#growing up abused

[furiousgoldfish]

When you're a kid going trough a scary, non-understandable traumatic experience, your child mind contextualizes it in a way that doesn't seem that scary. Like we don't tell small children when their relatives are dead, they're just traveling; it's easier for a child's mind to comprehend that someone is just gone for a while, and will be back.

When you're a small child living in abuse, not only does it seem normal to you, but your brain will find a way to put it into context that you can understand and live with. Your worst experiences of abuse might be foggy, forgotten, blocked off, or seem like it was a dream; not something you need to worry about or be wary of. Your parent, who violently attacks you, calls you names, turns on you and at times feels very dangerous and hateful, that's not their real self! They just 'turn' into this other person, and the times when they do that just need to be not taken seriously, you firmly believe that their true self is safe, okay to be around, necessary to love and understand at all costs, and not someone to be afraid of. You might want to keep all the bad memories away whenever things are good, so you'd be able to enjoy the moment when it feels normal, non-scary, so whenever they're not aggressive and scary, it feels like they never were in the first place. You feel like those times are made up, unreal, something your mind refuses to linger on.

Sometimes this defense turns against you. It can turn an experience out of your control, into something you could have potentially controlled if only you did things differently. If you never made a mistake, never broke anything, never said or did that one thing that set the abuse off - it wouldn't have happened. And so you have to focus on what you're doing wrong in order to 'prevent' future events of abuse. It ultimately plays into the idea that the abuse is 'your fault', and invokes deep feelings of guilt and shame; you end up feeling like you're the one causing yourself all that damage.

Abusers know this child mind defense, and fully expect to get away with anything they've done, by insisting the child imagined or dreamed it, and it didn't really happen. They know the event was traumatic for the child and makes them look bad, so their best luck is to convince the child it really was just made up, and to never recall it or show any consequence of it. They even go as far as trying to convince, now adult child, that the parent's own actions of abuse, were the child's fault. Something an adult can tell right away is not true, because you can now connect a cause and consequence, and you know a child is incapable of controlling adults in any way. But being told something as despicable as that will cast doubt and deep emotional damage.

Every time such experience is suspended and blocked off, the child loses a bit of their vitality, energy, health, trust, feeling of safety, feeling of connection. When these experiences accumulate, eventually the child might experience dissociation, or a full amnesia, not even being aware that anything more is happening, because they cannot handle even one more event of abuse. And these experiences won't stay suspended forever; soon they'll cause the development of anxiety, depression, ptsd, cptsd, and other related disorders. And eventually the truths can no longer stay hidden, the child will remember and struggle to add new context, to realize what exactly happen, because now they have a chance of knowing the truth and surviving it.

If someone attempts to make you feel like something they did to you as a child, was your fault, this is what they're trying to push you into. They'd prefer you never being able to put your life and experiences into context, never be able to recover from keeping trauma inside, just so they wouldn't have to look at what they've done to you and take accountability. If someone is telling you that the events you remember are made up, imagined, a dream, something you shouldn't think and talk about - but it's only like that when you're remembering abuse, they're trying to use your own defenses you had as a child against you. You needed to believe it back then in order to survive it, but you need to correctly contextualize it now, if you ever hope to feel okay again.

You can trust in your own mind, and your own defenses to get you trough this. You are not wrong in looking back and seeing things a different way. You are right say 'that was fucked up'. They shouldn't have done that to me and they know that.

[dddemigirl]

I may not remember exactly what you said but I will always remember the way that your words made me feel.

[spyroz]

if anyone needs help identifying things that can become moral scrupulosity OCD obsessions/compulsions, heres a list of some i've experienced:

rereading your posts/texts over and over

checking your notes and/or followers list frequently to "make sure" bad actors aren't interacting with you

checking OP's blog before interacting with posts

compulsively opening a social media tab to look at your notifs and then closing it, over and over

fearing ways that things you say/do (or don't do) could be taken in bad faith. being anxious that your words/actions will be misconstrued as morally wrong, bigoted, rude, or aggressive

feeling guilty or obsessing over whether you should or shouldn't have reblogged a post

feeling like you aren't "allowed" to disengage from online discourse or unfollow people who post it

fearing you're being stalked, talked about, or called out behind your back. fearing you'll never be forgiven and that people might even celebrate your disappearance or death, even though you havent done anything wrong

searching your own name/username to see if anyone is actually talking about you

imagining defenses you would make against nonexistent heinous accusations or arguments against you, to prove that you didnt do it

feeling like you have to roll over and become a doormat when others are cruel to you, because it could cause strife if you do anything other than grovel or apologize

having trouble enforcing your own boundaries out of fear that they are somehow "wrong" or unethical

ending up surrounded by people who have all the "right opinions" but are super mean and unpleasant, and make you feel like you have to walk on eggshells

fearing that just HAVING moral ocd makes you a bad person somehow (for example, i often fear that having moral ocd is somehow pushing a 'stranger danger' or misanthropist agenda, even though i actually have a lot of faith in my fellow humans)

some of these bullet points are not inherently bad on their own, but if you find yourself having this kind of anxiety very often, that's not normal, and it's time to get offline or even seek professional help if it's impacting your life

this list is catered to how online culture influences moral scrupulosity, it is not indicative of how everybody's moral scrupulosity functions, and it is not exhaustive

[its-simply-just-krys]

anonymous ; found on pinterest

[dcxdpdabbles]

DCxDP Fanfic idea: Old Friends

Bruce Wayne is no stranger to losing people. He has lost them to death or to madness within this city he is desperately trying to save. With each person, the void within him grows darker and darkeruntil he feels like he is still trapped back in that alley next to cold bodies and a broken heart.

That is why he tries his best to not overthink about them as they were in their final moments. He tries to remember his loved ones for who they were in the better days before tragedy struck.

Once in a while, even those memories he desperately tries to suppress because he can't handle the pain they bring. Bruce is aware it's not healthy.

He's seen plenty of men who are allowed their passions to become violent obsessions- he thinks of Harvey often- but being Batman was the one time he was actually making a difference instead of just allowing more and more tragedies to continue.

As Batman, he is at least putting up a fight.

Maybe that's why, on the night of his two old friends' deaths, Bruce sees them standing under a light post in Old Gotham as he is swinging by dressed as Batman. The very same one he would meet them at back as a teenager, scrambling to sneak out after Alfred would do his rounds.

He remembers his heart beating a mile a minute as he hurried out of his manor's caves, using the forgotten paths to meet the type of youth Alfred warned him against.

They would greet him with crooked smiles, sharp teasing voices, but soft, kind eyes. Despite how the older generations would wrinkle their noises at their appearance, they weren't bad people. Sometimes Bruce thought of them whenever people asked if Crime Alley was ever worth the effort to reform.

He knew they deserved someone to at least try.

Bruce, had meet them when he was ten and angry. They had both come from bad homes- at the time he hadn't realized just how bad- but they had been willing to help the privlage rich boy find his way home. They invited to linger when he neeed quite nights, listen to his woes and encourage his desire to be more.

The three were the same age, but sometimes Bruce would think he was the youngest one there. He grew up fast after his parent's murders, but not as fast as they had done.

They would rather spend their nights sleeping around the center of a small plaza in front of an old movie theater than going to either of their family houses, told him.

They were his best friends, a comfort that someone his age understood pain even if it wasn't the same one he had.

Maybe that is why he hadn't told them to stay when they told him that one had finally saved enough money for a motorbike, which the two were planning to use to run away. Bruce thought that they needed to get away until they were all adults and the system would no longer hold the power of them.

He had only given them a big hug, and well wishes.

Bruce never saw them again.

The light post hadn't been fixed in all those years, so the flickering light fell on the two figures casually leaning against it just as it did the very last night. They stood side by side, chatting lowly, lips cured around cigarettes.

Even the smoke floating around them is the same, and for a second, Bruce wonders if he is looking at a photograph. The same crooked smiles, taunting body language as if daring anyone to try to make them sad, and the same kind but so lonely eyes.

Even the blasted motocycle that stole them from him is propped up next to the pair just as it did the last night he saw them.

Bruce swings to a stop on the rooftop overlooking the two he had outlived. He remembers when he found out. Alfred had just turned on the TV to watch the daily news, and their pictures were flashing across the screen, the words Deadly motorcycle accident under their image.

Bruce had thrown up the meal Alfred had made him. No one else came to their funeral, fitting as it had been the girl's father that orginized their deaths.

All because his daughter would not follow her mother's footsteps and thus he would be out of a worker. Not that anyone belived him, even though Bruce had orginized thier funerals and been one of the four attendees.

Even though she had told them both with a shaking voice that her father wanted her to start wearing the clothes she was in to attract customers.

It was one of the first few cold cases he solved as Batman. He owed them that much.

"B?" Nightwing calls, noticing that his father had stopped following. He comes to stand next to him looking down to where Batman is staring. He sees nothing. "What is it?"

"Just some old friends," He mutters, turning away from Johnny and Kitty. He swears he can almost hear Johnny calling his name but Bruce can't bring himself to look back. If he does he'll fall into the void instead of staring. He aims his grabbling hook and swinings away.

Down below, the pair of ghosts watch the heroes go with wishful smiles.

"He's grown."

"He has." Johnny takes a long puff of his cigarette "I think the idiot can see us. He's had too many close calls if he can spot ghosts without the crazy levels of ectoplasm Amity Park has."

"He better not die. His kids need him." Kitty scoffs, but she leans on Johnny all the same, staring at the city they had tried so desperately to escape in life. They had passed by the street corner her father had controlled the working girls in, and she had burst into tears to see that Bruce had turned it into a women's shelter named after her. "This city needs him."

Johnny, for all his faults, and his flirtatious nature had allways been her rock. That's why when she had been sixteen and scared, she had gone to him to try to run away with.

He had gone with her to their deaths. Sometimes, she wonders if her boys ever blamed her for the end of their stories. She certainly did.

Johnny glances to the sky, spitting a swear. "Come babe, the glowing brat is back. We should try to split before he shoves us back to the Zone."

[reasonsforhope]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but especially with the end of the school year coming up soon, and a bunch of people about to leave high school or about to leave college, I just wanted to say:

Being an adult can be really nice, actually!!!

Like, okay, yeah, life can be fucking stressful sometimes, and there's definitely an annoying amount of paperwork.

But me and just about every single adult I know will agree: I would never choose to go back to being a teenager, even if I somehow could.

Insert obvious disclaimer that nothing is universal. But for people worried about aging or graduating into the next chapter of life, here's some words of reassurance:

When you're a teenager, your brain is extra mean to you. Like, neurologically. All of the changes it's undergoing really, really increase rates of depression/anxiety/etc. A lot of the time, literally just not being a teenager anymore is really good for your mental health

Less than five months out of high school, everyone I knew my age was like "Thank fuck we're no longer in high school." Once you leave high school and adolescence there's really just such a dramatic drop in petty bullshit. Shit that would have been a huge social humiliation or gossip in high school is really often just like, "Hate that for you, man." Boom, done.

When you're a teenager or a brand new adult, you're encountering so many problems for the first time ever. When you're older, you just. Have learned how to handle a lot more things. You know what to do way more often and that builds confidence

When you're an adult, other people generally don't care if you don't do things perfectly, because jobs and life don't work like grades. This was such a trip to learn, honestly? But when you are an adult or have a job the bar for success is usually just "Did you do the thing?" or "Did you do the thing well enough that it works?" or "Did you show up to work for your whole shift and look like you were doing things?"

Similarly, if you're about to graduate college and you're really stressed about it, fyi just about everyone I knew in college ended up very quickly going "wow, 'real life' is way easier." Admittedly I went to a school full of very stressed out perfectionists and the like, so I can't promise this is universal, but there's a very real chance that life will in many ways get easier when you graduate

WAY MORE CONTROL OF YOUR OWN LIFE

Literally I cannot overstate that last point. As an adult, you are (barring certain disabilities or shitty circumstances like abusive family/the criminal justice system/etc.) able to make most of your own decisions. If you want to rearrange your furniture, you can. If you want to eat tater tots at midnight, you can. If you want to get yourself a little treat, you can. You can sign contracts and make your own legal and medical decisions and not need a parent or guardian signature for just about anything ever again

You generally learn how to give fewer fucks

The people around you have also generally learned how to give fewer fucks

Even when things are shitty, being able to choose what kind of shitty a lot of the time can really be worth an awful lot

[stonebutchery]

it's kind of baffling to me that entire sub-groups of queer folks endured a decade of being singled out and targeted for being asexual, aromantic, bisexual, pansexual, nonbinary, polyamorous, etc. and i have yet to see any substantial apologies from people who were directly responsible for causing genuine harm. i find it completely bizarre that there are so many people who want to sweep their past contributions to widespread lateral aggression toward specific queer groups under the rug like it didn't happen so they can wash their hands of it... there are people who are irreversibly traumatized because of this. there are people who took their lives because of it.

i'm wording the post like despite the fact that exclusionism targeting these groups (and more) continues to persist partly because it was a really frighteningly common trend to harass people just because they were ace, aro, bi, pan, nonbinary, poly, etc... and it's crazy to me that many of the people who were affected by this massive multi-pronged public online bullying campaign against the 'unacceptable types of queers' are the ones still receiving messages like "my url got put on an aphobe blocklist in 2016 because apparently a post i made making fun of asexuals got some teenage asexuals harassed and i still distrust asexuals to this day because of that" ...are you fucking kidding me?

we will never achieve any kind of unity as a queer community while we are insisting upon ignoring the hurt that lateral aggression has caused, and acting like the burden lies on the shoulders of the people who were harmed to forgive the people who harmed them and 'just move on', many of whom are not sorry for what they did! or they don't consider what they did to be wrong! how is that not deeply disturbing and troubling to more of you?

03/06/2024 edit: i’m putting a complete moratorium on this post because i am really sick and tired of having my point not only completely misconstrued and distorted entirely but also weaponized against transfems (particularly in replies i have decided to delete about how “ugh yes, exclusionism, and now transfems are bullying transmascs”) i find that really sickening and i’m demanding that it stop, and i can make it stop by turning off reblogs. so i have.

my objective in writing this post was never to request an apology from people who have been laterally-aggressive exclusionists in the past. i don’t think we’ll ever get more than a handful of apologies from those people, anyway. my point was that it was pretty terrifying to witness and experience a lot of lateral aggression that transferred from the real, in-person world to the deeply online spaces back into the real, in-person world in a really fucked up feedback loop and being a young queer person during this time and having that shape me, snd shape the experiences of my queer friends who have been traumatized by it.

however, it is absolutely unacceptable to me that the issue of transmisogyny is so blatantly overlooked by our entire community. for decades, transfems have experienced oppression and exclusion from transmisogyny-exempt women and queers. their exclusion from political queer liberation movements has caused many of the major schisms within our community we are still having arguments about to this day. if you want collective queer liberation, you must uplift transfems. there is no other option. you don’t get to write off all transfems just because one person who happened to be transfem was mean to you online or something.

i have answered and responded to way too many conspiracy-brained transmisogynist reactionaries to allow this post to keep fucking snowballing with people writing paragraphs in the tags about “transmisandry” or “transandrophobia.” please get your heads out of your asses.

this absolutely is the transmisogyny website, as always, and the place where all basic textual comprehension skills go to die, apparently.

[nevermeyers]

I find it very realistic that Megumi wants to try to live for someone else again instead of for himself directly. I mean it. It will take him a long time to recover from what he has suffered, which was too much for a child (because he is still a child!!). At first I thought Megumi was going to pick himself up, but looking at it from another perspective and analyzing my own experience with mental health: it makes sense. Megumi needs help. And he will get it. Yuuji and his friends will teach him to live for himself. The ending of Megumi's character is a new beginning, unlike the others.

Btw, did y'all notice his scars are Sukuna's? The way i'd kms on the spot, poor boy :( he's going to live with the curse of remembering every time he looks on the mirror

[incognitopolls]

"Abusive" includes forms of abuse like physical, mental, emotional, or any other form.

–

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[zivazivc]

the morning (afternoon?) after this messy stunt. Floyd got off too easy in my opinion, but it's hard for Les to stay mad at him when he makes those sad pouting faces... 🤦

If you think Floyd's being really dumb at the start of this comic before getting a reality check, you have to take into account that he's madly lovesick and was feeling very smug atm; he's also a 15yo pop troll who thinks making out with someone means they're together now; and he assumed Les's sour mood was entirely the result of a nasty hangover...

P.S. They forgot about Hed lol (I almost forgot about him too, drew him just before posting lmao)

[gor3sigil]

I spent the majority of my life being scared to DEATH about getting older. When I was 10, I listened to a song about growing out of the innocence of childhood and cried for hours. When I was 13, I could have panic attacks and crying fits because I was terrified of not being passionate about music as much if I grew older. I cried when I reached my 20s. And I'm scared shitless about turning 30.

The adults in my life were MISERABLE. I was told almost every day that growing up meant giving up, making sacrifices, having to bury inside everything you ever were as a child and teenager to fit in the mould or you were going to be the scum of society, useless, not worthy of anything.

The adults in my life were traumatized and never did anything to address their traumas. And they openly didn't want to. They were persuading themselves that they were fine or that it wasn't important to heal from the past. But their traumas transpired in everything they did, every decision they made, and the way they treated me.

And look, I'm not old by any means. I'm almost 27. But I spend every day that makes me closer to 30 like a waiting room before my inner death. Like one day I'll wake up and become a zombie and everything I ever loved and was passionnate about will be erased from my mind and heard, only to be replaced by the excruciating burden of responsabilities, chores, work, filling papers and wondering how I ended up living this way.

That's why I left my family. Because I was so sure that they would shove me into the same patterns they were in that I just dropped everything and went away. And the reaction I got in return was "Well, do you think WE'RE happy ? No, but life goes on anyways." I felt my inner child scream in agony. I packed, took a train, never returned.

And thank god I did.

It warms my heart so much when I see peolle here in their 30s still engaging in famdoms, nerdy hobbies, passions like writing, drawing, make music. Know that you're the reason I keep going and am a little less scared of being myself and growing into who I want to become.

[yugiohz]

i love *throws up* that whenever hawks speaks about endeavor in a professional setting, we get childhood flashbacks and see that damn endeavor plushie, hawks might be the president now and make big choice that will alter people's lives, but he makes those decisions with a juvenile heart that can't let go of his love for a questionable man lol

on one hand it's realistic, not everyone can let go of that, but it's presented as something good when it really isn't. hawks is so chained to his childhood trauma he can't do shit without thinking of endeavor's well-being it's so sick. at least he knows that dabi knows that i hope he feels slighlty ashamed that he can't get over endeavor when even dabi and shoto could let go...... EMBARRASSING!!!!!!

and i already said it in my dabihawks post, but hawks and shoto also parallel each other! like hawks' life and relationship to his quirk is also shaped by endeavor but while shoto learns that he has to let go of that, hawks sticks to it and it's not even framed as an issue he still needs to face

[merakiui]

not poor you-tsum getting piled on the moment she shows up in front of the others. don't worry, i'm sure they're all just playing a fun game with her! she sure is squeaking a whole lot, though...

>_< poor you-tsum, returning to your arms looking so disheveled after playing with the other tsums for so long! They’re all so rough! Riddle tries to brag that his tsum would never participate in such things, but then he finds out his tsum was one of the first to jump on your tsum and now he’s absolutely mortified. The tsum does not reflect his inner thoughts; please believe him!!!! orz

Or you’re studying with the Octavinelle trio while your tsums play together. You don’t understand why they’re wrestling with each other, but all it takes are knowing smiles exchanged amongst the trio and you’ve suddenly got a bad feeling…

Napping alongside Leona while your tsums are busy playing. By this point, you’re almost certain they’re doing more than just playing. ^^;; if you comment on it, Leona cracks one eye open to look at them before smirking and saying, “Maybe we ought to copy their example. Seems fun.” Slow, sloppy, sleepy sex with our favorite lion prince hehe!!!! <3

[wormboyfriendcentralstation]

heathcliff: i killed cathy...... im a horrible person in every timeline. my revenge killed her. my remorse literally broke through timelines.

catherine who got back at heathcliff by stealing a house to remodel into the Magic Cocaine Labyrinth after draining the financial assets of england's least tragically ill victorian man, making carmen contact her copyright lawyers by sealing her ambiguously dead body into a glass tank while her brain powers a building, and potentially hiring the Mueseumafia of Modern Art because if she pays them with cash she doesnt have to report her Green-Energy-Human-Tank Powered Hydrogen Bomb Basement Factory's earnings to the IRS or whatever the city uses: 'tis what you get for trying to boyfail without your girlboss, methinks 😇😇😇😇😇

[ssaraexposs]

The way he wants to prove WRONG to Atsushi. The way he wants to prove that he's not like Dazai. He knows Kyouka deserved better from him and also knows he actually owes her. After everything they've been through, he saw the change in her eyes. He's seen how much she's grown, and how much she worked for become the girl he saw in that right moment.

[nenoname]

Gravity Falls DVD Commentary Highlights

(just a huge, and I mean huge, dump of random quotes that stuck out to me, which I sorta separated into characters+their relationships and it's probably gonna be obvious that Stan is my fave lmao

I dunno how to make this legible for anyone but whatever, just take all these rando character tidbits. Stan Twin pranks! Sonployee essays! The concept for a post-Weirdmageddon episode that Alex insists is just too miserable but I want it anyway! The Pines family making me cry!)

Stan

"We love the idea of Stan [in Boss Mabel] having a minute to uh, having a context where we want to see him be his worst self and seeing his big brash personality in like a setting that everyone can understand, because the Mystery Shack is a little bit ungrounded because he's in his world of his characters, but seeing him out in the outside world is funny weird."

We really enjoyed the fact that he's as awful as ever and he's rewarded for it. We like those anti-morals where Stan uses his terribleness to succeed incredibly well.

I think it was a little hard for people to understand in the writer's room at the beginning of the series was that, even though Stan is following a lot of these tropes of being a miser, he's not grumpy. Like he actually loves being himself. He really revels in it like even though he's got some kind of sorrow inside, his kind of day-to-day like he's more about just the uncle who loves to hear himself and make dumb jokes than he is somebody who's mean or cruel or cynical per se.

The [NWHS] storyboards managed to make Stan this awesome action hero while still keeping him Stan. Like I like the fact that he steals a wallet in the middle of it. He steals a wallet, he smashes somebody against the wall, he sasses him but he also has this just great Inception moment. And it's because we're building to a big question about “who is Stan?”, I felt a moment of seeing him be kind of awesome further increases your “who is this guy?” He keeps going back and forth between like “oh geez my back” and you're like “all right that's the Stan I know” and then like “whoa, he just did an awesome jailbreak! Is he some kind of super villain? Who is he really?

There's more of Ford in Stan than I think Stan realizes that I think only comes out in certain moments.”

Why did Stan keep a clipping of himself titled “grifter at large”? I think he thought he looked cool in that picture. “You know I kind of have a Clint Eastwood look in this grifter at large photo. I think maybe I'll use this as an About the Author one day. I gotta hold on to this one. You know what, I'm a criminal but I'm a nostalgic criminal! Loving the past is my greatest crime now!”

I know how Stan feels in this [Principal talking to his family] scene, when somebody comes in and says like “You know what? There was a race you didn't know you were running and you're already behind, way behind.” 

And you know even though Stan is a guy who looks like he's having a fun time, I always, in my gut, thought of him as somebody who is a huge well of sadness, a loss of human connection. And that need to please, that trying to get laughs from the crowd and constantly telling dumb jokes and you know putting on a big show in the Mystery Shack, he's trying to get from them the affection that he never got from his family and lost with his brother.

Stan has been waiting for years to have a reunion with his brother. He's always felt like a screw-up. Stan once again had an idea of how he thought things were going to go. He thought that his brother was saying “I need your help” for the first time. He's going to go up there, they're gonna have some drinks, they're gonna catch up and instead he ended up shoving his brother into another dimension and running out of food and money. It's sort of his worst nightmare. But this was Stan's entire character, from the very beginning of the series, was built around this idea that he's living with this tragedy. He's a guy who outwardly seems like he doesn't appreciate family but in fact wants it more than anything in the world and feels like maybe he's not worthy of it and would do anything to prove that he is.

Seeing Stan figure out what he's good at felt important to me. Like he's never been good at anything in his life and he makes a stupid hokey joke and it suddenly turns into a profit. I felt like without [showing how the Mystery Shack was created], I was missing something and understanding why he would do this, how this would be the solution to his problem.

We would like the idea that Stan appears to win through dumb luck, that it's sort of Intelligence versus Guts but Stan wouldn't actually bet everyone's life on a dice roll. He's a cheater! At the end of the day, I believe Stan has been thrown out of Vegas for counting cards and for weighing dies and I believe he could con his way out of any game, particularly for an obnoxious wizard like this. The idea that Stan would gamble everyone on pure chance is like no. No, he's got a plan. This is the guy who escaped prison using gravity leaps, he's got a way out.

The one big thing [The Stanchurian Candidate] does is really highlights Stan's inferiority complex compared to his brother. Part of what he's doing is he's trying to be an important man here and this episode is actually a pretty good setup in many ways for Weirdmageddon Part 3. When we see Ford they're all going on this rescue mission to rescue Ford and this episode shows you just how much Stan wants to be the hero like the reason that he can't shake Ford's hand when they're in that circle.  The cold open of this where he sees everyone loves Ford and now that Ford's back, he's the best. Stan's like “well, how about I run for mayor!” It's just to boost his ego and make him feel better about himself.

Dipper and Mabel

“Straight man protagonists are really hard to write because every other character had a comedic hook. We understand that Soos is kind of this weirdo, his brain is in another place. Mabel has this exuberance and sees the best in every situation and is very creative. Stan is a crooked conman. Dipper is… the normal guy and a character like that can often feel like they don’t have agency, start to feel just reactive.

Waddles is Mabel's only love that lasts the summer. Mabel is very prone to love at first sight and Waddles is able to love back with Mabel's degree of love.

[In Sock Opera] Mabel's in love with Gabe, Dipper's in love with the Author and they're both willing to do something crazy to get get closer to that thing

There kept being layers of adjustment to make it, “okay what would it take to get Dipper to make a deal with Bill?”  1: He would have to not understand the rules of the deal. He's been tricked, he thinks he's just giving a puppet, he didn't know was himself. Classic genie rules, you get what you wish for in a way you didn't expect.  2: There's a little ticking clock that just started, which if he doesn't do it by now, he's gonna lose all this.  3: Bill rightfully points out that Mabel has been kind of not sacrificing for him and he maybe needs another ally right now  4: He was sleep deprived and actually you'll notice that Dipper blinks right before Bill arrives and that's our way of suggesting that that countdown might not have even existed

I think Dipper and Mabel are of equal exact intelligence but Dipper's insecure. He sees his accomplishments as a way to make himself better and thus is motivated to focus on things that are accomplishment type things. And Mabel is very confident and likes having fun and when she's having a good time, she has a little tunnel vision for the people and the things around her. That's one of her biggest flaws. She's actually really, really sweet when she notices and understands your pain but not when she's doing a bit, when she's doing a scene, when she's doing a gag.

Ford

Originally [the fake Author] looked a little bit more like an oddball wacky inventor and I felt he had to be pretty idiosyncratic. There's certain color things about him you'll notice. He's more or less got the color scheme of the Journal, you know maroons and golds, so that you kind of feel instinctively like maybe that's him. A lot of these motifs though we would end up using in Ford's design, as well the gloves and the coat and all that but much cooler later on but preparing you, it's Ford Lite. 

Now this is there's no logical reason that Ford would break [the warnings about the portal] up into all these books this way but up until this point he's been shown as this sort of all-knowing mysterious Puzzle Master that it felt appropriate, even though it's not logical.

It works for the storytelling so when Ford wrote that, that's when he was super sleep deprived. He realized that Bill had betrayed him, he was starting to have a hard time differentiating between fantasy and reality, he was losing sleep and scribbling all sorts of lunatic serial killer looking stuff about the end of the world.

In Time Traveler’s Pig, we see what should be a young Stanford Pines even though again, the design's a little off but we knew big sideburns, bushy hair. Although that Stanford looked a little bit more swole than this guy and that's one of the what we thought were very subtle clues in season one that helped a lot of fans figure figure everything out way too soon.

[Using the memory gun on the agents scene] needs to show that Ford's really awesome and so we could get rid of the agents and show that Ford can pretty much handle anything that Stan can't and also call back to our memory ray all in one.

There was a lot of fan speculation when we first met Ford. Generally when television shows introduce a new mysterious character late in the game, they turn out to be a villain like 9 out of 10 times. They turn out to be a villain or they're there to get killed off to show the stakes of something and like we could have made Ford evil but I always felt that that would be less interesting. The point that I was trying to get to is that Stan and Ford had this relationship that fell apart and it was both of their faults and I thought that if I'm Stan, I'd be more frustrated if Ford is actually a good guy. It would drive me insane if he's pretty reasonable, pretty rational, better at me than everything.

So we've flirted with this brief moment where it seems like he's a villain and we worked really hard to make it so that like his eyes are being covered by the reflection of the light. His dialogue is ambiguous enough here that for a moment you believe what Dipper believes, which is “maybe he's possessed by Bill.” You just saw him shaking Bill's hand, what is he supposed to believe?

I like that Ford has this photo with him, he had for a really really long time all the way through multiple dimensions. And he's probably told himself- I almost imagined if McGucket found that photo in his coat while they were working on the portal or something, like “What's this here?” and Ford would say “oh yes, that's a photo of a very important moment! That's when I…  that's when I first decided I want to be an inventor!” There would be no reference to the real reason he's keeping it. “This is me and my brother.” It would be like, “oh yes I was thinking about science as a horizon, a frontier to reach towards– you know like a boat, like a ship, like science! It's about science!”

Soos

You choose family. That you create over the course of your life and if that somebody earns being your family, like the Mystery Shack. These kids and Stan, they’re Soos' family and he's happy about that.

I feel like Soos gained something out of [Blendin’s Game]. He gains the knowledge that like “I'm tired of thinking about this man who I'm missing, who doesn't care about me. I'm going to concentrate on the people in front of me, the people that are my true family.”

Soos is a fan of the show even though he's in it. He's a big fan of Gravity Falls and [NWHS] killed him.

I always knew what I wanted Soos’ end to be Soos running the Mystery Shack. I imagine that Soos is actually way better at giving tours than Stan is because he loves all that stuff truly and he believes it. That's part of the difference. Stan’s like “um, all right suckers, this stagnant puddle is the befuddle puddle!” while Soos is like “yeah, one time I looked in there, I think i saw like a cyclops dude. Like, I really think I saw one! Like it might have been a reflection combining my pupils, but like?” and people are like “Whoa, really??”

McGucket

They hired a bunch of people and then they erased their memory. That’s my explanation for why there's like such amazing inventions that would take whole teams of people. McGucket secretly hired a number of contractors and erased their minds. Like I think of McGucket as being like a really sweet nice guy completely in over his head who just like “oh well, once I've erased one guy's mind, I gotta erase ten more guys’ minds to cover it up” and it just sort of builds into like “I guess I'm kind of this kingpin of crime and I'm starting a cult I didn't mean to. Whoopsy daisy!”

When we get to Ford and see their backstory and see their relationship, it just makes all the stuff that happens with the portal and what happens with Ford and all that more poignant that he had someone there who was not only his friend but also a voice of reason and telling him to stop and that he wouldn't listen to him, as opposed to Ford being down there on his own with nobody to bounce off, anybody to say “hey wait a minute, is this a good idea?”

“McGucket was the assistant and he was maybe this assistant who was sort of put upon and Ford kind of brought a college buddy together with him. You know Ford as somebody who lost Stan, and even though he rejected his brother, he kind of needs that other person and he tried to find that in this kind of sweet prodigy and he just pushed him too far.

[The test scene] is meant to show sort of what it was that McGucket needed to erase, what it was that drove him to madness. It was partially seeing the Nightmare Verse and the way it messed with his head and also partly just realizing that this thing has apocalyptic consequences and he doesn't want to be a part of it. And if he can't destroy it or talk Ford out of something, he can forget about it.

Because If Ford's weakness is pride, McGucket's weakness is weakness. He's got a kind heart and he can't stop people, he can't destroy things. I mean he should have basically knocked Ford out with a wrench and take this thing apart piece by piece. He's the one who understood how to build it but I think he's kind of a follower and I think he's the kind of person who could get suckered in by a cult leader. He’s the kind of person looking for instruction and he really respects Stanford and can't bring himself to uh, he's like “I just got out of a bunker! I don't want to go work for another guy down in another bunker! This is my third doomsday cult this year!”

Stan and the kids

Stan and Mabel have such a different life perspective it seemed natural that at some point they would get to a major conflict

Seeing Grunkle Stan and Dipper bond like, I sort of believe that both of them are bad with women and both of them would rather believe there's a giant conspiracy than that they have they just can't get ladies 

Can this idea about Mabel's relationship with Waddles actually reveal a rift between Mabel and Stan where Mabel and Stan actually get along pretty well in the series you know? When they they're both such strong stubborn personalities that when they conflict, they conflict hard like in Boss Mabel. But this idea that Waddles is sort of a metaphor for what Mabel loves and Stan loves Mabel but he doesn't really think that anything she thinks is necessarily smart or right. He loves her like “guys she's my sweet niece but she doesn't know anything you know? She doesn't know anything about a pig” She forgives a lot with Stan but like Waddles sort of represents like the purity of her deepest love and the idea that Stan would threaten that is genuinely a shock

In the previous season it ends with Dipper giving up his journal and there was a lot of argument about “oh is it lame if he just gets his journal back?” Another thing we struggled with, we knew that Stan knows the importance of this journal he wouldn't give the journal back to Dipper so it was a bit of a convolution we'd written ourselves into a corner. We wrote ourselves out, we said “okay he's photocopied it. he's giving it to Dipper because he knows that Dipper's really precocious and he'll never stop asking.”

“We knew that we wanted everything to come to a head when the kids are going to discover Stan's secret and they're going to discover it in such a way that they only get little bits and pieces and they have to decide for themselves based on the limited information. Is Stan's a good guy or if he's a bad guy? Ultimately that decision will be a decision of heart versus mind. And Dipper's mind, Mabel is heart and they're fighting with the scraps of information they have.  Should we trust our heart about how we feel about this guy over the course of the summer and everything we've been through or should we trust the clues? That seemed like a believable way to get Dipper and Mabel to begin a rift between them that is resolved by the end of the series.”

The way Stan acts in [NWHS] is like, to me part of what feels so grounded about it is like I'm a child of divorce and like I know that when parents or parent figures know that hard times are coming for the kids. They kind of lay it on thick they're like who wants ice cream you know what I mean? Like Stan being extra nice to them at the beginning is like it's kind of a realistic thing that that adults do when they know like big changes are coming.

I felt it was really important that we added the scene where they're at maximum bonding. They're up on the roof, they're shooting firecrackers. Stan knows in his heart that when his brother arrives everything is going to change in ways he can't predict and he's really savoring this moment because he knows, even if things goes completely smoothly, which they don't. the kids are still going to be mad at him, especially Dipper for basically lying.  They had this big meeting after the end of Scaryoke where of course Dipper also crossed his finger but Stan crosses his fingers and says “oh I'm telling you everything” and he knows that the kids are not going to be happy about the fact that he's been keeping this all from them because they've done amazing things together already and he should have trusted them before now. 

This act break is them saying, “wait, Stan might be a random grifter who maybe killed our real uncle!” That's pretty heavy for any show let alone a cartoon show.

What that would mean for them if all this stuff is true is so much further than just like, “oh he lied to us about a couple things.” It's just like, “no he's straight up just some random dude that we don't even know uh and the guy that I've been pining for this whole time is dead!”  We really try to stack the deck so it's like Mabel's perspective and Dipper's perspective are both kind of racing to see who gets in front and there'll be a moment where it's like yeah you kind of buy with Mabel she feels good about about Stan and then this scene is the most you’re ever with Dipper where we discover this huge crazy curveball and this feeling that you have looking at this newspaper and looking through these fake IDs this is how Dipper feels all the time.  If you want a window about what it's like to be Dipper, this moment where a giant conspiracy reveals itself out of little pieces and seems to suggest that no one is trustworthy like that's that's where Dipper lives and this to him confirms every bit of suspicion and every bit of paranoia he's ever had and he's willing to run with it. 

I love these characters so much that, for me I was like “I need to see Stan saying goodbye to the kids at that bus. And I don't want him to be some guy who isn't Stan, who doesn't even remember the kids.” That would be really dramatic. It might make you cry more but to me it doesn't actually mean anything. Their relationship which they've built, he was willing to sacrifice his memories to save them. That's how much they meant to him but because he was willing to do that, I think he deserves to get him back.

Stan and Ford

But I think Stan's hope is, that in Stan's mind this is going to play out one way which is that; he's going to free his brother, his brother's gonna come out of that portal after 30 years. Stan's probably imagining that Ford is weak, emaciated, wrapped in a blanket, that he'll stumble forward, through a beard. through blurry eyes, he'll be “my brother, is that you?” He'll embrace Stan, he'll hug him, he'll say, “all these years I thought I was goner but you saved me! I was wrong to mock you, I was wrong to call you the stupid twin! Dad was wrong about you! You're the greatest man and let's be friends again and who are these niece and nephew?” Like that was what Stan was kind of hoping. He knows it's there's a million things that could go wrong, including potentially the destruction of this dimension, but he so desperately needs to believe that he can make up for the problems of the past. He's hoping for this but he knows that things are going to change

When I started the series, I always knew Stan had a twin but all I knew about Ford from the jump was that he's everything Stan Isn't. So Stan is a guy with a huge chip on his shoulder, he's kind of a loser at life. There's somebody who is a winner at life or at least was a winner in all these ways that Stan wasn't.

We realized that in order to bring out the maximum amount of frustration in Stan, [Ford] needed to have a bit of a heart. Like here we see him being kind to the kids, he's not he's not all bad which is what's so infuriating to Stan. The idea that he would quickly get along with the kids when he can't get any respect from them. Ford is designed for what would bring out the most amount of conflict in the family. What would be Dipper's hero, what would be Stan's rival and who's somebody that we could empathize with. I mean, it’s  hard to empathize with a character that comes out and punches one of your characters in the face, basically before he almost says anything.

You see that at this age, that all the stuff [in their room] that would cross over, that would appeal to both of them. It's not just like “there's science stuff here” and then there's “what Stan would be into.” but no, they both like all this.

There was also a version [of ToTS] where early on, they'd rigged the school water fountain. They did sort of like a caper, it was science and a scam together when they were in elementary school but we decided to save the science for the science fair stuff.

We played around with the idea that you would see them working together doing little science games or pulling little pranks. There was actually a scene that some of it was even storyboarded where they're in a treehouse together and Crampelter and his friends have tracked them down and are begging for their lunch money and Stan and Ford have used their jerkiness and geniusness to rig up like a water balloon throwing machine that knocks Crampelter in the head. I remember him saying, “oh no, my old-timey paper crown!” We were really hanging a lampshade on all these sort of Little Rascal cliches.

Ford's not a villain. You know he's getting in Stan's face and saying “I want my life back” but hopefully by the end of the episode even though you don't root for his perspective, you understand his perspective where it's like Stan ruined his science project, Stan shoved him into the portal, Stan took over his house. He’s not completely unreasonable to want it back and he's not completely unreasonable about his request. He says “okay you've got till the end of the summer” and Stan's little look there tells you everything you need to know about how he feels about the situation.

We needed pressure to be at the point where Stan and Ford recognize their lifelong rivalry and Ford does a sincere apology to Stan and almost more importantly, he acknowledges Stan's intelligence. He says “you wouldn't have fallen for Bill's nonsense.” He recognizes that his brother has a kind of intelligence he doesn't.

I always imagined that as kids, Stan and Ford were like this dynamic duo. They were getting into scrapes and like planning pranks and with Stan's creativity and Ford's genius that they were an unstoppable awesome team, before life turned them against each other. I imagine that as kids they were always swapping glasses and tricking their parents so that they could get double presents. And this is a move they did back in New Jersey constantly. We had to figure out who's gonna make a sacrifice and how and even though it's Stan who agrees to be “I'll be the one erase my mind, it's fine, it's worth it”, it's a sacrifice for both. Ford at this point is willing to get his brother back and he has to lose him again. 

Stan and Ford, when they can finally work together, do bring out the best in each other. They just have been missing it for so long.

Post-mind return, Stan and Ford get along and that scene where they both threaten the bus driver gives a hint of what would happen if their powers were combined. We've never seen them working together as adults, they would be a really formidable duo.

Pines Family

[The Blind Eye has] such a great scene between Mabel and Wendy. We don't have a lot of scenes that are just them hanging out and she can kind of be like the cool older sister. Mabel's so obsessed with boys and Wendy's just like "yeah, whatever. They're a dime a dozen."

“in the storyboard, the postcard that Soos is holding up from New Orleans actually said Vegas and at the last minute we got really worried that people were gonna see that and think that that was a clue that Stan was Soos's deadbeat father. And because like our audience, we've trained them to look for clues and to connect dots, they start connecting dots that are not connected. And I called a late retake because, and I see people be like, “wouldn't that be cool if Stan was actually Soos's father” and I hate that headcanon. Whoever's listening and you think “that's a great idea!”-- that's a terrible idea!! Because it means that Stan ran out on his kid and then came back in his life. And weirdly pretends to not be his dad. It flies against the moral of this entire episode which is like, you know this guy who is Soos’ blood relative like cast him out and didn't come back and didn't make time for him and all these people did. These people are Soos’ real family and to say “Stan would be Soos' real father more if he was genetically–”, I'm like “no, no forget that!” Like relationships are about what you do. To me friendship is thicker than water and family is something you can create so I really didn't want anyone to think that we were suggesting that because to me, it actually wasn't just the wrong idea, it was like thematically against what the show's about.” "

"[In NWHS] Every character faces their worst possible choice, which is “Mabel must choose between Dipper and Stan” and “Soos must choose between Stan and the kids,” like “guard that thing with your life. I'm not going to explain to you why.” I believe that Soos would do anything to guard Mr Pines's secrets and these are the only two characters that could possibly make him doubt Stan, these two kids that he loves so much."

"For [DD&MD], you want to set it up as being like [Ford]'s like the coolest toy that's down in the basement that Dipper really wants to play with and he is not allowed to play with him."

"The first three quarters of the series are sort of about Dipper's crush on Wendy and this final quarter is sort of about his crush on the Author. He's such a fan of this guy and he's so used to being denied that which he's a fan of and he's never found anybody who cares about his nerdy stuff. Mabel doesn't care, Stan doesn't care, Soos cares but on a different level. He's so hungry for the approval of somebody like Ford This idea that they would bond over a nerdy board game felt like sort of the way to do this big idea in a sort of grounded way that I like better than like Ford presented Dipper with the Five Trials of the Genius Boy. “I passed these when I was your age! Can you do it too?” and it's like nope he just likes the same dork game that he does."

"The arrival of Ford is creating the two sets of twins starting to pair off between the Brainiacs and the Maniacs"

"Actually I enjoyed that [Ford putting the die in a cheap plastic case] got a little bit of a reckless side because it shows you the Stan part of him. The Stan part of Ford, the little bit that likes a little bit of danger, he likes a little bit of risk. If he would show that side, it would be in when he feels at ease, with a kindred spirit. Around Dipper he’d be like “isn't this pretty cool?” He'd never be that irresponsible around Stan.  I like that Dipper is sort of a little bit of a Achilles heel for Ford as well. Ford has certain blind spots and Dipper exacerbates some of those just because he's willing to encourage, he's willing to “yes and” Ford towards whatever dumb idea he might have."

"Dipper, Mabel, Stan and Ford, they're all characters who need each other. Without Dipper, Mabel's just in a fantasy land. Without Mabel, Dipper is just sort of just spiraling into misery, spiraling into his own neurosis and not being pulled into those social situations, not growing as a person."

"You want [Stan] to be true to our various awful grandfathers, so I feel like for the most part you know that [being shitty to women] a plausible thing for Stan to do, that you only forgive because you know he's not a role model. Nobody wants to be like Stan. The kids never look up to him. The only person who looks up to Stan is Soos and Soos is enough of a comedy character that you understand the joke is “oh this guy thinks the worst way to live is good.” And then at one point you realize why. We made it clear why Soos looks up to Stan is because he gave him his job. He gave him a father basically, he’s essentially Soos’ father. And of course Stan who's had a life of just chaos and disappointment, the only person who would be a surrogate son is [Soos] but also Soos has the biggest heart in the world. So only the biggest heart in the world could forgive all of Stan's many flaws and also if Soos can love Stan, then maybe there's something in there worth loving, then maybe we can too."

"Stan, even when he's sweet, he still has to threaten to murder his niece and nephew."

"I do think the value of [Stanchurian Candidate] is that we're learning just how important it is that [Stan]’s seen. At this point, the kids have become a surrogate family. At the beginning of the show, they were just kind of a little nuisance and then he kind of tried out getting the family from them that he never got from his brother and the idea that he would lose them to his brother is his greatest nightmare and the only way he can really express that is by trying to be impressive to them and trying to be his brother's rival."

"Ford offers Dipper this apprenticeship because Ford sees Dipper as somebody who's special like himself. That Ford's great flaw is arrogance. He believes that there's special people and everyone else and that you can be held back by your siblings. That human attachments are actually weaknesses. The song and dance that he's giving Dipper right now is the exact song of dance that he gave McGucket back when they were younger which is like “sure you could continue working on your job and computers but you and me are different. We're better than everyone else, we have a path that no one else can understand. Only us can do this.” And it’s a very seductive idea for Dipper but he starts to be a little insecure here. He’s kind of “I can't believe it” and he's sort of right to be suspicious because Dipper is a smart kid but Ford's projecting. Ford loves Dipper because he sees someone who tell him yes to everything. He'll never challenge him and if Dipper had taken Ford's apprenticeship,Dipper probably would have gone the way of McGucket, turned into a kind of insane paranoid hermit with no friends, just kind of losing his mind. Like it's a seductive offer but also ultimately Dipper needs to learn not to try to grow up too fast."

"This entire time Dipper's been having this journey of self-discovery and seeing his future as this wonderful thing that he can't wait for. Mabel has been, piece by piece, seeing her idea of the summer fall apart."

"As Ford and Dipper's relationship grow stronger, Stan and Mabel also find much more sort of connection. They both feel like the sibling that's getting kind of sidelined."

"I think [amnesiac!Stan] would be hardest on Soos, second hardest on Ford but Soos would show it. Probably third hardest on Mabel, fourth hardest on Dipper just because where their hearts are. Dipper's not heartless, that's a testament to just how heartbroken those other characters are."

Series goal+ The Finale

"So our idea was; the memory gun can erase a concept as designated by the dial. It stores it. It records you and it keeps that recording and that if you watch that recording things start to come back a little bit, that it hasn't actually completely erased it from your mind. It's more sublimated somewhere where it's really really hard to reach and in the series finale, my concept of Bill is that; if he hadn't gotten in all those forms and fought Stan, Stan is the one that destroyed Bill. Were it just the mind eraser itself that he would be sublimated somewhere but he was weakened in the mindscape and destroyed in the mindscape. But Stan's memories were being sublimated and by looking at the scrapbook in the same way that McGucket's memories come back, they start to come back to the surface."

"I think part of what makes [NWHS] work also is that it has the strongest ticking clock. Yeah, I mean. it has a literal ticking clock. Also the sun is going down it's also, the town is starting to drift apart as the characters are starting to drift apart. There's just such a sense of Doomsday and even though we have like a three-part apocalypse, to me nothing feels as apocalyptic as this episode now."

"The entire purpose of [ToTS] is that Stan and his brother have had this huge rivalry that remains to this day and threatens to tear apart Dipper and Mabel and briefly does, and then Dipper and Mabel are able to find their way together, which is meant to repair Stan and his brother's past."

"Here we're teeing up the rest of the conclusion of the series which is just “whoa this is different. The status quo is shifted and is it going to shift us?” and that was the mission of this entire story was shift. Shift things such that it pits Dipper and Mabel against each other so that they can ultimately make things right and fix their uncles’ trauma in the process."

"“Let's try to set things into motion such that all of these characters who we love, who love each other are placed at maximum odds”. So Ford's entire existence in the series is basically a wrench in the relationships between Stan, Dipper and Mabel, that Stan has had a sibling who he didn't get along with and they've grown up having this horrible rift. Dipper and Mabel are these two twins who love each other but are very very different and are at this sort of volatile growing up moment where if something goes wrong could they turn out like Stan and Ford."

"[The convincing Gideon] scene works for me because it sort of represents the full completion of Dipper's Wendy Arc. Even though he's talking about Gideon and Mabel, he's really talking about himself. That idea that you can't force someone to love you but you can strive to be someone worthy of loving. It really does come down to like be the best you, you can be and the right person will see and feel that."

"It was gonna be W1, W2, W3 and then some kind of goodbye story. I remember it being something vaguely about some sort of other time travel. Bringing Blendin back because he just kind of vamoosed in the middle of this big story. There was that discussed like time traveling back to the first day when the kids arrived. The challenge was thinking of a valuable arc. So like each episode needs to have like a new problem and a new resolution and I was trying to brainstorm what's something that could feel valuable for like a final episode after the apocalypse, after Stan's mind has been erased and he's in the process of getting it back. "

"The thing I remember I wrote one out it was it's the last day of summer. Dipper and Mabel are packing uh they're planning to go home, they're feeling like nostalgic, they kind of don't want to leave. Blendin shows up and he explains that there's all these time bubbles left over, these weird anomalies because of all the time business and what Bill has done and just to watch out and be careful. Then Dipper and Mabel actually accidentally trip into one of these bubbles that are sent back to the very first episode or actually beyond the first episode, their first day in Gravity Falls um and somehow this was meant their character arc was to go from being like a little sad that they're going to leave Gravity Falls to seeing what it was like on the first day. When they were scared to be in Gravity Falls. The idea is like their first day they're like “oh Grunkle Stan, he's this weird old man and we hate living in this house and like we missed our place of comfort back home! And this is a kind of scary new adventure that we don't like.”  The kids see their own growth and realize like “the way we felt about going to Gravity Falls like we don't think we can handle it, is how we feel about leaving.” That feeling of going into a new experience means that something new and exciting is going to happen you're going to grow. There was some thought that maybe over the course of that episode, Stan would get his memory back and something that the kids had done in the past would help him in the present, get his memory back.

"What's supposed to be happening here isn't that Stan's entire memory reappears in an instant. It's supposed to be a couple days of work and we see the beginning of that process when he looks at the scrapbook and then we're kind of jumping ahead a few days. maybe a week of just intensive memory therapy with Stan before he gets there."

"When we were trying to crack the half hour episode after Weirdmageddon, it felt like we were just kind of wallowing and Stan not having his memories. It was a very depressing thing. And we didn’t get to have Stan for the last episode, which was like “it's a great it's great i think you get the emotion like in this episode. It tears you apart when you see it. You could last a little bit longer on it. But going much longer, then you just feels like well what are we doing? Why are we just kind of wallowing in our own sorrows for no good reason.”

"When we had discussed the idea of an episode beyond this episode, a fourth episode, it was basically 20 minutes of [amnesiac!Stan]. This is so intense, you might think you want it but good lord, this is enough."

"Bill singing “We’ll meet again” was something that just felt like the perfect reference because this is kind of an ending about endings in a lot of ways and we know we know Bill's going to be defeated. We know that people like Vill and have grown attached to him and for him to sing “We’ll meet again” is sort of the perfect mysterious way to say like “I might be going, I might not be going.” It’s a reference to Dr Strangelove, a movie that famously ends with nuclear apocalypse and the song “We’ll meet again” so it's for those pop culture savvy. It's already tinged with a kind of a fear and an irony and the apocalypse built in, so it's perfect on a number of levels."

"The concept of the Zodiac as existing in our current canon is this idea that the prophecy was that friends and enemies would need to come together, seemingly impossible alliances would need to be made to stand up to Bill for this prophetic moment. You know that characters like Gideon who was who used to be an enemy, characters like Pacifica, like Robbie, that we've reached the point where thanks to the kids’ kindness and growth, they are now friends with Pacifica, they've resolved Robbie's jerkiness, they've helped McGucket with his memory. They've even overcome this issue with Gideon in W1 and so it seems like friends and enemies have all been restored, leaving only one thing which is Stan and Ford have to shake hands. And their pride once again is what dooms the entire world but they get so close."

"It's clear Stan, even though he's being stubborn here and holds things up, he's ready to do it.  He clasps Ford's hand and then Ford can't help but correct his ignorant brother with something that doesn't matter at all after professing how important all this is and how important it is to put pettiness aside, he's the one who ends up being petty in the end."

"I like that Stan [during the deal] is just thinking “all right, think white, think white, think white.” He's like “think about nothing but sitting on your lazy boy.” "

"Stan and Bill had never interacted in the series up until this moment  because he had just been taken over when he was asleep. We'd seen a lot of Ford and Bill, but Stan and Bill has never happened. And Bill sort of represents all the mystery and weirdness, and Stan is the guy who just wants to have a good life and protect his family. He's the one who never invited Bill in but he's willing to take Bill out."

"If Mabel's going home with a pig, Dipper's going home with this symbol of his friendship with Wendy. And even Stan he's wearing that Mabel sweater. That's a visual symbol of; he's softened up, he's embraced family, he doesn't need to be the tough guy all the time."