do you think Mabel would blame Bill? Do you think Dipper, who watched the whole thing and whose body Bill saved, would be able to bring himself to claim it was Bill's fault? The only one who MIGHT blame him would be Stan, but do you think the rest of the family would let him do anything drastic? Do you think he's gonna shoot Bill with Soos holding him back and Mabel physically shoving herself in between? Do you think Dipper's testimony would mean nothing to him? And past that first wave of anger, don't you think Stan knows what it's like to get damned as a kneejerk reaction to sabotage you never committed?

Believe me, everyone would WANT to blame Bill for Ford's death. They'd want it VERY VERY MUCH. But on what fucking grounds could they possibly justify saying it's his fault when everybody knows how frantically he insisted it was dangerous and just how damn clear he was that staying on the ground was essential to survival?

Bill's expectation is optimistic, but it's not wrong. The circumstances are too clear cut and the only guy in the family paranoid enough to think "it could have all been some elaborate setup" is dead. Have an ounce of faith in the Pines' ability to examine evidence and to stop themselves before scapegoating the most blameworthy-looking innocent in the room. At worst, he might lose another tooth before cooler heads prevail.

[0-amateur-writer-0]

With Gratitude

Characters: Stan Pines, Ford Pines.

Tags: Post-finale, Hurt-Comfort, Mostly Fluff

Wordcount: 823

Summary:

“Do ya still want me around if I didn’t save the world. If I wasn’t--…y’know, a hero?”

#

“Do ya still want me around if I didn’t save the world. If I wasn’t--…y’know, a hero?”

Ford looks up from where he was tending to Stan’s arm. Stan was looking down at his bandaged arm, though it was clear that his mind was someplace far away.

So, it was one of those days.

He had picked up the signs quickly enough. This happens whenever a recently recounted memory was deeply affecting his brother. It’s a bad one. The bad memories always illicit this sort of reaction. Though, previous incidents weren’t quite this bad.

Ford gently, yet firmly tightens the bandages on Stan’s arm. Closely inspecting his handiwork once more, before finally allowing Stan to tuck his injured arm closer to himself.

Ford chuckles. “I think that’s where you’re mistaken; you were always a hero, Stan.”

The look Stan threw him in return, were equal parts skeptical as it was confused. By all means, what he just said probably came off as absurd; calling his brother who lies and cheats as constantly as he breathes. Who has a criminal record a mile long—a hero, will no doubt come off as such.

But it doesn’t make it any less true.

“Always?” Stan questioned.

“At least to me.” Ford adds with a lopsided smile. “Remember how you gave me your glasses when those mean kids from the playground broke mine?”

Stan stares at him in confusion over the sudden change of topic, before nodding carefully; letting himself be led along the conversation.

“Once we got home, Dad yelled at you for 10 straight minutes; even grounded you for a whole month because of it. But you never told him what really happened. Or how about that time--…er, I suppose the several times you punched Crampelter in the face for calling me a freak. Or all the other times you—"

“I remember; why’d ya ask?” Stan’ eyes are getting more, and more focused now. The fog was lifting, and his brother was slowly coming back to himself.

Ford smiles sadly. “I seemed to have forgotten all that. I was only reminded of all those things you did for me, because of…recent events.” His smile drops. “…I should be the one asking you that: why do you still want me around after everything I’ve done?”

Stan opens his mouth to answer, but Ford shook his head. “It was rhetorical; I know why.”

“And to answer your question: you were a hero even before you went ahead and saved the world. And I couldn’t think of anyone I’d be lucky enough to get to spend my time with.” A pause. “Well, apart from the children, our friends, and our immediate family but…you know.”

“I ought to say this more often, but…thank you; for having been there when nobody else was.”

…

Thank you.

Stan blinks. Out of all the recent changes that happened in his life, this is definitely one he still wasn’t used to. It still somehow felt weird to hear Ford say that; maybe it’s due to how hard he had to work just to get one in the first place. But now, Ford just…kept giving it away to him so freely. Things that don’t require thanks, and even the smallest gestures that should’ve been paid no mind, were met with an almost unreasonable amount of gratitude.

Thank you for making breakfast.

Thank you for playing D, D, and more D with me.

And then,

Thank you for remembering.

Thank you for being here…

The last one really threw him for a loop. Because where else would he be besides here: on the Stan O’ War, sailing around the world on the adventure of a lifetime? It was just unnecessary, especially at the rate of which Ford’s doing it. Often times, they would be doing something mundane like fishing, or cleaning when Ford would all of a sudden turn to him, and then thank him for…simply existing it seems.

A sap, that’s what his brother is. He’d made it a point to say so whenever Ford gets like this. This time was no exception; because Ford really just dropped a whole speech on him about how he was totally his hero this entire time. Sure, like he’s supposed to believe that.

It was a good speech at least.

He was about to call Ford out on his sap-like behavior yet again, but then he stops. Ford was looking at him, not only that, Ford was looking at him the same way he often does whenever he looks at the kids—warm eyes, and tender smiles.

Stan absentmindedly rubs his bandaged arm. “…Anytime, Sixer.”

Looks like Ford’s not the only sap in this damn boat.

…

"Stanley Pines was the man who saved the world, not me. ... If I'm totally honest, I must admit that he's a hero and I'm...a hero's brother. And I'm OK with that."

--From the Journal of Stanford Pines.

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

because i'm predictable to all hell, Ford with 2 11 13 25 and/or 28 for the character asks?

YYEAAAHHHH FORD ASKS WOOO!!!!

2 - when i think i truly started to like them?

as soon as ae knew of his existence. ae loved him as a character before ae even saw his debut episode lmao. he became a comfort character and much more important to me when ✨trauma✨ happened. he means 'you can drop into hell itself and things can still get much much better' and ae love that about him <3

11 - what's the first thing you think about when thinking of the character?

stars/cetus/saturn/space in general, beige, lab coats, dark mysterious rooms, incomprehensible beings and forces, industrial music, saltwater-dried curls, jellyfish blooms, 'if my hands were free, i'd break every bone in your face', etc. etc.

13 - your favorite friendship they have?

doesn't he just have one friend? unless you're counting family and acquaintances too, in which case stan, especially during the sea grunks era ^^ but ae like his friendship with fiddleford a lot too!! they match each other's chaos pretty well

25 - when do you think they acted the most out of character?

him calling stan an idiot in the journal always seemed off to me. it just never seemed like he was genuinely angry enough to say those sorts of things about stan, y'know? especially him going 'idiot or hero?' in the journal, since we see him trying to be friendly to stan fairly soon after in the actual show (dungeons dungeons and more dungeons). it just seems hard to compare 'grah, you idiot!!' to 'maybe if you played my favorite game (something i am extremely nostalgic and excited for after thirty years of not being able to relax and thus is very important to me right now) you would have fun'

then again he did cross it out and ae can relate to going from 'oh i'm going to kill you' to 'wow i love you never leave me' (ae have never done that with you, dw) pretty quickly. special flavor of mental illness that makes everyone hate you. but also what do you mean he was more concerned with hiding the fact that he likes human blood than the fact that he called his brother an idiot

idk. it just sorta feels like they were like 'oh wait fuck we forgot to make him unlikable' to me hahah. and that's the only way they could do it since they already made the mistake of making him a good character in the show ^^

as for stuff in actual the show itself, him hearing bill go 'why did the old man do this?' and actually going 'oh shit why' has always struck me as a bit silly. in a positive way, because we love ford being silly

(you could also argue princess unattainable but the general fandom consensus seems to be that he IS princess unattainable and ae think that's funny so ae'm gonna say that was entirely in character for him hahah)

28 - the most unnecessary thing they ever did?

the fact that there was an entire bit about him handing a crossbow to mabel and she never even used it except to shoot through a window and startle stan

also, as a bonus-

ford having built an entire death ray and still going 'FUCK, UNICORN HAIR??? but they don't like my vibe! how are we going to get it??' is very funny to us. we love him, we love him so much, he's such a great character. top ten guys ever and he takes every spot, including the secret eleventh and twelfth ones

[emlovesredbull]

the main 4 as teenagers

or how i imagine them at least....

stan marsh

-tried to stay away from weed to avoid being like randy (it doesn't work)

-he's not addicted, he just has easy access to weed and likes the feeling it gives him

-massive alcoholic

-he doesn't enjoy going to parties, but there's free alcohol there so he usually takes a stash to the bathroom or a more private area to be alone

-smokes with kenny behind the school when he gets bored with class

-dyed his hair blonde after his dad called stan his mini-me

-has really shaggy bangs, but his hair is weirdly soft (he accidentally used shelley's shampoo one time and now he can't stop)

-mostly c's with a few b's

-always listening to music during class and then proceeds to complain about never knowing what's going on

-the quarterback of the football team and actually very good at it???

-pretty tall, about 6'1

-has a notebook filled with song ideas, but never records/performs the songs he writes

-drives a slightly beat up ford bronco

-wears a lot of baggy clothes, especially sweatshirts

-has a VERY bad depression room (lowkey me too)

-coaches kid's football over the summer for extra cash

kyle

-very smart, 4.0 gpa (he won't rub it in your face though)

-amazing at basketball but underestimates himself and gets very bad anxiety every single tryout season

-slight germophobe

-pretty clean person, likes a tidy room, but whenever he gets busy it gets a little messy sometimes

-tallest of the friendgroup, 6'4, but nobody knows where it came from because both of his parents are super short

-very bad at all of the videogames and always comes last when the boys play

-doesn't smoke, but he drinks occasionally

-not a party boy, he'd much rather stay in, but sometimes kenny and stan drag him to functions

-he stands by the snack table and somehow always ends up helping a really drunk person

-gained better anger management strategies, but it's still fairly easy to make him tick

-drives a white subaru legacy

-sheila makes sure he always looks presentable, so he wears a lot of sweaters and jeans

-he still wears a hat to cover up his curls

-took up guitar a couple years after his guitar hero phase, but it usually sits in the corner untouched

-cancels plans a lot because sheila makes him pick up ike

kenny

-shows up to everything high (asked randy how to grow weed and started a little garden in his backyard)

-mostly c's with a few d's s

-usually leaves in the middle of the school day to go work one of his jobs

-pulls up to random snapchat functions with stan (and kyle)

-is the drummer in a band

-has very shaggy and somewhat long hair

-has a reputation as a playboy

-karen is always painting his nails different colors

-drives a beat-up truck he found in the junkyard (kevin helped him hotwire it)

-secretly really enjoys romcoms

-also enjoys the playboy magazines he sells to the middle school boys

-has been kicked out of target 34 times

-his clothes are kind of old and torn, so he adopted a grunge style so it looked natural

-treats girls surprisingly good because of his experience with his little sister

-speaking of karen, he saves a little bit of every paycheck to buy her something special

-spends the night in his car (with karen ofc) sometimes after his parents fight

-is 5'11

cartman

-worked at kfc but got fired for eating the skin off of people's chicken and then serving it to them

-throws parties sometimes and people only go to them to trash his house

-surprisingly gets straight a's

-varsity bench rider for football, but by the way he brags about it you'd think he's starting (he's a linebacker btw)

-genuinely believes he has abs (he does not, and the girls would like him to put his shirt back on)

-is famous on twitch, youtube and twitter for his gameplay and commentary (he's like a teenage boy trisha paytas)

-has the ice cream tiktok boy hairstyle and thinks it makes him look cool

-is like 5'8

-has a very basic style, and pretty much only wears nike

-runs an anonymous advice tiktok account and gaslights people into believing his bad advice

-drives a red convertible he BEGGED liane for

-doesn't really smoke, but he likes vaping and alcohol

-listens to edm music and everyone else despises it

-pretended to be a serial killer one time because he thought it was funny

-the teachers hate him because he's super loud and disruptive in their classes, but he's super smart effortlessly

-doesn't use deodorant

-or shower multiple times in a week

-his hair is very greasy

-definitely has a discord kitten because none of the girls at school like him

[callipraxia]

Oh, dear - good luck getting your emotional breath back! I spent...let's say, more hours than I care to admit to this weekend working on this thing, but it was super-fun. Thanks for the impetus to finally pull some things together!

Everything that I know about Ford points to him connecting his self-worth to how hard he's pushing himself...He only feels like he's worth something if he's miserable. 

Good point - it's a weird balance of masochism/a martyr complex, and the self-loathing thing again. I think there's a level - or multiple levels - on which he's afraid to not be miserable, at least pre-finale. Bill sold him the golden dream of being happy, or at least in a condition which he thought would make him happy at that time. Happiness therefore now equals temptation, temptation should be avoided for fear of weakness...after all, he was fooled before, wasn't he? Trusting himself again may be as hard as trusting other people.

Was he convinced that suffering made you more heroic, more manly, more admirable?

I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not sure he thought of it that way as a child necessarily - the Stan O' War and associated fantasy play with Stan were envisioned as escape - but as an adult? Yeah, based on his liking for playing a part an adult, I wouldn't be surprised at all if he wasn't tapping into some early idea of the Suffering Hero. There's more than a bit of evidence that he doesn't enjoy being alone at all, and he seems as much bitter as regretful when he reflects on how he can never share his burdens with anyone. He wants (and needs) his Fellowship to help him get through, but also thinks he doesn't deserve it/that it simply can't happen because he's the hero*, and the hero stands alone.

*I will give him a bit of charity here - while he had some main character syndrome beforehand, I think he came to slot himself into the rigid, stereotyped role of Hero to the extent he did in no small part due to his interaction with Jheselbraum. From his point of view: he was dying, and an extradimensional force swooped in to save him. Then he received an unusual gift (of sorts) to aid him in his quest, and he even was told about a prophecy which seemed to be about him defeating the Big Bad. "I'm the Chosen One" isn't an unreasonable interpretation of the evidence he had to hand, even without his preexisting feelings of personal responsibility for the Situation with the Big Bad and having been told he was special and fated his whole life anyway.

I've always assumed that Ford calling Fidds to help him work on the portal was Bill's idea

Interesting! That idea had never occurred to me, I suppose because of how much trouble Fiddleford ended up with the potential to cause Bill. However, goodness knows Bill is bad to underestimate people, so he might have seen Fiddleford as a non-threat and then gotten a nasty surprise when he then found himself with extra work to do to drive the wedge between them.

And it's not hard to convince Ford of this; after all, he trusted Stan and Stan hurt him deeply.

Yep. It wasn't hard for a controlling, abusive individual to cut Ford off from his support system because it was already such a fragile, barely-extant thing at that point. This is one of the things behind my idea that Bill...is as smart as he looks, maybe, but he's also lazy. He looks for the easiest possible target, the one he can get his claws into with the least effort. His desire for quick gratification ends up being his downfall...but that's another essay.

Bill thinks Ford is like him - they're both freaks, they're both angry at the world for turning its back on them. But Ford cares for people; he COULD have been as evil as Bill, but he decided not to be and that is utterly heroic. 

Excellent summation. On some level...Bill wants to create his own world, but Ford on some level always just wanted the world that exists to accept him, have a place for him. When he's a small boy, he doesn't want to show them, show them all! He wants to find a place where "freaks like me fit in." In elementary school, he brought something interesting to Show and Tell presumably in the hopes of impressing his classmates; he tried to hold somebody's hand once. I suspect (based on the implication that he had never heard of WTC before the meeting in the principal's office) that the reason he blows up so much over the college thing is more because he had just started to entertain the idea of going to a place full of people like him, people who'd share the interests he'd never had anyone to share with before and where he could have friends, when that shiny new possibility got yanked away. When he meets someone he considers his equal or even superior (Fiddleford), he appears to be delighted by it, and when he gets home, he's not even able to keep his promise to stay away from the family for a whole day. He wants relationships and to care about people and to be cared about, whereas Bill clearly couldn't give two flips about his so-called 'friends.'

That is a lot of learned behavior to undo, but I hope that once he does, he'll be able to rest, finally. He definitely deserves sweet dreams for once.

Yup. I think it might have been @from-hecks-heart-i-stabbeth-thee who I once saw make a post about "Ford x Restful Sleep" being the real OTP of the entire show; might not have been, it was a while ago, but the post definitely existed. A joke, of course, but he definitely deserves it at this point.

As semi-promised on Thursday night: here is a fuller explication of my thoughts after reading @zephrunsimperium's post about Ford and anger (which you should go check out their various Ford analysis pieces if you haven’t, they’re excellent and, unlike me, actually get to the point in a timely manner!)...thoughts which ultimately melded with some attempts at another essay I had semi-abandoned a few months ago, so hold on tight, friends, you’re in for quite the long ride with this one, should you choose to wade through it to the end, for this essay is more than 10,000 words long. Numbers in parentheses indicate endnotes, which can be found at the, well, end. Trigger warnings for extended discussions of multiple kinds of abuse portrayed/only thinly made into metaphors in the GF canon, and for discussion of mental health. For anyone feeling up to dealing with all that...read on below the cut.

To my way of thinking, one of the most essential things for understanding Ford lies in recognizing all the gaps between who he is, who he wants to be, and who he wants other people to think he is, and the intersection of anger, the performance of masculinity, and his long, long history of relational traumas is the fateful crossroads which those gaps emanate from. At the risk of sounding unduly like a pop psychologist, I also think his father is an important individual to consider in light of these issues.

Filbrick, as Stan tells us in ATOTS, was a strict man who had “the personality of a cinderblock.” Stan is not always a terribly reliable narrator, but he seems to lack the ability to lie to the flashback camera, and the first few flashbacks of the episode give us a glimpse at what the Pines family was like in the sixties which supports Stan’s assertion about his father. In those scenes, Filbrick is the only character we don’t see expressing strong emotion of some kind before the science fair, something that makes the ‘sound and fury’ of the scene where Stan is disowned, when it comes around, all that much more shocking. Until this point, Filbrick came about as close to physically resembling a cinderblock as his personality was said to; even when he expressed approval of Ford in the principal’s office, it was a relatively muted display, barely more emotive than his earlier “I’m not impressed” or his silent disappointment in the season one flashback when Stan recalls the summer Filbrick first sent him to boxing lessons. We learn after the science fair that he can, apparently, express anger very vividly, but “Lost Legends” further underlines how he is otherwise mostly emotionally inaccessible to his family; Stan (despite being far more aware of his emotions than he might like to admit that he is) cannot just talk to his father about how he feels, and once again, the only concrete emotion Filbrick shows on-screen is anger. Pictures near the end suggest possible mild experiences of a few other feelings, and the adult Ford, narrating many years after the fact and very probably after Filbrick’s death, speculates about what might have been going on in his head, but those feelings are never made explicit the way his anger is. We don’t know why Filbrick is this way (the closest thing to a hint we get is the information that he was a World War II veteran - there is, after all, a reason for the common portrayal of the Stan twins’ entire generation as one which was saddled with cruddy fathers in the aftermaths of World War II and Korea – but for all we know, Filbrick could have been like that before the War, too. What was his family life like, growing up? His financial condition? Could he just be someone who was born with a strong predisposition toward an emotional or personality disorder, regardless of whatever else happened in his life? We just don’t have enough information about him to say for sure), but it seems safe to speculate that he was this way pretty consistently: whatever else was going on with him, the only emotion he seems to have felt comfortable expressing was anger.

And this is the guy Ford and Stan had held up to them as their first, and quite possibly most influential, example of what being a man is.

I’d argue that – when they were children, at least – this was more of a problem for Stan than for Ford. Filbrick presumably saw them both as shamefully weak as children, but Ford, at least, had another route to the old man’s approval readily available to him. If Filbrick was at least grudgingly proud of Ford’s intelligence, then Ford could receive the measure of parental approval which Stan craved and could never get; we also see that Ford could apparently hold his own while sparring with Stan by the time they were teenagers, so it’s likely enough that he no longer had to worry about physical assault from his classmates by the time he was in high school, either. Though still isolated and insecure underneath it all because of his childhood experiences and probably in part due to his ongoing social isolation, Ford was able to find a path to a kind of self-esteem: he was both brilliant and quite capable of using his six fingers to break your nose if you had too much to say about them, and he knew it, and everyone else knew it, too. He also had his brother as a constant source of support. When Ford was made to look ridiculous by having a drink thrown in his face in public, Stan promptly threw a drink in his own face in order to look even more ridiculous. When Ford won competitions, which he seems to have started doing at an impressive rate very early in life, Stan seems to have been almost over-enthusiastic in his approval: he looks as delighted about Ford winning the science fair (at the time, before the meeting with the principal) as Ford himself does, if not even happier about it. Even his habit of copying off Ford’s papers in class could have served as a reinforcement for Ford’s ego: he not only could manage for himself, but he could even allow someone else to depend on him.

In this way, by the time everything went wrong, the teenaged Ford had probably already developed a degree of self-respect and self-sufficiency that Stan was still struggling to reliably maintain forty years later. Neither of them could ever be the kind of man Filbrick was, or of which they thought he would approve, they were both too emotionally vulnerable and expressive for that, but it’s probably noteworthy that Ford kept pictures of famous scientists (instead of family photographs) around him during his college and young adult years: because he could also do something Filbrick never could, he was able, to some degree, to carve out an idea of “how to be a man” on his own terms. If Filbrick’s approval was an immovable object in the path between Stan, Ford, and healthy expressions of adult masculinity, then where Stan flailed against it, Ford simply walked around it by choosing new conscious role models.

Tesla, Sagan, Einstein, and company were “great men,” successful (well, at least remembered posthumously) and respected, who were also given to Nerdy Enthusiasms. Said enthusiasm, an open delight in the marvels of the natural world, was therefore an emotion besides anger that Ford could express freely without compromising his view of himself, and it seems that he did so regularly. This appears to have worked well for him; we know very little about his college years – only that he worked very hard, that he made at least one close friend and (based on his usage of the plural ‘friends’ when discussing DD&MD) possibly even had a social group of sorts, and that he continued to indulge his creative side to a degree by playing DD&MD, which was as close as someone in his late teens and early twenties could probably get to continuing the kind of fantasy play he’d enjoyed as a child without sabotaging his probable adolescent desire to feel very grown up – but it seems they were productive and reasonably happy. Six years after them, a slice of his life comes into focus for us in the form of his journal. He was probably around thirty to thirty-three years old when it was written(1), give or take a year or two, and we find him several years into the circumstances he was in when he says, as a much older man, that he’d finally found somewhere to belong. He could be lying - Ford, unusually, even has the ability to lie to the flashback camera, or at least omit things - but we don't really have any reason to believe this; when the flashbacks turn to Stan making an abortive attempt at contact, Ford on the phone sounds cheery. His lack of paranoia and surprise about someone phoning him is also not the only evidence that, at this time, he may not even have been totally socially isolated in Gravity Falls – in the same years, he goes to the public library with some regularity, he declines to buy cookies from a zombie Boy Scout, he converses sometimes with the mailman, and he is on friendly enough terms with Dan Corduroy, even some years after Dan finished building Ford’s house, to know that Dan’s family had a holiday cabin and to ask to use it. Clearly nobody was too close to Ford even then, but his chosen path was going reasonably well for him; it's possible that Stan might have found him rather harder to replace at this point than he did later, after an unspecified time lapse, which may have lasted as long as a year,(2) during which Ford had gradually became a complete recluse as he became more and more consumed by his relationship with Bill Cipher. Before that time lapse, Ford the man seems like a logical enough place for Ford the boy to have ended up; after it…..

Well, after it is where we get back to the topics of anger and its intersection with various aspects of identity and self-concept.

A decent place to begin is with Fiddleford, and with why, exactly, Ford asked him to come to Gravity Falls. Ford tells us that he asked Fiddleford to come because he (Ford) did not have the technical know-how to complete the Portal. There is some evidence to support the veracity of this idea: Fiddleford is, after all, the man who later proves able to build astonishingly lifelike robot monsters whilst homeless (and thus, it seems safe to assume, without conventional sources of funds or supplies), and he is the one who sees the flaws in the Portal design. Indeed, he seems to start spotting them before he even has a chance to physically see them: Ford tells us that Fiddleford started suggesting revisions to the plans over the phone while still in California, in the same conversation where he agreed to come. In the third portion of the Journal, the sixtysomething Ford also mentions hearing about how a Parallel Earth Fiddleford was convinced to come back to the project, at which point the Parallel Portal was stabilized and became something that could be used the way Ford had intended to use it (as opposed to how Bill had intended to use it). The implication is that Ford not only didn’t understand how to complete the Portal, but that he also didn’t understand the plans even as far as he thought he understood them. Certainly the Fiddleford of the main timeline, who would have worked with him before, was instantly suspicious about the existence of a third collaborator once he saw how far Ford had gotten without him, which further supports the idea that Ford was more of a theoretician than a mechanic. This does, however, run somewhat against the grain of much of what we see Ford do on-screen. As a teenager of modest economic means, he was shown to be as comfortable working with his hands as with his pencil, and he was able to build something which acted enough like a perpetual motion device that he won a state-wide competition and drew the attention of an elite university. At university, he created the mind control tie – something which appears, both by its existence and by the glimpse we get of how it’s wired in “The Stanchurian Candidate,” to involve electronics more sophisticated than what Fiddleford was shown working with in roughly the same time period. I tend to run with the idea that the events of the episode “The Stanchurian Candidate” only happened in a particularly vivid nightmare of Stan’s, and therefore include the tie simply because it was in the Journal, but if one goes with official canon and accepts that “Stanchurian Candidate” happened, then Ford somehow, in a matter of hours, with no budget or supplies, invented a thousand-year lightbulb that also improves the complexion of the user in the same episode that shows us the wiring of the tie. In the eighties, he also seems to have developed his mind-encrypting machine as a private project, and in the Multiverse, he survived entirely on what he could steal or construct for thirty years, and it seems he had progressed a long way toward the development of the Quantum Destabilizer on his own before he stumbled into the ‘Better World’ dimension; Parallel Fiddleford really just sped the completion process up because he’d happened to discover a useful fuel source for presumably completely unrelated reasons years before Ford showed up. Clearly, Ford can more than hold his own as an engineer, and as one with a particular flair for doing impossible things with electricity and the laws of energy conservation; even Fiddleford trusted his gift in that area enough to, however reluctantly, briefly accept his claim that he had been working alone despite his serious doubts about the idea, and to allow Ford to bully him into silence about the Portal’s design flaws for weeks or possibly months before the confrontation at the diner. Why, then, did he suddenly become convinced, during that fateful July, that he could not finish the Portal without Fiddleford?

The answer may lay a few pages further back in the Journal. Not long before he calls Fiddleford, Ford makes notes on the plans for the Portal that Bill had showed him in a dream. One of these notes is “I MUST NOT LOSE MY NERVE!” Later, in a state of mind where he is increasingly paranoid and beginning to lose a degree of touch with reality, he reflects repeatedly about Fiddleford’s nerve in similar terms. There may well have been some level, deep down, on which Ford knew he was getting in over his head, and he was scared out of his mind by that realization. If this is true, then, on some level, he knew something was...off, with what was going on around him. He knew he needed help from someone he trusted and who was not Bill. And so he reached out to his college roommate for that help, and he did so in a way that allowed him to still plausibly deny just how much trouble he was in, both to himself and everyone else, and he didn’t only need that deniability because he was inviting a third party into the isolation of an increasingly abusive relationship and would need an excuse if Bill took exception to the idea of Ford relying on anyone or anything other than Bill. He also needed that plausible deniability to preserve his self-concept, because by this time, whatever he had or hadn’t been earlier, Ford Pines had become a deeply, deeply dishonest man.

One of the key moments for understanding this - and, in many ways, the character overall - occurs in “Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons.” There, Ford delivers the exasperated line, “if my hands were free, I’d break every part of your face!” If that line was taken totally out of context and shown to a casual viewer, the casual viewer would likely misidentify it as a line of Stan’s. Stan is, after all, the character with the hair-trigger temper and violent tendencies, right?

To an extent, yes. In “The Golf War,” Stan asks Soos if it would be “wrong” to punch a child (Pacifica) – probably more of an indirect threat in response to Pacifica’s insults toward the Pineses than a true question, but Stan’s moral code is sufficiently different from the standard issue that one can’t completely dismiss the possibility that he really wanted to, well, punch a child. And who can forget his antics in “The Land Before Swine” or “Scaryoke,” where he punches his way single-handed through monsters which had defeated the rest of the cast? Or in “Not What He Seems,” where he takes on multiple government agents in zero gravity while, for at least part of the time, he had his hands fastened behind his back? Or that glorious moment in the finale when he did, in fact, break every part of Bill Cipher’s glitched-out face? Stan is also the character who lost his temper to the extent that he lashed out at Ford physically in the middle of the save-the-world ritual, and Stan is the one who keeps his old boxing gloves around his bedroom, along with owning at least one set of brass knuckles. As an old man, he still seems to take pride in having learned to fight back against the world physically as a child, and he recommends that Dipper try knocking Robbie unconscious bare-handed when Dipper is challenged to a fight. And, of course, the man is a menace whenever he gets within a certain radius of the Stanmobile, the vehicle that can take out roadway railings, light poles, and theme park gates without showing a scratch. There’s no denying it: Stan is perhaps many other things, too, but he’s also a very physically aggressive kind of guy. If, therefore, someone in this series was going to threaten to break someone’s face, it seems obvious it would be Stan…but it wasn’t. It was his supposedly milder-mannered, “goody nerd-shoes,” brother who, on examination, actually behaves far more casually violently than Stan does throughout his sadly short time in the series. To demonstrate:

Ford sets foot in his house for the first time in thirty years and identifies the first person he sees as his brother. Later, writing in his reclaimed journal, Ford describes his own reaction thus: “instinct took over and I punched him right in the face. I feel kind of bad about that!” 

In the very next episode - aside from his antics in the first scenes(3) and the already-mentioned description of what he’d like to do to Probabilitator after the wizard captures him - we also have Ford’s immediate reaction to the wizard’s materialization. Stan is, naturally, most clearly unnerved by an evil math wizard suddenly materializing in the TV room, but there’s a moment where he glances sideways at Ford after Ford pulls a gun; to me, at least, this glance made it seem like he found that behavior pretty disturbing as well. For the past several hours, after all, Ford had been playing board games. Most people do not bring concealed guns to game night with their nephews. Ford does.

Stan and Ford both have wanted posters that show up ‘on screen’ – Stan’s in his box of memorabilia in “Not What He Seems,” and Ford’s in Journal 3. Stan’s talks about “scams, frauds, and identity theft” - all potentially serious crimes that can ruin the lives of the people on the other ends of them, but ones which follow the general tendency (per the reading I did last March) of real-world con men to avoid violence in the commission of their crimes. Ford’s, on the other hand, refers to its subject as ���armed and dangerous,’ and as someone with a bounty on his head. From the way Ford depicts his own appearance in it, it seems likely that particular version of the poster is at least ten to fifteen years old, but in “Lost Legends,” he is still instantly recognizable in the multiverse for his criminal shenanigans, even in the company of his near-identical twin. In his own words, “a number of dimensions consider me an outlaw to this day.” If one uses the dictionary definition of the term - and considering how much variety comes up just in the few examples Ford gives of worlds he’s visited, there’s no reason to assume he hasn’t visited a few Premodern Justice Dimensions - this means there could be multiple dimensions out there where the authorities took the time and trouble to formally declare that he had done something shocking enough to justify the revocation of all rights and protections he might have otherwise enjoyed under the law, thus allowing anyone to do anything they could physically manage to him with no fear of any negative repercussions except those he could personally inflict on them. He also refers to his own  exploits as “swashbuckling” (a term which brings piracy to mind) and offhandedly mentions travels with “bandits” (a term which describes practitioners of behavior usually classified under the ‘organized crime’ umbrella due to the cooperative nature of the often violent or potentially violent crimes in question).

Much of this behavior, it’s true, can be attributed to a combination of trauma responses and, in the Multiverse, sheer necessity. He refers in the journal to talking “my way into and out of food and shelter,” and the “out of” comment underlines how, like Stan before him, he very abruptly went from having a relatively stable situation (at least in the material sense) to being homeless, which would be at least a serious shock to the system of almost anyone, including people in much better mental health than he was in at that time. Then there’s the more complicated non-material aspects of his previous situation. As an adult reader, it’s stomach-knotting to go through the 1980s portion of the journal, because if you look at the behaviors and dynamics and leave out the “incorporeal eldritch abomination” element, it only takes a very little extrapolation from the material for his ‘partnership’ with Bill becomes an uncomfortably realistic depiction of a domestic abuse situation. Considering that either of these major traumas of 1981-1982 could (and, if the fantastical elements are stripped out, regularly do) induce PTSD in nearly anyone, and considering how many more traumatic events he doubtless went through in the years following, it’s not implausible that the man would develop a tendency toward believing that the best defense is a good offense. However, there is also evidence that at least some of these tendencies predated Ford’s major traumas, and that – despite how he would very likely insist this was not the case - the trigger-happy adrenaline addict we meet in “A Tale of Two Stans” may not represent a total change in character from who he was before the Portal – or even before Bill. The evidence here is admittedly scarcer and more ambiguous, but to illustrate:

In Journal 3, Ford seems sincerely puzzled about why Fiddleford would show signs of trauma after the gremlobin incident. This incident involved Fiddleford being shown his worst fear (something which ended in tourists being removed from the Mystery Shack via stretcher in apparent catatonic states. Fiddleford was a  man who probably had an anxiety disorder to begin with, who was just accepting the reality of the supernatural, and who was living, for at least several months, hours away from where his wife and young son were, something which seems to have troubled him at the best of times. It's remarkable he was functioning at all after the gremlobin incident). He was also hit with a bunch of venomous quills, and flown through the air by something which clearly had no good intentions for him in mind…and that was all before the solution to the situation ended up involving Ford crash-landing everyone through the roof of a barn, breaking Fiddleford’s arm in the process.

The gremlobin incident is not the only time Ford, even before the multiverse, appears bewildered by perfectly ordinary responses to frightening stimuli. While Fiddleford admittedly may have had some form of anxiety or compulsive disorder to begin with (an idea supported by events like his tearing out his own hair under stress and his need to correct the Cubik’s Cube), his reactions to monsters appear far more reasonable than Ford’s offhand assertion that he has survived many monster attacks without registering any of the experiences as traumatic.

When Fiddleford was in danger, Ford’s automatic response involved, essentially, jumping off a cliff and hoping the magnet gun-to-hyperdrive attraction would first catch and then carry him long enough for him to catch up…and that he would then somehow figure out how to land the improvised gremlobinmobile without killing himself, Fiddleford, and the monster all in one go.

When we go into the bunker in “Into the Bunker,” Soos finds a candy dispenser in a cabinet filled with weapons. These weapons appear to be a mix of firearms alongside various medieval or Renaissance-style pieces. It is, of course, possible - though to my mind, improbable; Fiddleford seems to prefer indirect methods of aggression, mostly in the form of homicidal robots - that some or all of these weapons belonged to Fiddleford, but there is also evidence that there was a similar mix of weapons in the house which later became the Mystery Shack: sside from Ford’s singular ideas about how to answer a door in “A Tale of Two Stans,” we also see a box of other manual weapons which Dipper has access to in “Boss Mabel,” and which Stan is seen rifling through to find a crossbow - presumably the same one which had come alarmingly close to his nose thirty years earlier – at the beginning of “Love God.” Stan further asserts there are ten guns in the Shack during “Fight Fighters,” but we never see them; even while fighting against zombies, while following pterodactyls into caverns beneath the town, and during Weirdmageddon, Stan routinely arms himself with bludgeoning weapons, not ranged ones. The only time we see him use a ranged weapon (at least that I can recall) is the time he aims the crossbow at a balloon, which was out of reach. Ford, however, despite demonstrating almost immediately upon arrival that he’s quite capable of fighting without one, repeatedly uses ranged weapons even in close quarters: the crossbow in Stan’s face, the handgun in the living room, the Quantum Destabilizer during Weirdmageddon, the spear in the closing montage of the finale. These examples are, of course, all justifiable enough in their various contexts, but the combination of several incidents and all the weapons around the house and its environs makes it seem eminently possible that Ford was a bit of a weapons nut long before he became an interdimensional fugitive, and that if there actually are ten guns in the house, Stan may have more or less 'inherited' them along with the Stanford identity.

When Bill - who knew Ford very well before the Portal - shows Ford a vision of a possible future in an attempt to convince Ford to join him in his conquest of the universe, it is a vision of complete destruction. We see Bill’s giant finger tearing cities apart in an uncomfortable amount of detail, and are treated to the sight of planets being munched on like apples…and this is Bill’s sales pitch, the ‘party’ he is inviting Ford to and really, really wants Ford to agree to attend. This leaves us with two options: either Bill can’t understand that anyone might ultimately desire anything beyond or besides the chance to participate in unlimited, consequence-free violence (something which doesn’t square too well with Bill’s otherwise apparently excellent grasp of human motivation and how to manipulate it to serve his own ends), or Bill has some reason for thinking that the prospects of immortality and a group of ‘friends’ to destroy things with on a massive scale might genuinely appeal to his “old pal” just as much as the prospect of being “all-powerful” and “all-knowing” would. This is also hinted at by how Bill appears to try to convince Ford to relate to him by revealing that he was once mortal himself and explaining that he burned his dimension before offering Ford the chance to effectively do the same to the universe of the canon timeline. 'Become a god of destruction' or 'get tortured a lot' were also not the only possible options Bill could have offered; he could, for instance, have tried to convince Ford that if he (for all intents and purposes) became a god, then he could save at least some sapient life-forms in the universe from Bill by setting up his galaxy as a benevolent dictatorship or the like, with the alternative being that everyone would die if Ford didn’t take that deal. Bill did not attempt anything of the sort. Bill, at least, thinks Ford is not only capable of observing or even committing acts of great violence, but that he is capable of relishing the opportunity to do so.

Why are all these things easy to overlook? In part, it is because Ford wants us to overlook them, because they do not ‘fit’ with the person Ford wishes that he was. He wants, very much, to see himself as a cool-headed, utterly rational, cultured figure – not least because this would represent a total contrast to his twin brother and everything Stan stands for, either in reality or inside Ford’s imagination - and so he uses long words and is usually fairly softly-spoken. He emphasizes his “well-ordered and scientific mind” even as he behaves in ways which suggest he’s highly volatile and puts in writing (however carefully concealed the information might be behind veils of words) that he planned to make his name on a scientific project which wasn’t of his own design, a behavior which indicates a comfort with shortcuts even more potentially disastrous than Stan’s. When he does, rarely, have to acknowledge something that he would rather not acknowledge directly, he always immediately justifies the potentially unflattering behavior in fairly grandiose ways - stealing radioactive materials, for instance, is rationalized as a ‘doing a public service,’ and all the things he did to become a wanted man in multiple dimensions are, similarly, lumped together and dismissed as crimes committed “for a noble purpose.” No doubt some of them were, but on the page about the Infinity Die, one doesn’t really get the impression that he was particularly discriminating about when he used that thing, considering the usage statistics we’re given. The page informs us that the Die saved Ford’s life three times, endangered it “around 20,” permanently changed the color of a sky one time…and that it’s been used enough other times besides these that he can note the odd frequency of rolling a four(4). When talking to Dipper, he also seems quite confident about just how far the Die can warp reality - he doesn’t speak as if “the universe could turn into an egg” is an exaggeration. Use of the Infinity Die would not be a reliable way to limit damage or even to advance his goals while committing other crimes, so it becomes a bit difficult to justify his apparently relatively casual use of it as something he did only as a last resort and/or only in service of a noble purpose. Most fans recognize that he clearly started over-identifying Dipper with himself toward the end of the series, but he identifies Dipper with himself only when it comes to traits he is proud of having; otherwise, the “grammar, Stanley” remark is one of the few criticisms he has of Stan which doesn’t also come across as something he might want to say about himself and his own less desirable qualities, if he could only bring himself to acknowledge them for what they are in plain language. It reads, to borrow from someone I once talked about the character with on Reddit, like “my man is just as chaotic [as Stan], he just manifests it differently.”

Part of this difference lies in their respective approaches to the truth. Neither is anything you could reasonably call an honest man, but the distinction lies in how Ford appears to lie to himself a lot more often than Stan does. Stan, outside of ‘working hours,’ is utterly up-front about who and what he is and what he cares about: he’s a crook and a grifter and a liar, interested only in that which benefits him and the small number of people he personally cares about. Only once, when contemplating his epitaph in “The Stanchurian Candidate,” does he show anything even vaguely resembling shame about this, and even then, he still includes the detail that he would, of course, be a crooked mayor if he became one. It's entirely possible that the only ultimately sacrificed himself to destroy Bill because of the direct and imminent threat Bill represented to his individual relatives. As the man himself once said: it wasn’t enough for him to be the town’s hero, because his real agenda was being Dipper and Mabel’s. Ford, on the other hand, seems to have shared many of Stan’s desires (wealth, respect, shortcuts to these things) as a young man, but also to have always felt some need to convince himself that he wanted more (for lack of a better term) socially acceptable ‘side features’ as well. When he dreams of scientific accomplishment, he will admit he looks forward to riches and glory...but he also throws in that he wants to revolutionize science to enhance the well-being of all mankind, too. When he writes down the story of how he began his quest to kill Bill, he acknowledges that he wished to “wreak vengeance for the life he stole from me” - but only after saying he would “save the multiverse from [Bill’s] wrath.” Later, though, when talking about his meeting with a parallel Fiddleford, he refers to his vow as a “vendetta” - a word defined as “a blood feud in which the family of a murdered person seeks vengeance on the murderer or the murderer's family; a prolonged bitter quarrel with or campaign against someone.” The word can be used far less precisely in casual conversation, of course, and he probably does sincerely see it as his duty to atone for his mistakes by removing the entity which seeks to exploit them, but at the end of the day, despite his attempts to frame his behavior in terms of doing what is objectively right, there’s also a massive degree to which his quest is personal. Anger and revenge and personal concerns ultimately prove just as important to him as they are to his brother, if not even more important. This is illustrated perhaps most dramatically in the lead-up to the Final Deal: one can only imagine what Bill’s back-up plan was, because Bill came close to not needing one. Ultimately, when put to the test, the principles which went along with the persona Ford tried so hard to project crumbled: the family was, in the end, more important to him than saving the world, just as it was for Stan. He never mentioned the idea of making any attempt to save himself in the deal (on top of doubtless believing that such an effort would be doomed to failure, there are hints that Ford always planned to die in the execution of his revenge, or at least never saw a way around doing so), but he was willing to let Bill take over the galaxy “or worse” just to save (or at least exempt himself from the responsibility of personally dooming) three other people on a probably quite temporary basis. If Bill was unraveling reality all around them, after all, where exactly were Stan and the twins supposed to go?

“What other choice do we have?” It took no few viewings of the finale for it to register why I always find that line so wrenchingly uncomfortable to watch. At that moment, finally, for the first time on screen, Ford admits that he cannot save the situation, or even himself. That he’s been backed into a corner – trapped – forced to acknowledge that another entity can and will hurt him, and that it can and will hurt him on as many levels as it pleases. He’s been taken right back to where he was when his first grade classmates nearly put him in the hospital, and he can’t hide it from himself or anyone else anymore...and it’s after this moment that we almost immediately see a dramatic change in Ford’s behavior and self-representation. The same man who remained remarkably defiant, all things considered, when tied up by an evil sorcerer who was gloating about its plans to consume his brain, or even in the midst of what was probably several days of severe torture,(5) visibly flinches, his hands shaking, while using the memory gun; in the aftermath of that moment, we then see him standing in a corner, looking helpless and at a loss for what to do while other people (specifically, mostly Mabel) try to figure out a solution without his assistance, as he's meekly accepted the situation instead of trying to change it. Dipper notes that some point in that day was the “only time” anyone had ever seen Ford cry, a statement that implies there had been other occasions where Dipper expected him to cry when he didn’t do so – perhaps it’s just because Dipper is used to Stan, who cries rather a lot, but for some reason, Dipper regarded this observation as specific enough to underline the severity of the situation during the first hours of Stan’s amnesia. The closest Ford really gets to his pre-Weirdmageddon demeanor again is when he takes the long way around the block in order to ask Stan to accompany him to investigate some anomaly up north, just as he’d previously made the same excuse about being too old to manage on his own anymore for asking Dipper to stay in town after the summer ended; since even unbending enough to, effectively, ask anyone not to leave him was already a step away from his isolated-hero act, it’s far from one of his more distinctive adult characteristics reasserting itself. Something, it seems, in the man profoundly broke in the throne room of the Fearamid, and based on his worryingly fervent attempts in the last pages of his journal to represent both Stan and Fiddleford as plaster saints, it doesn’t seem like it’s getting fixed any time soon.

I noted earlier that I suspected Ford had no intention of surviving his duel with Bill in the Nightmare Realm during “Not What He Seems.” There are a few reasons for this. One is simple probability, of course (even if he had destroyed Bill, there would have still been plenty of creatures around that would have been more than happy to eat him, and his death ray was almost out of power). More pertinent, however, are a few of Ford’s own words. Twice, he refers to Stan as having “saved” him – not ‘rescued’ ‘retrieved’ ‘gotten back’ or any other possible combination of words, but “saved.” The first, where he’s still grumbling about it, is when he shows Dipper the Rift and explains why he was angry at Stan for this seemingly charitable behavior: he saved Ford’s life, but at the cost of endangering the world, and at that time, Ford was still deeply committed to the idea of himself as someone who sacrifices, not someone who sacrifices are made for. On the second occasion, while trying to explain what just happened to Dipper and Mabel after they realize that Stan no longer recognizes them, he sounds almost bewildered as well as moved as he makes the statement. Shortly before that second occasion, in the Fearmid itself, he also, infamously, uses the word “suicide” on the Disney Channel, when he tells Dipper and Mabel that any attempt to take on Bill – or, in other words, to undertake the very task he was attempting when the Portal reopened in NWHS – was a “suicide mission.” His behavior, from the moment he comes back, is usually varying degrees of reckless, and the Journal illustrates that this isn’t an entirely new tendency: aside from vowing to undo the damage he’d done “or lose my life in the attempt” at the end of the 1980s section, he also put himself through the kind of work conditions that can literally kill a person for, it seems, months before he realized Bill had played him; afterward, he proceeded to have a breakdown while continuing, or even increasing, his dangerous habits of sleep deprivation and stimulant overuse. And even before that, as previously noted: he once didn’t think twice about jumping off a cliff. There has, at least since he came to Gravity Falls, always been a part of Ford which seems to have had some inclination toward self-destruction; he may not have been suicidal as such in the early years, but even then, he seems to have been more than merely indifferent to his own well-being. It is at this point that all the disparate threads of this essay will begin to gather back together into a single line, because this behavior can be interpreted as Ford, essentially, daring the universe to so much as try to make a victim of him, because it was at in those years that he began to feel the need to assure himself that he wasn’t one. After he admits he’s out of ideas in the Fearamid, though, he finally has no other choice but to admit that he has in fact been victimized – specifically, by Bill Cipher.

When Ford chose to adopt famous scientists as his models for how to be a man, he began to lie to himself about himself to some degree. He insisted he was rational and unemotional when he was anything but. He retained some pride in being in better physical condition than the other men close to him during both his scientist and hero arcs, but he downplayed his quite real attraction toward violence (recall that on two of the three occasions where he and Stan came to blows, Ford was the one who escalated the conflict) and thrill-seeking, trying to veil them from himself as well as the reader. Ford’s tendency toward black-and-white thinking didn’t disappear at the end of the show; he simply reversed the polarity, so that now, instead of him being the hero, he recast others in that role and was at least attempting to accept a place among the ranks of those who’d needed saving. This was something that he’d been denying he was for a very long time, even at the price of focusing on anger-inducing aspects of the past, perhaps distorting them out of proportion in his memory so he could keep his mind on the future. Unable to cope with the loss of control implicit in his situation with his 'Muse,' acting as the agent of something else and being manipulated in deeper and deeper over his head, he directed his attention to a future where he would be on top again, focusing on anger toward the past instead of on his fear of the present.

For most of the show, Ford has real issues with anger, and I tend to believe that quite a lot of them had to do with the need to protect two things after the disintegration of his relationship with Bill Cipher. One is his image of himself, and the other - arguably, something dependent on the maintenance of his self-concept - is his sanity – or at least, if not his sanity, then his ability to function. As noted the other night – anger might not feel good, exactly, but it can feel so much better than hurting that it can be mistaken for feeling good. Fury can be paralyzing, yes, but it can also, when directed outward, keep you moving – spite, as they say, is the source of many an accomplishment Self-loathing, on the other hand, will crush you like a boulder, sooner or later...and it’s painfully obvious, in the scrambled, increasingly unhinged journal entries between the Portal test and his decision to call Stan, that Ford is capable of intense self-hatred. Even in later years, when he has focused his entire mind on revenge for decades and reviles the traits in his brother that he dislikes in himself, there’s still that undercurrent of guilt and self-hatred running just beneath the surface, so close to the top that even he can never really fully ignore it. He doesn’t really know how to accept help while maintaining his self-respect, and here’s where we get to him being both an abuse survivor and, arguably, specifically a male one.

Earlier, I referred to his partnership with Bill as an uncomfortably realistic depiction of a domestic abuse situation when you strip the supernatural frills away. Bill could well have marked off items on some kind of manipulation checklist: he would flatter Ford to draw him in, and then withdraw without explanation, leaving Ford despondent and thus that much more dependent on Bill upon Bill’s return. Bill convinces Ford that nobody else really understands him like Bill does, and that nobody else ever could do so. They are all parasites who want to ride on Ford’s coattails, or steal his work, or are people who will hurt him because they are jealous of him; Bill is the one who inspires him, because he’s just that deserving of inspiration...except, of course, when he isn’t. When the Muse would go silent for long stretches of time, waiting with highly uncharacteristic patience until he got just close enough to desperate for a breakthrough. Then the whole cycle would begin all over again, until finally, by 1980-1981, Bill had succeeded in reducing Ford’s world to little more than himself. Based on the state of Ford’s study, he was, by the end, probably literally worshiping Bill as a god.(6) It is therefore possible to argue that the relationship included spiritual abuse in addition to the blatant psychological, physical (“enjoy the mystery bruises”), and financial (in that much of the grant ended up being used to pursue Bill’s agenda instead of for its intended purpose) abuse...and all of that happens before the possession sub-plot after the Portal test, where any illusion that their association is consensual or in any way for Ford’s benefit falls apart. Bill systematically violates every understood boundary within the relationship during the weeks between the Portal test and the Portal incident, and Bill very clearly enjoys doing so. He takes the time to taunt his victim by scribbling in the Journal when Ford blacks out. He seems to derive a great deal of satisfaction not only from the ability to completely deprive Ford of all mental and bodily autonomy on a whim, but from reminding Ford that he had this ability: he seems to have gotten a twisted satisfaction from knowing that Ford knew that, sooner or later, he would be unable to physically prevent himself from sleeping any longer. The hopelessness and inescapability of his situation are thrown in Ford's face again and again, and apparently for no better reason than that Bill is a physical and psychological sadist. Other people's misery and horror are like a drug to Bill, and we see, again and again, in the series that Bill will even undermine the pursuit of his own goals in order to enjoy it.

And the person he did all this to was Ford. Someone who already had profound trust issues (from his point of view, everyone he ever cared for had betrayed him to one degree or another), and whose formative years were during early fifties. This is significant, even aside from the impact of personality flaws specific to Filbrick Pines on his son’s development. Even today, in our rather better-informed times, many people dismiss the idea that men and even boys can be victims of abuse entirely, and even some of those who acknowledge the possibility won’t take it as seriously as the idea of men abusing women and girls. When Ford was physically and verbally bullied in elementary school, the only solution his father could offer was “learn to hit harder than the other guy.” If someone hurts you, you hurt them back; this, in the earliest examples he seems to have had, is how you reclaim power, and if you can’t do that, then Filbrick thinks you’re weak, that you’re an embarrassment, and that he just wishes you were gone, to very nearly quote Stan from “Dreamscaperers.” This was also a general attitude of the surrounding culture, without a lot of prominent examples of better options. Years later, it follows - horrible though it is to say – reasonably enough that when Ford realized he’d been manipulated and used by something that couldn’t be punched in the face, he began to have a breakdown, which only began to resolve in a small way when he convinced himself there was, in fact, a way to do something at least equivalent to punching Bill in the face. His plan was irrational and poorly strung together, and it did require him to ask someone for help, which must have galled – but it’s only Stan he has to ask, after all, and Stan doesn’t really count, and Stan owes him anything he might choose to ask for anyway, and besides, he’s not really asking Stan to help him deal with the problem, is he? He’s going to be the one who defeats that bastard or dies trying. Stan’s just...going to hold his beer, so to speak. Or book, as the case may be. Because he doesn’t need Stan. He doesn’t need anyone. Because he’s in control of this situation. He’s going to save the universe, and then everything will be fine again (or so he tells himself), because then he will be, once and for all, beyond the reach of anyone who might want to hurt him again. Because if he can pull this one off, then who would dare? Who would even want to? He’ll be a hero, a savior, someone deserving of everyone’s respect – and if not, he’ll at least be a martyr, which to him likely seems like a better second choice than continuing to live with the thought that he’s vulnerable and that everyone knows it.

An interesting thing to examine at this point is the similarity between his approaches to Fiddleford and Stan in the eighties. Earlier, it was argued that Ford may have reached out to Fiddleford as much out of repressed fear as from any real need for technical assistance. When Fiddleford first comes to Gravity Falls, Ford cannot stop talking about Fiddleford’s excellence, praising it even above his own. Fiddleford is his friend, his partner, his companion on this path to glory. Slowly, though, it changes. He begins to cast more and more doubt on Fiddleford’s capabilities, in a way, at first, which almost seems reasonable due to Fiddleford’s neuroses. He begins to feel that he is doing Fiddleford a favor – many favors, in fact – by allowing him to participate in “making history” like this. He projects and lashes out. This shows up even more clearly when he writes to Stan. He does not, admittedly, start out with praise in that case, but he still clearly goes through the same process of progressing from acknowledging a need to twisting it around in his own head so he no longer has to do so, just at a higher rate of speed. Almost as soon as he decides to write to Stan, he adds in his journal that “perhaps he can prove his worth to me.” This is followed by some prevarication – the line about how perhaps the mistakes of the past can be made right could apply to his thoughts on how he feels Stan wronged him, his thoughts on his situation with Bill, or even his past actions toward Stan, and when Stan arrives, Ford initially seems to present the matter as one where he needs a partner-in-crime because Stan is the one person he can trust – but within minutes, he shouts about how he’s offering Stan the one chance he’ll ever have to do something meaningful in his entire life. He’s progressed again to the idea that he doesn’t need help, and that he’s just doing these people - people who he has ostensibly asked for help - a favor. He is still in control. Because he doesn’t need them. He doesn’t need anyone. And when he triumphs over Bill, then….

...Then….

...Then we get to the bit I did write about on Thursday night. Specifically, how there’s very likely going to come a day when Ford will start finding it very, very hard not to have Bill around to hate anymore. To paraphrase zephyrsimperium - even when anger is hurting you so much that even you can see that it’s doing so, even when you know, intellectually, that it doesn’t really feel very good at all, it still hurts less than actually cleaning out the psychological wound.

To a certain extent, Ford’s anger did save him in 1982. Coping mechanisms can be necessary, for a time, when a trauma is too close to deal with. Truly dealing with it would be healthier, but there are situations where some distance has to be put between oneself and the trauma before it can be addressed; situations where you’ve just very suddenly become homeless and are being hunted by your reality-warping abuser would, it seems safe to say, be among these. Too much pain from too many sources could not be addressed all at once, especially by someone who, for reasons both cultural and innate, possessed none of the psychological tools or self-awareness to even begin to work through it all, and so when survival became a priority, focusing on hating Bill more than he hated himself probably was the only choice Ford realistically had in that moment. At the end of the show, however...Bill’s gone. Ford no longer has that mission to focus on, and at some point, that’s likely to mean waking up and realizing – if I may be forgiven for quoting a song from the Dark Ages, aka, my childhood -

“Wherever you go, there you are/You can run from yourself, but you won’t get far.”

Learning to defend himself as a child wasn’t enough – he still had to seek validation, acceptance of some kind, through all those competitions. Winning the competitions wasn’t enough – he still needed to find a place where he could fit in, somehow, either as a genius or as an anomaly. Going to college, finding someone he considered even more brilliant than himself, winning a grant – somehow, it still wasn’t enough, he needed to discover a new theory and emblazon his name in the history books...never realizing that even if he’d succeeded in that endeavor, it still wouldn’t have been enough. And all that was before Bill. Afterward, sure...he killed Bill. The being that made him feel weak and stupid and helpless all those years ago, it’s gone now. He won. And it still won’t be enough, because removing Bill doesn’t undo what Bill did to him. It doesn’t take away the difficulty of trusting anyone else after such an acute betrayal. It doesn’t take away the anger at himself for being someone who got duped. It doesn’t take away all those years out in the Multiverse, and the memories of whatever less-than-ideal things he had to do to survive them, or the impulse to hit first and ask questions later that he’s developed, or anything else. Nor is throwing himself into being the Perfect Friend or Perfect Brother in an attempt to make up for the past going to ultimately help much – he can’t undo whatever wrongs he did Fiddleford or Stan any more than they can undo the ones they did him, and all three of them are likely in for a rough ride of learning how to have relationships where sometimes you clash and disagree, but you trust the other person enough that you can have a relationship with them when neither of you is a Perfect Anything to the other…and where you trust the other person to still want to be your friend after you demonstrate that you aren’t perfect, or even able to perfectly fit into a simple, clear mold. As hard as accepting onself as a flawed individual with vulnerabilities that can be exploited is, it's probably still child's play compared with then, after having been taken advantage of in the past, to trust anyone to not do so at the first opportunity again.

Despite the somewhat gloomy tone of this essay, there are reasons for hope. One lies simply in the fact that Ford got this far. His story, after all, follows the arc of many a tragic hero, and yet, he manages to end the show alive and without having gone over to the Dark Side (even if he came dangerously close and was only pulled back from the edge by Stan’s quick thinking and acting skills). Another, more promising, is in "Lost Legends," where we get a glimpse of the Pines family in the week between Weirdmageddon and the birthday party. We see that Stan has recovered his normal personality and memories enough that he and Ford manage to annoy each other throughout the adventure. They disagree on how to proceed, which of them is more competent to look after the twins, etc...and the incident ends with a truce, rather than each of them slinging blame at the other for the situation Mabel ultimately has to rescue them both from. Ford is able to accept that they both contributed to the problem, rather than it being a black-and-white situation, the way he seems to have viewed most situations for quite some time. He even lets Stan play with the super-glue gun of science. It's progress. Here's hoping, for everyone's sake, that it's one step among many to be taken.

Notes

(1) See my essay “The Trouble With Timelines” on AO3 for an explanation of this assertion.

(2) Reasoning for this hypothesis can also be found in “The Trouble With Timelines.”

(3) Based on his lack of alarm when a second specimen later attacks him in the lab, my theory is that Ford staged the near-escape of the Cycloptopus at the beginning from first to last - note how he appears to have a pretty solid grip on it when he enters the gift shop, and later turns to the family, holding it up and smiling brightly, after subduing it as though looking for approval from others before indicating that he’d like to be included at meal times. Later, in “The Last Mabelcorn,” we learn from the read-out of his thoughts that he lurked closely enough behind the vending machine to eavesdrop for at least long enough to hear Stan refer to him as a “dangerous know-it-all;” since his other thoughts in that sequence all involve loss, anxiety, regret, and childhood bullying, it seems reasonable to assume that whatever he had hoped  to overhear, it wasn’t that. Considering how Ford agreed to avoid the children at the end of “A Tale of Two Stans,” it seems likely to me that Ford staged the Cycloptopus incident just for an excuse to interact with the rest of the family for a moment without obviously trying to do so, and that the creature was not actually especially dangerous.

(4) Though it is possible that some of the times Ford rolled a four were among the 20-odd times the Infinity Die allegedly endangered his life; if he was already in a bit of a bind and decided to risk getting a solution that way, rolling a four with something that is highly illegal to own - and, therefore, probably even more highly illegal to roll - would be unlikely to improve his situation

(5) I saw an essay once where someone actually tried to figure out what, if Bill was accurately portraying his own usage of electricity, happened there: best-case scenario involved convulsions violent enough to dislocate joints accompanied by severe internal and external burns. It seems, considering the contrast between his first appearance in “Take Back The Falls” and his relatively physically normal behavior during the rest of the episode, that being turned into gold again resulted in the instantaneous restoration of his pre-torture physical condition, but this would probably provide small comfort if you are under the impression that every time you ‘wake up,’ you’re just going to go right back through the same thing again...and again...and again….

(6) Comments in the codes of all Journals and in invisible ink in the blacklight journal make the question of Ford’s religious beliefs another interesting one; we know he was raised Jewish, but his few remarks after dealing with Bill could suggest that, by the story’s main time, he may have become some form of dualist. An argument which can be used either for or against this idea is the apparent existence of the Axolotl cult, as shown in exclamations by space refugees, carvings in Jheselbraum’s shrine, Bill’s dying invocation, and a bumper sticker in “Lost Legends.” On one hand, Ford expresses confusion about what the refugees meant by “praise the Axolotl!” and makes no explicit connection between the statement and the carvings he later sees in Dimension 52; when he speculates on “the opposite of Bill?”, it is unclear if he is referring to Jheselbraum or her background art/presumed patron deity (“Oracle” is suggestive of the Oracles of Delphi, who were priestesses of Apollo and were supposed to prophesy through divine inspiration, so it does seem likely that Ford, Jheselbraum, or both believe that another entity is the source of her prophetic gift). It is also unclear what, exactly, the power dynamic between Bill and the Axolotl is; the fact that Bill invokes it in the hopes of returning from his deletion implies it is far more powerful than him, but it is unclear (both in Bill’s invocation and in the Axolotl’s prophecy in “Time Pirates’ Treasure”) if the Axolotl could choose to ignore the invocation if it wished to do so. Bill, we know (or are at least told), was once a mortal being which sought escape from all laws, including the laws of nature which dictated his own mortality; we do not know how the Axolotl came to exist outside of time and space, or what this implies about its nature. When Bill muses on his enemies, however, he swears that neither Time Baby nor “the big frilly jerk” will stop him; this could imply that he sees Time Baby and The Big Frilly Jerk (most likely Axolotl, unless the canon version really does have a twin brother) as equal threats, and that perhaps “the ancient power” is something they are all in some way bound to/reliant upon for their seeming immortality? Bill was able to reduce Time Baby to his component molecules, but word of author is that TB is not actually dead and will eventually manage to pull said molecules back together into a Time Baby-like shape again, which renders the issue of power levels even murkier.

[itsthemysterykids]

BNHA AU? Just their stories, their teachers, that stuff

The Mystery Kids all go to school at UA Dormitory School (Because if there are dorms, it’s gotta be called a Dormitory) and are all in the class 1-A Hero Course (A few years after Class 1-A’s graduation and they opened up their own agencies)

Their homeroom teacher is none other than the legendary underground hero, Ford Pines, also known as Intel

His Quirk allows him to gather information on anyone just by looking at them, making him amazing at undercover missions

Their other teacher is Stan Pines, the former Pro hero, Convince. His Quirk is his hero name, allowing him to smooth talk villains into giving up

Their first day, Ford has his new students do a bonding exercise/quirk exercise in the gym

Long story short, Lili punched Dipper with a vine, Raz somehow got tangled up with Mabel’s yarn, Dipper got dry-eye, people kept accidentally walking through Norman and felt very cold afterwards, Coraline kept messing with others using her illusions, one of Neil’s shields accidentally hit a bird when he threw it, and nobody knows how Wybie’s quirk works

Wybie: I can make anything out of any metal. *A gold sword appears in his hand*

Dipper: Okay, but how?

Wybie: I make it.

Dipper: Yes, but out of what? Items made from creation quirks aren’t just made out of thin air, they have to come from something.

Wybie: Fine. My lipids like Creati. Happy?

Coraline: He’s lying! I can tell!

Dipper: *Thinking* I will find out your Quirk. (And thus begins this arc)

The next day comes combat training where they get… THEIR COSTUMES! Each one is tailored to assist their quirks while also looking badass

Coraline comes equipped with goggles, Dipper has a camera built into his costume, Lili has spray bottles for her plants, Raz’s suit can stretch all across the country if one were to try, Wybie’s comes equipped with thermals and Dipper willl find out why, Norman’s is made from his hair so it becomes intangible with him, Mabel’s is made of an endless yarn so she always has some on her, and Neil’s is designed to keep him more energized when he makes too many shields

Their instructor for this lesson is none other than the Pro Hero… Deku!

He makes it very clear that no one should be getting seriously injured in this exercise. Let’s not have another ‘Kacchan Incident.’

The pairs for the exercise will switch with each round, just to get the students to learn more about each other and their fighting skills

Dipper is still trying to figure out how Wybie’s quirk works

Lili totally dominates the first round by having plants take over the entire training building

Raz and Mabel once again get tangled together

Norman just outright phases through the walls to get to the bomb

And in another round where he’s the villain, he possesses Coraline and has her attack Neil

Then comes the USJ… Which, hopefully, doesn’t go like Class 1-A’s trip

On the bus ride, the students discuss their quirks and what kind of heroes they could be with them

Coraline, Dipper, and Norman are aiming to be Recon heroes, Mabel, Neil, and Raz- Defense, Wybie- Support, Lili- Rescue

Coraline: I thought about being a Social Hero, but they usually handle interrogations. I’m not sure how creating a bunch of illusions can help me weasel answers out of villains.

Norman: Unless you create an illusion of their greatest fear and force them to look at it until they break.

Mystery Kids: …

Ford: …

Norman: … What? I’m a ghost. I like scary stuff. Just think about it.

Mabel: Anyway, I think my Quirk can be good for protecting civilians and stopping villains, so, Defense Hero: Yarn Queen is coming, people!

Lili: Strange. I got chills when you said that.

Dipper: You get used to that. So! Wybie, why Support?

Wybie: I’m not telling you how my quirk works.

Neil: Oh, come on! Even I’m curious.

Raz: Is it weird, or something? It can’t be any weirder than my bones turning to rubber whenever I stretch.

Coraline: Wait, what?

Raz: Told you. It’s weird. Hell, Lili sneezes whenever she uses her quirk.

Lili: My allergies flare up! That’s not weird! How’d this become about me?! He’s the one hiding facts about his quirk!

Wybie: … Fine! I sweat different types of metal so everything I make is made from my sweat, happy?

Mystery Kids: …

Dipper: … Was not expecting that.

Their instructor is Thirteen, who is still in their prime, mind you, along with Froppy, another hero in the Rescue category

And just to make sure no villains disrupt their lesson, the Pro Heroes took more precautions and heavily armed the USJ so no one, even someone with a teleportation quirk can get in unless they have granted access

But, whoever came up with this did not seem to account for a villain with a hacking quirk

All I got

[thelastspeecher]

Best Revenge AU - Pines Family Reunion

Have I used that as a ficlet title before?  I feel like I have.

Anyways, technically, I could probably split this into two posts, but I’m impatient, so I wont.  Instead, have both the Stan-Shermie reunion and the Stan-Ma Pines reunion.  The Shermie one happens...quite some time before the Ma Pines one.  Enjoy.

——————————————————————————————

             Shermie liked San Diego.  In fact, he liked it so much that he was tempted to move there.  He was a hero, after all, and San Diego had recently become full of villains.

             But Amelia is happy where we are.  I’d hate to uproot her and the kids.  Family comes first.  Shermie sighed quietly as he walked through the West Coast Tech campus. He was in town for a hero conference but couldn’t resist visiting the school that had fractured his family years ago. It seems nice enough, I suppose. I don’t think it merited Stan being kicked out over Ford not being admitted.  Shermie frowned thoughtfully.  Doesn’t Ford live in San Diego?  I suppose I could always use that as an excuse to come here.

             “This here is the biology buildin’,” a voice said behind him.  Shermie turned his head.  A couple stood in front of a nearby building, holding hands.  The woman, who had spoken, was much shorter than the man.  He smiled faintly.

             I love seeing sweethearts.  Maybe they met here.  The man turned to face the woman, making his face visible to Shermie. Shermie’s thoughts stuttered to a halt. Or maybe they didn’t.

             “You’ve got everything you need?” asked the man, Shermie’s long-lost younger brother Stanley.

             “Hon, I don’t really need anything.”

             “It’s a job interview.”

             “No, it’s me chattin’ with a former professor ‘bout the possibility that they might have an openin’ at some point soon,” the woman retorted in a thick southern accent.  Stan rolled his eyes.

             “No, it’s a job interview and you’re gonna get the job.”  Stan caught sight of Shermie, who was now staring at him.  “Hey, jackass, get some other hobby,” he snapped.  Shermie opened and closed his mouth silently.  Stan’s eyes widened.  “Wait.  Shermie?”

             “Pardon?”  The woman turned around.  Shermie’s jaw dropped.  The woman Stan was with was visibly pregnant, likely close to full term.  She blinked.  “Stanley, that feller looks like ya.”

             “Yeah.  There’s a reason for that,” Stan mumbled.  Shermie walked over.  He held out a hand.

             “Sherman Pines, but most people call me Shermie. I’m Stan’s older brother.”  The woman shook the offered hand.

             “Angie McGucket.  I’ve been datin’ Stan fer some time now.”

             “I had the suspicion you two were serious.  Even as a kid, Stan made it clear that he would stick around whenever he became a dad.”  Stan shifted awkwardly.  “I have a lot of questions.”

             “Well, Stanley, sounds like ya have somethin’ to do while I’m talkin’ to my old professor,” Angie said brightly.  She stood on her tiptoes to kiss Stan on the cheek. “I’ll see ya when I’m done.”  Stan kissed her back.

             “You got this, babe.”

             “Oh, I know.”  Angie waved at Shermie.  “Pleasure to meet ya, Sherman.”  She walked inside.  Shermie raised an eyebrow at Stan.

             “You’ve been busy.”

             “I mean, you’re not wrong,” Stan muttered. He sat down on the building’s front steps.  Shermie sat next to him.  “Ever since I came to San Diego, things have been nuts.  But the last six months have been absolutely batshit.”  Stan began to gesture animatedly.  “I mean, there’s Angie, and then there’s her dick of an ex-husband, and then there’s the baby, and-”

             “Whoa.”  Shermie held up a hand.  “I’m more than happy to slip back into my big brother role and listen to your problems, but I need some context first.  What happened after you got kicked out?”

             “I don’t really wanna talk about my drifter days, Sherm,” Stan said quietly.  “The important thing is that I wound up here.”  He looked at Shermie.  “When did you get back from overseas?”

             “Not too long after you were kicked out. Honorable discharge.”

             “Ah.”

             “When I found out what Pops did, I tried to look for you,” Shermie said.  Stan’s shoulders lost some tension.

             “Yeah.  I figured you probably did.  You’re a good guy.”

             “Not that good.  I didn’t manage to track you down.”

             “C’mon, don’t blame yourself,” Stan said.  “I pretty much disappeared.”

             “Yeah, you did.”  Shermie sighed.  “So. You were a drifter.  You wound up in San Diego.  What happened next?”

             “I got a job.  Coupla jobs, actually.  One of ‘em is with Angie’s twin brother, Lute.”

             “Did you just say ‘Luke’ or ‘Lute’?”

             “Lute.  With a ‘T’.” Stan waved a hand vaguely.  “It’s some weird naming thing their family does.”

             “And I’m assuming you met Angie via him?”

             “Not really.  I met Angie at a bar.  She was drowning her troubles in booze after another fight with her husband.”

             “Right, you mentioned something about an ex-husband.”

             “She just wanted someone to listen to her about her issues.  Someone who would have no skin in the game.”  A faint smile played around Stan’s lips.  “That someone was me.”

             “You talked her into leaving her husband?”

             “I didn’t mean to,” Stan said.  “I just told her my opinion about her situation.  And that wound up with her dumping him.”  He scowled.  “It wasn’t pretty.  Angie moved in with Lute, and her ex kept coming by their place to try to talk to her. He even showed up at her work a few times.”

             “Geez.”

             “Luckily, Angie’s coworkers were on her side and sent him packing.  And Lute and I handled it whenever he showed up at their place.”  Stan looked down.  He played with the fraying hem of his jacket.  “Angie can take care of herself.  She’s- she’s pretty badass.  But when it comes to her ex, it’s like- well, it’s sorta like me and Carla.  Carla could string me along all she liked.”

             “I remember,” Shermie said softly.

             “But Carla wasn’t as bad as Angie’s ex.”  Stan clenched his jaw.  “Guy deserves to be in jail.”

             “Shit,” Shermie breathed.  “That bad?”

             “Yeah.  But Angie won’t press charges.  She just wants to move on.  I get that.”

             “I’m very glad she has you in her corner,” Shermie said sincerely.  Stan managed a smile.  “How long were you dating when she got pregnant?”  Stan’s smile turned into a grimace.  “That early?”

             “Yeah.  Yeah, pretty- pretty damn early.”  Stan looked up at the sky.  “We were dating for maybe a month.”

             “A month?” Shermie said, surprised.  Stan nodded.  “And I’m guessing that the two of you got together pretty quickly after Angie broke things off with her ex-husband.”

             “Yeah,” Stan said in a tight voice.

             “Damn.”  Shermie ran his hand through his hair.  “You’re right.  That is insane.”

             “Her parents weren’t very pleased.”

             “I can imagine.”

             “But, y’know, I’m stepping up,” Stan said, looking at Shermie again.  “I’m gonna take care of that kid.”  Shermie smiled.

             “Oh, I have no doubts about that.”

             “So, that’s been what I’ve been up to.”  Stan nudged Shermie.  “What about you?  Why are you in town?”

             “Conference.”

             “Conference?”

             “Yep.  But now that I’ve got a reason to visit town, I might show up even when I don’t have a conference,” Shermie said.  “I mean, both my younger brothers live here.”  Stan tensed.

             “Wait.  Ford’s here?”

             “You- you didn’t know?”

             “Shermie, you’re the first person from the family that I’ve seen in years!  No shit, I didn’t know Ford lived here!”

             “Hey, calm down,” Shermie said smoothly.  He put his hand on Stan’s shoulder.  “I won’t tell him you’re here.”  Stan nodded, but remained on edge.  “I won’t even tell Mom I saw you.”

             “And Pops?”

             “I feel like it goes without saying that I won’t tell Pops where you are.”

             “Good.”

             “He blames you for the divorce, you know.”

             “What?  No, I don’t know!  What divorce?” Stan demanded.  Shermie blinked.

             “Mom and Pops.  They divorced not long after you were kicked out.  Mom said it was the last straw.”

             “Huh.”  Stan looked down at his shoes, eyes churning with emotion.  “I- I had no idea.”

             “She was always upset she couldn’t find you.”

             “That’s bullshit,” Stan spat.  “She’s a damn psychic.  If anyone could find me, it’d be her.”  Stan was beginning to get worked up again.  Shermie squeezed his brother’s shoulder reassuringly.

             “It’s okay, Stan.  I’ll drop it.”

             “Good.”

             “So…”  Shermie looked back at the building that Angie had disappeared into.  “How long will Angie take?”

             “Probably a coupla hours.”

             “It’s lunchtime.”

             “You wanna grab something to eat?” Stan asked.

             “Well, you know the places around here better than me.”

             “Yeah.”  Stan grinned. “Okay, we can do lunch.  But only if you’re buyin’.”  Shermie chuckled.

             “Of course.  It’s the big brother’s job to pay for his little brother’s lunch.”

-----

             “Man, I can’t believe Junior’s gonna be a year old in a week,” Stan sighed.  He and Angie were walking through the mall, Stan pushing Junior in a stroller.  “It feels a lot shorter than that.”

             “Mm.”  Angie took a hold of Stan’s hand.  “Are ya excited to throw him his first birthday party?”

             “Uh, duh.  What costume should he wear for it?”

             “Costume?”

             “Ang, his birthday is on Halloween.  He’s gonna wear a costume for his party,” Stan said firmly.  Angie laughed.  “So, whattaya think for his costume?”

             “Hmm…”  Angie’s eyes lit up.  “Oh! Salamander.”

             “Shoulda figured you’d want that.  But I don’t think they make salamander costumes for one-year-olds.”  Stan frowned thoughtfully.  “We’d have a better shot looking for a dinosaur costume.”

             “Well, I’d prefer salamander, but dinosaur is good.” Angie bent over to peer into the stroller at Junior.  “The lil bean ‘ll look cute in anything.”

             “Damn straight,” Stan said firmly.

             “Language, dear,” Angie scolded playfully.

             “Look, he’s already said his first word, we don’t need to worry about it being a swear.”  Angie laughed.

             “Stanley, that’s not the only reason we shouldn’t swear around-”

             “Stanley!” a voice called.  Stan froze.  Angie looked around.

             “Was someone callin’ ya?” she asked.  A middle-aged woman walked up to them.

             “Stanley, you didn’t even turn around when you heard your own mother say your name?” the woman asked.  She crossed her arms.  “I raised you with better manners.”

             “…Hi, Mom,” Stan mumbled.

             “That’s all I get?  How long has it been since I’ve heard from you?”

             “Uh…”

             “Ages!  In fact, I didn’t even know you were in this city!  After you skipped town, you just dropped off the map.”  The woman shook her head.  “Honestly.  It’s a good thing I heard about a sale and decided to stop by this mall.  Or I woulda missed you completely!”

             “What are you doing in town if you didn’t know I was here?” Stan asked.  The woman rolled her eyes.

             “Visiting Stanford, of course.”

             “Of course,” Stan muttered.

             “Now, are you gonna introduce me to this lovely lady or leave me in the dark ‘bout who she is?” the woman said pointedly. Stan groaned.  “Don’t take that tone with me, young man.”

             “Angie, in case you couldn’t tell, this is my mom,” Stan said.  “Mom, this is my girlfriend, Angie.”  Angie held out a hand.

             “Angie McGucket, ma’am.  Pleasure to meet ya.”  Mrs. Pines shook the hand happily, beaming.

             “Caryn Pines.  Aren’t you a well-mannered young lady!”

             “My folks raised me right.”

             “Clearly.  And that’s a beautiful accent.  Where’s it from?”

             “Arkansas.”

             “Arkansas.  Y’know, back in my glory days, I did some work in Arkansas.”

             “Oh, really?  What a coincidence,” Angie said smoothly, breaking off the handshake. Mrs. Pines bent over to peer into Junior’s stroller.  “This here is Junior.”

             “He’s quite the looker.”  Mrs. Pines straightened.  She glared at Stan.  “And I’m guessing he’s yours.”

             “Mom-”

             “Actually, he’s my ex-husband’s,” Angie said shortly. Mrs. Pines’ eyes widened.  “It’s a long story, ma’am, and it ain’t one I want to get into.  Just know that it weren’t an amicable divorce and Stan really helped me get through it.”

             “What’s his actual name?” Mrs. Pines asked.

             “Stanley McGucket.”

             “You named him after Stan?”

             “Yes’m.”

             “And judging by how you call him Junior, I’m assuming that Stanley plans on being an important figure in this young man’s life,” Mrs. Pines said.  Angie and Stan nodded.  “You’re raising him as your own, Stan?”

             “Yeah.  I am.” Stan swallowed.  “And I know that you probably aren’t happy about it, but-” Before he could say anything else, Mrs. Pines wrapped him in a massive hug.  “Uh.  Mom?”

             “Like father, like son, I suppose,” Mrs. Pines said. Stan broke off the hug.

             “The hell does that mean?”

             “Language,” Angie said.  Mrs. Pines smiled at her before turning back to Stan.

             “Sweetie, Shermie’s your half-brother.”  Stan’s jaw dropped.  “I know, I know.  You had no idea.  That was on purpose.  Shermie’s biological father, he- he went missing in action.  Presumed dead.  Shermie was only three months old when it happened.  But I pulled myself together and continued life as best I could. Until I met your father.  He took in Shermie, raised that boy as his own.” Mrs. Pines stroked Stan’s face. “And now you’re doin’ the same thing.”

             “Great, Pops did one half-decent thing in his life,” Stan muttered.  “Doesn’t erase the thousands of sh- awful things he did.”

             “Oh, no, you’re right, dear.”  Mrs. Pines smiled.  “But I’m still happy to see you carrying on the tradition.  Maybe Junior will do the same.”

             “Maybe.”  Stan cleared his throat.  “Look, Mom, Angie and I are kinda busy.”

             “Oh, right, right.  Go ahead and get back to shopping.  But call me up when you get home.  I want to have dinner with you, Angie, and Junior.”  Mrs. Pines took out a scrap of paper and scribbled a number on it. “Here.”

             “Cool,” Stan muttered, taking the paper from her.

             “I’ll see you later, Stanley Danley.”

             “Sure,” Stan said.  Mrs. Pines cooed at Junior, waved at Angie, and then walked away. Stan stuffed the piece of paper into his back pocket with a scowl.

             “Are we goin’ to have her over fer dinner?” Angie asked.  Stan rolled his eyes.

             “Hell, no.  That woman never bothered to track me down after her husband kicked me out at seventeen.”

             “Maybe she couldn’t find ya,” Angie suggested.

             “She’s the best psychic of her generation,” Stan said flatly.  “Not to mention, as a hero, she’s got better contacts than the FBI.”

             “Oh.  Fair point.” Angie paused.  “In that case, I’m surprised how civil ya were with her just now.”

             “We’ve been over this.  No fighting in front of Junior.”  Stan grimaced.  “Also, there’s no way I’d be able to really take her on.”  Angie kissed Stan on the cheek.

             “With my help, I think you could.  My ma taught me how to handle psychics.”  Stan managed a grin.  “Now.  Costumes?”

             “Yeah.  Costumes.”

[piratewithvigor]

My first thought in regard to every band that gets played on my radio station

ACDC: Every dad’s favourite band

Adams, Bryan: Every mom’s favourite singer until Michael Buble came along

Aerosmith: haha they thought Vince Neil was a lady

Alice Cooper: he’s a Game Of Thrones fanboy and I have proof

Alice In Chains: my sister doesn’t like them because she decided AC were Alice Cooper’s initials ONLY

Allman Brothers Band: good music for dropping acid to

Allman, Gregg: That’s too many Gs for one name

Animals: House Of The Rising Sun, or who even cares

Argent: Sometimes Hold Your Head Up is really catchy

Asia: Tuesdays

Autograph: one of the members went on to be a pharmacist

Bachman-Turner Overdrive: There are just so many pop culture jokes about Taking Care Of Business that whatever I say won’t be as funny

Bad Company: with their song; Bad Company, off their album; Bad Company

Benatar, Pat: Always getting her confused with Patti Smith

Black Crowes: I like them for Lickin, but it doesn’t seem to exist outside of one shoddy video on youtube and my old CD

Blackfoot: this band name feels kind of racy

Black Sabbath: Dio was not better or worse than Ozzy; just different

Blondie: I like Call Me, but Blondie confuses me stylistically

Blue Oyster Cult: MORE COWBELL

Bon Jovi: Hello, childhood trauma, I missed you

Boston: ONE GUY. ONE GUY DID IT ALL AND NO ONE KNOWS

Bowie, David: Don’t let your children watch The Man Who Fell To Earth, or David Bowie’s will end up being the third penis they see in life

Browne, Jackson: Another musician ruined by Supernatural

Buffalo Springfield: Jack Nicholson was at the riot they sing about

Burdon, Eric: no ideas, brain empty

Bush: ditto

Candlebox: ditto once more. Who are these people?

Cars: This band feels so gay and so straight at the same time, I can only assume they’re the poster children of bisexual panic

Cheap Trick: I played Dream Police on Guitar Hero so fucking much because it was the only song anyone who played with me could keep up with

Chicago: Chicago 30 exists, but they do not have 30 albums. Fucking riddle me that

Clapton, Eric: 6 discs in one Greatest Hits is too many. That’s called “re releasing your discography”

Cochrane, Tom: For some reason, everyone thinks Rascal Flats did it better

Cocker, Joe: Belushi did it right

Collective Soul: who?

Collins, Phil: If his biggest hits were done by MCR, they would be emo anthems, but because he’s 5′6″ and from the 80s, they’re not

Cream: *Vietnam flashbacks on the hippie side*

CCR: *Vietnam flashbacks on the war side*

CSNY: David Crosby; meh

Deep Purple: THEY’RE SO MUCH MORE THAN SMOKE ON THE WATER

Def Leppard: the only music for when you’re a heartbroken bitch but also a sexy one

Derek And The Dominos: Clapton and ‘Layla’ broke up

Derringer, Rick: Tom Petty if he was from the midwest

Dio: You thought it was an anime reference, but it was me, Dio

Dire Straits: You can tell how bigoted a radio station is based on how much of Money For Nothing they censor

Doobie Brothers: I have yet to smoke weed, but I listen to the Doobies, and I think that’s pretty close

Dylan, Bob: I take back everything I said about him in my youth

Eagles: Hotel California isn’t their best song, but the memes that come from it are second to none

Edgar Winter Group: @the--blackdahlia

Electric Light Orchestra: Actually an orchestra and sound a fuckton like George Harrison

ELO: I really hesitate to ask what happens with the 7 virgins and a mule

Essex, David: no prominent memories of him

Fabulous Thunderbirds: cannot spell

Faces: Who on earth thought that was a good album name?

Faith No More: I got nothing

Fixx: One Thing Leads To Another is a damn bop

Fleetwood Mac: I ain’t straight, but I’m simply not enough of a witch to enjoy them to full potential

Fogerty, John: He got sued cause he sounded like himself

Foghat: Slow Ride slowly becoming less coherent feels like a drug trip

Foo Fighters: He was just excited to buy a grill

Ford, Lita: deserved better

Foreigner: dramatically overplayed

Frampton, Peter: a masterful user of the talk box

Free: dramatically underplayed

Gabriel, Peter: leaving Genesis changed him a lot

Genesis: if someone likes Genesis, clarify the era, because yes, it does matter

Georgia Satellites: sing like you have a cactus in your ass

Golden Earring: Twilight Zone slaps, but it doesn’t slap as hard as this station thinks it does

Grand Funk Railroad: Funk

Grateful Dead: I like their aesthetic more than their music

Great White: there are so many fucking shark jokes

Greenbaum, Norman: makes me think of Subway for some reason

Green Day: the first of the emo revolution

Greg Kihn Band: RocKihnRoll is literally the most clever album name I’ve ever seen

Guns N Roses: They have more than three good songs, but radio stations never recognize that

Hagar, Sammy: I’m still trying to figure out where he lived to take 16 hours to get to LA driving 55 and how fucking fast was he driving beforehand?

Harrison, George: He went from religious to rock, and if he had continued rocking, he would have gotten too cool 

Head East: I respect people who use breakfast foods as album names

Heart: Magic Man and Barracuda are played at least once every goddamn day. They’re not even the best songs!

Hendrix, Jimi: I have both a cousin and a sibling named after Hendrix references

Henley, Don: Dirty Laundry gives me too much inspiration

Hollies: Somehow sound like they’re both from the 60s and the 80s at the same time

Idol, Billy: he’s doing well for himself

INXS: Terminator vibes

Iris, Donnie: knockoff Roy Orbison

James Gang: too many funks

Jane’s Addiction: if TMNT had a grunge band representative

Jefferson Airplane: *assorted cheers*

Jefferson Starship: *assorted boos*

Jethro Tull: The only band to make you feel not cool enough to play the flute

Jett, Joan: icon

J. Geils Band: I requested them on the radio once and it got played

Joel, Billy: he really did just air everybody’s business like that

John Cafferty And The Beaver Brown Band: literally wtf is that name

John, Elton: yarn Elton sits in my basement, unstaring. Please someone take him from me

Joplin, Janis: Queen

Journey: Stop overplaying Don’t Stop Believing. It takes away from the rest of the repetoire

Judas Priest: literally started the gay leather aesthetic

Kansas: another fucking band Supernatural stole

Kenny Wayne Shepherd: the man confuses me to the point where he isn’t in the right place alphabetically

Kiss: Mick Mars and I will simply have to disagree on the subject

Kravitz, Lenny: runaway vibes

Led Zeppelin: Fucking fight me if you don’t think they’re the most talented band (maybe not the most talented individually, but collectively, no one comes close)

Lennon, John: My least favourite Beatle for reasons

Live: I got nothin

Living Colour: slap a decent amount

Loverboy: do you not get TURNT the fuck up to the big Loverboy hits? Who hurt you??

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Sweet Home Alabama is a Neil Young diss track

Marshall Tucker Band: no opinion

Manfred Mann’s Earth Band: VERY STRONG OPINIONS THAT THEY AREN’T GOOD

McCartney, Paul/Wings: Power couple

Meatloaf: I have nothing but respect for a man who willingly named himself Meatloaf

Mellencamp, John: voted cutest lesbian of 1987

Metallica: I liked their appearance on Jimmy Fallon

Midnight Oil: I get them confused for Talking Heads a lot

Modern English: who?

Molly Hatchet: Hollies vibes, but also Georgia Satellites vibes

Money, Eddie: DAN AVIDAN, IF YOU SEE THIS, COVER TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT

Motley Crue: Stan Mick Mars and John Corabi. They’re the only ones who deserve it

Mott The Hoople: no one loves them except for David Bowie

Mountain: props for naming an album ‘Climbing’

Nazareth: I want to make a John Mulaney joke here, but I can never come up with one

Nicks, Stevie: witch queen

Night Ranger: I get them confused with Urge Overkill

Nirvana: Kurt Cobain was the ally grunge needed

Nova, Aldo: he’s Canadian, at least

Nugent, Ted: *serves a ghost as jerky*

Offspring: nothing here

Osbourne, Ozzy: this bitch crazy

Outfield: Your Love is kind of a sketchy song, but it slaps hard

Palmer, Robert: low quality Eddie Money

Pearl Jam: *grunts in Eddie Vedder*

Petty, Tom: I have so many feelings about Tom Petty and they are all good

Pink Floyd: which one is Pink?

Plant, Robert: solo career is a crapshoot, but his voice is unparalleled

Poison: I want them to write a song called ‘Alice Cooper’

Pretenders: I want to say good things, but I have nothing to say

Queen: A doctor of astrophysics, a screaming girl, a disco queen and a diva walk into a bar. It’s Queen; they’re there to play a gig

Queensryche: neutral opinion

Quiet Riot: they got big because of a song they hated. I love that

Rafferty, Gerry: the second-sexiest sax opening in all of music

Rainbow: Ritchie Blackmore created something very magnificent

Ram Jam: one good song and they didn’t even write it

Ratt: I’m sure they have more than Round And Round, but I don’t know it

RHCP: funky, but if you have paid money to hear them, you’re going to The Bad Place (I don’t make the rules)

Red Rider: basically Golden Earring

Reed, Lou: Walk On The Wild Side would be such a cool song if it wasn’t so dull

REM: American Tragically Hip

REO Speedwagon: Props for having a dad joke as an album title

Rolling Stones: Never in my life could I imagine the drummer being named anything but Charlie

Rush: How to make being uncool the coolest fucking shit

Santana: The world needs more Santana

Scandal: There’s something really funny about The Warrior being my brother’s “song” with his girlfriend

Scorpions: Was Wind Of Change written by the CIA? Only the spotify podcast I got an ad for once could say

Seger, Bob: A different variety of Eric Clapton (frankly a better variety, but that’s just me)

Simple Minds: we ALL forgot about you

Skid Row: Sebastian Bach is prettier than all of us

Soundgarden: music that makes you feel like you dunked your head underwater

Springsteen, Bruce: my arch-nemesis. Maybe someday, he’ll find out about it

Squeeze: according to my friends, the stupidest band name ever, but they’re theatre kids, so you know

Squier, Billy: If he can make it through 1984 alive, you can make it through whatever bad day you’re having

Stealers Wheel: Yet another band who I always mistake for George Harrison

Steely Dan: my house’s nickname for the Robber in Settlers Of Catan

Steppenwolf: Either makes me think of Jay & Silent Bob, Jack Nicholson, or that time I had to cut 6lbs of onions

Steve Miller Band: when you’re in the right mood, they slap hard

Stewart, Rod: my soundtrack to summer 2015

Stills, Stephen: Love The One You’re With Is Catchy, but the lyrics are questionable

Stone Temple Pilots: the only band to write a song about goo you smear on yourself

Stray Cats: an obscene amount of merch is available for them

Styx: Supernatural would have ruined them for me too if I hadn’t been into them previously. 

Supertramp: I hunted for Breakfast In America for two years and it was worth every hunt

Sweet: I will never understand my two-month obsession with Ballroom Blitz when I was 15, but it was legit all I listened to

Talking Heads: you may find yourself in a pizza hut. And you may find yourself in a taco bell. And you may find yourself at the combination pizza hut and taco bell. And you may ask yourself; ‘how did I get here?’

Temple Of The Dog: I keep confusing them for Nazareth

Ten Years After: somehow still relevant

Tesla: not the car or the dude

The Beatles: Evokes a lot of opinions from people. Mine is that I love them

The Clash: I showed my sister the ‘Lock The Taskbar’ vine ONCE and it still kills her

The Doors: evokes teenage terror from deep within my soul

The Guess Who: Canada’s answer to confusing question-themed band names

The Kinks: kinky

The Police: wrote the theme of 2020 and everyone somehow forgot it was about a teacher resisting becoming a pedophile

The Ramones: playing all of their songs in a row wouldn’t take more than 2 hours

The Romantics: you don’t think you know them, but if you’ve seen Shrek 2, you have

The Who: If someone can explain Tommy to me, I’d be glad to hear it

The Zombies: I think they happened because of the 60s

Thin Lizzy: Could the boys maybe leave town?

Thorogood, George: blues, but make it modern

Toto: the most memed song behind All Star

Townshend, Pete: just makes me think of the end of Mr. Deeds

T-Rex: Mark Bolan is an icon

Triumph: The no-name brand of Rush

Tubes: like the yogurt

Twisted Sister: they did a christmas album and my mom does NOT hate it

U2: U2 Movers; we move in mysterious ways

Van Halen: RIP Eddie

Van Morrison: honestly, who’s named Van?

Vaughn, Stevie Ray: Steamy Ray Vaughn

Walsh, Joe: The Smoker You Drink The Player You Get

War: Foghat, but even groovier

Whitesnake: the most successful band to be named after a penis

Wright, Gary: the 90s thanks him for writing the song every movie used for the “guy sees cute girl and it’s love at first sight” scene

Yes: To Be Continued

Young, Neil: The best part of CSNY

Zevon, Warren: the album cover of Excitable Boy makes me deeply uncomfortable for reasons I don’t understand

ZZ Top: has been the same three guys since 1969. Lineup unchanged. 

3 Doors Down: They feel a little modern to be on a classic rock station, but whatever

38 Special: Why 38?

[mintartem]

@alextwdgf01 you request for a comic but I decided for it to be a fic instead... Um...Is it okay? The fic, I mean

Warning: The fic under the cut is rated M for Graphic depictions of violence.

The rattling of chains echoed and a screamed followed suit. It’s been like this for days. At least, Ford liked to think it’s only been days. He can’t tell at this point. It’s chaos outside. But said chaos is only stuck here in Gravity Falls because of Gravity Falls’ weirdness magnetism which prevents Bill from getting out.

Their plan had failed. So close… They were so close to defeating Bill. But the demon was able to get a closer look at Ford’s (who was posing as Stan) finger. Hiding it would be suspicious. Ford thought that the demon would be too arrogant or “caught in the moment” to notice the slight difference. Turns out he was wrong. Bill was observant. The almost successful attempt at conning him, Bill got angry and ended up killing both Dipper and Mabel. That hurt Ford way more than the 500 volts of electricity.

Like Bill’s original plan, Bill will torture the people Ford cares about to get the equation from him. Unfortunately, that only leaves Stan since the kids are… gone.

Another blood curdling scream came from his brother. Ford closed his eyes tightly and covered his ears. He should’ve been used to this. He heard a lot of pained screams in the portal before – some he even caused to survive. Why is this different?

Because it’s Stan

All he heard next were heavy breathing and rattling of chains. He opened his eyes slightly. The first thing he saw was Mabel and Dipper’s ashes. Bill must’ve done something to it because wind had blown many times and yet it still there in place as if it was mocking him. He heard the phantom scream of the kids as they were burnt alive. The way they called out his and Stan’s names...

Stop, Ford thought.

He looked up from his position to see the gruesome sight of his brother. His eyes were missing! The place where the eyes should’ve been are nothing but empty sockets! The eyes were telepathically floating next to Bill along with Stan’s left ear. Blood pour out of the empty sockets freely like waterfall. The same can be said to his mouth. While there was dried blood there, there were still new ones pouring.

Looking lower, Ford almost puked his guts out. Stan’s intestines were hanging. Drip drop. Blood trickled and fell to the floor creating a small puddle of blood. And yet looking at his chest, it’s still moving. Stan is still alive! How is he still alive?

Ford’s thoughts were cut short by Bill’s sadistic laughter.

“You still haven’t cracked yet, Sixer? My, my, I’m impressed. Your brother is screaming his eyeballs out!” one of Stan’s eyes was telepathically floated towards him, which made Ford visibly flinched. “I thought you cared about him. Or maybe you don’t and you actually ENJOY his pain? He did ruined your life after all,” Bill mocked. Ford clenched his teeth in anger and disbelief. It’s always that. Bill always uses that. EVERYONE always use that against him! “Whadda’ya say, Fordsy? Why don’t you just hand me the equation for old time’s sake? I’m doing you a favor here” Bill added.

Favor? How is this a favor?

Bill hummed in thought, thinking of what other torture methods he could do next. Psychologically and mentally torturing Stan is fun and all, but all Stan will do next is beg for his life to end with. While that tortures Ford a lot, it’s no fun if the other has grown immune to it that they accepted it now. What else do these twins like?

It looked like a light bulb lit up. Bill’s face looked happy and excited. Ford doesn’t like it at all. “Y’a know, Fordsy, I went into Stan’s mind one time,” Bill started. “I saw how he always seems to run away from everything.”

Is Bill about to do what Ford thinks he is about to do?

“I figured, let’s get rid of that ability!” Bill cheerfully grabbed a sledgehammer out of nowhere. Ford felt dread consume his body. Stan had always loved to run. He is pretty damn good at it too. Running always made Stan feel free… No, no, no, Ford felt tears start to form at the corners of his eyes.

The chains the held Stanley up disappeared and he dropped to the ground. Stanley gave a pained groaned as pain shot from his stomach at his – very – open wound. He should be dead! Bill must’ve done something that kept him alive. His left arm is twisted but both arms have deep unhealed cuts. His arms throb at being held up for too long. His legs felt like jelly. But most importantly, he is free. He can try to crawl towards Ford – wherever he is, to try and comfort his brother like old times. Like when he was punished by pops. To tell him he is okay.

But a sudden unexpected pain shot through his body, most especially his right leg. He heard the cracking of bones and a scream erupted from his already painful throat. If he kept screaming, he might destroy his vocal chords making his voice even uglier than it already is. Another extreme pain came from the back of his knee, another bone cracked, and another scream erupted from him.

Holy Moses! If there really is a God, please, please, please, fucking save him! He’ll take anything, anything at all just to replace this pain. He doesn’t mind if he’ll wake up back in his car, or if he wakes up and he was still stuck with Rico or Jimmy, or if he wakes up and Ford still hates him., just… God end this pain!

Another blood curdling scream came from him as another pain shot from his leg. But this time, he heard another voice. It’s not his. It’s Ford’s! Why was his brother screaming? Was Bill doing something to him to? No, no, no. Give the pain back to him, just not his brother! Not Ford!

On the third scream, Ford can’t handle it any more. Stan’s pain isn’t worth saving the entire world anymore! What… What has the world ever done for them? Fuck being a hero! Fuck Bill! Fuck everything!

“STOP,” Ford screamed. Bill stopped at the sledgehammer at hitting his other leg at the last second, clearly amuse. Tears fall from Ford’s eyes as he looked at his brother’s bloody face. Stan’s crying, but since his eyes are currently floating around, no tears came out. Ford knows because of Stan’s sniffling.

“I-I’ll… I’ll give the equation. Just please, please, stop hurting him,” Ford begged. He wants to run to his brother but the chains around his neck were holding him back. Bill lit up like a Christmas tree and Ford needed to resist the urge to punch him.

“You will? I knew you’d come around, Sixer!” Bill happily floated towards him and held out his hand, the weapon disappeared it seems. “I’ll give you the equation, but no harm will ever come to Stan or me ever again. And, you have to fix us both back up” Ford bargained. Bill appeared to be thinking for a moment before “DEAL” Bill’s hand lit up with a familiar blue fire as he waits for Ford. Ford grabbed the glowing hand and the knowledge of the equation was shared with Bill.

Bill looked like a child in which Christmas came early. “A deal’s a deal, Sixer!” Bill gleefully said. He snapped his fingers and Ford felt refreshed. He stopped feeling tired and felt like he drank gallons of water as his thirst was clenched. The chains around his neck were gone as if it was never there since it left no bruises.

He immediately ran towards Stan and slid on the floor to get near to him. “Stanley?” Ford whispered. He arranged Stan’s position so Stan’s head would be lying on his shoulder. Using his other hand, Ford checked under Stan’s eyelid. The eyeball is there and moving. Good. Stan’s intestines were back inside where they belong and not hanging open. His other ear is back in place too. He felt the broken leg to see if it’s okay. It’s there. There is a bone there like it was never touched.

“I won’t let Bill hurt you again,” Ford promised. “I won’t let anyone hurt you again… No one will hurt you again… no one will hurt you again… no one will hurt you again…” Ford repeated the phrase like a mantra. No one will touch Stan ever again. No one will harm Stan ever again. If he can’t save the entire world, the least he could do is save his world. He wiped the tears and snot from his face as he scanned his brother’s body just in case there were more injuries he had overlooked.

“Jeez, Sixer, So dramatic,” Bill said as he floated towards the twins. Ford hugged Stan tighter and gave Bill the scariest glare he can master. “Relax, kid. I did my end of the bargain. He’s alive, just resting. Maybe he’ll wake up with a sore throat though” he added. “What do you want this time? You got what you needed,” Ford asked. “The offer still stands, Sixer. I told you, you’re a FREAK! You’ll fit right in with us. Not sure about Stanley though” Ford’s glare hardened “But you two are a package so no separating,” Bill quickly added.

“The point is, I like you. You might as well join us in this party. If you accept this deal, I’ll give you power! You can conquer planets, galaxies, the multi-verse! Or you could stick with just being very powerful and not conquer any stuff - no fun in that though. You can exact revenge to those who wronged you. Prove everyone wrong,” Bill said. “So, do you want to be one of us?” Bill held out his hand waiting for Ford to shake it.

There’s nothing for him to lose now. The moment he broke and gave the equation, he knew it. He is a monster. Might as well join with Bill where he fits right in. Stan might hate him… Or he might not but he knows this betrayal will hurt Stan though. The power that will come with the deal, that, he needs in order to protect Stan. Ford doesn’t know how well Bill will keep his end, so Ford has to make sure no harm comes to them. If he has power, he’ll be able to protect both him and Stan. Yes… To protect Stan, he’ll take it. He’ll take this stupid deal.

“Deal”

~~~~~

Done! If you made this fair, congratulations! I hope the fic is okay.

[nataliedanovelist]

GF - How A Star Is Born ch.X

Hercules AU, founded by @evaroze, whom this fic is a gift for. I hope y’all like it!

ch.IX

AO3 link

~~~~~~~~~~

Mabel, though a bit salty that her uncle would send her away from battle, quickly saw the chaos raining down on Earth and formed her own plan: find dipper and work together to save the world. Simple enough. So she used Gompers the giant goat to gallop across the valley and through the woods to Thebes, where a big goblin was smashing buildings and weirdness was torturing the Greek city, creating an apocalyptic atmosphere.

Mabel remembered where her brother’s house was and heard an old man yell as Gompers approached. She stopped the giant goat and gasped at who was at the entrance. In armor and a red cape, someone who looked a lot like her Grunkle Ford was staring at her with brown eyes that matched her own.

Stan smiled nervously and stepped forward. “Hi… Mabel, ri-...”

“GRUNKLE STAN!” Mabel cheered with tears streaming down her face and she jumped down into his arms, knocking him to the ground, but Stan just laughed and hugged his newfound niece. “I can’t believe it! I get to meet you! Hi! I’m Mabel! Hi!”

“Well, hey there, pumpkin.” Stan greeted as he hugged her and petted her long brown hair. “Grunkle, huh? I love it! Alright, lemme look at you.” He gently held her by the shoulders and grinned at the blushing muse. She glowed golden, her skin a slightly bright hue than his thanks to being immortal. “Holy Hera, you’re beautiful. You look like Ma, bless her soul. Wow… just, wow.”

Mabel brought him into another hug and whispered, “Thanks. I… I never thought I’d get to see you.”

“Mabel?” Dipper said weakly as he leaned against the doorway.

Mabel and Stan gave him their full attention, still completely ignoring the devastation taking place around them, and Mabel cried freely as she looked at her twin. “DIPPER!” She got off her knees and ran to him. He graced himself for impact, but was happily brought into a tight hug that lifted him off his feet. Clearly she had some god-like strength, too.

“Mabel… it’s great to see you…”

“I missed you, I missed you, I MISSED YOU!” Mabel yelled happily and sat him on his feet. She looked back at her great-uncle, who was on his feet and joining the niblings, and she reached out a hand for him and held Dipper’s hand. “Look at this! We’re a family again! So… how do you like each other?” She asked excitedly.

Dipper shrugged. “Fine.”

Stan chuckled nervously and rubbed the back of his neck. “You’re not still… mad about me not telling you, are you?”

“Wait… oh.” Mabel said and let her boys go and took a step back to let them talk.

“I’m just…” Dipper gritted his teeth and rubbed his forehead, his head grazing over his birthmark that looked like a kitchen dipper. “I don’t understand. Why? Why didn’t you ever tell me? Were you… Are you really that ashamed to be family?”

“No.” Stan quickly said. “No, Dipper, I… I’m proud to be your family. I am so proud of you, hero or no hero. I… I just didn’t know how to tell you. I almost did when we first met, when this scrawny but strong and smart twelve-year-old came to my doorstep, desperate to become a hero only so he could have a family again, but… I decided you were better off not knowing. You were already dealing with so much, knowing you had an uncle who was a total failure didn’t need to be one of them. 

“I’m sorry.” The old trainer of heroes said woefully. “I wish I had told you. I wish I had been more honest with you. But… kid, it doesn’t matter if I’m your uncle or not. Nothing’s changed. Not really. I’m still so proud of you and I’m still gonna do everything I can to make sure you two aren’t ever separated ever again.” Stan swore, pointing at Dipper and Mabel. “Even if it happens tomorrow or thirty years from now, I swear it’ll happen. But no matter what, you’ll always have a family, Dipper. We’ll always be a family, god or no gods, blood or no blood.”

Dipper let this soak in, then sighed and swayed a little. Really, if it wasn’t for everything going on, the big reveal probably wouldn’t have been as devastating, it was just a lot at once. “Yeah… Yeah, we will…”

Mabel’s smile dropped at seeing how pale and sickly he looked, and she rubbed his shoulders and was much more gentle with him. “Whoa, hey, what’s wrong?”

“He traded his strength away to that Bill guy.” Stan informed.

Mabel turned to look at the big goblin tearing up the city. “I’m guessing that’s why.” The young muse cracked her knuckles and grinned excitedly. “And here I thought I was gonna miss a fight! Stan, you look after Dipper, I’ll handle Ugly.” And she ran down the street for the monster.

“Mabel, no!” Dipper called after her, stepping towards her, but he tripped over his feet and Stan had to catch him.

“Easy, kid, easy. Your sis can handle this.” Stan reassured. “Check it.”

Mabel ran past people who were trying to get out of Eight Ball’s way. She slid to a stop at the town’s circle and whistled loudly. Eight Ball looked down and laughed. “A little girl?! Aw, what, are you gonna dance for me?”

Mabel growled and sneered a sly smile. “If it’ll make you happy… let’s dance!” And she pulled out her duel sword from either hip and plunged them into a green foot that was almost as big as her.

Eight Ball yelled and kicked up, sending Mabel up in the air. The goblin quickly swatted her and she was thrown against a stone wall and slid down painfully, but she staggeringly got up and resumed the fight.

“Ouch! That’s it, pumpkin, shake it off!” Stan coached.

Dipper pulled himself away from Stan and moaned, “I gotta help her…”

“Kid, you’ll die without your strength.” Stan said firmly and made Dipper sit down on a step of their home. “Just breathe and rest, okay? You’ll get your strength back in twenty-three hours.”

Dipper held his head. While so weak and in pain, it was hard for him to think. His mind was so stuffed and so full but so low on energy that he was driving himself insane, but those words created a clear path of thinking, and he shot up as an idea came to mind. “Or if you’re hurt.”

Stan raised an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah.”

“The deal’ll break if you’re hurt.” Dipper explained and looked around. He saw Pacifica guiding children into a house where they would be safe, and he whistled. “Paz! C’mere!”

The blonde woman looked ashamed, but did as she was told. She slowly approached the scowling old man and the weak young man as she nervously played with her hair. “Listen, I…”

“No, you listen. You owe us a favor.” Dipper panted, weak from the effort of whistling.

“Uh, okay.” Pacifica agreed.

“Punch him.” Dipper said, jabbing a thumb at Stan.

“Me?”

“Him?”

“Him.”

Pacifica shrugged. “Okay.” And she gave him a sharp left hook.

“GAH!” Stan held his cheek and rubbed. “Woman! That hurt!”

“Good!” Dipper laughed, his color instantly returning and his stance getting stronger, grinning with pride over his own cleverness. “You got hurt! The deal’s off!”

“YES!” Stan cheered and punched his shoulder, having no effect on the young hero with god-like strength. “That’s my little conman! NOW GO BEAT UP THAT GUY WITH YOU SISTER!”

Dipper nodded and ran off into battle. 

Mabel was doing a very good job of fighting off the monster, but the fight was at a stand-still. At one point the muse was in the clutches of Eight Ball, both hands trapping her as she squirmed and pulled. “I’m gonna bite your head off!” He roared.

“LEAVE MY SISTER ALONE!” Dipper demanded, grabbing a lit torch, jumping off a tall building, and smacking Eight Ball in one of his weird eyes with the fire.

“GAH!” The monster dropped Mabel, who recovered by doing a flip and landed perfectly with a bend of her knee. Dipper jumped down beside her and they both smiled proudly at each other, only allowed a moment before eight Ball had recovered and roared, but one sly glance at each other and the fallen god and the young muse were ready to do battle.

They pounced on the goblin, Dipper throwing punches and Mabel using her duel swords, and they fell behind a large mountain with the beast. Stan and Pacifica gasp, the battle out of sight, and three voices yelled when large rocks from the side of the mountain fell. The audience ran closer, but stopped as they heard rustling. Preparing for the worst but praying for the best, Dipper and Mabel slowly emerged, a bit dirty but healthy nonetheless.

Stan hollered with joy as his chest swelled with pride while Pacifica clapped politely. “THAT’S MY KIDS! Alright, alright! I’m so proud of you guys!”

Dipper and Mabel grinned, but the brother looked up at the dark clouds seriously. “Bill’s still out there…”

“OH NO!” Mabel smacked her forehead. “I almost forgot! More monsters were attacking Olympus! Grunkle Ford needs our help!”

“You two go help Sixer.” Stan said and jabbed a thumb at the broken city. “I better help these guys out, tell the press what’s going on, the usual stuff.”

“You sure?” Mabel asked. “We could use your help.”

“Nah, you don’t need me.” Stan chuckled. “You both just took on a monster with your bare hands like it was nothing! Now go save the world!”

Mabel and Dipper grinned, excited to kick that demon back where he belongs, and the muse whistled for Gompers. As soon as he arrived they got up on him and galloped for the home of the gods, ready for Round 2.

~~~~~~~~~~

“What’s our status?!” Ford asked his best friend.

“Everyone’s bein’ turned t’stone!” Fiddleford yelled as an eyebat shined a beam down at him. “Even me!”

“NO!” Ford threw his last bolt at the eyebat, but it swerved out of the way and scooped up Fiddleford’s frozen body.

Ford looked left and right, waiting for an idea to come to him, but he was too clouded with anxiety and worry that he failed to notice the huge, now three-dimensional demon behind him. “Fordsie, I’m home.” A shrill voice sang.

“Bill?” Ford breathed, his eyes narrowing in anger and he shook with rage. He should have listened to Mabel and knew he was behind this. He growled like an angry bulldog and tried to throw a punch, but with a lift of a finger Bill had total control over Ford’s body and made him float lifelessly in front of him.

“Well well, looks like you truly are as dumb as you look. Tell me, did you really think such a powerful being would ever be friends with a six-fingered monster?” Bill laughed evilly and moved two arms close, creating lava and ice to work together to encase Ford in a stony prison. “This dimension is mine, Sixer, and it’s all thanks to you.” He said as Ford climbed and crawled to try to escape, but was steadily being encased, like quicksand. “Now all I need to do is make sure those brats stay out of my way.”

“NO! NO!” Ford screamed. “NOT MY KIDS, YOU CA-…” And he was completely covered.

“I’m the one giving orders now, Freak.” Bill sneered and sat in his new throne the eyebats had made for him, made entirely out of gods and goddesses. “And I think I’m gonna like it here.”

“Don’t get too comfortable, Bill!” A voice yelled and Bill turned red and left his throne to see behind him.

Bursting on top of the mountain, Gompers carried Dipper and Mabel, who hopped down and scowled up at the mean triangle.

“WHAAAAAAAAAT?!?! No, no no NO!” Bill roared. “Eight Ball had ONE job to do! UGH! Henchmaniacs, TAKE THEM OUT!”

The twins nodded at each other, agreeing to the plan, and Mabel gave Dipper some cover by hopping over the monsters and attacking the eyebats, stabbing them like they were meatballs. Dipper quickly hurried to the throne made of stoned gods, and used his god-like intelligence to know which god to pull loose.

After a quick analysis, Dipper gently pulled out a dark-skinned goddess with a red dress, the goddess of summer and romance, one by one all of the victims were unfrozen and the throne fell apart. Freed and ready for battle, gods pulled out their weapons and helped Mabel attack the monsters now that all of the eyebats were dead.

“YA HOO!” Fiddleford hollered and smacked little Teeth with a banjo. “Thanks, Mason!”

Dipper grinned and quickly climbed over the large pile of rock. At the top, he tore the prison apart and freed Grunkle Ford. The men had a moment much like Stan and Mabel had, simply looking at each other, until Ford blinked his eyes dry and put a six-fingered hand on each of dipper’s shoulders. “Thank you, my boy.”

Dipper felt like throwing up, but in a good way. He and Ford looked down at the glorious battle of gods defeating the monsters, and they quickly joined in.

One by one as monsters were defeated, Dipper used his super strength to pull them behind them, gathering unconscious, sagging bodies until he and Mabel were at the entrance of Olympus with their gain. Mabel swiped the Golden Rope of Truth from the goddess of summer and romance and the twins worked together to tie up the minions in a heap, and Mabel held them still while Dipper kicked so powerfully they flew all the way to the ocean and down through the little hole in space-time, which sealed instantly.

Mabel pounced on her brother, who scooped her up and hugged her tightly as everyone cheered over their victory. Ford was by their side, ruffling their hair and smiling with brown eyes full of love. “I’m so proud of you both.”

Dipper could feel all his dreams coming true, but a shrill voice rang through the dark clouds as a golden triangle fled. “Thanks a ton, freaks! But at least I got one swell consolation prize! A friend of yours, who’s dying to see me!”

The three gasp over fear of losing their missing family member forever. “STAN!”

[mozart-the-meerkitten]

Why is Ford such a butt?

Alright, I have no idea why everyone keeps sending me asks about Ford (I mean, I don’t mind, I’m enjoying finding things in my ask box) but finally one of y’all asked an actual question so I’m gonna answer it (probably more seriously than you intended for me to take it but oh well). Okay, so first of all, this is an explanation of why Ford is the way he is. None of this is meant to excuse his actions in any way. He was thoughtless when it came to others feelings and needs and didn’t take time to consider how what he was doing affected anyone else around him. He messed up, and his actions nearly caused the end of the world. Now, with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get on to figuring out why he was Like That. (Please note that I will be using Journal 3 as a reference for a lot of this and I take it 100% as canon because, I mean, it’s a source in the show so)

First of all Ford had a kind of messed up childhood. He was bullied and made fun of for being different and his only friend was his brother. In the Journal he even actually says he wasn’t good at socializing with other kids. That can mess anybody up, but it’s also coupled with his home life. We don’t know that his dad was abusive or anything, but he’s definitely not a guy who gives you warm fuzzies, and he throws Stan out without waiting for any kind of explanation at all and we’re told he was rarely proud of his sons. That being said, Ford’s parents (according to his dad) put all their hopes and dreams of having a better future onto Ford’s shoulders. That is a lot of pressure to put on a 17-18 year old. It’s actually kind of like (yep I’m gonna go there) Azula in ATLA. No, she wasn’t outright abused like Zuko, but she was made into the “perfect child” by her dad and conforming to that eventually caused her to make bad choices, stop trusting people, become highly paranoid and have a mental breakdown. Sound familiar?

 Alright, so here’s how I think Ford becoming the way he is went down. He didn’t know how to make friends, he was weird and defensive because he was used to being mocked. He had a lot of pressure put on him to be successful. So, he isolated himself (making it harder and harder for him to understand other people and what they needed, but protecting himself from their mocking) and made his work the most important thing in the world to him. Because he had to be successful. He had to prove that he was worthy of his parent’s love and pride, he had to prove that he wasn’t just a weirdo. He had to prove that he was worthy to be cared about and in the process isolated himself from everyone who did care about him.

And when he does finally trust someone without reserve they turn out to be a homicidal demon who wants to destroy the world. He then barely sleeps for an indeterminate amount of time (I don’t think it actually says but I’m guessing it had to be at least a month if not longer) to avoid being possessed. I’m not sure if you’re aware what severe sleep deprivation does to a person, but it does not aid in rational thought let me tell you. So, when he finally contacts Stan he’s insanely paranoid and can’t think straight. It’s possible that if those things hadn’t been a factor he’d been able to better communicate his purpose in calling Stan there, but if that were the case he’d probably never have called his brother at all. (But it does show that buried deep down in his heart is love and respect and trust for his brother, or else he never would have asked him to come).

And, here’s the kicker; Ford never meant to ruin anyone’s life. It was his carelessness and callousness that did that. He didn’t think about how getting kicked out would affect Stan, or even really how his leaving would affect Stan. He never (as far as we know) tried to contact or help his brother before asking him to come to Gravity Falls. He (sort of) cares about Fiddleford, but never enough to suggest that the guy go home because getting attacked by monsters is obviously traumatizing him. He also doesn’t trust F enough to tell him about Bill or listen to F’s advice/warning about the portal. Kind of like how he refused to listen to his brother about what happened to his science project. Ford always puts himself first and that is his downfall. He admits in the Journal that he always thought of himself as the hero, as the one who would save the day, that that’s what he wanted...

But, in the end, this is what he concludes about himself:

“Looking back on my lifetime of catastrophic mistakes, I realize one great pattern in all my follies. I thought being a great man meant being alone. Apart from the crowd. I bristled at the idea of sharing my accomplishments with anyone. I shunned my brother for one dumb mistake, and I shunned Fiddleford for having the sense to try to stop me from dooming the world...

Stanley Pines was the man who saved the world, not me. I spent so long thinking he was a selfish jerk, and he turned out to be the most selfless man I’ve ever met in any dimension. If I’m totally honest, I must admit that he’s a hero and I’m... a hero’s brother.

And I’m okay with that.” -Journal 3

Alright, there’s my essay on Stanford Pines and why he’s Like That. Thank you to the anon who gave me the excuse to write this. You probably weren’t expecting to get an essay, but I hope this was an interesting read nonetheless.

[detectivejigsawpines]

Stanford’s Sides

Some of you might have heard of the YouTube vlog called “Sanders Sides,” in which this guy named Thomas Sanders plays as different versions of his personality that show up and give him life advice.

If you haven’t, that’s very sad, and while it might not be for everyone, you should at least give it a shot, at the link I’m offering you here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYA7DZ_sbUzvB1l6KsO5LZV2rrk2u1xl4

And that leads me to why I made this post in the first place: because I came up with an idea to combine my love for Gravity Falls with my interest in this show, and its name is...

*Drumroll*

Stanford’s Sides!!!!

...Which in hindsight I realize you might have already guessed from the title.

...I’m just gonna go straight into introducing the different sides to Ford’s personality so this doesn’t get more awkward.

Logic

-Not in control of Stanford’s actions nearly as much as he thinks he is

-Tries and fails to remind him of the importance of eating, sleeping, personal hygiene, and other self-care stuff that he forgets about in the name of science

-Appreciates Ford’s love of science and studying anomalies...and then bewails his tendency to run headlong into danger so he can study those anomalies

-One of the main sources behind his decision to push people away if they’re “holding him back”

Morality

-Most in touch with Ford’s inner child

-Loves going on adventures; he and Fantasy often make pretend treasure maps for each other and scavenger hunts and stuff

-Struggles when it comes to getting along with Logic and Pride

-Source of many of the goofy names Ford gives to his discoveries

-Admits the most freely that he misses Stanley

Fantasy

-Always appears as a D,D&D hero/mad scientist/mixture of both, depending on the day

-One of the sources of Ford’s arrogance, whether he realizes it or not

-The others aren’t sure if his ears are really that pointy or not, and he’s not telling

-Secretly one of the most insecure ones in the group about his hands; secretly makes them look normal sometimes

-Also spends the most time telling himself that these hands are a sign that he’s destined for greatness

-Never shaves, but always manages to just be scruffy, instead of with a full beard; he thinks this makes him look like a “rugged” hero

-Everyone else blames him for the “All-Star” tattoo; he emphatically denies this

-IS responsible for Ford’s irresponsible coffee intake; more time spent awake = more time that can be spent achieving his dreams

Pride

-Source of Ford’s most negative emotions

-Also the source of his most extreme paranoia; bags under eyes from lack of sleep

-Is the loudest voice against ever forgiving Stan.  Or accepting help from anyone.  Or even just admitting that there are some things Ford is incapable of doing by himself.

-Fantasy has never let him live down the time he tricked him into wearing a tinfoil hat for three days straight

-Or the time when he lost a bet so Fantasy made him wear a judge’s wig

-Spends a surprising amount of time being dealt near-mortal blows, yet never truly crumbles until after Weirdmageddon

********

I’m not completely happy with how I drew Pride, but I was kind of stuck for a good look for him, and finally went with turtleneck-wearing pseudo-Goth.

If anyone has their own thoughts/opinions/ideas for Stanford’s Sides, I’d be happy to hear them!

Sort of, since I’d just be reading your stuff, and not actually hearing it unless I said it aloud.

Ah, you know what I mean.

[toooldforfandom-liveblogs]

Gravity Falls S02E18 - Weirdmageddon Part I

I really like that name for the end of the world. I'm not sure what to expect from this one since this is literally new territory for everyone. My one hope is that Mabel gets forgiven easily but there has to be some drama, either for the twins or the Stans (since that relationship really needs some mending, and the end of the world seems to be a good place for that kind of thing.) I think that's all so let's do this!

If this is the first shot of the episode, things are going to get _weird_.

Wait. Wait. What.

Okay, had to go back and check Bill's summoning circle.

I completely forgot about this but I guess he needs all the symbols for something beyond summoning everything weird into this dimension? But why? Uhm.

Anyway, back in Dreamscaperers I wrote:

Glasses = The ones Stan found in the room with the magic carpet? Question Mark = Soos Ice - Fish with food? > Pine = Dipper Star with an eye  Hand = Whoever wrote the journals considering the symbol on their covers? Llama/Alpaca? Shooting star = Mabel Heart with stitches

Fish with food ended up being Stan's fez. I _think_ Heart with Stitches could be Robbie. Hand is obviously Ford. I'm still not sure about Glasses (they really look like Stan's glasses but... how would that work?) and Star (maaaaybe Gideon? The star appears in the ending cypher in S02E14.) The alpaca/llama and the ice are a complete mystery. Considering everyone of importance is in there already, maybe Wendy is one of those two?

Symbols aside, does this mean that Mabel is going to be missing until who knows when? That's a bit disappointing.

Imagine being able to choose any physical form at all and choosing to keep being a dorito.

Before I paused I was convinced this guy was some weird Nigel Thornberry cameo.

So, Bill has 10 friends, which is exactly the number of symbols in the summoning circle. Huh. Interesting.

Maybe it means nothing but their appearance feels so sudden that I feel they have to be important somehow.

Immersion ruined, the Northwests would never lower themselves and go "downtown"

What a trianglist, she had no problems with Mabel.

I imagine Wendy can't wait to go to college a thousand miles away from her family.

Death, Famine, War, Conquest and Capitalism.

That's horrifying. But he's a dick. What a moral dilemma. Nah, he really deserves it.

Why steal Durland? Huh. Maybe he's also one of the symbols? Or Bill is just being Bill.

Oh, oh, I know what they do!

What an intro, I'm 100% sold.

What can our protagonists do? I guess Ford has a plan, maybe the symbols are for unsummoning Bill and that's why he's collecting them so they can't do whatever ritual they need to do. Maybe Ford and Stan will be in a similar situation that made them fight 30 years ago, but this time they actually communicate and win? Mabel is out so I hope they rescue her (or she rescues herself) before too much plot happens.

I _love_ how much of an effect the changed OP had on me.

After watching 37 episodes with the same opening song any changes are immediately noticeable and it feels _wrong_. What a great way to show how everything is changing for the worse thanks to Bill.

It does make me wonder how Gravity Falls is going to recover though. It looks _bad_, bad enough that in any other show I wouldn't be surprised by a time-machine or a literal genie undoing everything bad that happened. I doubt that'll happen here, since the town itself is so used to the "weird" but if someone dies all bets are off.

YESSSS, Dipper doesn't blame her! I'm sure there'll be some self-blame later on but I'm so glad his first reaction was to be worried.

Why is Soos unaffected? Is it related to his presence in the summoning circle? Looking for unaltered people may be a good way to find who are the missing symbols.

Soos deserved more episodes, what a hero

Has there been any positive romantic relationship in Gravity Falls?

Wendy and Dipper was an unrequited mess, Mabel and all her crushes were all disasters of some kind or another, the less said about Wendy and Robbie the better, and Tambry and Robbie is the result of the twins messing with their minds without their consent. Oh, and Gideon and his murderous crush on Mabel.

I love that tiny shiny dodrio.

I didn't need to know that Bill's hat was meat and bones.

What? No! Warnings later, explanations how to defeat a demon now!

This is the first time he calls Dipper by his symbol, right? He also called Ford "six fingers." The writers really wanted everyone on the same page here about making the relation between the symbols and the characters.

...I refuse to believe that the eye piece meant nothing with how much it has been shown!

Weirdmageddon sounds much better.

Wow. He has been wandering around for three days, probably having to scavenge for food and water. These kids are really going to need a therapist after summer break is over.

For some reason I find that guy more disturbing that most of the weirdness in this episode so far. He just sounds very predator-y.

...oh Dipper, those nachos are three days old at best. So young, so ignorant of the consequences of gastroenteritis.

...of course. I'm glad she's okay. She's been shown as a very badass so it would have been a shame if she was down without a fight.

But, but, rabies.

Can't wait for the weirdmaggeddon to be over and then immediately after everyone dying of infectious diseases.

So, how many post-weirdmageddon dipper/wendy fics did this scene inspire?

Robbie is conspicuously missing from that list

nevermind. Would have been an amazing selfie though, can't fault him for that

Aw. This got me a bit teary-eyed. They really can do anything if they are together.

Shame about Mabel being inside Bill's floating lair completely out of their reach.

What a raw deal, last game I played with twins on it they l– actually, never mind, spoilers. But it was really cool, believe me.

It looks like the mission briefing for a stealth game so, in my case, I'd try to avoid the lights, fail miserably a thousand times and then rage quit. Hopefully Dipper is better at stealth.

Making the world weird?

Wouldn't they know what's going to happen? Since there seems to be only one timeline? Actually, nevermind, I'm too sober to analyze the time travel mechanics of gravity falls.

Time Baby was the most powerful entity in the show so far! Stakes have been raised.

RIP Bodacious T, we never go to know you.

Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015

Two months being a villain and he still hasn't learned to avoid monologuing.

Don't worry, Gideon. It took Steven Universe 6 years to grow a neck, you'll get one someday.

Huh. So Bill manipulated him by using his obsession for Mabel. That's a nice way to explain why it came back after so many episodes without mentioning it too much.

Ugh.

She's a genuine action movie heroine trapped in a cartoon

I have no idea how Wendy manages to get more and more badass this season.

Right!? Right!? Wow.

Holy shit, this really is Fury Road.

that's deep, man

Ah, that explains it. Nothing more dangerous than a philosophy major.

Hatoful Boyfriend, 2014

My mind is exploding right now. I wasn't ready for anime Dipper and Wendy. What are the monkey and kid in the backseat referencing?

Lady Gag– nah, I refuse to use the same joke three times in the same liveblog.

* screams in terror too *

What a shame that we couldn't see the birth of the legend of Soos.

I can't believe Dipper is using the "Power of Understanding" to talk Gideon down.

This is really good. I almost want to joke and say "but it wasn't worth the Wendy/Dipper episodes" but it actually does make them work in retrospect. It's probably the largest source of character growth for Dipper during the show and here's the payoff.

I mean, yes.

WHAT

HOW DARE YOU

GAME IS OVER, AND I WON

NOW IT'S TIME TO START THE FUN

I ALWAYS LOVE CORRUPTING LIVES

NOW LET'S SEE WHICH PINES SURVIVES

well, that's nice.

---

I wasn't sure what to expect from this "Part 1", I thought it was going to be mostly setup. And it had a bit of that, just to show how screwed Gravity Falls (the town) is, but after that it was all action and it was all good.

I think getting Ford out of the way early was a good idea, it removes the possibility of a quick solution. Now Dipper has to figure things on his own. He still needed Wendy to remind him of what he and Mabel are capable of but that's a friend offering help, not "the mentor" giving him the answer to the problem. On the other hand, while Stan hasn't appeared after the goat, he hasn't been captured yet (he's important enough to deserve an on-screen capture, unless it's going to be revealed as a demoralizing surprise?) so I think he'll appear soon since he's just a guy, without any special knowledge about Bill.

Soos really deserves his own show. "The Legend of Soos" Or give Wendy her own show with Soos as the mysterious stranger that appears from time to time to help. Because wow, Wendy is lost in this show, she should be the protagonist of something.

But the star of the show was Dipper talking Gideon down. I _really_ didn't expect that. This is not a show where the protagonists defeat their villains by talking to them (with some exceptions) so I thought they'd defeat him in some other, more violent, way. And the way he uses the "Power of Understanding" to do it (go read Scott Pilgrim)! While Dipper never got to that extreme, he "gets" it and that's just * chef kiss *

I can't wait for the next episode, especially because this one ended in a cliffhanger, so until next time!