#not me relating to ford even more…once again

[aceofstars16]

Just me blowing my own mind thinking about Gravity Falls again lol (or maybe more like “oh gosh that makes so much sense holy moley…”)

But here’s the thing….people always blame Ford’s pride on his reaction to Stan wanting to burn his journal. And while I agree to some extent, there is another reason for this intense reaction. Which I understand now more than when I first watched the show…

Soooo…the last time Ford saw Stan was right after he feels betrayed because he thinks Stan destroyed his project. His project, which he put so much time, effort, and work into. It was his ticket to a better future. And he believes that Stan did it on purpose, because he was so caught up in their old dream of sailing together. This would create a very painful memory, which I believe, especially with Ford not working through the emotions, is still a very sensitive “trigger” of a sorts for him.

Fast forward to the portal incident. Ford needs Stan’s help, desperately. He is reaching out despite the rift between them, because he doesn’t know what else to do. And he asks Stan to take his work, and hide it. Which to be fair, is already a big thing, because the last time Stan was around his work….he broke it (or so Ford believed). But THEN Stan doesn’t want to hide it, he wants to *destroy* it. Something that Ford, once again, put a lot of time, energy, and work into. To me, that similarity would trigger the pain and hurt that Ford felt when he was a teenager. Plus those emotions were probably increased more due to his huge lack of sleep and intense desperation for help in a situation where he was in way over his head.

I’m not trying to get Ford off the hook or say he doesn’t share in the blame for what happened. But bro…as someone who understands those kinds of triggers to betrayal and deep emotional pain…Where something, even if it’s not totally the same, has very similar elements to the painful event, happens, that pain and those intense emotions are very real. And it’s a very valid reaction, especially for someone who has not worked through or healed any from that emotional trauma.

[lobotomysyndromez]

Ford Pines they'll never make me hate you

[praisetheaxolotl]

The Arsonist Theory, Part 4: Blame The Arson, Not The Fire

Part 1: Mandibles!

Part 2: We Get It, The Billboard Was A Metaphor

Part 3: Journey To The Vicious Spiral Nebula

Welcome to the end.

Before we start, I just want to shine a light on some interpretations of the billboard in relation to part 2 of the theory right here, and an observation about "Trust no one" that relates to the theory right here.

Once again, for those new to the theory: it proposes that Bill wasn't alone in destroying his dimension-- he had a partner, one that used him like he used Ford. The previous three posts are crucial to understanding where I'm coming from with this.

This post will mostly be some miscellaneous things that I think could support the overall theory, honestly. So I'm just gonna get started with it. And, as always:

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK OF BILL, INCLUDING CIPHERS

Let's finish this.

So, something that was in the original Arsonist Theory from years ago was that Bill, oddly enough, seemed afraid of his own fire powers. He never uses them in combat, even though it would be a major advantage to him to do so. In fact, he really only seems to use fire as little more than cosmetic flair, lighting his hand on fire to make deals and other situations like that. There are really only three times he uses his fire to directly effect the environment--

Ford's dream sequence, destroying the journals, and burning up the Cipher wheel in the finale.

It's a bit strange, though. All three of those times, he didn't use his signature blue flames. He used orange flames instead.

Another thing is, remember when he died? The second the room lit on fire, he panicked. He's a dream demon, he should have been able to get the hell out of there the second he realized something was wrong! He's not powerless in this situation, so why is he acting like he is? Unless, for some reason, something about the environment reminded him of a certain... other time he was surrounded by fire? A time where, unlike now, he was powerless? Curious!

That on its own doesn't support the theory directly, however it points to lingering trauma from the destruction of Euclidia regardless.

Now... I saw a theory that made an argument that the repeated motifs of "mandibles" points to the idea that Bill might have eaten his own family.

And honestly, I agree. But...

As another layer to it, we only know that Bill had a mutation that let him see the third dimension, along with most likely fire powers since birth. So where did this sudden interest in devouring people come from?

Maybe whoever was with him was the one that taught him it. The one that told him that consuming souls meant that you would never be alone, as they would always be inside of you forever. Because, to me, it seems like an odd leap from "wants to show everyone the third dimension" to "eating people as everything burns around him." So maybe, he was influenced by something? Someone?

And another thing: When Bill is dying, in the Book Of Bill, we see two ciphers on the page.

One of them is "AXOLOTL" over and over, as to be expected.

The other? "Just fit in."

That absolutely sounds like something Euclidia would have pushed upon him! Ergo, he was remembering Euclidia in that moment, ergo the fire did definitively remind him of Euclidia, ergo he seems to get flashbacks when he sees his own fire.

This next part is pure extrapolation, so bear with me here.

Bill, on one page, mentions a highlight of his glory days as being "disassociating, and waking up to find [he'd] conquered another dynasty." Score!

Except... disassociating? Think about it.

Bill had just made a mention to disassociation, implying that he knows that he does it and knows what it feels like for him when it happens.

But when he was talking about Euclidia... he says there's a "loud buzzing in [his] ears and [he] blacks out for 30 seconds."

If this was how his disassociation usually presented itself... wouldn't he just say so?

This doesn't sound like his usual denial, either. When Bill denies something, he remains perfectly cognizant of the events that occurred, merely twisting around some details and/or justifying it to himself.

...Remember back in part one, I said I'd discuss what Bill said about his weaknesses? About how he's been touchy about them ever since... something? And how the obvious interpretation is-- especially considering that he Gatsby's us after the memory gun is mentioned-- that he's touchy ever since the Pines defeated him?

Another thing this book teaches us is that multiple versions of the same object can exist. Mainly, there have been many different iterations of the portal over the centuries.

Perhaps... multiples of some other object can exist, and have existed, and have been used against Bill?

A loud buzzing in your ears. Do you know what makes a loud buzzing noise when it's used?

"No!" You're probably thinking.

"Yes," I say.

Okay, "Probably likely" I say, but that's not as good for dramatic flair.

Sure, the buzzing isn't that loud, but once it's up to your ear... it'd be plenty loud.

One of the ciphers regarding Bill says "EVEN HIS LIES ARE LIES." Meaning, there's a secret, deeper layer to even his lies. Maybe it's that, at least here, this isn't necessarily a lie, moreso that he's operating under missing information.

And furthermore- Bill remembers some parts of what happened, judging by the text that wasn't blocked out, which does line up with how the memory gun works-- at the end of the clip, McGucket makes a reference to Bill himself, the very thing he wanted to forget.

And wouldn't that be another instance of some kind of damaging cycle? Something took away Bill's memories, now Bill has stolen the memories of another? I know, I know, it's kind of a long shot.

But you have to admit, it is interesting to think about.

Now, there might be one final thing you might be wanting from me.

If Bill was someone's accomplice, who is the bigger fish?

And to that I say...

I have no fucking idea.

Not a single clue. Bill says on his "weaknesses" page that anyone whose figured out his weaknesses haven't lived to tell the tale, but that's already verifiably false with Stan still being alive, and with the added bonus of his memory possibly being tampered with... are we sure?

I'm... not sure if the thisisnotawabsitedotcom.com lost files will have anything to do with Euclidia or not. I'm not sure what they'll be at all, honestly.

But at the end of the day, I do think this theory holds some sort of ground and is an interesting angle (pun intended) of looking at Bill's past.

Hope you all liked the theorizing, folks! Let's all wait for that countdown!!

[ghostywastaken]

Ford headcanons pt2. Just random ones.

#1: he is either pansexual or aroace, he doesn't know which one.

#2: almost was blinded in his left eye from how much blood was coming out of it so frequently. (Which is the result of bill possessing him)

#3: he once got bullied to the point where he was rushed to the hospital for a concussion and a broken arm, stanley tried to protect him.

#4: he has faint scars from his childhood on his body from his abusive parents. (His dad was more abusive, ford was absolutely terrified of emmbarrasing his dad or doing something that displeases him. HIS DAD WAS THAT BAD. So both ford and stan got into the habit of pleasing everybody out of coping from the trauma 🙁)

#5: shermie was born in the backseat of stans car. Why? Because there mom didn't think that she was in labor until her water broke, so ford and stan drove her to the hospital on the way shermie arrived. Ford was in the backseat with his laboring mother while stan was in the front driving nervously. Keep in mind that they were 17 or 16. Ford helped and will never unsee that memory of the day shermie was born! (Based off a comic I found on here.)

#6: he has a kid that he kept a secret from everyone, he placed he or she on a doorstep during his paranoid stage and took off. He felt that he couldn't be a father so he left them on a doorstep, he of course felt horrible about it but he didn't want bill killing them as a five month old. (I'll possibly make a au or fanfic off of this headcanon! Atleast both stan and ford have a secret or unknown child of theirs)

#7: he was kidnapped by fiddleford when fiddleford was apart of the society of the blind eye still, fiddleford thought that ford should unsee what he has seen about bill and all about gravity falls. It didn't work. Fiddleford couldn't do it so ford escaped never trusting fiddleford until they saw eachother again during weirdmageddon.

#8: he made a 'cult' for bill cipher as a way of praising and worshipping him as his own personal lord, this was when ford really became loyal to bill. Bill appreciated this and gave ford more information that no one knew, ford made 'shrines' too like the one in the basement.

#9: he dreams about bill still after weirdmageddon, it terrified him but he knew bill could never harm him again.

#10: ford tried destroying the book of bill in multiple different ways, burning it, throwing it away, burying it, etc. He even fed it to waddles and gompers.

#11: ford is OBSESSED with Greek mythology. He is incredibly fascinated by it, he kind of relates to persephone since he had basically the same relationship with Bill.

#12: mcgucket was clueless about bill at the start but after a while he got suspicious than he found out, bill tortured mcgucket extremely psychologically out of jealously and hatred. (Bill wanted ford all to himself.)

If you want more gravity falls headcanons tell me! I'll create more. I don't take credit to making all of these, some people came up with almost the exact same headcanons or aus.

[lucisfavoritedemon]

Through The Portal: Chapter 3

Series Masterlist

Chapter Summary: Stan finally learns what really happened to Y/n back in 1973. Stan realizes the sweet girl he once knew isn’t as bubbly as she used to be, but is determined to bring her back however he can.

Pairing(s): Stan x reader (platonic present, romantic past), Ford x platonic!reader, Dipper x best friend!reader, Mabel x best friend!reader Bill x reader

Warnings: angst, fluff, mentions of hopelessness, mental manipulation, unrequited love, flashbacks.

A/N: The events and ideas are based on a theory I have about the Nightmare Realm. This is in no way canonically true, just my theories based on what we canonically know about the Nightmare Realm.

“Wait, New Jersey?” Mabel and Dipper questioned simultaneously.

I nodded as Stan gave me a look of, ‘don't tell them just yet’. I guess in a way Stan was right, I probably shouldn’t tell them about the fact I technically am 61 years old. So I decided to tell them a little white lie.

“Yeah, I grew up in New Jersey. Just like Stan and Ford did.”

“So, how did you end up here? Did you work with Ford?” Mabel asked curiously.

“Don’t be silly Mabel, she’s not old enough to have worked with Ford on the portal.” Dipper interjected.

“Then you must be his daughter!” Mabel beamed.

“No! I-I’m not Ford’s daughter.” I quickly tried to correct her.”

“Then are you Stan’s daughter?” Mabel questioned.

“No, I have no relation to them at all. It’s a long story that I’m not ready to share just yet.”

“But, you do know Stan. You said that you were sorry you left. So, what happened?” Dipper asked, ready to write it down on a notepad as if he was interviewing me.

Stan walked up behind the two kids before I had the chance to protest, “why don’t you two go wreak havoc or whatever somewhere else. I need to speak with Y/n.”

Mabel and Dipper groaned, but didn’t protest as Stan shoved them out of the gift shop. Stan walked back over to the chair he was sitting in. He gave a questioning look before he finally spoke up, “so, now that the kids are gone, tell me what you meant by you didn’t mean to walk through that stupid portal.”

I take a deep breath before speaking, “look, Stan, it was an accident. I was just doing some test runs on the mechanics. I was not prepared for it to start up and suck me in. I spent years trying to get back to you. I knew you’d be upset with me…I didn’t want to leave…” I answered.

“Then why were you building it in the first place!?” Stan was agitated.

“I…I wanted to win a Nobel prize or a huge patent so you and I could get out of that town. I wanted to give you the one thing you always talked about…to sail around the world on the adventure of a lifetime.

“I-I know I’m not the person you wanted to do that with…but I wanted to make you feel like you finally had someone who cared about you. I did care about you, more than you knew Stan.” I finally confessed.

Stan couldn’t even think of what to say. All these years he had blamed me for leaving him alone in the world again, but he didn’t know I had planned it out thoroughly. He felt like a jerk for judging me without knowing my true plan.

“Y-you were doing it…for me?”

I nodded, “I knew that either you could use the money to sail around the world, or bring the fortune to your family and make up for your mistake. Either way, I didn’t want the money or the fame, I was doing it because I thought it would make you happy.”

“And now I’m the jerk for blaming you after all these years…and I never really asked why you were doing it.”

I smile softly at hsi response. It wasn’t completely wrong. I wanted Stan to be able to rid himself of his guilt and move past his mistake. I had also been tricked into doing so, but I wasn’t ready to confess to him that if I had succeeded that he never would have gotten what I wanted him to get out of it.

“I think I was more upset that I lost the girl I was crushing on more than anything…” Stan confessed, rubbing the back of his neck.

“W-wait…y-you were crushing on me?” I was taken aback by his confession. I knew Stan liked me, but I never imagined he thought of me in that light.

He just nods, “that seems like a lifetime ago though. I’m different now than I used to be.”

“You and me both…” I look down at the floor knowing I probably opened a huge can of worms that I won’t be able to stick back in.

“I could tell. Whatever you saw in there, whatever you went through, must have been rough for you.”

“You have no idea.”

I floated in a daze. This place had no gravity, no sense of time, it was utter chaos.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t dear ol’ sweet Y/n. What brings you here sweetheart?” Bill’s voice seemed to boom as it had really nothing to bounce off of.

“B-Bill? Where am I?”

“You’re in my dimension. Too bad your invention failed because if it hadn’t this would be released upon your dimension, and you and I could rule over everything! I could just imagine it.”

“Y-your dimension? This is where you live?” I was horrified at what I saw.

Bill was surrounded by strange and weird beings of chaos. I couldn’t believe I had been tricked. Had I truly succeeded, it would have meant the end of the world as I knew it, everyone I cared about would have been put in danger, and It would have been all my fault.

Bill starts to laugh his demented laugh, “yes! Welcome to the Nightmare Realm! A place where chaos reigns! Too bad you failed med, I could have used a partner in crime to help create chaos with me.”

“You tricked me! I trusted you!”

“If I told you my true plans you would have backed out of it. I had no choice, sweetheart.”

“Stop calling me that! I’m not your sweetheart anymore, Cipher! You tricked me, and almost made me destroy my world!”“Not my sweetheart anymore huh?” He looked like he was starting to get angry.

I knew I needed to get away. I started to float away from him as he called his henchmaniacs to catch me. I floated towards an asteroid field and was able to avoid getting caught. I slipped into the hole looking for sanctuary. That’s when I realized I wasn't alone.

After Stan and I talked things out, I needed to find something mindless to get my mind off of everything. I decided to try and get to know the young Pines twins better. They were both sitting in the living room watching TV.

“Hey kids.” I say softly, announcing my presence.

“Y/n!” They both exclaimed excitedly.

“I thought Stan was going to tell you to stay away from us or something?” Mabel blurted out.

I giggle softly, “no, Stan doesn’t mind me trying to get to know the two of you. Just, no questions about where I came from or about the portal, okay?”

“Ah, come on, just one question each, please?” Mabel begged.

“I’m sorry, but I’d rather not talk about what I’ve seen or been through. Not to mention, Stan and Ford both think it’s best you two stay away from that subject.”

“One question each, and then no more after that, please Y/n?” Mabel begged harder, flashing the biggest puppy dog eyes I’ve ever seen.

I sigh and give in, “okay, okay. One question each, but if I think it is too personal, I have the right to refuse to answer it.”

“Deal!” Dipper and Mabel exclaim enthusiastically.

“I’ll go first, how do you know Stan?” Mabel blurted out.

“Stan and I were friends at one point,” I see Mabel go to say something, but I stop her, “no Mabel, you cannot follow up with a question. The truth I’m sure will be revealed in due time.”

“Okay, can I ask how you knew I was going to ask that?” Mabel questioned.

“That’s an appropriate question and allows you to get to know me, so yes, that’s okay. I am a very perceptive person, I can read a person by just looking into their eyes.”

“That’s so awesome!”

“Okay, Dipper, which one of your billion questions are you gonna ask me? I can tell you’re the curious one.”

Dipper smiles and flips through his notepad, “where were you before you came out of that portal?”

I had to think about how to answer that without revealing too much. Luckily it was a fairly broad question, so I felt like I could answer this without revealing too much about myself, “I was in a place that I wish no one else to see, not even my mortal enemies.”

“Yeesh, that sounds horrible. You seem so…optimistic, how did you maintain that?”

“Is that too much of a revealing question!?” Mabel yelled as I went to answer.

“No, again it helps you two better understand who I am and how I function in difficult situations. Well, to be straight to the point and sort of sappy, the thought of returning home kept me optimistic. I’ve always been that way I guess, so maintaining that mindset was fairly easy considering the strain I was under.”

The kids continued to go back and forth on questions to get to know me as a person, the person I was before I went into the portal. The person I hoped was still in there somehow. In turn, they told me more about themselves, and I felt like I was really starting to bond with them.

“So, did you go to college?”

I shake my head, “as egotistical as it sounds, I felt like I was too good for college, like there was nothing it was going to teach me that I didn’t already know, you know? So, rather than spending thousands of dollars on education I felt was futile, I spent time doing what I loved, and looking for grants in other ways.”

“That’s possible?” Dipper questined, intrigued.

“Uh…sure. I definitely think you should pursue higher education. Don’t end up like me.”

Mabel went to ask another question when someone behind us cleared their throat. I turned to see who it was. Ford stood there and gestured for me to come with him. I nodded and stood up, “sorry kids, we can finish this later. It’s been really good talking to you two.”

The kids waved as Ford and I walked back into the gift shop and down to the basement. He didn’t say anything the entire walk down, and I was getting concerned. “Did I say something too revealing to the kids?”

Ford shakes his head, “no, I know you would try to protect them as much as Stan or I would. No, this is something much more serious. I found this while dismantling the portal.” Ford shows me a base and globe containing colorful glowing matter.

“I-is that what I think it is?”

Ford nods, “an interdimensional rift. I contained it, but I’m afraid that Bill may know about this…and will do anything to get his hands on it. I think this may also be the cause of your vivid dreams.”

My eyes widened, “you think that Bill might be heightening my connection to him and tormenting me into possibly making a deal so he can possess me to break the rift?”

Ford chuckles lightly, “it’s like you took the words right out of my mouth. I always forget how perceptive you are. Unfortunately, because of the connection Bill has with you already, encrypting your thoughts is going to be a difficult task to undertake.”

I take a deep breath, “I want to erase my memories then.”

[rosemallowss]

some thoughts

Obviously, people have probably analyzed the hell out of this poem already, or it's incredibly obvious, but I just cannot get over the parallels between Bill Cipher and Stanley here so here are my ramblings for myself when I originally read the poem.

As we learn more of Bill's backstory, the hatred he has for Stan goes deeper, not just because Bill is upset that a "lower life form" has defeated him, but because he's deeply envious that the both of them "always dragged his family down", "couldn't outrun life's regrets", and yet only one of them got a happy ending: reunited with a family who loves him despite his mistakes, able to reverse one of his own deepest regrets, ie. pushing Ford through the portal after just getting him back. Bill likely always dragged his family down with his ability to see the third dimension, as the book and website implies that no one in Euclydia were exactly fond of his abilities, nor did they take him seriously, and they tried to quell his power. (He's basically like Viktor from The Umbrella Academy, but I digress I have not seen the new season). "One mistake, disowned, denied", their paths differ here, but Stan's mistake- ruining Ford's school project accidentally, and Bill's- massacring an entire dimension in the process of attempting to get them all to see what he sees.

We know Stanley's whole life of hiding and changing his identity. Bill goes to "reinvent, retry, reload" throughout dimensions.

"A girdle, eyepatch, fathers fez, / 'I'm a new man!' so he says,": With new info from the website, we can also guess that Bill's top hat, where he keeps the molecules of Euclydia in, once belonged to his father. They both "couldn't outrun life's regrets," and both are con mans in their own right of course, Bill is sketchy and makes deals to manipulate people. He’s a new man once he takes his dad’s top hat!

"When you've lost track of your lies / When the poison starts to rise / When the walls are closing in / When its clear you cannot win / When your actions make it worse / When they see you as a curse," sheesh, Bill is really projecting here. Even his lies are lies. It's funny how Bill really sees himself in both of the Stan twins. With Stanley he seems to project what he hates most about himself onto him in terms of mistakes, failures, and permanently altering his and his loved ones' lives forever, again showing why he despises Stan the most. Despite all of that, Stan got the life that Bill couldn't get back. With Ford, they both have a genetic abnormality, and level of genius and personality that no one else could relate to, making them both outcasts.

"You think you left the past behind / But trust me / I'm still on your mind." By the way, if Bill was still in his mind while his memories were getting erased, and Stan is getting those memories back, that implies that Bill can reform whole again, right? But anyway, these last few lines don't seem to apply to Stan as much as it does to Bill. His dead universe is always on his mind no matter what. Bill's story is so fascinating to me. He's been my favorite villain since I was eleven, so to expand upon him feels awesome. Book of Bill coming out has made me feel like a giddy little kid again who was screaming when she found out that there was a secret flashing of an image once the GF intro ended.

Stanley Pines, the conman clown,

Always dragged his family down.

One mistake, disowned, denied,

Only thing to do was hide.

One way out: the open road.

Reinvent, retry, reload.

A girdle, eyepatch, fathers fez,

"I'm a new man!" so he says

Couldn't outrun life's regrets,

Just kept placing bigger bets.

Changed his haircut, switched hotels-

Truth is just whatever sells.

When you've lost track of your lies,

When the poison starts to rise,

When the walls are closing in,

When its clear you cannot win,

When your actions make it worse,

When they see you as a curse,

Give the wheel one last spin,

Take your chips and go all in,

And Lucky Stan- the roll's on black,

He got his life and family back.

His big break, it finally came,

Redemption from a life of shame.

You really think you won the day.

You packed your bags and sailed away.

You think you left the past behind.

But trust me

I'm still on your mind.

[justcallmeremus]

The current Ford hate on TT is insane to me.

“He didn’t care about Stan!”

I’m sorry what? This is the same Ford that, in the ripped out pages from the journal in Book Of Bill, stated “Stanley could have made her laugh” when he was referring to the waitress and him having a poor interaction. Meaning he had fond thoughts of his brother even during a time when he wasn’t talking to him.

Another direct quote is referring to the telephone booth scene

“‘HEY BROTHER, IT’S SIXER. I’M GOING TO TAKE A SWIM IN THE FROZEN LAKE TOMORROW, AND I MIGHT NOT COME BACK, SO IF YOU DON’T HEAR FROM ME, I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT IT’S BECAUSE I NEVER LOVED YOU. BUH-BYEEEEE’

My heart was in my throat until I heard the dial tone…”

Ford was in a state of anxiety from the idea of the last thing Stan potentially ever hearing from him was that he [Ford] never loved him [Stan]. That shows he cares for his brother I do not care what you say. Even in a spat such as theirs Ford showed in small ways that he did care for Stan.

“Oh but during the portal scene(s) he was mean to Stan!!!”

“If Stan was sucked into the portal we know Ford wouldn’t have helped”

In the first scene where Stan and Ford are at the portal arguing Ford is in an extreme state of paranoia due to the lack of sleep and stress Bill has put on his body.

The second one Ford has just returned from what we can only imagine as a traumatic experience, fighting for his life in another dimension, oh right yes the dimension that very portal leads to and that Ford was trying to make sure couldn’t link the two worlds.

If they had swapped places and Ford didn’t know the extent of what was on the other side, because remember Fiddleford was the only one who had seen the other side before this moment, I bet Ford would’ve done anything to get Stan back, and then when Stan returned, if he knew that the portal linked the two dimensions at this point, Stan would probably be upset too! Wondering why his smart brother would risk total destruction on this town just to get him back!

“He didn’t thank Stan for everything he did to get Ford back!!!”

Yes, of course he should be grateful that his brother brought him home but also if Stan managed to get the portal running then Ford knows that Stan read his journals and also knows those dangers and once again he’s disregarded the consequences of his actions in Ford’s eyes.

“Erm why didn’t he use his grant money to help the fam…kinda selfish!!!”

Do you not know how grant money works? You can’t just use it for whatever you want! You have to use it in relation to your studies! He built himself a lab with his grant money to do research, like he’s supposed to. If he hadn’t used it as intended guess what! He’d have to pay it back!!! Out of pocket!

“Making Dipper his apprentice was kinda weird like what about school…”

There’s schools in Gravity Falls??? Like did you forget there were other people his age going to school in the area?? Also, Dipper expressed interest in the things Ford spent his life studying.

Dipper read the journal like it was his whole world and Ford basically had found someone to relay and teach all the things he learned to, which would allow Dipper to learn far more than he could anywhere else, especially if this is a field of study Dipper would like to pursue!!

I’d like to add that Stan also never apologized for ruining Ford’s project, even if it was an accident generally you apologize for things you do accidentally if it impacted someone you love so greatly. Instead he said how they could just travel instead of Ford going off to school, completely disregarding how that made his brother feel.

If there was an apology. If there was an explanation. Ford most likely would have forgiven Stan much sooner.

“I just don’t like Ford”

And that’s fine! You’re allowed to not like a character! No one is forcing you to like him, but when you’re saying you don’t like him and these are your defenses? Your argument and reasonings fall flat.

I love both Stan and Ford deeply and do not view one as better over the other, but the way the fandom holds Ford way more accountable than Stan is insane to me. The way Stan can repeatedly put people in danger and/or do things without thinking about the consequences is a valid thing to critique just like any of Ford’s actions.

Oookay long rant over.

TLDR; Stop blaming Ford for everything, picking and choosing what parts of canon about him you use for arguments, hold Stan more accountable.

[sunny-mercya]

Collapsed

Trafalgar Law x Male Reader

Fandom -> One Piece

Requested by -> @bunbunboysworld

Masterlist | Related OS |

It had been two weeks—which equals into 14 days and those were approximately, plus minus, 336 hours—since you had fallen into a coma.

A coma which could've been prevented if your captain wasn't so recklessly careless with your health and—in a sense of way, profusely—ignored your medical needs—at least that's how Laws oh so humble opinion of view about this was.

When you had collapsed, for once and final—in the mere hours of the ultimate last battle, after you stood up once more to fight, against Kaido—Law picked you up and teleported back to the Polar Tang, into the Medical room, hooking you up on the machines and tubes—doing is best to get you stable.

Your heartline had deflated more than once during the first attempts of getting you stable enough—out of the death threatening double zero blood sugar zone—and Law, by any means of being a damned good Doctor, had doubted himself all these hours whenever your heart dropped out of living.

For someone, mused Law to himself in his lonesome thoughts—which he couldn't share with you at the moment, to get your input and opinions about whatever plagues his mind—like Monkey D. Luffy, who declares literally war against everyone and anything, even against humanity itself if needed to be, when whoever dares to hurt his dear friends—he really does like to care little and less about the wellbeing of his own crew mates.

Slumping down onto a chair next to you, Law breathed out a heavily sigh of defeat—his hand moving towards your ashen face, fingers gently tracing over the feverish skin.

»[Name]-ya, would you even agree to leave the Strawhats and come with me instead?« a whispering question, Law knew would never be answered and which he also would never dare to repeat to you again.

But Law wished, longing in a sort of way even, that you would just stay with him instead of Luffy—but knowing your faithfulness of loyalty you have pledged and declared loudly—especially against the whole Marines and Admiral Akinau—during the battle of Marine-Ford to the Strawhat and what history you have with him, Law knew you would never waver and Law himself didn't want to force you to choose between two sides.

~~~

The first thing Law hears, when going to the Strawhats—wanting to ask either Robin or Chopper, if they could bring some of your clothes to him—was how Luffy declared you as almost dead and Law stopped in his tracks—Bepo, Sachi and Penguin crashing into his back and looking slightly confused and concerned at him.

Mentally Law counted till ten and he also tries to recall, when he ever said something along those lines. He certainly didn't.

Law did say, that your health condition is still considered critical and that it takes a while for you to recover—but he definitely never said that you're dying or being dead.

»[Name]-ya isn't dying. Not anytime soon and not when I'm still a Doctor.« comment Law, making his way to Robin, greeting her with a curt nod.

»But Traffy! You said [Nickname] is close to death,«

Law wonders why he still bothers with such a Captain as Rival.

»Yes. When [Name]-ya's blood sugar reaches Zero and if no one's there to keep him stable or gives him the insulin, than he's close to deaths door. I did explained before, didn't I?« Law sighed out, clenched his jaw and trying his best not explode any seconds from the up building anger.

How many times did he told them? More than often. From Punk Hazard all the way to Wano, Law had explained—even in simple folk terms—what sort of medical issue you having, what it caused and how to prevent it mostly—but here they are, once again, having to go such discussion repeatedly again.

»If you had listen, to what I have said at Punk Hazard and Dressrosa, then you wouldn't need to ask again.« Law might have said it a bit harshly, but to the above—he doesn't care at the moment.

Laws tired, honestly exhausted, having slept at all these past weeks—he hadn't a good schedule of sleep to begin with, always being a bit insomniac—hadn't a good cup of coffee either, because he only ever drinks it when your brewing him one—it just taste much better in his opinion—and besides him having to do his duties as a Captain and Doctor—he's in a constant mood of worry over you.

So, please, excuse Law when he's about to be done with whatever nonsense shit Monkey D. Luffy is babbling on about.

»You know Strawhat-ya, if you keep this up, I might just snatch [Nickname]-ya away from you. After all I'm his husband, so he belongs to me and I honestly to god don't give a fucking shit, if this means war between us.«

For once, Law doesn't stop himself to speak unfiltered when tired—feeling rather relieved even to have said such declaration now.

»Ehhhh?! Whatcha mean? Watcha mean with this Traffy?!«

Law ignores Luffy's whining questions and his bouncing around—thanking Robin, ignoring her teasing smile and made his way back to the Polar-Tang.

~~~

When you woken up from your coma, you had been barely awake and neither responsive—you still weren't, even after days, falling back into the clutches of sleep more than often.

Once you were more coherent enough to respond to Laws medical questions and doings, he had deemed you not critical of condition anymore, but still not recovered.

»It's....hot...« you mumble out, moving—albeit still weakly—under the blankets, wanting some coolness onto your skin.

»I'll bring you another frozen washcloth soon.« said Law, turning another page of his book—a book about medical history—sitting next to you on the bed, his bed to be exact—had moved you there, after Law was certain you didn't need the machines to keep your heart and lungs from collapsing.

You suffering through a high fever and an sensitive stomach—couldn't keep any sorts of food in, without vomiting it out right after—was an outcome Law had predicted to come—after all, blood sugar comas were tricky.

Law's glad it's only a high fever you had gotten and not something like internal bleeding or decaying limps—like said before, blood sugar coma are tricky life threatening risky.

»Can I have.....uhm....that one warm drink too? Please?«

»Hot Chocolate?«

»Yes! No, wait, the other warm drink, what I had last night,«

»Tea?«

»Yeah, yeah tea, please.«

»Sure, whatever you wish for, love.«

Marking the page and putting his book away on the nightstand, Law lays himself down—getting more comfortable—to you, arm draping over your blanket covered stomach, while his other hand supports his head.

Such flushed, Law mused to himself with an upcoming impish boy smile—blood flowing red your face is—expression and the slight sweat, suits you really well and if you weren't currently bed ridden and on recovery—Law would have nibbled on your exposed skin already, teasing and edging you till you're close of passing out.

Although Law couldn't enjoy some passionate sex with you, he could cuddle with you as much as he wants now and this sounds by far like a much better deal anyways—after all, you and him are more separated than together, so Law takes every opportunity he gets to have you.

Perhaps, Law doesn't have to declare War against the Strawhat—not as long as you're sick anyways and once recovered and healthy, maybe than Law could persuade you to go with him from now on.

Law had lost his focus on his train of thoughts and all his future plans, when you booped his nose. Raising an eyebrow in amusement, Law glances down at you.

»Law, please, I'm hot and I also wanna have some tea and cuddles.« you pouted a bit, scrunching up your face from the uncomfortable warmth.

»As you wish.« Law leaned down, giving you a kiss on the forehead and moving from the bed.

Law's indeed glad—despite the circumstances of how—to be a Doctor and you're his patient, but he's absolutely overjoyed to have you has his Husband now and forever.

[mintyeve322]

for anyone concerned by my writing style on my posts that my fic(s) might have no capital letters, random capital letters, or some other issue, i just wanted to clarify i type posts and messages very different from stories.

in stories I'll use proper punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and grammar. (at least to the best of my ability) i just couldn't give two shits about that stuff while I'm rambling here.

just a warning or heads up, haha.

anyway, so that we're on topic, fiddlestan time below the cut.

I think their relationship is pretty quick to take off but slow to be official. i feel like Stan is so starved for affection that she's scared to acknowledge her feelings, especially since affection is sometimes just "platonic girl stuff". don't worry stan, overly affectionate heterosexual female friends drive me insane too.

on Fidd's part, i think she is hesitant to make things official because at first she's not sure if her feelings are genuine or if she's accidentally using Stan, but once she realized thats not it, she's still hesitant to say anything because she doesn't wanna make Stan uncomfortable if she's not right about her feelings.

Fidds is a people pleaser and unhinged as hell before she uses the memory gun, let alone afterwards, so she for sure has made or aquired some crazy shit as gifts for Stan. She for sure has made her at least one robot that malfunctioned and had to be decommissioned, she bought Stan a fish, I'll do some fish research to figure out what kind later but it has some sort of significance, to occupy the empty tank in the shack since Frilliam is lost at sea. She's probably helped Stan make exhibits and made a cryptid up that reminds her of Stan. I feel like she'd get gifts for Stan constantly, and Stan wouldn't know how to act about it because her instinct is to be skeptical of kindness but Fidds was her sister's friend and she hasn't asked Stan for anything in return and she doesn't know why.

Related to Stan's belief that affection is transactional, if Fidds ever gets nervous about the portal or if Stan keeps something from her, like why she got arrested last night or where she found a part and Fidds says she owes Fidds an explanation, Stan will shut down and probably cry in her room for an hour.

Stan is VERY worried that Fidds is gonna reveal one day that she's only there for some sort of payment or gain on her end, and if she even implies that Stan owes her something, Stan will spiral until Fidds is able to figure out the problem and apologize, even if she agrees that she does owe Fiddleford something for all she's done.

Related to this, there's probably a period of time where Fidds is working really hard, to the bone, for Stan. She hates not feeling useful and may have hit a road block she's trying to push through or something, and when Stan tells her to take a break, she interprets it as a sarcastic "just let me do it, idiot" comment and not the "please take a break im worried about you" way stan intended it, due to the fact Ford, with her one track mind, has been harsh to her in that way before.

Fidds is apologetic and swears she's almost got it she just needs more time and please don't maker her leave she promises she can do it, and Stan has to basically grab her, look her in the eyes, and tell her she just needs to take a break and come back later. Fidds says she just wants to be useful for Stan, and Stan tells her she doesn't care if she's useful, she just needs her there and burning herself out working on the project is not worth it. they have a long conversation about how even if fidds never worked on the project again Stan would still want her around and its sad and fluffy.

also a thing where stan gets frustrated and implies Fidds isnt useful and has to comfort her and insist that isn't what she meant because it genuinely wasn't what she meant agh i love miscommunication hurt/comfort

idk im rambling and i feel like we're all so busy unpacking Stan's trauma we forget that Fidds has very real trauma from her work with Ford that has plenty of hurt/comfort potential as well.

[dimonds456]

Transfem Stan Thoughtdump

Okay so @/abyssalzones made a pretty good post that sums up a lot of my thoughts as well, but I have a few extra ones I'd like to add to this discussion, as well as elaborating on one of the post's points. I've been thinking about transfem Stan for a couple of weeks now and at this point I'm like "fuck it we ball" and throwing it out there. 

For one, it warms my heart whenever there's an older character who was raised in the mid-1900s/older times who realizes they're queer, or comes to terms with their identity in old age. You're never too old to realize you're part of the community, and never too late. Adding this on top of the many, MANY identities that Stan has had to take to survive in her life, it'd be like really turning over a new leaf for her. She'd get to really step into an identity that she aligns with completely, and not something else given to her or that she took to protect herself. 

Not to mention, everything regarding Ford. The fact that she had to pretend to be Ford for so long, she more than likely never had the chance to even think about taking on any other identities. She had to keep this one as intact as she could. Otherwise, she could risk loosing the Shack, and with it, the portal- her brother. No way that was happening. 

It was briefly touched in the post, but when Stan was watching that one movie and she was like "JUST LIKE ME FR", obviously the writers intended that to just be a joke since this was as far and away from Stan's identity as they could get. But we're gonna ignore that and take it at face value for a second. 

The channel introduces itself (jokingly) as the boring old lady black-and-white channel, clearly something that a manly-man like Stan wouldn't be into, and he reacts like how you'd expect. But once it gets going, he gets fully sucked into it, leading eventually to the scene where the main character, seemingly about to complete a Character Arc™, tells her mother "I'm not just a dutchess, I'm also a woman!" and Stan cheers for her, saying the "just like me fr" line. 

Without any transfem headcanons, again, this is a joke. Or you could interpret this in hindsight as Stan feeling a similar way about his father, since lines like "I'm a woman!" declared like that usually means "I'm free to make my own choices," which is a message resident make-my-father-proud-issues Stanley Pines would relate to pretty hard. Even though this isn't a conclusion Stan comes to in the show, we could easily see him coming to a conclusion like that in the future.

Now let's add the transfem headcanon back in. With that new layer to it, Stan (whose egg hasn't cracked yet) would be confused as to why she relates so hard. After all, she's a man who was raised to shove feelings down and be a manly-man man by Filbrick. She's more than likely gone her entire life trying to conform to that idea of toxic masculinity that her dad pushed on both her and Ford. Stan was always the one who resorted to punching, after all. That's a manly-man trait, so surely this goes no further right

There's a part of Gravity Falls that I feel doesn't get discussed enough, and that's the underlying misogyny of it. There's not a ton of it, but there are quite a few jokes about how men are stronger than women and the like. Stan has quite a few lines like that herself. So she would be subscribing to a similar mental state, the idea that if you like punching, CLEARLY you're a guy. Cuz that's how it works. Obviously. 

Introducing Mabel Pines, someone who is VERY much a girly-girl. She likes pink and unicorns and rainbows and makeup and sleepovers, stuff of the like. Now I could make a whole other post about my headcanons for Mabel and her queer journey, but one thing she can definitely do that "girly-girls" DON'T? Punching.

Mabel can punch. And she punches a lot. 

It's a small thing, and something I think Stan has just kinda accepted without question over the course of the series, but if she were to stop and think about it, she'd be like ".....wait a minute." and it could very well be the first piece that cracks the idea of manly-man masculinity vs just. existing as a person and what that actually means. 

Once Stan finally starts to break away from toxic masculinity and all those lessons she got thrown into her head, then her egg would finally be able to start cracking. 

As for why it even matters, first off, it just makes for an interesting interpretation of the character I haven't really seen before until VERY recently. Like, within the past 2 days recently (and maybe once like a month ago?? idk). 

But secondly, for her character, it would be a good, healthy step into really taking back her identity. Who IS Stan Pines? She's spent so long being other people, either as a form of self-defense or pretending to be her brother so she can help save him from the sideburn hell dimension, that I don't think she's really allowed herself to connect to who Stan is. 

This is true regardless of gender headcanon, but I think the transfem angle makes it so much more interesting. Who is Stan? Not even she knows. And she's starting to feel VERY confused about the whole thing. 

As for Ford, I think he'd be more than willing to support an identity journey for Stan. After all, he's traveled across dimensions and more than likely had all his teachings questioned as well. I am willing to bet money he's encountered trans people before. And, knowing Ford, he'd be open and curious to the idea, not close-minded, no matter what their father tried to teach his kids. Honestly, I could see Ford pestering Stan with questions long into the night regarding the whole thing, and taking up the whole identity mystery for himself as something the two of them can "crack" (heh) together. Just another adventure for the crew of the Stan'o'War II! 

There's SO much more but I don't wanna re-say things that the og post already said, these are just the big ones that stick out to me and what I wanted to elaborate on. 

TL;DR Stan goes on a journey of realizing that toxic masculinity Is Bad Actually and honestly so was his father, and once he accepts that and starts actively challenging his own beliefs about gender, her egg cracks and she realizes that maybe she isn't a guy at all. The rest of the Pines- but Ford especially- are supportive, and although Stan has a LOT of self-reflection to do and I could see her getting frustrated, flustered, or even embarrassed of her newfound realization, ultimately it makes her happier like this. Cuz it's her identity. She's not pretending to be anyone else anymore and she can just wholly be herself.

Thank you and goodnight

[sleepingdeath-light]

realising he might be gay after falling for trans masc reader hcs ; ford

requested by ; a common simp (28/07/23)

fandom(s) ; gravity falls

fandom masterlist(s) ; here

character(s) ; ford pines

outline ; “Ford Pines realizing he may be gay after he falls in love with a transmasc reader?

-A Common Simp”

warning(s) ; self discovery related angst, mostly fluff!

something important to recognise about ford is that he grew up in a very different time — he was never bigoted, nothing of the sort, but he didn’t really know all that much about non cishet people, identities and communities (he was much too focused on his research to even consider dating anyone himself, let alone who anyone else dates) — so him meeting you may very well have been his first experience getting to know someone who wasn’t, well, cis or het

all of those factors (never dating/exploring his sexuality, never being exposed to non cishet people, etc) meant that when he started to fall for you, ford started to have a mild panic — he’d never felt this way about anyone else before and didn’t even realise it was ‘love’ and ‘attraction’ until stan started bullying him for his crush, and the first person he’s ever fallen for is another man which would be especially confusing for him as he’d just assumed he was straight his whole life

(which, naturally, was quite a long time to be blatantly incorrect about something — which further adds to the mess he’s gotten himself into)

so then ford does what ford does best in a time of personal crisis and locks himself away from everyone in his lab, using his research to distract him from his confusing feelings and shooing everyone away using a half dozen excuses about ‘dangerous materials’ and ‘hazardous experiments’ — which stan knows is complete bs so he tells you the truth the moment you ask (after all, you and ford had become quite good friends at this point and it was only natural you’d worry about him in a situation like this)

and that leads to the brothers getting into an argument because ford was very much so not ready for you to know about his feelings, he’s just been outed by his brother to his crush, and he’s still trying to process everything whilst a new stressor has been thrown into the mix — and you’re trying to calm him down whilst stan is rolling his eyes and telling ford to ‘thank me later’ before walking away to continue watching whatever was on the television

which leaves the two of you alone just outside of his lab — no stan to fight, no great grand niece or nephew to use as an excuse, just you and him and the silence between you as he refuses to look you in the eye and tries to find any excuse to leave (mind drawing a blank every time — for once the brilliant scientist/stubborn old man is out of his element and he just doesn’t know what to do)

what happens next depends on if you return his feelings or not.

if you don’t then he’ll accept your answer and back off (honestly he never had any intention of confessing in the first place) — withdrawing for a while to sort out his feelings so that you can go back to being close friends again

if you do then you get a grumpy, awkward, old scientist of a boyfriend who is both incredibly protective over you and so unsure of himself that even the slightest bit of physical affection or verbal reassurance can leave him looking visibly more relaxed and calm — even if he struggles to call you his ‘boyfriend’ and instead refers to you as his ‘life partner’ (he just feels it’s a bit silly for someone his age to be using that term)

you’ll catch him staring at you sometimes because he’ll end up stuck in his own head about how much he’s attracted to you and how much he loves you — don’t bring it up because he’ll withdraw again to get over himself

[cy-fi-theansweris42]

I've been thinking about the story of the Psychic 7 more and the world of Psychonauts, and I think part of the reason why it just stuck so intensely in my brain is because of the little glimpses we get of their past, and how towards the end of the game, after everything that's happened, the group is reunited. Yes, there's things to work out, things they have to talk about (primarily looking at you, Ford), but despite everything, they're all together again.

Let me explain. (Also, please keep in mind I haven't played the game in almost 2 years and I only recently started rereading things for the games, I could miss some details).

In the world of Psychonauts, the world is not kind to psychics.

We're told this right away in the beginning of the first game. When Raz is reciting the text from the pamphlet for the summer camp, he has these lines:

Raz: You were born with a special gift but the people around you treat it like a curse. Your mother is afraid of you and your father looks at you with shame in his eyes. Come to Whispering Rock psychic summer camp and you can show them all! Back home your powers make you a loner, an outcast, a circus freak, but in this dojo in this psychic dojo they make you a hero. 

As they show different campers in this scene, we know that these words hit home for them. They can all relate to the words Raz is reciting. Even by Raz's time, even after there's been a Psychic organization helping people for years, psychics aren't fully accepted.

To anyone that's ever felt othered, felt like they didn't belong somewhere, these words are relatable. We instantly relate to our main character, and potentially to the other psychic characters we meet. We know what their struggle is like.

Now like I said, this was in Raz's time. But back in the Psychic 7's time? There wasn't an organization like the Psychonauts. Back then there would have been even less reason for them to be accepted, so I think things were potentially even worse back then. There was far less known about how psychic powers worked since Otto and the others were the ones to do the research, and no doubt people were probably more afraid of psychics then.

However, despite living in a world that was even less accepting of psychics, the Psychic 7 still found each other. They still found each other, found others just like them, and they basically formed this little family.

Personally, what makes this hit even harder is the fact that none of them were exactly young when they all found each other, they were all adults and well into adulthood. They all had different backgrounds, different experiences. Lucy had already married and lost a husband, Bob had already lost both parents, Helmut was a struggling performer, Cassie escaped a dangerous environment, and more. They were all adults with different lives and came from different places, but they still found each other. Making friends as an adult is hard, but they still found each other and not only became friends, but became a little family.

And then, after Maligula, after losing Helmut, after being separated for so long, once they all see Lucy, they hug. They're back together again. They're not missing any members of their family again.

So that's what really makes it Hit Different for me. The fact that, despite the world they all lived in at the time, the Psychic 7 found and made their little family, and even after so much time and tragedy and separation, they came back together.

[littleoneamanda]

GF: Fiddleford Hadron Mcgucket

Alright, I think I'll just continue drawing in the original style. It's actually pretty fun xD The only difference is colored lines and maybe background. Hope you like it!

And here we go again to my thoughts on the book of bill, thisisnotawebsitedotcom and my thoughts on Fiddleford as a character. Or in this one is more like a summary of what information we have about him. Welcome to my second essay on 2D characters xD (SPOILERS)

Oh boy, where do I begin with this one? xD

Fiddleford, probably (imo) one of the most tragic character in this show. Going from once a brilliant inventor to a deranged hillbilly living at the dump. His life ruined by trauma, his fear of bad memories, and by his own invention.

College

Fidds is the first Mcgucket in the family to go to college. His first day starts off pretty rocky. The school's mascot "THE BMU B-", shoved him into a locker, got his mustache caught in a pencil sharperner (???) and getting laughed out by a whole class for trying to prove the universe was a giant hologram. While sitting in his room in tears, his room mate barge in the room. Confidently declared that his theory was plausible and was ready to not sleep until they have proved it accurate. Not only did they cracked it, but Fidds did something else that he thought was impossible: He made a friend, Stanford Pines.

This is pretty much (currently) the information we have about them in college. I really wish there were more. It seems both of them became friends very fast. Both being nerdy and outcasts for different things. Ford with his sixth finger and Fidds coming from a hog farm ( I relate so hard with Fidds on the farm background you have no idea I love it) However, while Ford is more of a socially awkward introvert, Fidds seems to be a little bit more extroverted.

After college

Fiddleford moved to Palo Alto, California. Around this time he met his wife Emma-May and they had their son Tate.  He starts up his own computer buisness "Fiddleford Computermajigs". It's unclear how the relationship between Fidds and his wife were, but the fact that he doesn't seem to hesitate to leave them behind to help an old college friend he haven't talked to in 6 years is a little weird. Six years is how long Ford had been in Gravity Falls before he contacted Fidds. (Source: Journal 3). Sure, if the whole project was a positive thing, it could be have been their big break in science and fame. But Fiddleford had a life in California. He had a family, but how good was the marriage? Maybe Fidds didn't get any other friends after college. So when Ford called for help, he didn't seem to hesitate to say yes and join him.

"Success! He has agreed to join me! With his assistance, I am confident we can complete the machine. He has already made several suggestions over the phone that I intend to incorporate into my revised designs."

-Stanford, Journal 3

Gravity Falls, Fiddleford is now Stanfords assistant/partner.

Some things Fiddleford brought with him: A vase/pot when he chews tobacco, a photo of his family, the banjo, floppy disks , two laptops which one of them is special designed for Fords extra finger. The other one is Fidds which has Fords name as password. And a Cubic's Cube that Ford scrambles when Fidds is not looking. Fidds solves it without a problem tho.

When seeing the blueprints for the portal for the first time, he asked Ford if he had any help with these plans because of complex they are. Ford describes Fidds as a suspicious man (pretty ironic knowing how Ford will become later).

During his time in Gravity falls we learn early that Fidds seems to have some trouble handeling his anxiety. Especially after some of the things they encountered. His knee starts bouncing when he's agitated or he starts pulling out his hair. Being Fords assistant turned out to be adventurous and scary at the same time. Reading Journal 3 you kinda wonder why he even stayed for so long with Ford. There was times he really got traumatized. It is now where the we get into the speculations and the hints of Fidds having a bit of stronger feelings for Ford than just a friend.

The gifts. Already in Journal 3, he gives Ford a special designed laptop with extra keys for his extra finger. He buys a pumpkin at the fair because it reminded him of Ford.

"He pulled it out of a barrel of "reject gourds" because he said it reminded him of me! (Suppose I did inherit my dad's nose.)

-Stanford, Journal 3

From the thisisnotawebsitedotcom, if you type in Oroborous, you will get two pages of when Fidds gave Ford an axolotl that Ford named it Frilliam.

"F said it's frills reminded him of my sideburns and he thought it could keep me company the next time he's out."

-Stanford, thisisnotawebsitedotcom, Code: Oroborous

I'm still pretty traumatized after Frilliam...that damn dorito asshole demon. Also...Ford drew a heart over the "i" in friend instead of the dot??

In the TBOB, Fiddleford gives Stanford a snow globe that HE MADE. And not only that! He gives Ford knitted a pair of six-fingered gloves that HE has KNITTED.

Fiddleford flies back home to visit his family for the holidays, but the reunion have not been exactly happy. Fidds and his wife had got in a massive fight when she realized he'd forgotten to buy her a Christmas Present...man. Look. I mean...I honestly do not know what to say to that. My guy gave gifts that he had made to his bestfriend that he might have some certain feelings for and just happen to forget he had a wife...that's normal right? xD

Let's talk a little bit about Ford cause I forgot to mention some other things as well. In journal 3, Ford talks in a certain way. It's more sterile and stiff. Keeping distance from emotions pretty much. Especially before the 30 years on the other side of the portal. In TBOB+ the pages from the website, these pages are more personal. Which is a whole new view of Ford that we didn't see before. This time we get to see what Fidds and Ford did when they weren't focused on the project. When they had a winter break from it. When Fidds tells Ford he's leaving to visit his family, you can kinda read between the lines that Ford seems very sad about that. His fear of being alone again. On that page, there are some blue stains which some believe are tears... :(

"Sixer was a lot better at science than he was at making friends, and he tended to rip out journal pages that had anything to do with his issues with others..."

-Bill, TBOB

After the massive fight between Fidds and his wife, he decides to return to Gravity Falls as soon as possible. When he reurns, he sees Ford being in trouble and saves him from the Krampus by hitting him with his banjo. They embraced. Fidds explains why he's back and Ford asks him if there is anything he could do to cheer him up. But Fidds feel pretty defeated by everything that has happen.

That night, Ford calls Fidds to come down to the lab for a portal update.

"I'll admit that it wasn't the most efficient use of our electricity, but the smile on his face proved I'd made the right choice."

-Stanford, TBOB

Ford later tells that it was time to drink nog until they didn't remember what a Krampus was. And they spent the rest of the night building snowmen and reminiscing about old times.

This is wholesome asf. Also, Ford said himself he's not really a drinker, but after that kareoke drunk thing, I wonder if he kinda wanted have a similar experience? Perhaps a stretch, but interesting in my opinion.

But all good things comes to an end. In Fiddlefords case, in a very tragic way. After some traumatic encounters (especially after the  Gremloblin), he invents the memory gun. He uses the gun multiple times on himself during his time with Ford. He have even used it on Ford at one point when Ford tries to talk him out of ever using it.

The night before the testing of the portal, Fiddleford expresses his concerns to Ford about the portal. He tries to talk him into publish his research as a thesis instead of the portal. Ford who has been ver manipulated at this point to believe Fiddleford has ill intentions, refused. And the next day...the portal incident that makes Fidds mental state go so south. Seeing the Nightmare realm and  predicting apocalyptic catastrophe that was about to be the consequences of the portal.

Now here is a interesting thing about the portal scene (this could be a stretch once again). Something i did notice while rewatching s2. When Ford tells the story about the portal, it seems pretty cut and clear of what happen. Fidds get dragged into the portal, traumatized, warns Ford, stands up and leaves. And Ford calls Stan. Which makes it look like everything happened in a very short time period. But when Ford talks about the portal incident again with Dipper, Ford has different clothes, sitting down and have Fidds in his lap. Now this could just be a mistake or something they choose for more dramatic effect. But seeing the difference how Ford talks in Journal 3 and TBOB, it is a interesting choice for that scene. Like, when he has the white shirt and black tie, there is a more serious tone and stiffnes. When he has his blue shirt and brown sweater vest he is more personal. In TBOB, it takes like around 2 days before he finally decides to contact Stan. He decides to do that after he found the 5 failed knitted prototypes for the perfect 6-fingered gloves and the ripped photo. When he realized he had lost Fiddleford.

Fiddleford's mental health keept getting worse. After quitting the project, he found himself still very haunted by everything he has seen. He started to use the memory gun even more and created an organization, The Blind Eye Society. Hoping this would help other people in the town to forget bad memories. Ford found this out and suspected Fidds to be behind it. Unfortunaly, Fidds started to use it as soon as he had seen something scary. The more he used it, the more he started to lose his mind and forgetting words. 618 days. It took around 1 year, 8 months, 1 week and 6 days. That is not really a long time. He used it so frequently, and knowing he had some trouble handling his anxiety from the start…this hurts. His body aged so fast during this time as well. And he's suppose to be around the same age as Ford, around or in his 30s.

Fiddleford before the portal: a very smart, brilliant inventor, sensitive and a very kind person.

After the portal: An old deranged hillbilly who lived at the dump with no memory of his past, but still haunted by what he saw in the portal.

He does starts to regain his memories in S2: Society of the Blind Eye. Finding out after 30 years who he really was.

"After all these years I finally know who I am. Maybe I messed up in the past, but now that I've seen what happened, I can begin to put myself together again."

-Fiddleford, S2, "Society of the Blind Eye"

When Ford and Fidds reunite in Weirdmaggedon, he forgives Ford for everything that led up to this. After Weirdmaggedon, Ford visits Fiddleford. Fidds was overjoyed to see Ford and they spent hours talking. Ford is feeling guilty for the things leading to Fidds causing losing his memories, but Fidds dismisses his attempts to apologize.

"Not only is this man's mind superior to mine, but he has one of the biggest hearts I've ever seen."

"Before I left, Fiddleford insisted that I listen to him play the banjo. I could have sworn that as he joyfully played, i could see the age lift off his face, and see the the Fiddleford who had been my friend so many years ago."

-Stanford. Journal 3

I swear a tear dropped from my eye while writing this quote. And I have an idea for a drawing for just that one.

And that's where I wanna leave this. A happy ending after all :)

I'm very sorry again if there are any grammar errors in this one. I have to go back and forth on the sources a lot here. The show, books, website and the wiki just to try understand the timeline and if there were any details missed. I did not intend for this one to be as long (maybe even longer) about Stanford. But I kinda wanted to put Fiddlefords story together and give some of my thoughts on it as well. Fiddlefords story is so sad in so many ways. He and Ford, Best friends and room mates in college. Both of them having no other friends than each other. He sacrifices a lot when he leaves his family to help Ford in Gravity Falls, Returns to Ford when the family reunion goes south. The fact that he could have done anything else, but he decides to go back to Ford. Maybe because he felt he didn't feel welcome there anymore and only has Ford left. Tate is probably the one I mostly feel sorry for in this situation. His father coming home for the Holidays and then leaves again to not come back. Fidds trying and wanting to help Ford, but get his concerns about a real danger ignored. Then Fidds trauma and fear of remembering bad things takes over so much he invents a memory gun that becomes his addiction. Ruined by his own invention.

Now, I'm someone who has NEVER done shipping art or not really expressing any thoughts about it. I'm pretty careful with that honestly and I have been with Ford and Fidds as well. But this time feel so different from the other times of speculations of what happend between them. It feels like it's right there. Especially with Fiddleford reading TBOB what he did for Stanford. Or maybe I'm just another person hoping a little bit too much xD It's just...the possibility of them having some kind of stronger feelings is there. Again, Especially when it's from Fiddleford. Stanford is kinda bit harder to read when it comes to his feelings. Kinda what I said before, he talks in two different tones. Probably depends on who he trusts to talk to.

Alright, That's all folks! I promise I won't do a essay like this for the other drawings xD But I just needed it to get out of my system. And I haven't really seen a post like this that sums up the information we have atm. So I wanted to contribute xD

Thanks for reading!

Next up is actually going to be a GF video🍃

[prettyinpwn]

Weird thought that crossed my mind yesterday, I was 50/50 with the fact in The Book of Bill about him being born with an eye mutation that allowed him to see the third dimension. I mean, knowing Bill this might be a lie, that was the thought that was a bit weird for me.

Just to make it clear, the little I know of the book it’s because of analytics posts and clips that shared screenshots of the book. I haven’t bought it yet so my knowledge is limited.

Anyway, honestly, I took it at face value that he was born with a mutation and that’s why he connected to Ford, but in the romance section of the book where he talked about vulnerabilities, Bill said that you need a sob story to have your “partner” eating from the palm on your hand. And while Bill used that trick by sharing the speck of dust from his home dimension, I wonder why he didn’t use the truth of his eye mutation and whatever hardships he went through because of that to manipulate Ford.

If I’m right by remembering this part of the book, in the section of the lost pages of Journal 3, Ford talked about Rudolph, wondering why he didn’t kill his bullies when he saw the Christmas movie about him. And if Bill saw this memory he might’ve thought that exploiting Ford’s resentment against his old bullies would be a great idea to have him by his side. Making him believe he “related” to Ford because he was also “bullied and ostracized” because of his eye mutation.

This has gotten a bit too long but I’m curious to know what you think 🤔

Yeah, it's hard to tell with Bill what's real and what are lies. He manipulates so much that he's pure unreliable narrator, imo. I personally think most if not all of The Book of Bill - at least the parts with Bill as the narrator - are a lie or heavily warped by the way he as a character sees himself; I can't say which parts are real, which parts are just lies as a play for sympathy, which parts are just Bill's self delusions, which parts are accidental slips of truth, etc.

It is odd that he didn't use the "I have a mutation, too!" thing to draw Ford in more, like you said. I almost wonder if it's because whereas the whole "my dimension is gone" story is something that makes Bill look like a tragic hero (which is easy to do when he leaves out that little part where he destroyed it himself), whereas admitting the mutation would be him admitting that something about himself is "off", so to speak. Sort of like admitting a weakness.

The "my dimension is gone" is a half-truth, the "I have a mutation" is a full truth (once again, assuming he is truthful about that), too; telling a full truth would require vulnerability from Bill to tell. And based on how he's faring in the Theraprism, er... he's not so good at vulnerability and honesty. Plus, if Bill found himself relating to Ford, that might nip whatever little tiny bit of conscience he has - if he even has one left - that says, hey... maybe I can empathize with Ford? And that would be a wrench in his plans. He can't manipulate someone he feels empathy for. Or maybe he can and just does it anyways because he's that twisted?

As for the part of the book where Ford talked about destroying his bullies... I think it's similar to my point up above: if Bill admitted he was also a picked on kid, that'd be admitting a "weakness". In Bill's mind, he's the most powerful thing in the Multiverse. He's a walking embodiment of ego gone horribly wrong. He's trying to sell to Ford that he's some grand muse come to inspire a once in a century genius, so it'd break his image if he admitted his mutation/picked on childhood (once again, assuming even those parts are true, because everything Bill says needs to be taken with a grain of salt imo).

[callipraxia]

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.

[an-au-blog]

difan is fine by me~

and i gotta say, SO excited by how much thought you've put into these options!! i think impel down is a super compelling choice, wrt the traumas your au buggy has, and making the marineford storyline still work, AND for that shippy agenda of yours (which i am fully in favor of ftr 😍)

i'm having fun imagining the marines announcing the buggy-roger pirates connection to the confusion of everyone on that ship BUT luffy, who did hear from rayleigh the other day about some buggy guy who used to be on the roger crew with shanks—but it didn't occur to luffy that this could also be HIS buggy until just now

alabasta is also a really interesting choice!! is the interest in history something he picked up after getting to know robin, or is it an interest he always had & is now remembering? (like, idk, maybe he recognizes the poneglyph language? and can't READ it, not without years of study and practice, but he thinks he used to know someone who could…?)

Aaa thank you, difan :')

I imagine that, yes, he picked up his love for history from Robin. Other than being the only responsible one adult, she often has a lot of sleepless nights, just like u!Buggy (who gets horrible night terrors). And I think that they would bond over being night owls. Also when she tries to tell him about the poneglyphs or just approached the topic, he reflexively goes "oh, yeah I know that", and then has a "wait... why do I feel like I know about them?" moment.

No, he cannot read them, but he knows more than the average person about them and about other things related to them. Robin thinks someone in the past before his memory loss taught him, or could read them, or maybe even found some of them...

Idk I just love the idea of Buggy being surprisingly smart especially with history (he asked Roger's crew taught him to be smart because he couldn't be strong like Shamks), so I guess it's self indulgence.

About the impel down thing:

Luffy would definitely be like "huh, so you're that Buggy, okay, cool!" Also I believe that all the prisoners would still want to become him devote followers, but he'd have to say goodbye to them because he's no captain, and the only captain he has is Luffy. (Which essentially makes them both respect Luffy immensely and think Buggy is just sooo modest and sooo loyal, committed, modest, etc, etc.)

I'd forgotten that the straw hats meet Rayleigh in the bar before Kuma sent them off and every detection. So I believe that Buggy already had a little talk with him about his life. And by little talk I mean he knows Rayleigh recognized him, and he finds out they've known each other because they both sailed. He refused to tell him more because he should find it for on his own pace.

(I'm gonna push some shuggy, here again lol):

On the way to Marine Ford, when the person on the snail told everyone that he was a part of the Roger pirates and is an associate of Shanks's, he was terrified. He'd never really seen this red-haired Shanks guy, only knows what Luffy had told him and what he's heard from the grapevine. And sure, Luffy praised him, but Luffy was way too trusting and positive. So excuse him for being untrusting towards a complete stranger.

(To give myself an excuse to push them in physical proximity...) Buggy would get swept by the attention and action, and Luffy would be taken by Law's crew by the time Buggy realizes he's gone. That's when Shanks sees him. His long lost friend and the person he was chasing ever since he found out he escaped from his entrapment on his own.

Shanks seems happy to see Buggy, and he seems like the only better option of getting the hell out of Marine Ford, so he takes him up on his offer for a ride back.

Once in the ship, where Shanks doesn't have to keep up appearances, he finally lets himself give Buggy a proper hug and starts telling him how much he's missed him and how worried he's been.