#she's still suggesting that it looks like i still owe $50 which i am quite sure i don't unless the argument is that when the claim was sent

[andromeda3116]

dealing with the insurance company and then the clinic itself via a "health advocate" who agrees that this looks shady and she's not seeing the same thing on her end that i'm seeing on the bill is just. exactly what i wanted to spend my work break doing. fantastic. fun times.

[a-froger-epic]

About the Interview

Since I posted the interview with J - a woman who has described herself to me as one of Queen’s first “groupies” - there has naturally been a lot of discussion about the veracity of the interview, the source, and my own motivations in posting it. I fully expected that, and I will say once more that nobody (apart from a small handful of anonymous trolls) has behaved inappropriately in these discussions. I have not received any “hate” because of this. There is no “drama”. Nobody is wrong, or a party-pooper, or attacking me by expressing their doubts. I have seen some awful bile spat at people anonymously recently, and that kind of behaviour has got to stop.

Now, if you don't think I am genuine, there is obviously nothing I can do about that. 

However, what I am hoping to do here is add as much transparency as I can in regard to how and why the interview happened, and also share my own full thoughts on it with you. 

First things first. No unverified, anonymous source can be seen as definitive proof of anything, ever. That is my stance. I have myself been criticised for so much as suggesting that other anonymous sources tied in with Freddie’s history are not 100% proof of one thing or another. But for me, an anonymous source can never mean more than at best: this seems very likely, but we can’t be 100% certain.

Perhaps I was naive to think that what I considered to be enough of a disclaimer at the beginning of the interview, was enough. My intention was to express that while I, personally, believe J to be a) the person she says she is and b) genuine about what she remembers, that does not mean I believe everything she has told me is fact or happened in that exact way. I thought this was obvious. Perhaps I was unclear, and I apologise for that. 

So let me be clear. There is nobody in the world who has perfect, factual recollections of what happened to them almost 50 years ago. Not even J herself claims for one moment that this is the case. She mentions several times that these are old memories from when she was very young, that she indulged in recreational drugs at the time, and that her views - of course - carry a personal bias. All this, I thought, would be enough for readers to know not to take everything they read at face value.

All of the above is why I kept my own thoughts and notes to a minimum within the interview, why I didn’t correct or point out obvious mistakes. I simply assumed that everybody would go away and read the interview against all the sources and information they already have, as I have done myself.

But maybe that was somewhat irresponsible of me, and I should have been the first person to dig into how J’s memories fit in (or don’t) with the information which is already out there, and how to put the two together. While I refrained from sharing all my thoughts alongside the interview (although I have fragmentally done so in response to other people since), others like @quirkysubject​ (here), @iwilltrytobereasonable​ (here), @emmaandorlando​ (here), @sarinataylor​ and @talkingismylifewrites​ (here) all had some very good things to say. All of them make excellent points. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SEND THEM NASTY MESSAGES. I frankly can’t believe I have to say this at all.

I found myself in a difficult position, because as the person who had spoken to J and asked her all these questions, I did not feel as though I could dissect her words as freely as anybody else. She has put a lot of trust in me, and I do not want her to think that I question her honesty and intentions. Because I don’t. If I hadn’t felt as sure as I reasonably can be that she is the person she says she is, and that her story is genuine from her perspective, if I had been in any doubt about that, I would not have made it public.

Here's the thing:

Even if you don't believe J knew the boys, her recollections of the time period alone are still valuable and incredibly interesting, giving us a glimpse of early 1970s London. 

But I do believe J. Why?

Before I answer that, let me just say: I fully realise that of course the fact that it was my story J happened across, and me she decided to speak to because of it, makes me more inclined to want to believe her. However, other authors I'm friends with, as well as myself, have received messages from older people several times before. It does trigger nostalgia when a story is very strongly rooted in a time somebody has lived through. There are older people in the fandom. (I recently ran a poll and all age groups were represented even here on Tumblr.) 

Now, on to the reasons why my communication with J has felt nothing but authentic to me.

1. She was never in any rush to get in touch with me or relate information to me. It took her a few days to email me after she first spoke to me in the comment section, where I begged her to please get in touch. She then sent me the same email five times, over two days, because she couldn’t quite work my email address out at first. 

I ended up asking several questions more than once to get an answer because they were overlooked. The conversation went off on tangents, and we chatted about her weekend at her friend’s house (and I was presented with a beautiful snapshot of the beach), the memory box her daughter made for her, her work and other things. There were stretches of days at a time when J simply didn’t find the time to get back to me. And I may have badgered her with a few too many emails asking her to please remember to answer my questions when she has a moment. In short, it was the opposite of somebody rushing to share their story. I was doing all the rushing. (I realise that I am asking you to take my word for this, but this did not all happen in a vacuum. @plainxte​, @quirkysubject​, @fingersfallingupwards​, @onegoldenglance​ and @freddieofhearts​ witnessed the process first-hand, as well as my excitement and some of J’s original emails.)

2. J was very trusting. I know her full name, where she lives and her place of work. She sent me current pictures of herself and her husband unprompted. At no point did she ask me not to reveal her identity, that is a call I made because I did not want to expose her to any possible harassment.

3. There were a few things in her account of what she remembered which were so obviously at odds with what we know to be true - it’s well-known John is a bit taller than Roger, for example, but J remembered him shorter, Queen went to Sydney in ‘85, J remember it as ‘84 - that I couldn’t help but think, if I was somebody who was trying to convince others of a made up story, the first thing I would surely do is make absolutely certain to get the facts which are easily findable right. Instead, J always lead with: this was all a long time ago, I’m sorry, I’m doing my best trying to remember.

I realise that a very clever hoaxer could do all this and convince me. But here the question has to be, to what end? This would be quite an act for someone to arrange, to make it seem quite so naturalistic. Nobody would go through the trouble of doing that for nothing. There’s no monetary gain. Scandal? There is nothing scandalous in the interview. Attention? J is barely an active member of the fandom. She has managed to create a Tumblr though: @since72​. There is one post currently. 

It also took her a couple of days to get back to me after I posted the interview.

In brief, I have no logical explanation for why somebody would go to these lengths and fool me so cleverly, with such attention to detail, when there seems to be nothing in it for them. Why then did J bother to talk to me at all? What was her motivation? Well, after I thanked her profusely for doing this, she simply said that she felt she owed me as reading my story had brought back so many memories for her.

All of the above is why I strongly feel that J is very much real and genuine. But I completely understand that it all hinges on the fact that in order to believe everything I say is true, you would have to trust me. And I know that as I am just another person on the internet, you have no reason to do that. But I’ll get to me in a moment.

Here are a few more doubts which I have seen come up with regard to J.

Why would she be reading fanfiction about people she knew? That’s weird.

To be perfectly honest, exactly that was my first reaction, too. But then I thought about it and talked to friends about it. 

Firstly, J says herself that she was never a close friend. I agree that it would be far weirder to read fanfiction about somebody you knew very well. Having said that, John Deacon’s son has been known to read Queen fanfic about his father (and read it out on his YouTube channel). But I think given that it’s been half a century and J has been watching Queen in the public eye ever since, it isn’t really all that strange to read about fictional versions of them.

Secondly, a friend of mine noticed that it seems as though older people in the fandom find J overall more credible than younger people. I’m 35, and it is true that the older we get, the more we look for the things which remind us of our younger years. There is an urge to remember and re-live. You can trust me on this, or you can ask anyone over the age of 30 or 40. Nostalgia is real, and it only comes to you with age. Why would somebody who had briefly brushed shoulders with people who later became celebrities not take an interest in them later? It seems natural that she would. As J says, she never stopped being a fan of Queen’s music and came across fanfic when she looked up Adam Lambert. Is it really so strange that she would find fanfic about them entertaining? Having given it all this thought, I really don’t think so.

It’s unrealistic that she was so young.

This is something I have to disagree with. Times were different. Pete Townshend entered Ealing Art School at age 16, according to Wikipedia. My mother (currently 62) moved 600km away from home at the age of 15 to study piano at music college. I myself moved out from home at 17 (no tragic reasons whatsoever), but that’s beside the point. I have seen it framed in a way where it was said that “It isn’t realistic that a 16-year-old was hanging out with Queen who were all in their 20s”. I agree, it would be a little strange if the story was that one 16-year-old girl was hanging out with Queen by herself as their good buddy. But that is not the story. (Even though it is well-known that during the 60s and 70s, young teenaged groupies did in fact hang out with rock groups very frequently. Of course, J was not that kind of groupie.) She was simply part of a large circle of friends, by her own admission not a close friend of the band. Personally, I struggle to see how this is unrealistic in any way. 

It seems super suspicious that she lost her photos in a flood.

Yes, it does. I agree. J realises that, too. 

Like @quirkysubject​ said in her post, I don’t blame anyone who is too sceptical at this point. But there actually was a pretty bad flood in Australia in 1988.

There are mistakes in J’s story!

Yes, there are! Let me point them out to you. I already mentioned John’s height and Queen being in Australia in ‘85, not ‘84. I also think that her perception that Freddie was taller than Roger in ‘72, but no longer in the 80s, had everything to do with platform shoes. I have to say that I did ask J some questions which I knew were things which are almost impossible to remember about people you weren’t particularly close to. I knew there was no way she would be able to accurately recall their heights, but I still wanted to know what the impression was which she had come away with. I don’t for one moment think she could possibly know why and if Freddie’s nickname was really ‘Freddie Baby’ at EAS well before she went there. But I still wanted to hear what she thought of that. This is why I stated specifically that this entire interview consists of one woman’s subjective opinions and memories. That alone means you can absolutely not take any of it as definitive fact. That just isn’t how memory works.

Kensington Market and the stall:

J’s answers on this one thoroughly confused me. Not only did she say that while she saw Freddie at the market a lot, Roger was hardly ever there, but there was also some Indian man working at the stall during the week (who I don’t think could have been Freddie’s father). She saw Freddie at multiple stalls, a girl named Jill also worked at the stall… and J was under the impression that Roger and Freddie hadn’t even started the stall. None of this made a whole lot of sense to me, until somebody pointed out that the original stall owned by Roger and Freddie must have closed in the second half of 1971. (Sources: Queen in Cornwall & Queen: As it Began)

It is confirmed (same sources as above) that Freddie worked at the market until as late as 1974. I think it is therefore entirely possible that J would have seen him working at Alan’s stall, or helping out at other stalls, and the likelihood that Roger would have come to hang out with him on a weekend is fairly high, in my opinion. Later, reading about Freddie and Roger running a stall, J would have had no reason to think that this wasn’t the same stall she had seen them at. And yes, this is of course only a theory.

The gay pride march:

@rushingheadlong​, who has recently done a lot of fantastic research about Tim, confirms that there’s no chance (as far as we know) that Tim could have been at the march. Did any of them really go? Is J misremembering entirely? Could it be that one of them or two of them went, and looking back, J remembers it as all of them (minus John, however) because she was used to mostly seeing them all together? Does she remember them from another protest march and got it mixed up with the gay rights march? I can’t say. The march and who exactly went is a big question mark. Even J herself is only “pretty sure” that they were all there, and I have to say, I can’t tell you who was where exactly when I think back to when I was 16. Certainly not when there was a big group of people around. And that was only 20 years ago for me.

Lastly, I’m going to try and use the guide our awesome local historian @emmaandorlando​ provided on how to analyse new sources. Of course, I’m not a historian (and I’m also partly the source by being the interviewer, so I can perhaps only do this impertectly), but let’s give it a go.

1. Who wrote this document? 

‘Written historical records were created by individuals in a specific historical setting for a particular purpose. Until you know who created the document you have read, you cannot know why it was created or what meanings its author intended to impart by creating it’.

In this case, the answer is two-fold because essentially I wrote the interview, in as far as that I asked the questions, I gave it shape and presented it in the form in which it came, but the answers are J’s. I completely understand that this is already a big stumbling block for many, because not only am I presenting her as an anonymous source, but many of you don’t know anything about me. If you follow me on Tumblr, you will know that I have shared more with the internet than is probably wise. But still, I am somebody you know little about, presenting to you a person you know even less about. Whether you trust me or not is entirely down to your own judgement and instinct, and that will be different for everybody.

(I’ve seen it said that I’m plugging my own work through this interview. If that was my plan, I’m afraid it’s failed miserably. I looked, and DoA has gained a whopping 2 or 3 kudos.)

2. Who is the intended audience?

‘The relationship between author and audience is one of the most basic elements of communication and one that will tell you much about the purpose of the document. Think of the difference between the audience for a novel and that for a diary, or for a law and for a secret treaty. Knowing the audience allows you to begin to ask important questions, such as; “Should I believe what I am being told?”’

The intended audience is the Queen fandom on Tumblr and AO3. I have no interest in sharing this anywhere else because I’m not familiar with the other fan communities (Facebook? Instagram?) and wouldn’t know how to go about it. For J, the intended audience was mostly me, an author she likes who was very interested in her memories.

3. Why was this document written?

‘Everything is written for a reason. Understanding the purpose of a historical document is critical to analysing the strategies that the author employs within it. A document intended to convince will employ logic; a document intended to entertain will employ fancy; a document attempting to motivate will employ emotional appeals. In order to find these strategies, you must know what purpose the document was intended to serve.’

I got really, really excited. That is the reason. When J got in touch with me, I had a decision to make. I could ask her all the questions I wanted privately and share her answers only with my "inner circle” of fandom friends, or I could share everything with the fandom spaces where I’ve been very active in the last two years. I wanted to share the excitement and decided to do the latter.

I also wanted to present the interview in a way where it would be an engaging, well-structured read and not simply all of her emails to me dumped here with a quick ‘there you go’. So I tried to wrap it in a beautiful “package”, which is why I asked her for her art, for example.

4. What type of document is this?

‘The form of a document is vital to its purpose. The form or genre in which a document appears is always carefully chosen. Genre contains its own conventions, which fulfil the expectations of author and audience.’

An interview, written by somebody who has never interviewed anyone before.

5. Can I believe this document?

‘To be successful, a document designed to persuade, to recount events, or to motivate people to action must be believable to its audience. For the critical historical reader, it is that very believability that must be examined. Every author has a point of view, and exposing the assumptions of the document is an essential task for the reader. 

You must treat all claims sceptically (even while admiring audacity, rhetorical tricks, and clever comparisons). One question you certainly want to ask is, “is this a likely story?” Testing the credibility of a document means looking at it from the other side.’

This is for all of you to decide for yourselves, and that was always the case. Far be it from me to be upset with anyone who straight up doesn’t believe a word I say, doesn’t believe J is real or any other scepticism. I’ll say it again, DO NOT harass anyone for expressing their opinions on this! It is NOT WRONG to discuss a new source! It’s wonderful that people are doing it!

And so, we come to that last question: Is this a likely story? 

Personally, I can firmly answer that with: Yes. In my personal opinion, it is. I find J’s story very likely and there is close to nothing that makes me question that these are indeed her real memories. But given the nature of human memory, they are just as imperfect as anybody else’s and do not, and should not, supersede any factual, verified information we already have.

With that, I hope to have provided a bit more clarity and transparency, and leave you - as before - to make up your own minds.

[amiplayingright]

This is a long story, but I think it’s a good one

For weeks my DM (my roommate) was hyping up the next game. It was hard to schedule a video call, so she was always writing something I couldn’t look at or painting a mini I couldn’t see. We were playing a campaign in a bit of a mix between modern and medieval. Our objective was to find an archmage’s artifact in an abandoned laboratory. Of course it had to be a laboratory. 

My character was an elf-orc wizlock named Alta whose father was a scientist. A simple explanation of her backstory is that they lived in a town called Vassali, but were shunned due to being inhuman mages. When a tornado and hurricane combined into quite a literal perfect storm, the village’s leader had all the explanation necessary to execute the scapegoats. Alta managed to escape with a gash on her back, but her father, Reluvethel, was beheaded. 

Fast forward an ambiguous number of years, Alta, Berrian (a moon elf fighter), and Katherine (a gnomish druid) were traveling the lab. Entering a room with a beaten door, we began a battle with the monster my DM was talking about all this time. 

The battle itself was kind of underwhelming. Everyone in the group made their own cool plays, but it was ultimately killed while I was two death saves down. Being healed again, I saw as the creature crumpled to rust. Everyone was reduced, except it’s white metal head, which clashed to the floor.

It’s a good thing my partymates are new players, or else it would have been obvious that my Eldritch Sight was, in fact, not a wizard thing. I told them the head was magic. They predictably started fighting over it, while I slipped away to find what was magic in the cabinets.

I firstly found an amulet, which I silently tucked away without investigating. That, however was not all. I told my party that I had found a series of documents. The DM pulled out a physical copy. 

The front was a series of signatures, with a line of scratching and holes. A few of the names were written in different scripts, which I deciphered with my Eyes of the Rune Keeper. All of the names had a latin lettered version above them, exept the head researcher. I asked my DM with dread what the elvish script and signature said. Reluvethel.

Of course.

I hoped it was only a hint of things to come later in the dungeon, and began to read the rest.

“Experiment overview: The development of an intelligent war machine (sanctioned & sponsored by Fen Labs) to aid the great country of Valoria.”

Below were four drawings. A humanoid with barely distinguished pointed ears behind a large hole and scratches, labeled J.D. An unscathed human with a large scar on her face labeled Ana D. A smiling dragonborn labeled Telvar with scratches on their neck. Another humanoid with pointed ears and what seem to be small fangs under a clump of scratches labeled Selva.

“Day one: I’m glad that Lady Fen let us begin this experiment. They even gave us our own testing hall under the mountain! Perfect secluded location for our little project. Will update further.” Lady fen was one of the Archmage’s colleagues. She was the nicest, and said Reluvethel used to work with her in the lab. This page, along with others, had sketches of the machine we fought, cited as being drawn by Ana.

“Day 2: Still constructing the outer shell, meanwhile me & Telvar have been thinking up ways to engineer it’s sentience. Our list: 

Magic spell

Humanoid parts

Haunting

Realistic AI”

“Day 4: Lady Fen came by to check on my progress today. She said that she’s proud of me! We even tried an animation spell, but without success.”

“Day 6: We tried to place a deer heart into the frontal compartment. Will document further.”

“Day 9: It’s alive. IT’S ALIVE! It seems to be skittish and passive. J.D suggests putting in bear or monster organs. We’ll just have to deal with the smell.”

“Day 13: Bear organs work & we’ve achieved the desired temperament for a war machine. Lady Fen will be so happy.”

“Day 14: Fen was happy.”

“Day 16: Ana suggested we take it to the next level & put something intelligent’s organs in. I agreed, Telvor & Selva were passive, but J.D. was so revolted that he left. His loss.”

“Day 21: Fen supplied us with the organs. They showed up in a box at the door. I̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶a̶s̶k̶ ̶h̶o̶ I’m grateful.”

“Day 24: Human parts work, but it can’t talk and seems confused. I wonder if multiple sets will fix it or make it worse.”

“Day 27: Fen supplied more at our request. Selva seems reluctant to continue, but  it’s for science’s sake that I do this. I won’t stop.” 

“Day 28: Ana here. Dr. Maiava (my surname) seems to be very interested in this. Will ask about it. Perhaps he does not want to disappoint Fen?”

“Day 30: Selva walked into the lab to see that our creation had died. It wrote on the wall in blood: ‘So long, G0od DoctOR!’. It appears to have been a suicide. Maybe the extra set of organs drove it to the brink. Fen won’t be happy. Selva quit.”

“Day 34: Ana again. Got a set of organs from Fen. Dr. Maiava is shut up in his workshop. He’s modifying the mask to have a mouth.”

“Day 36: It’s alive again and can now talk, as well as see. It seems to have retained memories from when it was alive. It told us to explain, so we did, but it was ecstatic to learn that it was practically immortal now. As long as it cooperates, I’ll be happy.”

“Day 44: The first battle was today. It was just some skirmishers, but our creation was efficient and ecstatic. Fen was just as happy.”

“Day 45: Another push into enemy territory, another victory!”

“Day 46: Dr. Maiava & Fen wanted to unveil our pet project, but Tevlar opposed. He said that if it went wrong, they could execute us for unethical experimentation. We decided to listen.”

“Day 50: It killed, but this time it enjoyed it far too much.”

“Day 68: It went power crazy it killed tevlar someone please help PLEASE NOT YET IT’S BANGING ON THE DOOR NOT YET I DON’T WANT TO DIE BY AN EXTENSION OF MY OWN HAND”

“Day 70: Ana here. I dealt with it, but D̶r̶.̶ ̶M̶a̶i̶a̶v̶a̶ Reluvethel fled to Vassali. Something about a family to live for? I’m building a tower to keep watch over the mountain & scare of investigators. Will update.”

Day 210: I got the news that Reluvethel is dead. I know how much he loved this project, like a child. And seeing as the soul inhabiting the shell retains memory... I know what I should do. He’d want this.”

“Day 416: I̶t̶’̶s̶ He’s feral. I locked the lab up for good. He’s too far gone to reason with. I only wish that the daughter never finds out. If she finds this, I am so deeply sorry. I thought it would work. I’m so sorry, Rel. I hope this book can jog your memory.”

The next few pages are blank with a series of scratches.

“Al t a. I am OK. It is OK.”

Each time I read his name, I hoped more that there wouldn’t be a reason to tell the rest who Reluvethel was. Of course that couldn’t happen.

[muna67]

Bombay - A city that I always love to visit during the monsoons, but this time the purpose of my visit was different, I was getting married, and I wanted to prepare my trouser from the colorful city.

I love the rich Indian culture, it’s arts and I enjoyed reading the poems of Tagore, going around the city that never sleeps, the noises of the barking sales people, the smell of different dishes cooked on the streets, people that were chatting on a cup of tea, or meal, roads that were almost packed with traffic and people, you can smell the diesel all over, but when there’s rain, you can feel the beautiful drops on your face, get a fresh air and breathe deeply with the fragrance of the first drops on the grass, that was Mumbai for me, a city I would love to visit again and again. I had prepared my shopping list and was ready to go to the Shops I frequently visit, to buy my wedding items. It was Sunday and I thought I would take a break on that day, go for a walk, or just sit at the Taj Mahal Hotel’s coffee shop reading a book, or just enjoying the view of the hotel, the lady who was serving me, Reha was her name, asked me what’s my plan for the weekend? I just shook my shoulders and said nothing! So she asked me if she can suggest something nice and relaxing for me, I was happy for the idea and agreed on it, so she told me, take a walk today at the Marine drive towards the sunset, you will never see like this view anywhere in the world. I agreed to her idea, and headed to the Marine drive (a 3.6 KM long promenade , known as the Queen’s necklace, at night the street light resemble a string of pearls in a necklace, I got a cup of tea, facing the Arabian ocean, a cool breeze touched my face, I closed my eyes to enjoy that moment, kept everything on pose in my mind, as if I don’t need to think of anything no matter how important it is, or close to my heart, that moment I can still remember it, it was a moment of peace and love of my soul and mind, a pure meditation moment, which is so important for our souls and minds. sat facing the sea and the cup of chai (tea) made wonders to me. I just went on looking deep into the waves and felt the wonderful rhythm of the water splashing the rocks, it made me feel that no matter how large my difficulties are, it will one day vanish, and so on I enjoyed my moments, till I could hear a lovely music playing from a distance. I looked back, it was a young boy around 11 years playing an instrument in which most of its thread were broken, he had few ones they made a beautiful music, he came towards me, and I thought he came to me because I looked like a tourist, but my silly mind expectations were wrong. The little boy was blind, and just felt that someone is sitting there, he had a nice voice and kept on playing a famous Bollywood movie song (as he mentioned later). After he completed his song, I told you have a very nice voice. I think he was too used to those words, he smiled and told me thank you madam, at that moment I wanted to know more about him, so I asked him can we sit and chat. He laughed and said what we talk about madam?

What’s your name: Raja,

Raja what’s the meaning of your name I asked, he said it means the King. I said wow great, he told me “I was born on the slums of Mumbai, never saw my parents, the streets of this land are my parents. I often cry or laugh here, I feel this is my parent’s arms that hug me in difficult moments. As you see, I was born blind, never saw the colors of the world, I don’t know what does white mean or red, am used to only one color, black and I enjoy that color, because it’s with me forever”. Where do you stay Raja? He said I don’t have a house or family. In the morning I work in a bakery shop where I have to sort out every 5 pieces of bread into bags and keep them ready for the customers, the bakery owner is a very kind man he lets me sleep at night in the shop, and gives me Rs. 50/- ($ 0.7) everyday as a salary. After that I come here to sing and earn some extra pocket money, life is beautiful for me and very kind too. I was surprised and asked him how is that possible Raja? You can’t see, you don’t have a family or a house to go and feel secure, no future as you didn’t have any qualifications. Raja kept quite for a moment, and with a smile he answered, “Madam, deeply am a very happy person, I don’t owe anyone and no one owes me anything, that’s true I don’t have a family or a house to go to by end of the day, I didn’t go to school and have never seen how books look like, never saw my parents or heard their voices, never had any sort of security in my life, am on the streets all of my life, in hot seasons and rainy days. But one thing madam, I never thought of jealousy nor negativity towards others, as God made me blind, he made my heart blind too, for the worlds love. I live a very simple life, what I need in life I have, i.e. food, work, a place I can sleep and a wonderful instrument I play on and get money, what else I would need in life, that’s my luxury”. For a moment I felt so bad for myself, I thought how greedy I am, or we all are. We have every piece of comfort in life and we still are sad because we didn’t get more. We are so selfish towards ourselves, we never thought that happiness comes with small things too and loved gifts which are not branded items. Our minds have got over materialistic things, greedy and even by having all the luxuries, we still complaint,,, Raja,, the young boy taught me to look at things with love and enjoyment, instead of the value of it…Thank you Raja… and see you at the same place, one day again…. By: Muna Jassim Fakhri, for comments pls email: fakhri.17@hotmail.com

[dontstarve-maxwil-imeanmaxwell]

Chapter 4

(Wigfrid notices something amiss and Winona agrees, but Wolfgang be the big trusting teadybear he is :3c kind long )

“That is an unusual sight!” Wigfrid stated quite loudly, but Winona just hummed and continued tinkering with the gears from a bishop and a rook they took down earlier that day, already used to her outburst, “What is?” “Where Wilsön and Maxwell always that clöse??” This caught Winona's attention immediately, whipping her head up she saw Maxwell and Wilson talking while walking up to Wilsons work tent, even pulling up the flap and letting him enter first. What. Winona looked at Wigfrid and shared a look of ‘ Did we seriously just see that’, “Maxwell isn’t known to be kind unless he wants something….” Wigfrid nodded her head in agreement, “ I don’t trust it either, but it dösen’t löök like they were arguing?” Winona shook her head” Well whatever it is, I am sure Wilson can handle it, he dealt with him before”

“Who dealt with who before?”

Winona and Wigfrid looked over to see Wolfgang, Winona speaked up” We were just talking about how Wilson and Maxwell have seem to gotten closer the past few days”, The burly man put on a thinking gesture with his hand brushing his mustache, “ Tiny man talk to Tall man quite much, I saw them doing chores together, unusual indeed” He still had an accent but his english was better nowadays due to Wickerbottom helping him out, she somehow knew a bit of Russian, she always seemed to know almost everything. “ No need worry of little man, he is strong in mind, and in body, Ms. Wickerbottom said no worry, he is not to harm tiny man, he is friend”, and with that he walked off to put down the logs he was carrying next to Wickerbottom who was busy weaving. “Odd” Winona stated, but if Wickerbottom was ok with it, then she would be ok, if not a bit wary, she was fond of WIlson and didn’t want him to get hurt in any way. Wigfrid had thought it over “ Wickerböttöm can be as wise as Ödin at times, I trust her, but let's keep an eye ön him at least '' They both nodded and got back to work on tearing up the mechanical beasts for parts.

Maxwell and Wilson were in the tent looking over the sketches of the guitar Wilson was doing “ No- that doesn't look right, you have to put the strings into a wooden block at the bottom, and the proportions are a bit wrong on the strings, each one is a different thickness”, Wilson nodded looking at the sketches and added notes to the side of the paper, “ Oh! I was thinking that the steel wool we can get from the Ewecus can be unravelled and straightened into the strings!” Maxwell hummed in agreement, this.. Was oddly nice, Maxwell had thought to himself, watching as Wilson was talking about ways to put things together and whatnot. Really it was endearing watching this in person rather than from the throne, he really liked to watch Wilson survive, it was quite funny, he had to comment on everything, and get into everything, he had really felt sorry for Wilson to take over the throne but he was too selfish, ‘better him than me’, was the last thought he had before he turned to dust, only to be brought right back to him. He would have believed it was fate, but in a place like this, there wasn’t really any mistake, after all the slap fight they had when they first saw each other outside of the throne room probably gave the shadows something to laugh about-”Um Maxwell, did you hear my other suggestion?” Maxwell a bit startled, straightened up, forgetting there was a lantern hanging just above his head,Thunk! He sucked in a breath between teeth in a low hiss as he pushed the lantern out of the way, glaring as if it personally offended him (which it did I might add) he heard loud boyish laughter and looked down to see Wilson practically dying in his laughter “HahHAHhahah!O-*giggles*-Oh my god, hah!’ Maxwell grumbled, “Find something funny PAL?” Maxwell basically hissed at the shorter man, who was still laughing hard, flushed and eyes pricked with tears,”I-HAhah-I am so-sorry but that, t-that was too funny” Maxwell then sneered,” Ha ha ha, laugh it up now, but you realize I have seen many more embarrassing things from you on the throne, what about that incident with the honey? ripped out a few hairs didn’t it?” That shut Wilson up real quick, he gaped like a fish up at Maxwell, red as the salmon in the salt ponds” Y-you!-good heavens you saw THAT!?” Wilson buried his face in his hands,” T-that was one time...and it was an a-accident!” Maxwell smirked,” Honey isn’t the substitute for lube here pal, there are better options” Wilson looked positively mortified, then curious in a second, what did Maxwell mean by-” ‘better options’? What does that mean?

“Exactly what it means Higgsbury, would you like a few tips?” Wilson looked at him skeptically, up then down, then up again,” How old are you?” ...Ow, Maxwell thought, Well to be fair he did look.. A bit old, he was around 50 when he came to this world, and that certainly wasn’t that old (It certainly was),” I am 50 Higsbury, not 100, despite how many years go by, we will never age here”, Higgsbury considered this for a moment, then turned back to his work shaking his head,” Alright Maxy, but don’t think I will forget about your little incident, so what would wood should we use?”Maxwell was taken aback by how the man was switching topics so quickly that he couldn’t keep up at times, maybe it was some form of ADHD? He shook his head. It was better than going back to the topic of his age,” Hm I was thinking of Birchwood? It is softer and easier to bend and carve” Taking his place behind Higgsbury, not seeing the little smirk Wilson had,”Softer and easier to bend huh?”Maxwell scowled,” I do hope you are talking about the wood Higgsbury ”,Wilson let out another laugh at Maxwell's expense, and it is to say that evening was filled with large amounts of arguing and laughing alike.

[funkymbtifiction]

hey charity, can you describe in depth why you mistyped as ISFJ, and found your true type of ENFP (what lead you to it, does it feel like the one, etc). also what do you score on function tests?

Sure. You should know I blame my Enneagram 6 for… like, all of it.

I came on the scene assuming I was an ENFP right from the start, but that’s before I was introduced to all the stereotypes which focus on behavior and not mental processing. I thought the general profiles of the ENFP fit me really well – but then I started getting doubts because… honestly, I don’t just leap into things without looking or thinking about them first; I have not hopped on a plane to a foreign country and gone off to do exciting things without a safety net; I do not move apartments or change boyfriends every 4 months out of boredom; I can finish whatever books I start writing, without getting distracted and leaving a lifetime of half-finished tasks behind me; and I use my Ne for more than just idealism. At the time I knew nothing about Enneagram, nor that all of the above is Ne-dom + Enneagram 7 (with an sx variant of idealism). Plus, my 6 is anxious about the future to some extent, and I had read about inferior Ne being anxious about the future.

So, that threw me off a lot. I had a long list of what I didn’t realize at the time were blatant stereotypes to compare my behavior to, and coz I’m a head type / 6 it didn’t match. No one explained to me that it’s how you think, not what you do, that determines your type. So I had to resign myself to likely not being an ENFP, and because I’m somewhat introverted, that narrowed down my options (I assumed I had therefore to be IXFX). I kept reading… and found a bunch more stereotypes, especially of the “Fe is unselfish, and Fi is selfish and rude and uncaring” variety. I looked at Fi characters and saw a trait of stubbornness and selfishness I could not relate to and I had a strong reaction to of dislike. I am an agreeable person who spends a lot of time concerned with how she makes other people feel and goes along with them to keep them happy. I make decisions based on how I think they’re going to feel – so since I wasn’t some clueless and totally self-absorbed person, I obviously had to use Fe, right? (I’m ashamed of how I used to see Fi. And those “Fe is the nice one” stereotypes sadden me.)

Again, I never at that time ran across anything that explained how Fe is a social organizer and thinks in terms of “us” and “we” (the collective) which would have helped me realize – that’s not what I do. I actually have an adverse reaction to that sort of thing. No one told me Fi’s feelings are abstract and hard to tell other people about; if they had, I would have connected to it, since I have had people ask me how I’m feeling and I just stare at them in confusion, unable to articulate it because it’s all… impressions in my head. Abstract. And often out of sync with what people expect me to feel. I once had someone express to me, “Oh, I’m so sorry you didn’t grow up close to your sisters, how sad.” And I was like, “Why is it sad? I don’t care that we weren’t close. Should I care that we weren’t close? Why would you assume I’d care? And why would you express sadness over it? Because people are supposed to be close to their sisters? But why would you be close to them if you have nothing in common and no attachment to them?”

Because I quickly identified Ne in myself (THAT at least rang true – the “getting ideas outside yourself” has always been blatantly obvious to me, about me) and was going off stereotypes, I concluded (rather unhappily, I might add) that I had to be ISFJ. And, as you probably know, I stuck with it for a long time.

Several people pointed out to me that I used way, way more Ne than an ISFJ. I just reasoned that my dad was an intuitive and it rubbed off on me (cute… but that’s not how it works, not the focused, reading-between-the-lines, operating-on-hunches Ne that I use). A few other strangers around tumblr suggested to me I came across as a Te user, due to my straightforward / directive style, in which I discard any pretense of niceties and just answer questions by focusing on what’s being asked and giving an answer (no Fe “sugar coating” – I often read back over stuff later and go, “Oh yeah, I guess I could have been less blunt and less detached and more warm and personal… oops”). I assumed they had to be wrong, because I finish things and ENFPs don’t. Stupid, I know.

But ISFJ never quite fit. I left bait in ISFJ forums to entice them into abstract conversations that went ignored. I looked at my ISFJ (confirmed) best friend and could see NOTHING similar in us, from how we communicated, thought, felt, and reacted to our overall tastes and interests. And frankly, when I said I shared her type, her eyebrows shot up into her hairline and my parents died laughing. None of them knew what type I was, but it “sure as hell isn’t ISFJ.”

And then came two intense discussions over about a week that forced me to toss out ISFJ altogether and start over. In the first, an INTJ I’d met through this tumblr and had been talking to / corresponding with for a few months pointed out that our Te thinking process was similar; our conclusions were similar; my reasoning was similar to hers, as was my Fi tendency to think people are all responsible for their own emotional states. So, that threw me for a loop. Then another NF friend had a five hour argument with me in which she insisted I had to be an intuitive and came up with evidence of how fast my brain switches gears, how often I am abstracting away from things (as an example, someone dies in a movie and I cry, not because the character is dead but because I’m thinking about death / loss abstractly), and how fast I can think on my feet and discard my own ideas, and how often I contradict myself.

I finally just accepted it, tentatively and with anxiety, since I was still hounded by the 98 ways I do NOT fit the ENFP stereotype. Learning my Enneagram has helped that anxiety fade, but I still wonder if I got it right sometimes. Looking back, I can see where I screwed myself over from recognizing my cognition sooner because of my 6w7 tendency to trust / seek other people’s opinions and automatically suspect, “Well, they probably have more information / knowledge than I do… so even though it feels kind of wrong, I guess I’ll run with their idea?” Ne-dom tendency to latch onto other people’s notions even if they’re thin. If this person is married to a (7 core) ENFP who never finishes things… and I finish what I start and and steadily work at it until it’s done… then I guess I can’t be an ENFP because this person must know what they’re talking about... (Typical immature tert-Te – lose patience, just wants an answer, grabs onto one example and assumes it creates a base pattern, rushes to a conclusion that doesn’t fit, and then tries to figure out WHY this feels off.)

You ask if it feels right. Not always but I’m learning that’s owing to my tritype. My 6 finds it hard to let go of the four people out there who still think I’m an SFJ. I have anxiety about it from time to time, wondering if I’m misleading everyone, until I remember how bad I am at anything Si-related and how easy it is for me to abstract away from an object, and then I feel weirdly comforted / secure again.

Function tests. The Socionics one always gives me ENFp or INFj (INFP). I tend to baffle the similarminds test, since I get similar to these results (current):

Te (Extroverted Thinking) (70%) your valuation of / adherence to logic of external systems / hierarchies / methods

Ti (Introverted Thinking) (30%) your valuation of / adherence to your own internally devised logic/rational

Ne (Extroverted Intuition) (70%) your valuation of / tendency towards free association and creating with external stimuli

Ni (Introverted Intuition) (50%) your valuation of / tendency towards internal/original free association and creativity

Se (Extroverted Sensing) (15%) your valuation of / tendency to fully experience the world unfiltered, in the moment

Si (Introverted Sensing) (35%) your valuation of / focus on internal sensations and reliving past moments

Fe (Extroverted Feeling) (65%) your valuation of / adherence to external morals, ethics, traditions, customs, groups

Fi (Introverted Feeling) (65%) your valuation of / adherence to the sanctity of your own feelings / ideals / sentiment

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

 based on your results your type is likely - unclear

HAHAHAHA.

If you’re asking me this, to try and find your type, drop all the stereotypes about the types and focus on how your brain works. Remember to factor in your core Enneagram type and think about how that might impact your dominant function. I can see clearly how 6 shapes my Ne and has strengthened my Te. It holds back my Ne in some respects (it’s like… I operate on Ne but am anxious about my N conclusions without Te finding proof), and between 6 and 1, focuses it intently; but I am still prone to leaping on ideas half-baked and running with them, since I am not always great at objectively ruling them out (which also made it hard to find my type)… which is high Ne, not low Ne. And then there’s the fact that I shock most people when I honestly say I can’t remember 95% of my childhood, much less what I just read. I realized the other day my grandparents have all been dead for over 5 years. I honestly could not have told you how long they’ve been gone – in some ways, it feels like last summer and in others, like a lifetime ago. THAT is how bad I am with actual details, even on things that matter to me. My Si basically hangs out, stressing over forgetting things / practical details and gets nit-picky about DID NO ONE NOTICE THAT’S FORMATTED WRONG?

- ENFP Mod.

[avallcnis]

I think there’s a lot of reasons why Merlin says he’s emotionless, chiefly because I think he believes at this point that he is. If you tell yourself something is true for long enough then, sadly, you tend to start believing it and this is something Merlin has been telling himself for a very very long time.

Fair warning this will be a long post.

Merlin has always known exactly what he is, and whilst his mother can be inferred to have loved him/done her best by him she was the only one. Merlin was bullied as a child because of this, and I really do doubt that it was only children being like this to him. He was essentially treated like a monster as a young boy;

In the dispute Dabutius said to Merlin “You fool, do you presume to quarrel with me? Is there any equality in our birth? I am descended from royal race, both by my father’s and my mother’s side. As for you, nobody knows what you are, for you never had a father.

I don’t think altercations like this were uncommon, especially if we take into account the fact Merlin is actually a Prince himself given his grandfather was a King. It’s obviously inferred here that Dabutius is also royalty, but even then you don’t usually casually run around insulting the grandchildren of Kings. The fact no one bats an eye to this or suggests Dabutius not being an asshole is.... also fairly telling. People past his mother didn’t care about him, arguably they didn’t want him near them and were by on large cruel to him. People are generally unpleasant to what they don’t understand, and I really do think Merlin is lucky to be alive more than anything. Especially being that he is half Demon in an era which is really quite heavily Catholic.

To say he spent most of his formative years treated like a monster is fair, which to a child would unquestionably cause so much damage. It becomes easy to believe the majority telling you this/treating you that way, especially when your father was a ‘monster’. Sadly he is a product of this treatment, finding it easier to take their words at face value than continually end up distressed trying to argue with them on the matter.

It’s hard to say exactly how old Merlin was when he met Vortigern, the illustrations being in that old style that makes everyone (even cats?) look like 50 year old men. From his stature though it can be inferred he was probably about 15.

Vortigern obviously wanted to kill Merlin, told him as much when they met, stating he wanted to use his blood because his tower wouldn’t remain standing. By this point I think Merlin already believed his own inhumanity and, as a result, was grappling already with a repression of emotions. We see him bursting into tears when he gives Vortigern the prophecy of the two dragons (and you can argue that could just be for dramatic writing effect, something I agree with. However in the application of this to a character which is being written ‘dramatic effect’ isn’t a solid explanation to such an emotional reaction from a child), which i think is largely due to the fact he’s really struggling to cope with it all.

Merlin obviously ends up in the service of Vortigern, a man who was notorious for his cruelty as an individual. When Vortigern dies he ends up in the service of Aurelius, and from him Uther. All of these men were often described in bestial and animalistic ways, being people who inspired fear before respect. Merlin survived because he was useful to them, because his ‘inhumanity’ made him something of an asset. Exposing weakness to men like that would have been foolish, showing emotions giving them a leverage he was scared to offer. If Merlin hadn’t managed to shut himself down on an emotional level before these 3 he certainly managed to do it during his time under them.

Then comes Arturia, someone Merlin ends up loving. His dialogue in FGO when paired with her is indicative, expressing what I really think is a genuine happiness for being near her again; he has no reason to lie here, there is nothing to be gained by him acting happy if he is not. Merlin loved her, but I think he was and is far too damaged to do better than he did. Yes he has his clairvoyance and knew how things would end, but clairvoyance of the future is shown to show the individual many possible futures and does not always give a complete picture. Merlin thought he knew what he was doing and objectively he did, but she made him feel for her and suddenly he’s faced with the fact he’s caused all kind of damage to this girl and now there’s nothing he can do. His realisation is too late, and it’s crushing.

When she ends up stuck in that awful limbo of hers this is made worse, his guilt consuming as he makes himself watch because it is the least he can do. The least he owes this girl. When she is summoned to fight he hides Excalibur, doing what little he can but knowing it’s not enough. He watches her torture for a millennium and a half, watching someone he loves tortured essentially because of him. This, for someone who has 0 emotional intelligence for all he has the capacity for emotion still, is so far beyond what he is able to deal with or reconcile with. Garden Of Avalon goes on to describe how awful he finds the entire thing, but that he cannot look away due to his own guilt.

It is not until the end of the fifth grail war that we see a shift in Merlin, the conclusion spurring him to kick Cath Palug out of Avalon to go and find ‘beauty’ such as that he himself had seen. Before this point I think Merlin had truly lost sight of how beautiful the world was, falling into a state probably best described as depressive. With the end of that war he found beauty, found the worth in things again, and wished for Cath Palug to go and find these things too.

In the years between the end of of that grail war and the events of FGO Merlin took to a more positive outlook again, one catalysed by Ritsuka. But... this got very long so that’s a headcanon for another day.

[chaotic-good-hawke]

Gymnophoria - From Another Perspective

prompt originally from @that-cat-over-there from this post. (thank you again, friend!)

Part 1 can be found here. 

I was inspired to write the scenes from the other perspective. 

Link to work on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16329293

Kirkwall, 9:31 Dragon

Marian Hawke downed her first shot of the night, feeling the cheap burn at the back of her throat.

The Hanged Man was filled with its usual crowd of miscreants and ruffians, the best of which were sitting with her at their usual spot. Varric sat at the head of the table with his legs crossed and set on the table, nursing his beer. Fenris was next to him and was reluctantly drinking along. Aveline had just arrived and took a seat next to Fenris, still in her city guard armor. Isabela was next to Hawke, already several shots in and in peak Isabela form.

Varric was shuffling the cards. They were going to play Wicked Grace once Carver arrived with Merrill (Maker, how did she manage to get so lost?) and Anders found his way from the clinic.

It promised to be a good night.

“Deal the cards, Varric!” Isabela exclaimed.

“Be patient, Rivaini, we will start when the whole crew is assembled.” Varric said, continuing to shuffle.

“I am bored! Someone distract me.”

“What do you want to do, Isabela?”

“Do you have to ask, Sweet thing? We could go back to my room and entertain ourselves.” Isabela said, trailing her finger along Hawke’s arm. Hawke laughed, but did consider it.

“Whore, do you ever stop?” Aveline asked.

“No.” Was all Fenris said.

“Spoilsport, Captain Manhands.” Isabela grumbled into her cup.

“How about a bet? There is a dart board over there.” Varric suggested.

“But no darts, Varric. And last time Corth yelled at us when you fired Bianca at the board from across the bar.” Hawke said. “We don’t want to get thrown out THIS early.”

The group went silent for a minute considering their options. “Well, how about this then. I bet you 50 silver that you can’t pick up someone from this bar.” Isabela suggested.

“I can do that easily, Bela.” Hawke said with confidence. “You’re on!”

“Hawke, are you really going to do this?” Aveline asked.

“Yes, Hawke, are you?” Fenris asked, with thinly veiled curiosity.

“Of course!” Hawke downed another shot. “Varric! You like me, right?”

“While I am flattered-”

“No, it can’t be someone you know, Hawke.” Isabela protested.

“You didn’t specify that!”

“Well I am now!”

“Fine!”

“Will you two please stop shouting?” Aveline asked, rubbing her temple. “Maker, why I associate with you…”

“You love it, Aveline.” Hawke said, then, turning back to Isabela. “Fine, someone I don’t know.”

Hawke surveyed the bar, trying to find a likely candidate. Most were drunks, or regulars, or regular drunks.

There has to be someone suitable here…

But then, Hawke spotted a perfect mark at the bar. He had golden hair, muscles, from the looks of it, and he definitely looked lonely.

“Him, I will pick that guy up, using my incredible skill and then you will owe me 50 silver.”

“Hey, I want in on this bet.” Varric said. “50 silver says Rivaini manages to steal him out from under you.”

“Varric! Have you no faith in me?” Hawke said, dramatically.

“I’ve seen you try to flirt, Hawke. It was sad.”

“That was for a job, this is entirely different.”

“Whatever you say, will you take that bet?”

“Yes! Just to spite you!” With that, Hawke waved Nora down and requested a drink be send over to the gentleman.

She waited for the drink to be delivered. When it was, she forced everyone to look away, to not make it obvious.

She looked across the bar at him and waved. He looked concerned or confused. Hawke elbowed Isabela. “See, already he is looking my way.”

“You do know how to pick them, Hawke. He looks very fit, indeed.” They took a moment to eye him, imagining how his obvious muscles looked underneath his clothing. The man looked away and downed his drink.

“Ah, getting his courage up?” Isabela purred.

“We shall see. Now is my chance.”

“Honestly, Hawke…” Aveline said, shaking her head.

Hawke rose from the bench and started towards the bar, with her best sashay. The man watched her. Suddenly, he rose from the stool, threw down some coins, and practically ran from the bar.

Hawke heard Varric laughing behind her.

“Sweet thing! You scared him off!” Isabela exclaimed and Hawke made her way back to the table. “I think that means I win.”

“No one is to mention any part of this to Carver.” Hawke said sulkily, handing over the coin to Isabela.

“Not a word, Hawke, not a word.” Varric said, still chortling.

Maker, I will never live this down.

Haven, 9:41 Dragon

Dorian strolled around the small village of Haven. It was quaint, in a Southern fashion. The villagers side-eyed him as he walked, whispering and gawking. You would think he was the Elder One the way they acted.

He heard the sound of clanging steel and wandered on down the steps through the gate. He found before him a glorious sight. The Commander was fighting another rather strapping fellow, both of them down to their shirts, which, sweat soaked as they were, left little to the imagination. Well, many people’s imaginations, Dorian found he could come up with a few things.

Their bout came to an end and the commander moved to a side bench, lifting a ladle of water. Some of the water trickled down his body.

Bless the Maker.

The commander turned and met his eyes. Dorian raised his brow and cocked his head to the side, giving the man a long look. The man in question looked down and, if his eyes were not deceiving him, the Commander was blushing.  

“You are looking quite intent about something, Dorian.” Lavellan said, stepping beside him. The Dalish mage had taken to him, after their jaunt to the future. She was one of the only ones to even treat him like a person in Haven.

“Just enjoying the wonderful view, darling.” Lavellan turned and seeing where his gaze fell, touched his arm lightly and started laughing.

“Oh, I see. Just enjoying the natural wonders of the South, huh?” She said, the laugh still in her voice. She looked towards the Commander and waved, a wide grin of mirth on her face. He gave a half-hearted wave back before turning and walking away.

“Ah, you scared him away!” Dorian complained.

Lavellan playfully slapped his arm. “I did not! It was probably your leering at him!”

“I was not leering! I was admiring!”

“Of course, dear Altus. Of course.”

Skyhold, 9:41 Dragon

Lavellan left the rotunda. She had just left a shocked and delighted Dorian on the second floor. He was the first one she told about her night. About her amazing night.

She was a cheerful person by nature, but even for her, she found herself grinning more than usual. As she greeted various people in the hall on her way to the war table, she found an extra bounce to her step and had to keep from outright whistling.

Cullen was cautious about a relationship. He was so adorably awkward and sweet at times. She understood that he was struggling with his lyrium withdrawals and that made him want to take things slow.

Lavellan had been fine with taking things slow. With the Inquisition, it was almost impossible to spend any time together, but they had made it work: a chess game here, a walk in the moonlit there. Then, last night, Cullen made a move, a much bolder move than she had been expecting.

Lavellan reached the door to the War Room and entered, hearing the now familiar creak of the hinges. She quickly looked to Cullen and she felt herself smiling again.

“Good afternoon, everyone! What’s on the agenda today?” She asked, looking to the other advisors.

“Ah, Inquisitor, yes, we have several Orlesian nobles visiting that wish an audience with you…”

Josephine and Leliana started detailing the meetings she would have throughout the days and the information she would need to talk to the nobles. Really, they were invaluable in that department.

“Lady Bellington can be a bit…verbose at times.” Josephine said.

Lavellan laughed at that, “Verbose? Why, Josephine, you never cease to amaze me with how you manage to make even the most awful nobles sound nice. I remember Lady Bellington from Val Royeaux and verbose is putting it mildly.”

Josephine and Leliana then started debating about whether Lavellan should speak to her alone or if they should have a messenger interrupt them.

Lavellan looked to Cullen and found his eyes intently on her. She ducked her head and felt a blush coming to her cheeks. He most certainly was not focusing on the meeting.

She met his gaze again and raised her eyebrow just so, before letting her eyes trail across his armored form, communicating that she was quite pleased with what she saw and what she knew was underneath all the armor.

“Commander?” Josephine asked. Lavellan started suddenly, straightening and refocusing.

“Yes, Josephine?” Cullen asked in reply.

“Did you have any suggestions to add?”

“No, I think you and Leliana have it well in hand.” He had recovered quickly, well done. Lavellan felt a smirk on her face.

“Excellent, Commander, now if we move on to this other matter…”

Lavellan focused on the meeting and took some notes on her upcoming meetings, but she did notice that Cullen was pointedly not looking her way.

Poor man, I am so very distracting.

The meeting came to a close and Leliana and Josephine left, talking about some recent gossip. Lavellan leaned against the doorframe and waited for Cullen to leave. He finished gathering his notes and looked up at her. He instantly smiled at her and Lavellan couldn’t help returning it.

How can one man do this to me?

As they left the room, Lavellan took his hand in hers and gently tugged him down to her. She had a wicked glint in her eye and she whispered into his ear, “Tonight, you can undress me for real, not just with your eyes, Cullen.”

She saw him freeze, her words taking hold.

Oh, yes. I have plans for you tonight. She thought, pulling the still dazed Commander through the hall.

[kragbrady32-blog]

Air ride suspension & Insurance?

Hello, I am male, nearly 18. I want to buy a 2004 / 5 Mini cooper for my first car. Insurance at about 1000 - 1500 quoted. When I get it I want to do some visual mods such as new rims, possibly a colour change, window tints. I know I have to notify my insurance company, whomever it may be and it probably wont effect what I'm paying. But I also want to lower the car, so I researched this and came across these air - ride kits that are air suspension that can be lowered and raised all from in your car with buttoms. These arnt hydralacs, there quite slow to adjust. This would be great for me as I live in a town but I have to drive on a lot of moorland roads, so I could raise it on the moors, lower it in the cities and on motorways etc... Would this effect my insurance at all? Its quite an expensive mod but would it change ( increase ) my insurance costs? Cheers, Alex. 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Please if everyone knows any...show more" Air ride suspension & Insurance? Hello, I am male, nearly 18. I want to buy a 2004 / 5 Mini cooper for my first car. Insurance at about 1000 - 1500 quoted. When I get it I want to do some visual mods such as new rims, possibly a colour change, window tints. I know I have to notify my insurance company, whomever it may be and it probably wont effect what I'm paying. But I also want to lower the car, so I researched this and came across these air - ride kits that are air suspension that can be lowered and raised all from in your car with buttoms. These arnt hydralacs, there quite slow to adjust. This would be great for me as I live in a town but I have to drive on a lot of moorland roads, so I could raise it on the moors, lower it in the cities and on motorways etc... Would this effect my insurance at all? Its quite an expensive mod but would it change ( increase ) my insurance costs? Cheers, Alex. I suggest that you try this web site where one can get quotes from different companies: http://insure4car.xyz How can I get my insurance? I'm 17 years of age. Insurance ca n't be afforded by my dad since he's 4 kids plus they wont offer him free insurance. I reside in Georgia. I would like insurance cause I end-up paying out WITHOUT ANY HELP like 90$ to visit the doctor. I don't think it really is alright not to have insurance. So what do I actually do? Where do I do this? Could they allow a 17-year old to get insurance by their home (being a modest)" Do you think aero updates may cause my insurance to move up? I wished to then add aero upgrades for my car and stay near Va international raceway. I also want to decrease it and get performance wheels. You think my insurance will be increased by this considerably? I'm simply curious what others believe although I cannot call until tomorrow. 16 yr-old Insurance question.? 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I know I have to notify my insurance company, whomever it may be and it probably wont effect what I'm paying. But I also want to lower the car, so I researched this and came across these air - ride kits that are air suspension that can be lowered and raised all from in your car with buttoms. These arnt hydralacs, there quite slow to adjust. This would be great for me as I live in a town but I have to drive on a lot of moorland roads, so I could raise it on the moors, lower it in the cities and on motorways etc... Would this effect my insurance at all? Its quite an expensive mod but would it change ( increase ) my insurance costs? Cheers, Alex. I suggest that you try this web site where one can get quotes from different companies: http://insure4car.xyz

[minijenn]

Universe Falls, Chapter 50, Part 2

HAHAHAHAHAHAH HERE WE GO KIDS ITS TIME FOR THE BIG ONE. ANd I really mean that seeing as how this chapter is like 33,000 words long. Seriously what the hell am I even doing with my life anymore??? Still this one turned out HELLA good in my opinion, so I really hope you enjoy it! And without any reason to keep stalling, here it is! :D 

Previous: http://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/171705709469/universe-falls-chapter-50-part-1

Chapter 50, Part 2: A Tale of Two Stans

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The summer sun beamed down upon the murky ocean water, making it shimmer almost as it lapped onto the somewhat dirty shore. For any other beach, a pristine day like this would have seen countless beachgoers and tourists, but Glass Shard Beach didn’t often attract too many of those. What it did attract, however, was a pair of brothers, twins, around the age of 11 or 12, who lived in the sleepy nearby town. Whenever they could spare a few hours, the boys gladly rushed down to their favorite haunt, knowing that more often than not, they’d have the entire beach to themselves to simply run around and explore. A pastime that they were both gladly taking part in.

“Hey! Wait up!” the older of the twins called after his brother, trailing behind him a bit as they ran across the sandy shore.

“Heh, yeah, you should keep up,” the other twin retorted with a sly smirk, still taking a large lead.

“I-I can keep up!” the slower of the brothers called a bit breathlessly, though he stopped alongside his twin as they reached something neither of them had seen before: a small, closed-off cave. “Whoa!”

“Neato!” the younger twin exclaimed, aptly excited by such a find.

“A mysterious, boarded cave!” the older twin grinned, just as intrigued as his brother. “It might be filled with lost prehistoric life forms! Or Mesoamerican gold!”

“Or a dead body!”

“Why would you want to find a dead body?”

The younger twin shrugged, matching his twin’s rather bemused smile. “You gotta admit it’d be kinda cool.”

“…Yeah, I guess it would be.”

“So, ladies first,” the younger twin’s grin widened as he pushed his brother forward a bit. The older of the two laughed at this, giving his brother a playful punch on the arm, one that was quickly returned as the pair moved up to the cave itself. As it turned out, the entrance was boarded up quite securely to keep any trespassers out, hence why the older twin’s attempt at pulling them away only resulted in him falling backwards into the sand, much to his brother’s amusement.

“Ha! Good thing you’ve got your smarts, poindexter. I’ve got the other thing. What’s it called? Oh right! Punching!” And he proceeded to do just that, launching his fist through the boards and breaking a sizable opening through the wood, despite the pieces of the board stuck in his hand as a result. “Cool, splinters!”

“Whoa…” the older twin remarked, shining his flashlight into the darkened cavern. “It’s so creepy in here!”

“Hey, don’t worry, bro,” the younger twin slung an arm around his brother’s shoulder as they stepped into the cave. “Wherever we go, we go together. By the way, don’t forget to leave our names so they know who owns the place.”

They both did just that, inscribing their names on the stone wall near the entrance of the cave before they ran off to continue exploring, proudly cheering their last name in unison as they left a subtle, written declaration of their close-knit bond behind:

Stanley and Stanford Pines

Present Day

In the immediate aftermath of the complete and utter upheaval of reality as a result of the portal, the Mystery Shack was still settling back into place, though it was by far much worse for wear. The basement had by far suffered from the worst of it, the machine in complete shambles as everyone gradually picked themselves up and looked to who had just joined them from the other side of the portal, none other than the nearly-mythical author of the journals himself. Still, no one was quite sure how to react to his unexcepted arrival, save for Stan as he warmly stepped forward to greet his long-lost twin.

“Finally!” he exclaimed with a smile so huge and so happy that it nearly brought him to joyful tears. And really, he wouldn’t have been too surprised if they actually fell as he opened his arms up wide to embrace his brother, not noticing the infuriated glare he was receiving from his own twin as he rushed towards him. “After all these long years of waiting, you’re actually here! Brother!”

Before Stan could even come close to hugging the author, however, he suddenly lashed out, swinging a hard and heavy fist that connected with the conman’s cheek and knocked him back brutally, much to the admitted surprise of everyone watching. “Ow!” Stan hissed in pain before looking back to his brother with confused frustration. “What the heck was that for?!”

“This was an insanely risky move, restarting the portal!” the author exclaimed in gruff fury. “What in the world were you thinking?! Didn’t you read my warnings?!”

“Warnings, schmarnings,” Stan scoffed, still rubbing his sore cheek. “How’s about maybe a thank you for saving you from what appears to be, I dunno, some kind of sci-fi sideburn dimension?”

“Thank you?” the author asked incredulously. “You really think I’m gonna thank you after what you did thirty years ago?!”

“What I did?!” Stan retorted just as harshly, his hands clenching into threatening fists as he prepared to act on his own growing anger. “Why, you ungrateful-!” The conman didn’t finish as he launched himself at his brother, fists at the ready to strike though the author quickly and easily evaded his attack. He swiftly restrained the incensed conman, pinning his arms behind his back before slamming him to the ground, but even still, Stan showed no signs of giving up against his clearly much stronger brother. “D-don’t expect me to go easy on you just because you’re family!” he shouted, shoving the author off of him before scrambling to stand once more. The author also rose, ready to fight himself, though before the brothers could throw any more punches at each other, their blows were suddenly blocked off by a sturdy gauntlet on each side.

“Enough!” Garnet exclaimed as both punches simultaneously hit her protected palms. Stan simply backed off at this, sending a harsh glare past the Gem leader and to his brother instead. The author, on the other hand, seemed to abandon his fury as he looked to Garnet herself, his eyes wide with both surprise and recognition as he stared at her in clear amazement.

“G-Garnet?” he asked, catching a look of apt bewilderment from the Gem leader before he happened to notice her teammates standing nearby. “Pearl! Amethyst! I-I can’t believe it! You three look exactly the same as you did 30 years ago!” he exclaimed with a baffled, but still elated smile. “Then again, I suppose that’s not that surprising seeing as how Gems don’t age, but to see such partial immortality in action is downright incredible!”

Despite the author’s apparent excitement, none of the Gems shared in on it as they looked to each other in complete, dumbfounded confusion. Sure enough, Stan had confirmed that this man was indeed the author, but that didn’t mean they had much of a recollection about him given their apparent missing memories on anything remotely pertaining to him. All the same, out of anyone who could have been the elusive author, they had to admit that none of them, not even Garnet, had been expecting him to be Stan’s unknown brother, which of course, was yet another secret the conman had been hiding from them for all these years.

“Uh… do we… know you?” Pearl asked somewhat uncomfortably. After all, this was the man who had written copious notes about all three of them in his journals, despite them apparently not knowing him personally. Though based on how he addressed them, clearly he felt as though he was somehow quite familiar with all of them.

The author took pause at this, his smile fading into surprise as he looked between the trio of confused Gems. “Wha—o-of course you do! It’s me: Ford! We used to work together, remember?”

Once again, the Gems didn’t really know what to say to this claim as they looked to the author, or rather, to Ford in sincere uncertainty. “Uh… well we don’t know about all that,” Amethyst spoke up, still trying to avert eye contact with her teammates in light of everything that had just happened. “But I do know that if you really are author dude, then we’ve got like a ton of questions for you.”

“Namely, how in the world did you amass so much information about us in those journals of yours without our consent?” Pearl asked, narrowing her eyes as she looked to the author rather distrustfully.

“Without your con—what?” Ford asked, now just as confused as the Gems seemed to be. “I always had permission to document the Crystal Gems from all three of you, and from Rose! How do you not remember everything we-”

“Forget it, sixer,” Stan cut in, arms crossed as he rolled his eyes at his brother’s apparent distress over this news. “Those three don’t remember a thing about you. In fact they haven’t for about the past… oh, I dunno, 22 or so years now?”

“B-but why not?” the author pressed, sending his brother a brief glare before looking back to the Gems with much more concern.

“Heck if I know,” the conman shrugged. “The only thing Rose told me was that somebody went and jacked all their memories about you and about all of this,” he nodded back towards the ruined portal. “She never bothered to bring up how or why in any of it. Just like her to be as shady and vague as possible, if ya ask me.”

“W-wait,” Pearl interjected, aghast at such news. “Rose really did know what happened to our memories?! T-then why did she never tell us about any of this?!”

“Well, why don’t you just ask her for yourself?” Ford suggested. “In fact, if there’s anyone who can clear all of this up, then I’m sure its Rose. Where is she? Up at the temple?

The Gems once again fell silent at this, their expressions switching from confusion to despair upon the author’s assumption that the pink Gem was still around. At this juncture, the kids, who had only just been watching everything unfurl in silent shock, finally broke out of it enough to exchange a tentative glance, none of them really even knowing how to react to everything that was going on in front of them. But upon hearing Ford question about his mother’s whereabouts, Steven found that he could no longer really stand back in the shadows and keep the truth silent, especially given how distraught both the author and the Gems seemed to be.

“Um, actually…” Steven began somewhat apprehensively as he stepped forward. “She’s… not around anymore…”

Ford froze at this, looking over to the young Gem with wide eyes of shock upon hearing such a thing. “…What?” he asked, his voice strangely soft and shaken.

“He’s right,” Garnet spoke up, letting out a sad sigh as she adjusted her shades. “Several years ago, Rose Quartz sacrificed her physical form to bring her son, Steven, into the world.”

“Her… son?” the author asked, even more bewildered by this news as he looked back to the young Gem incredulously. “But… Gems can’t… how did she… I… I don’t believe it…”

“Um… well, i-its true,” Steven said with awkward, yet polite smile as he pulled his shirt up a bit to show the Gem on his navel, something that seemed to perplex Ford even more. As a result, the young Gem couldn’t help but feel somewhat guilty, though for what reason he wasn’t entirely sure. Still, he did his best to make an effort to try to set the clearly upset author to ease. “By the way, i-it’s… really nice to meet you, Mr. Author, sir.”

Ford hardly seemed to pay this warm greeting much mind as he placed a hand against his temple, still clearly reeling from this revelation. “I… I never thought that she’d… She… she can’t be gone…” he muttered shaking his head morosely. “I didn’t even get to tell her that I’m sorry for-” The author abruptly cut himself off at this, glancing up to notice the several pairs of eyes watching him, particularly the Gems themselves, none of whom still knew what to really make of him. Which was why he was quick to regain his composure, taking in a tight breath and discreetly wiping his nearly damp eyes dry before he quickly changed took the subject off of the now-deceased pink Gem. “Hm, w-well, it’s… unfortunate that Rose is… no longer with us,” he began with a steadying sigh of apparent acceptance as he spared another glance at the young Gem, this time offering him a slight smile of greeting. “But all the same, it’s a pleasure to meet you as well—er… um… what did you say your name was again?”

“Steven,” the young Gem reiterated with an amicable, patient grin.

“Right, Steven,” Ford nodded, his smile growing a bit, until he happened to notice the other pair of kids in the room, both of them looking to him in lingering amazement. As he did, his dejected manner quickly turned back into an aggravated one as he glanced back over at his brother. “Stan, you didn’t tell me there were so many children down here. And… some sort of large, hairless gopher?” he frowned, glancing over at Soos.

“Heh, I get that a lot,” the handyman chuckled, hardly offended.

“They’re your family, poindexter,” Stan remarked, nodding towards his, as well as Ford’s, nibblings. “Shermie’s grandkids. The colorful one’s Mabel and the sweaty one’s Dipper. You can figure out the rest.”

This news finally seemed to be enough to lift the author’s spirits completely as he looked towards the twins with a soft, but warm smile. “I-I have a niece and nephew?” he inquired, his manner quite cordial as he stepped forward to meet them properly. Excited by the opportunity to make his acquaintance, Mabel rushed forward first, eagerly shaking Ford’s extended hand. “Greetings… Mabel, was it?” he began, working off what Stan had told him as his niece brightly nodded. “Do kids still say greetings? I haven’t been in this dimension in a really long time…”

“Whoa, a six fingered handshake?” Mabel said, clearly impressed as she counted off his fingers to find that, sure enough, there were indeed six on each hand. “It’s a full finger friendlier than normal!”

“Heh, I like this kid!” Ford chuckled, amused. “She’s weird.”

“I… I can’t believe it…” Dipper finally spoke up in a stark whisper at first. For the longest time, he had been so lost in shock, from the portal opening, to Ford stepping out of it, to the confusion between him and the Gems, that he had still been trying to piece it all together and make sense of it. But in the midst of doing so, he had nearly forgotten one very vital thing: that one of the biggest mysteries of the summer by far had just been solved in the most unexpected of ways. “Y-you’re the author of the journals!”

“Oh, you’ve read my journals?” Ford asked, still smiling as he turned to his nephew and pulled the one he had claimed earlier out of his cloak pocket.

“I haven’t just read them, I’ve lived them!” Dipper exclaimed, beside himself with elation as he began to pace around frenetically. “I’ve been waiting for so long to meet you! I-I don’t even know what to say, I have so many questions! I-” He abruptly cut himself off, so overwhelmed by his excitement that he had nearly gotten to the point where he wasn’t able to even physically handle it as he weakly doubled over. “Ohhhh, I think I’m gonna throw up,” he groaned, prompting both Mabel and Steven to rush to his aid as he briefly gagged before trying his best to calm down. “Ugh, o-ok! False alarm! J-just gotta ride it out!”

“Listen, there will be time for questions and proper introductions later,” Ford advised before turning back to his brother. “But first, tell me, Stan: are there any security breaches? Does anyone else know about this portal?”

“No, just us,” Stan assured, arms crossed. “…Also maybe the entire U.S. government.”

“The what!?” Ford gasped, completely appalled to hear such alarming news. And sure enough, this fact still rang true, for the security feed in the other room showed that the swarm of agents had already returned to the shack and were flooding inside under Powers’ command.

“Fan out!” the head agent demanded. “We’re not going anywhere until we find Stan Pines, the Crystal Gems, and those kids!”

“Geez, those guys are still looking for us?!” Amethyst asked with an aggravated huff. “You’d think they’d give it a rest already!”

“Ok, it’s alright,” Ford said with an even sigh as he stepped back towards the portal’s remains. “We’ve got a while before they find this room. In the meantime, we just need to lay low and think of a plan.”

“Yes, and maybe while we’re at it we can try and figure all of this out…” Pearl noted, her expression still filled with dread and doubt at the thought that Rose had been keeping their lost memories hidden from them for so long.

“Speaking of figuring things out…” Mabel said leadingly as she looked towards both Stan and Ford. “Looks like we’re all gonna be stuck down here for a while. So… who wants to tell us their entire mysterious backstory?”

“Yes, I have some questions about all this myself, Stanley,” Ford remarked amidst taking down a few notes in the journal he had on hand. However, what he failed to notice was how confused everyone else was upon hearing him call the conman by such a name.

“Stanley?” Dipper questioned, looking to his uncle in apt wonder.

“But… your name is Stanford…” Mabel clarified with a frown, though Ford was quickly caught off guard upon hearing this as he turned to face his brother sharply.

“Wait, you took my name?!” he asked angrily. “What have you been doing all these years, you knucklehead?!”

“Wait, hold on!” Amethyst cut in, looking to the conman in upset surprise, her former feelings of betrayal towards him all quickly rushing back. “Are you serious?! First there’s all those fake IDs and stuff, then this portal thing, and now you aren’t even who I thought you were?! What the heck, Stan?! Just how many other things have you told me and everyone else over the years that just weren’t true!?”

Stan couldn’t help but flinch upon hearing the purple Gem’s incredibly harsh tone, but his guilt only grew upon catching the distrustful, sour glares from most of the others, including his own nibblings. “Yeah, Grunkle Stan, no more lies!” Dipper asserted firmly. “You owe us some answers. What’s the deal with this portal? Why did you keep this a secret?”

“And what exactly made you think it was anywhere near remotely safe to operate a device that could have potentially destroyed the entire universe as we know it?!” Pearl asked just as hotly, still clearly infuriated over that dire aspect of all of this.

“And what happened between you and your brother?” Mabel asked, mainly just wanting to know why there seemed to be so much bitterness and hostility between her two grunkles.

“I hope all this aligns exactly with my fanfic, Stan,” Soos said staunchly. “If not, I’ll be very disappointed. My headcanons are at stake!”

“Ok, ok,” Stan conceded, knowing that if there was any time for finally coming clean about everything, it would be now, in the aftermath of everything tearing itself apart. “I know a lot’s happened and I have a lot of explaining to do.”

“That’s an understatement.” Garnet remarked rather dryly.

“…And it’d be a lot easier if I was able to do that explaining without any sass,” the conman deadpanned before continuing. “So, here goes nothing. It all started… a lifetime ago…”

1960s

Glass Shard Beach was a small New Jersey town, not known for much save for its rather mediocre salt water toffee. Still, despite its murky ocean, litter-ridden beach, and smog-filled city, this humble setting was home to young Stanford and Stanley Pines, nearly identical twin brothers both around the age of 12. The boys lived above the family business, Pines Pawns, located in the heart of the less than glamorous Lead Paint district, with their parents, who were both natives of Glass Shard themselves. Their father, Filbrick Pines, was, by all accounts, a strict, staunch, stoic, unsympathetic man, one had very little warmth and kindness to offer to anyone, his customers and his family alike. Ma Pines was a bit gentler than her husband, though only really when it came to her sons; her own customers, who solicited her supposed clairvoyance as an over-the-phone psychic, often called her out for overpricing and lying, claims that she had a smooth enough tongue to often easily refute.

As for the brothers themselves, they really couldn’t have been more different. Stanford was not just the older of the two, but also, for lack of a better word, the stranger, in more ways than one. His most notable oddity was by far his six fingers on each hand, a very rare birth defect that was initially visible to just about everyone he met. However, what most were quick to learn about Ford right after that was that he was smart; more than smart really, he was brilliant, with an incredibly high IQ from even a very early age. While he excelled at really every subject academically, Ford found his interest namely in the oddities of the world, in the fantastic or supernatural anomalies he read about in books or saw in movies. He was fascinated in anything peculiar or unknown, and even more fascinated in trying to solve the mysteries behind such strangeness with a passion and zeal far beyond his years. Stanley, on the other hand, wasn’t much interested in mysteries or anomalies, his academic preformance was just barely average on a good day, and he only had a total of ten fingers as opposed to twelve. But even so, Stan carried other, less obvious talents, from his well-gained street smarts to his surprising haggling abilities, which served his father well in the pawn shop downstairs. Generally though, Stan was a bit more of a rambunctious troublemaker, often called out for being a slacker and a goofball, though he hardly cared about his often sour reputation. As far as he was concerned, he only needed one person by his side, and that was his brother.

And for the most part, that’s exactly how things were.

Throughout their shared childhood, Stan and Ford were inseparable, to the point that they were more than brothers, really; they were the very best of friends. No matter what the occasion, they always had each other’s backs, through thick and thin, always ready to stand up for one another or even just encourage one another when they needed it most. Their brotherly bond was practically unbreakable, something that was clear to see from just how much time they spent together. Nearly, every day, the boys set out to the beach, both of them always eager and ready for whatever adventure they came across, for they knew that whatever they faced, no matter how big or how small, they’d face it together.

On this particular day, the brothers had happened across an entirely new adventure, one that had taken them to a previously undiscovered cave on the far end of the beach. After punching through the boards blocking it off, Stan and Ford ventured inside, armed with only a flashlight as they explored the damp, darkened cavern, until they happened across something that, to the two young boys, was absolutely incredible.

“Whoa!” Ford exclaimed as he shined his flashlight over at the rather battered and time-weathered boat they had managed to find. “A shipwrecked sailboat, possibly haunted by pirate ghosts!”

“This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen!” Stan proclaimed, equally as amazed. “And I once saw a dead rat floatin’ in a bucket!”

“Ew!” Ford chuckled, giving his brother a playful shove. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Huh, you know what this thing needs?” Stan asked, giving the downed sailboat a scrutinizing glance. Ford also looked to it just as thoughtfully, before both brothers ended up reaching the exact same conclusion.

“Flags!”

And so they acted on that idea, using their own shirts as makeshift flags for the ruined vessel as they began to pull it out onto the beach itself, proudly chanting “kings of New Jersey” all the while. It took some doing, but eventually the brothers managed to push the boat onto the shore so they could have better light to work on it by, but their plan was clear: they were going to fix it up to the best of their abilities and set sail to wherever their hearts’ desired. It was an ambitious dream, perhaps even a bit of an outlandish, childish one, but even so, the brothers were intent on making it happen, no matter what.

And so the boys worked late into the afternoon on their new pet project, scrounging up any stray materials they could find across the beach to help them patch the beaten boat back together. They hardly even noticed the hours passing by or the rather impressive sunburns they were both getting in the summer heat as they worked and laughed together, inspired by the adventures they’d someday have on the open sea when their vessel was at last completed.

“You almost done over there, poindexter?” Stan asked, falling flat onto the sand out of exhaustion after he finished haphazardly fixing one of the boat’s many lower holes.

“Give me just a second and… done!” Ford grinned as he pulled his paintbrush away from the side of the boat, looking proudly to the vessel’s new moniker. “I dub thee: the Stan O’ War!” Before the brothers had a chance to celebrate this casual christening, however, their fun was abruptly cut off by a sudden pebble tossed to hit the back of Ford’s head. “Ow! What the heck?” he exclaimed, disgruntledly rubbing the now sore spot as both him and Stan turned to see who had thrown it. Neither of them were really surprised to see that it was the notorious local bully, Crampelter and his two cronies, standing atop the nearby hill looking over the beach as he smirked down at the two younger boys smugly.

“Well, well, if it ain’t the loser twins,” he mocked confidently. “Nice boat. Ya get it at the dump. Ha!” He laughed, exchanging a triumphant high five with his equally snide friends.

“You would know, Crampelter!” Stan growled hotly as he stood, shaking his fist at the bully. “Get lost!”

“Pfft, like you scare me, runt,” Crampelter deadpanned. “Listen, dorks, and listen good. You’re a six-fingered freak,” he began, pointing at Ford, who could only glance down in embarrassment as he tried to conceal his hands. “And you’re just a dumber, sweatier version of him,” he called Stan out next, though instead of being flustered, his harsh glare for the bully only intensified. “And you’re lucky you have each other, cause neither of you will ever make any friends!” Crampelter let out another goading chuckle as him and his friends departed, further calling the twins dorks and losers all the while. All the same, Stan ran after them a few steps, refusing to let such cruel teasing slide without getting the last word in.

“Yeah, that’s right! You better run, you jerks!” he shouted threateningly, though he put his anger on hold upon glancing back at his brother. In light of everything Crampelter had just said, the most Ford could really do was look down at one of his hands in clear shame over something he had no way of changing or fixing whatsoever. “Hey, don’t let those idiots get to you,” Stan hurried to comfort his brother, placing a supportive hand on his shoulder. “If it makes ya feel any better, I heard that Crampelter still sucks his thumb, so if that’s true, then you’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“Yes, I do…” Ford sighed rather morosely, forcing his sights away from his extra fingers. “He was right… I really am a freak… I just wonder if there’s anywhere in the world where weirdos like me fit in…”

Stan’s already sympathetic frown deepened upon hearing this, knowing that Ford being bullied for his six-fingered hands was no uncommon occurrence. Still, even though this kind of teasing happened rather frequently, Stan always hated seeing his brother so down and upset as a result of it, which was how he had gotten so good at lifting him up and comforting him from it over the years. “Aw, chin up, buddy,” he assured with a warm smile as he helped Ford up to stand alongside him. “Look out there,” Stan nodded towards the sea stretching out wide and seemingly endless before them. “What do you see?”

“Um… the ocean?” Ford ventured, not sure about where his brother was going with this.

“Well, duh, the ocean,” Stan rolled his eyes. “But you know what else is out there? The future. One of these days, you and me are gonna sail away from this dumb old town. We’ll hunt for treasure, get all the girls, and be an unstoppable team of adventurers!”

“Y-you really mean it?” Ford asked with a small, but growing smile.

“You know I do!” Stan boldly proclaimed. “It’ll be us forever, just like its supposed to be! High-six?” He offered his hand out to his brother, who gladly met it in their own special version of a high five.

“High-six,” Ford laughed, clearly feeling much better from the usual kind support from his brother. Still, the boys both took one more glance out over the open ocean before they went back to their boat, their shared resolve to set sail upon it together someday ringing as a clear, hopeful promise in both their hearts. A promise that, for as far off as it might be, seemed completely within reach for them both.

And it was a promise they continued to hold onto, even as the years went by.

Stan and Ford sticking together remained a constant throughout their middle school endeavors, their close companionship as apparent to everyone who encountered them just as much as their academic differences were. Ford consistently remained at the top of their class, with grades so high they baffled even most teachers, though despite several offers to skip a grade, or even two, he never did. For if he had, that would have left Ford without Stan and Stan without Ford, an outcome that neither of the brothers really ever wanted to see happen. After all, the boys were both picked on by both bullies and teachers alike so frequently, singled out for a variety of reasons: Ford’s six fingers, Stan’s rebellious attitude, or even the simple fact that they were always by each others’ sides, no matter what came their way. Still, the boys hardly minded their lack of friends aside from each other, even as they entered their high school years, for as long as they had each other, they knew they could make it through just about anything. From failed attempts at romance, to surviving arduous school work, to even just continuing work on the Stan O’ War, which was progressing more and more by the day, Stan and Ford always had each others’ backs. Through good times and bad, through successes and setbacks, the brothers knew above anything else, that they could always lean on each other to get through it all. And all the while, they continued dreaming of the future, of the day when their ship could finally set sail off into the unknown, but shining horizon, where opportunity and adventure awaited them both.

Until one fatefully day during the boys’ senior year of high school, when an unexpected wrench was thrown into the close-knit bond they had always known.

It had started out like any other day, with the twins sitting in study hall as usual. And as usual, Ford was hard at work on his studies, fervently reading and taking notes while Stan casually sat beside him, hardly engaged in any sort of academics as he instead reclined back in his seat and munched on his favorite snack of toffee peanuts. He was about to lean over to his brother and make a sardonic remark regarding his current boredom, but before he could, the PA blared with an announcement neither of the brothers had been expecting: “Pines twins to the principle’s office. Pines twins to the principle’s office.”

“Aw, great, what is it this time?” Stan remarked dryly, already pushing himself out of his seat. Ford followed him a bit apprehensively, expecting them to be called on account of something that his brother had gotten himself into some kind of unknown trouble. Though when they arrived at the office, they were quick to learn that this was apparently not the case.

“Not you,” the secretary stopped the brothers just shy of reaching the principles door, motioning for Stan to remain outside and Ford to go on in. “Him.”

The twins exchanged a rather confused glance at this, both of them knowing well that rare was the occasion that Ford ever did something wrong enough to actually get him in trouble. Still, Stan gave him a reassuring shrug as he took a seat outside the office, prompting Ford to head in on his own. Of course, he was even more surprised to find both of his parents sitting in front of the principle’s desk, their expressions all unreadable and expectant as they turned to face him. Ford took in something of an anxious breath as he took the empty seat in between his parents, folding his hands tightly in his lap as they all waited to hear what the principle had to say.

“Now, Mr. Pines, I’d like to speak to you very frankly, if I may,” the principle began, his manner still just vague enough to make Ford worry about what they had all been called here for.

“Very frankly is the only way I speak,” Filbrick remarked as coldly as ever.

“When it comes right down to it, you have two sons here,” the principle said matter-of-factly. “One of them is incredibly gifted, the other one is standing outside of this room and his name is Stanley.”

Ford couldn’t help but frown upon hearing this, more than used to hearing others hail Stan as the lesser of the two of them by now, though that hardly meant he approved of it. But before he could say anything to correct the principle’s rather disrespectful claims, his mother cut in instead. “What are you saying?” she asked, appropriately confused.

“I’m saying your son, Stanford, is a genius!” the principle proclaimed with a wide grin. “All his teachers are goin’ bananas over his science fair experiment! Ya ever heard of West Coast Tech?” he asked, handing Ford a pamphlet to the aforementioned school. “Best college in the country. Their graduates turn science fiction into science fact! The admissions team is visiting tomorrow to check out Stanford’s experiment! Your son may be a future millionaire, Mr. Pines.”

Upon hearing this, Filbrick’s usually staunch, stoic expression lifted into what almost looked like a genuinely pleased, proud smile. “I’m impressed,” he noted, something that only amazed Ford even more than the news that he was even being considered for a college as prestigious as West Coast Tech. In all honesty, he had never really considered college much before, largely since he had always assumed that his future would entail him and Stan finishing their boat and traveling the world with it. But now, that first dream seemed to be replaced with a new one, much more exciting one, one where he could really put his excessively high intelligence into practice, where he could apply his already innate scientific knowledge, where he could possibly even figure out a way to change the world for the better. And even beyond that, perhaps West Coast Tech could be a place where he could learn to fit in, somewhere where his IQ would be appreciated instead of picked on, somewhere where he could finally belong.

By all accounts, it was far too good of an opportunity to pass up. And yet… it wasn’t all as simple as it initially seemed as he was quickly reminded of the reality of it all.

“But what about our little free spirit, Stanley?” Ma asked with genuine concern for her other son’s future. Concern that Ford felt as well as he remembered that he wasn’t all alone in this, or anything else really. After all, the promise him and Stan had made as kids still rang true: where they went, they went together. But how could they hope to do that now, when only one of them had this chance to excel while the other one wouldn’t be receiving any such offer?

“That clown?” the principle scoffed apathetically. “At this rate, he’ll be lucky to graduate high school. Look, there’s a saltwater taffy store on the dock, and somebody’s gotta get paid to scrub the barnacles off of it. Truth is, Stanford’s goin’ places, while Stanley’s not. But hey, look on the bright side; at least you’ll have one son here in New Jersey forever.”

Unbeknownst to anyone inside the office, Stan had happened to overhear just about all of this from eavesdropping on the other side of the door. And suffice to say that a vast majority of it proved to be quite the blow to not just his self-confidence, but his hopes for the future as well. As he sank down to sit against the door, he put his head in his hands, fear filling him over the possibility that Ford might actually act upon this opportunity, that he might actually jump at the chance to leave him behind and move on to bigger and better things. True, Ford had never voiced the desire to really leave Glass Shard Beach outside of their plans to set sail on the Stan O’ War someday, but still, it was a fear that Stan just couldn’t shake, no matter how implausible it might be. In fact, it was a worry he had always secretly harbored, the idea that Ford might someday want something more than what they had planned, that they might end up parting ways, that their dynamic duo would suddenly somehow fall apart. That without him, he’d be left friendless, stagnant, and alone.

Still, Stan couldn’t know for sure what Ford really intended on doing until later that evening, when the brothers finally found a peaceful moment alone on the swing set at the beach. As their parents had proudly celebrated the opportunity that had dropped into Ford’s lap after the meeting with the principle, Stan had mostly hung back from it all in apprehensive silence, something that he fretfully found his brother not even paying any mind as he instead spoke with clear excitement over everything West Coast Tech had to offer. Excitement that already gave Stan a pretty good idea about what his brother wanted to do, as much as it pained him to think about.

All the same, he forced out a small, sardonic laugh as they sat together on the swings, the crisp warmth of the spring evening making things seem lighter than they really felt. “Ha, joke’s on them if they think you wanna go to some stuffy college on the other side of the country,” Stan remarked, the slightest hint of bitterness in his tone. “Once we get the Stan O’ War finished, it’s gonna be beaches, babes, and treasure hunting for us until we’re a pair of crusty old men, right?”

Ford hesitated upon hearing this, looking up from the pamphlet in his hands to his brother with a small, almost bittersweet smile. “Look, Stan, I can’t pass up a chance like this,” he began, deciding to be perfectly honest, though he could tell Stan wasn’t a fan of the idea based on his worried manner alone. “This school has cutting edge programs and multi-dimensional paradigm theory.”

“Beep-boop, I am a nerd robot,” Stan mocked, pulling off a robot pose to buffer his increasing aggravation with his brother. “That’s you, that’s what you sound like right now.”

Despite this teasing, Ford let out a brief chuckle, more than used to Stan’s playful joking by now. “Well, if the college board isn’t impressed with my experiment tomorrow, then… ok, I’ll do the treasure hunting thing with you.”

“…And if they are?”

“Well, then, I guess you better come visit me on the other side of the country, you knucklehead,” Ford grinned warmly, giving his brother a light punch on the shoulder before standing up to head home. All the same, Stan lingered on the swings for a bit after that, refusing to share the same hopeful manner as his brother, for he saw no hope in any of this. The only thing he really could see was something unthinkable: a future where Ford was accepted into that college, where he gladly left and stayed, likely settling roots there and creating a successful life for himself as a result of his scientific accomplishments. And on the opposite end, there Stan would be, without much of a chance to make any name for himself, much less any kind of sustainable income, stuck in Glass Shard Beach forever, stuck in lonely obscurity forever, stuck without his brother forever.

His grip on the sides of the swing tightened as he glanced over at the Stan O’ War, still sitting in its constant spot in the sand just a few feet away. For most of his youth, he had such ambitious dreams of the two of them jumping onto that boat the moment it was seaworthy, sailing wherever the wind took them and standing by each other throughout it all. Stan had always thought that Ford had shared those dreams, that they wanted the same thing: to stay together, no matter where they were. But now, that clearly wasn’t the case; they wanted different things, they had different dreams, and in the end, they were going to go their separate ways, no matter how much Stan wanted to keep them together.

And it infuriated him.

In fact, it enraged him so much that he couldn’t think of going home for the night just to hear his parents laud praise upon Ford for the successful future that awaited him. He couldn’t think of facing his brother, who had every plan of leaving him behind without so much as a second thought. He couldn’t think of going really anywhere else but school, where he knew all of these sudden troubles had first began. The gym was strangely unlocked for the night, as well as devoid of any security that the school was too cheap to hire, which allowed Stan easy access inside, where all of the science fair experiments were already set up for the following day. He had no real intentions in mind as he paced down the rows of tables hotly, bitterly snacking on his bag of toffee peanuts and seething to himself as he tried in vain to figure out how in the world Ford could even entertain the thought of breaking up their perfect, life-long team. But then, as he approached his brother’s experiment, a very impressive perpetual motion machine Ford had configured and built all on his own as a show of his vast scientific capabilities, Stan quickly realized exactly how he could. Because it was always all so easy for Ford while it had always been a struggle for Stan. Because success had really always been dangling right in front of Ford’s face, and only now had he actually realized he could take it, but only to Stan’s detriment. Because clearly, Ford really was the better of the two, while Stan was anything but.

“Ugh! This is all your fault, you dumb machine!” he growled, pouring all of his mounting frustration into the experiment before him, the very thing that would certainly prove to be Ford’s ticket into West Coast Tech the following day. And as that frustration reached his height, Stan lashed out, slamming his fist down onto the table it was sitting on, only for the machine to react almost immediately to the blow. A small piece of metal on its side came clattering off, a slight plume of smoke rising up from its internal mechanisms as a result, showing that clearly, something was wrong with it. “Oh no!” Stan gasped, dropping his snack and instantly regretting his mistake as he frantically looked over the damaged machine. “W-what did I do?! I-I didn’t mean to-” He cut his initial panic off with a steadying gasp as he looked to the machine again, not having any idea about what to do to fix it other than simply reattaching the piece that had fallen off. “T-There,” he sighed, noting that the machine looked like it was running as it should be. “Alright, good as new. Probably.” Unsure of what else to do, Stan hurriedly put a nearby tarp over the experiment and promptly left, hoping that Ford wouldn’t notice. And really, how could he? After all, it was fixed, there was nothing to worry about. Except there was.

For the next day, Ford arrived to the gym just on time, well-dressed, ready and eager to meet with West Coast Tech’s admission board. He took in a deep, steadying breath as the stoic group approached, knowing that his entire future depended on this one, integral moment; still, he strangely wasn’t all too worried. He was certain that his perpetual motion machine would be more than enough to impress the board and grant him the highly coveted scholarship that would finally set him down a path far greater than any he had ever imagined before.

“Alright, kid,” the head advisee said, his tone rather cold as he looked to Ford, initially unimpressed. “Show us what you got.”

“O-ok,” Ford nodded, putting on the most confident smile he could muster. “Well, what if I told you that the future of technology was beneath this sheet?” His smile widened a bit as he removed the tarp from his experiment, only for the board members’ expressions to remain as apathetic as before.

“I’d say we wasted a car trip,” the head advisee remarked, glancing between Ford and his experiment in staunch disapproval.

“What?!” Ford flinched, quickly looking back towards his machine only to find that it was completely still, with not so much as even a spark of energy coursing through it whatsoever. “T-that’s impossible! It was stable yesterday! A-a fuse must have blown or something!”

“Kid, a perpetual motion machine has one job: to not stop,” the head advisee said, swiftly crossing Ford’s name off their candidate list. “I don’t think you’re West Coast material.”

Ford gasped at this, initially dumbfounded in disbelief as the board members walked off, taking his one chance for any real excellence with them. “N-no! Wait!” he pleaded desperately as he began to hurry after them. “Just give me another chance! I worked so hard! Please, I-” He stopped short as he happened to step on something lying on the gym floor: an empty bag of toffee peanuts. And while at first Ford hadn’t the faintest idea about how his machine might have suddenly malfunctioned at the very worst of times, as he picked that bag up, he had no doubts about what, or rather who had ruined everything for him in one fell swoop.

Despite his lingering worries concerning Ford and his experiment, Stan had mostly managed to push such worries out of his mind by that night. True, he was still dreading the inevitable revelation that Ford was accepted and that come next fall, he’d be gone, but even if that did happen, there was still some time. Perhaps a few months would be all he’d need to convince his brother to change his mind, a few months to finish the Stan O’ War and set out upon it, a few months for everything to return to the way it was supposed to be.

The only problem with such wishful thinking was that it was just that: wishful thinking.

For as Stan reclined on the living room couch casually paddle balling away while watching TV, he failed to hear Ford fiercely enter the house until his brother came to stand between him and the television, clearly seething with rage. “Hey, what’s the word, Sixer?” Stan asked with a smile of greeting, one that quickly faded into confusion upon seeing just how apparently furious his brother was.

“Care to explain what this was doing next to my broken project?!” Ford growled as he held the bag of toffee peanuts up, instantly telling Stan everything he needed to know about what had happened.

“Uh…. O-ok…” Stan began quite awkwardly as he stood, unsure of how to really explain it all in a way that wouldn’t set Ford off even more. “So, I might have… a-accidentally been horsing around, and-”

“This was no accident, Stan,” Ford snapped bitterly. “You did this! You did this because you couldn’t handle me going to college on my own and leaving you here all by yourself! And now because of you, any chances I had for getting into West Coast Tech are completely destroyed, just like my project!”

“Look, it was a mistake!” Stan countered earnestly. “I didn’t mean to bust your thing up, I-I promise!”

“Do you honestly expect me to believe you!?” Ford argued sharply, his hands in tight fists at his sides. “Ever since I got this offer yesterday, you’ve done nothing but complain about it and try to talk me out of it! Honestly, I should have expected you to try and sabotage me like this just to keep me tied down to you!”

“Whoa, hold on, what?!” Stan shot back, narrowing his eyes at his brother. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Up until yesterday, you seemed totally fine with being ‘tied down to me’, but when the first offer for something ‘better’ drops into your lap, you jump on it without a second thought! What, did you just forget that the two of us have spent our entire damn lives together or something?!”

“Well of course I haven’t! But be reasonable, Stanley! We’re almost adults, for crying out loud! Its time for both of us to move on and live our own lives! We can’t stay attached to each other at the hip forever!”

“Easy for you to say! You’re the one who’s actually going places! If they had let you into that fancy nerd school, then I would have been stuck here in boring, deadass New Jersey for rest of my life all by myself! But hey,” Stan let out a sigh, running a hand through his hair as he attempted to calm down. “If you think about it, m-maybe there’s a silver lining to all this, huh? Treasure hunting?”

Ford was silent for a moment upon hearing this, his expression awash in disbelief as he stared at his brother in shock over such a callous request before exploding in absolute anger. “Are you kidding me?! Why would I ever want to do anything with the person who sabotaged by entire future?!” At this, Ford found he could no longer contain his frustration as he acted upon it physically, shoving Stan hard back into the couch. Or rather, right into their father as he happened to enter the room, far from pleased over everything he’d just overheard.

“You did what, you knucklehead?!” Filbrick hissed, griping his son by the front of his shirt as he glared at him relentlessly.

“Stanley?” Ma asked tiredly as she entered the room, her young grandson bundled up and crying in her arms. “What’s goin’ on in here?”

“I’ll tell ya what’s goin’ on in here,” Filbrick remarked hotly, his threatening scowl enough to frighten Stan to the core. “Your little ‘free spirit’ here just ruined Stanford’s chances into getting’ into that fancy college! Ain’t that right?” he snapped over at Ford, who’s tune had quickly changed from anger into sudden fear over just how infuriated his father seemed to be.

“I-I… uh, w-well…” he stammered, looking between Filbrick, and Stan, who was silently, desperately pleading with him to disprove it. Something that, in light of just how much his brother had cost him, Ford found he simply couldn’t do.

“Ah, forget it,” Filbrick scoffed over his other son’s apprehensive silence. “I already heard the whole damn thing. Which means its time to do what I should’ve done a long time ago…”

“W-wait!” Stan begged as his father roughly dragged him downstairs. Ford gasped at this, unsure of what their father really intended on doing, which was why he promptly followed a safe distance behind them to see for himself. “No! I-I can’t explain! It was a mistake!”

“The only mistake around here is you!” Filbrick yelled as he tossed Stan outside onto the curb hard. “Your brother was gonna be our ticket out of this dump! All you ever do is lie and cheat and ride off your brother’s coattails. Well this time you cost our family potential millions! And until you make us a fortune, you ain’t welcome in this household!”

With this, Filbrick threw a full duffle bag at his now disowned son, showing not the slightest bit of empathy or pity as he prepared to slam the door on him. However, right before he could, Ford, acting on impulse alone, happened to intervene. “W-wait!” he exclaimed, stepped up behind his father. “D-Dad, you… you can’t… S-Stan wasn’t… he didn’t mean to-”

“Oh what? All the sudden you wanna defend him?” Filbrick scowled as he stood over his other son rather imposingly. “If ya feel so ‘sorry’ for him, then why don’t you just pack up and join him on the street seeing as how neither of you are ever gonna amount anything now that-”

“Filbrick!” Ma swiftly interupted as she stood at the end of the stairs, tears in her eyes despite her severe expression over her husband’s harsh actions. At this, Filbrick finally seemed to quell his rage, though just a bit as he turned to slam the door behind him, not sparing a word to either Stan or Ford as he solidified his decision.

“Wait, no!” Stan cried one last time as he scrambled to pick himself up off the ground. “Ford, tell him he’s being crazy!” He looked to his brother pleadingly, only to receive a look of both shame and betrayal all at once. Ford hung back, clearly terrified to rock the boat with their father again, lest he be kicked out just as Stan was, something that he understood well, but couldn’t take all the same. “F-Ford?” he tried once again as Ford slowly turned away from him, his shoulders hunched with regret as he refused to look his brother in the eye, even one last time. “D-don’t leave me hangin’… High six?” he offered his hand with a weak smile, one that was never returned as Filbrick finally slammed the door on him, shutting him out of his home, out of his family, just like that.

And for a moment, the most Stan could really even do in light of this was simply stand there, nearly on the verge of tears as he realized he had just lost everything in one fell swoop. Yet that wasn’t even the worst part of it all. The worst part, was that, despite his first meager attempt to stop this, in the end, Ford had still chosen everything else over him. Which meant that now, he really was all alone, just as he had feared.

“F-fine,” Stan began, forcing his grief out in place of anger as he gripped the bag his father had apparently packed for him in anticipation of kicking him out. Yet another sign of just how little he clearly meant to his own family, he assumed. “I can make it on my own! I don’t need you! I don’t need anyone!” he shouted back at the closed off house, hoping that his father and especially Ford could hear him. “I’ll make millions and you’ll rue the day you ever turned your back on me!” Without sparing any of them another word, Stan abruptly turn and got into his car, speeding away from his former home as fast as he could. All the same, before he turned off the block for good, he couldn’t help but spare one final, remorseful glance at everything he was leaving behind, knowing that despite his father’s refusal to listen to reason, despite his brother’s hesitance to stand up and defend him, despite all of the guilt he could just as easily place on everyone else, he only had himself to blame.

Which meant that the only one he could depend on to fix it all was himself.

And so, after a sleepless night spent in his car, Stan set out to do exactly that. With no real plan for sustaining himself in mind, he decided to go with the best thing he could think of: treasure hunting. Of course, the Stan O’ War was still a ways off from completion, and without Ford’s help, Stan doubted that it would ever really be seaworthy. So instead, he decided to begin his search for wealth right on Glass Shard Beach itself. Armed with only a metal detector, he began combing the shore, hoping that somewhere buried deep beneath it would be the treasure that would prove to his entire family that he was so much more than screw up they thought him to be. Unfortunately, despite his thorough efforts, the most the shore really had to offer were discarded cans and other such assorted litter, things that certainly weren’t going to get him anywhere close to rich any time soon.

What did have a chance at getting him rich was something Stan hadn’t really considered before, but was instantly inspired to do upon spotting a well-placed billboard near the beach: becoming a traveling salesman. With no home or family to tie him down any longer, Stan found that he was easily able to throw himself into the on-the-go entrepreneur lifestyle as he began his very first lone business venture: Stan Co. Enterprises. He worked out of his car, going door to door at first and selling home and personal products from vacuums to coat hangers to everything in between, all made out of the cheapest materials he could possibly amass so he could make the biggest profit possible in return. After he had made a decent amount of money, Stan began advertising his wares on late-night infomercial spots, which he was glad to see boosted his sales even more. However, what the young salesman hadn’t been anticipating was that his customers wouldn’t be satisfied with the rather poor quality of his wares. One item in particular, the Sham Total, caught the ire of its users, as, instead of removing stains like it was promoted to do, its cheap dye only served to make them much, much worse. Stan quickly learned about his customer’s frustration firsthand as they swarmed his market stand on the boardwalk as an angry mob, complete with riotous demands for refunds and pitchforks in hand. Fortunately for Stan, he had sold them said pitchforks, and they were all just about as faulty and defective as any other product he offered, which allowed him to make a clean getaway, without returning any of their money to them whatsoever.

Of course, such fraud and essential theft was highly illegal in the state of New Jersey, but Stan only narrowly avoided jailtime for it in exchange for never entered the state again. The young salesman hardly even cared as he left his home state for the last time, officially banned from it as he ventured into Pennsylvania, wisely changing his name so that he could keep his still-fledgling business intact. Still, Stan, or as he now referred to himself, Steve Pinington, had hardly learned his lesson when it came to selling defective products, for despite his Rip-Off brand bandages being advertised to not give users rashes, they did exactly that. After just a few short weeks, Stan was effectively driven out of Pennsylvania and onto the next state, changing his name yet again in the process.

And so things continued in a similar process for the next several years. After realizing that his attempts at playing entrepreneur weren’t working to make him much of a profit, Stan decided to try his hand at various other get rich quick schemes. From betting on horse races, to trying his hand at the lottery, to money laundering scams, to even getting involved with mobs and cartels, he tried just about everything he could think of to make his way in the world. Of course, getting a regular job would have been much easier, but he was quick to find that most places had no interest in hiring a high school dropout with a rapidly growing criminal history to his name, or rather names. It had been quite some time since he had gone by Stanley Pines, and in its place were several other conjured IDs thought up throughout his travels: Stetson Pinefied, Hal Forrester, Andrew “8-Ball” Alcatraz, and those were just a few of the false identities he fabricated, identities that allowed him to travel across the country, and in a few cases even outside of it, as he pleased. True, it wasn’t always easy; living out of his car was far from glamorous, money for food, or for anything else really, wasn’t often guaranteed, and he had made more than a few enemies in his misadventures, from law enforcement officers to thugs and gangsters. But even despite all of the struggles, he was his still own man, finally cut loose from being just “Ford’s brother” as he had been known throughout his entire youth. And while acting on his own and having to fight all his own battles carried plenty of problems of its own, Stan kind of preferred it like that.

After all, with no one in the world left to rely on, not even his own twin brother, that meant that the only one he could rely on was himself.

Present Day

Seeing that the kids in particular were rather overwhelmed by the lengthy story he was detailing for them, Stan decided to take a brief break, though only really to counter the sullen scowl Ford was sending his way. Even the Gems were just as quick to notice the tension between the two brothers, but neither of them really said anything on it seeing as how they were still very eager to learn what their apparent part in all of this was. Yet even so, they had been paying attention thus far, something that, out of all three of them, Pearl was the one to prove as she spoke up, giving the conman something of a critical frown.

“So I suppose all that time ‘on the run’ explains those fake IDs of yours we found?” she asked somewhat caustically.

“Oh, gee, I dunno, Pearl,” Stan deadpanned, clearly in no mood to contend with both her and Ford at the same time. “Maybe all those IDs belong to some other guy who got kicked out of his family and had to run around all over the country for over ten years just to get by.”

Pearl simply let out a disgruntled scoff upon hearing this, one that Ford lightly echoed as he shook his head in obvious disapproval of his brother’s sarcasm. Still, Stan hardly paid either of them any mind as he happened to glance over at Amethyst, who remained in sullen silence as she glared away from him, arms crossed and expression sour. He was half tempted to address her, to apologize from everything he had harbored from one of his closest friends for long, but before he could get the chance, Steven interjected.

“Wow…” he said with a sympathetic frown for Stan and Ford after pondering all they had just heard. “What happened between you guys… it’s… it’s really sad…”

“It sure is!” Mabel quipped just as fretfully before trying her best to perk up a bit. “I know exactly what you two little broken teacups need: to hug it out!” She grinned brightly, looking between the brothers as they stood a good distance away from each other, their backs turned and their expressions petulant as the refused to do anything of the sort. “Hug it out!” Mabel tried again, this time a bit less insistently as her smile started to falter. “H-hug train’s coming in the station! Hugapalooza! Two thousand!”

“Uh… m-maybe you guys just need a good example?” Steven offered a bit less excitably. “It’s easy, all you have to do is open your arms out wide and-” The young Gem finished by pulling both Mabel and Dipper into a sudden hug, one that the former gladly welcomed, despite her surprised blush, though the latter was by far less enthusiastic about.

“Ugh, you guys, come on,” Dipper scowled as he pulled himself away from the pair, averting their confused glances rather bitterly. “Knock it off. Now isn’t the time to be messing around, ok?”

“Aw, but come on, bro-bro, we were just-” Mabel found herself abruptly cut off by the hand her brother put up, making it quite clear that had no interesting in addressing either her or Steven at the moment. And they both had a heavy hunch about what the exact reason for such staunch avoidance really was, as much as it worried them both.  

Instead, Dipper turned his attention over to Ford since he was by far more curious about whatever the author’s intriguing, unknown past might have entailed than Stan’s history of lying and deceit. “So wait, what about you?” he asked curiously. “Did you end up going to your dreams school?”

Ford let out a rather frustrated sigh at this, paired with an irritated glare that was clearly intended for Stan in light of what had transpired between them years ago. “Not exactly…”

Early 1970s

Backupsmore University was far from being anything close to a prestigious college, placed in a small town only a few hours outside of Glass Shard Beach, with a subpar enrollment number and mediocre programs and facilities. However, given that his chances for getting into any ivy league school like West Coast Tech had been all but ruined, Ford had found that he really had no other choices when it came to his higher education. Backupsmore, while quite underwhelming, had at least offered him a decent academic scholarship, one that he begrudgingly took in the hopes that he could at least advance his future somehow. Besides, anything that got him out of Glass Shard Beach and out from his under father’s almost oppressively strict thumb, Ford considered to be a plus.

Still, that didn’t mean he was exactly excited about venturing off into his college career on his own. For the entire summer after Stan had been kicked out, Ford often found himself lost in a sea of unanswerable “what ifs”. What if he had been accepted into West Coast Tech? What if Stan hadn’t been kicked out? What if things between the two of them hadn’t been completely torn apart over one simple instance neither one of them could have ever really predicted?

Or more than that, what if he had the courage and the nerve to stand up to his father, to walk right out that door and join his brother in an uncertain, but still united future?

Truthfully, he’d never know. Because on that family-shattering night, Ford had made his choice, just as Stan had made his choice to take away his chances for a securely successful future out of spite. And his choice to walk alone and forge his own path to success was one he was determined to stand by, no matter what.

But all the same, forging that path was far from easy work. Ford threw himself into his studies from day one of his freshman year, relentlessly pouring over any book that came his way and acing every single exam he took. He quickly gained a reputation on campus as “the six-fingered genius”, as well as a plethora of other goading nicknames, though Ford paid none of them any mind. He had long since given up on the endeavor of a social life in favor of his academic pursuits, in which he was making great strides. It wasn’t always smooth sailing; Backupsmore didn’t often know how to handle a student as high preforming as Ford, but even so he managed to advance through his undergraduate program three years ahead of schedule, an outstanding record for anyone at the college by far. His graduate studies were every bit as successful, with tireless, sleepless days and nights spent working on his master’s thesis, one that was impressive enough to gain recognition and adulation on a national scale. By the time Ford finished his studies with multiple PhDs under his belt, the university awarded him with what was by far the highest honor he could have hoped for: a substantial grant for $100,000, intended to fund any research endeavor of his choice.

To Ford, it was like a dream come true. So much work, so much time, and so much effort, and through it all he had cultivated the means to finally go out and explore literally anything his heart desired. Excitement practically overwhelmed him in the weeks following graduation as he tried to figure out exactly what scientific pursuit he wanted to follow with this hefty grant. In all honesty, there were so many options available to him, from aerodynamic physics, to theoretical astronomy, to advanced robotics, and literally everything in between. And yet, as the fresh graduate pondered over his abundant choices, his mind often wandered back to his own six-fingered hands every time he so much as glanced down at them. Throughout his childhood and teen years, even a good portion of his college experience, his polydactylism had often been a stimulus of sour ridicule towards him from his peers. And yet… for as odd and sometimes off putting as he often say his apparent defect, Ford couldn’t deny that there was an element of unique strangeness to it, to the point that it could certainly be classified as an anomaly of sorts. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he was far from the only anomaly out there; certainly, the world was filled with incredibly strange things, the likes of which no one had ever seen before, just waiting to be discovered and studied and reported on by someone intrepid enough to seize such a challenge. And fortunately for Ford, he was more than intrepid and dedicated enough to take on such a bold, untapped field, all on his own.

With his mission in mind, all that was really left was for Ford to pick a base of operations for his research. Ideally, it would be somewhere where reports of oddities and bizarre sightings were common, highly concentrated even, so that his research could be contained to one set geographical place. And, after some intensive investigations, Ford eventually managed to pinpoint a place that had exactly that, a small Oregonian town, one that rarely even made an appearance on most maps at all, yet by all accounts, seemed to be home to countless unknown anomalies never seen or heard of before:

Gravity Falls.

And so, that’s exactly where he went. With his grant check in his pocket and purpose in his heart, Ford set out on the long, cross-country drive to Oregon, ready to begin his search for the unknown. Upon his initial arrival, Gravity Falls didn’t seem that notable; just a little lumberjack town, nestled within a cozy little valley of deep pine forests and populated by what appeared to be average, unassuming people. However, as the young researcher drove in closer to the town, he happened to notice one particular facet about it that made him pull his car to a stop and stare in apt amazement.

From an initial glance, it appeared to be some sort of statue, rising high above the town from the tall cliff face it was carved into. The statue was carved into the shape of a woman, massive and stately, with several arms with palms held up towards the sky, and a mask of two stoic, yet steadfast faces. Needless to say that Ford was completely awestruck upon seeing such a monument, and already, his curiosity was peaked for whatever secrets it, as well as the rest of this seemingly normal town might hold.

In fact, his interest about this statue was so peaked that he ended up purchasing a plot of land in the forest just down the hill from it to build his new home, or rather, his base of operations on. His grant money would be more than enough to cover the construction costs, leaving Ford to begin his initial investigations. Of course, he didn’t have to look very far for any strangeness, for not but a day after he had arrived, a massive, wooden hand emerged from the depths of the forest and swept his car away entirely. While normally, he would have been distraught or even outraged at the loss of his main method of transportation, Ford couldn’t have been any more excited by this sign that truly, something bizarre, maybe even supernatural lurked within this odd little town.

In fact, as the days passed on into weeks, Ford only began to spot even more oddities betwixt the forests of Gravity Falls, to the point that it was quickly becoming clear that he wouldn’t be able to keep the reports of his findings restrained to the small notebook he had brought along with him. And so, in order to properly document the fascinating strangeness he happened across every day, the young researcher decided it would be best to chronicle it all within a series of journals-

Present Day

“AHHHH!”

Ford cut his ongoing narration off at this absolutely elated squeal, one that had, much to everyone’s surprise, had come from Dipper. “The journals!” he exclaimed, heavily excited over the mere mention of the long-unknown origin of the trio of books. His enthusiasm quickly quelled into embarrassment however, upon noticing that the others were all looking to him rather awkwardly, all of them apparently caught off guard by his interruption, including the author himself.

“Oh, uh… s-sorry,” Dipper quickly apologized, suppressing a flustered blush as he averted eye contact with the others. “I-I, um, just got… kinda excited there… a-about the journals… k-keep… keep talking.”

Another beat of tentative silence passed in light of this, but it soon came to an end as Ford continued right where he had left off. “So as I was saying, I began to keep a journal-”

“AHHHHH!” Dipper inadvertently interupted Ford once again, unable to contain his excitement over the books even a second time, though he forced himself to be calm as Garnet patiently shushed him so Ford could go on.

“Just going to ignore that,” the author said staunchly as he dove right back into telling his compelling tale.

1970s

With his journals serving as the idea way to document all of the countless anomalies he came across, Ford finally began to investigate the unique oddities of Gravity Falls in depth, and he was far from disappointed with what he saw. From floating eyeballs, to cursed doors, to even the surprisingly large population of gnomes dwelling deep within the woods, the unexpectedly incredible little town had so much strangeness to offer, both supernatural and otherwise. And yet, for all of the anomalies he found on his frequent forays deep into the forest, there was still one mystery that baffled the young researcher as the weeks of his time there passed into months. A mystery that was only a short walk right up the hill from his very own home.

And after months of being preoccupied by smaller, more cursory explorations, Ford decided that perhaps it was finally time to look into that massive, almost ethereal statue for himself. He started his investigation by asking around town about it, but none of the rumors he heard seemed to bear much weight, including whispers of women who changed their shape and could pull weapons out of stones on their bodies. So in light of having so little to go off of, Ford decided on one crisp autumn day that if he wanted answers to this curiosity hanging almost literally right over his head, he’d just have to find them for himself.

While the young researcher wasn’t exactly sure what he had been expecting to find, what he ended up encountering during that trudge up the hill towards the statue gave him quite a scare. For as he was writing down some cursory notes in his journal on his way up to the statue, Ford suddenly found himself pushed abruptly to the ground by a creature that was quite unlike any he had encountered in Gravity Falls thus far. It was a large, lumbering monster, with multiple limbs and a semi-gelatinous form, though what was quite interesting about it was the fact that it possessed what appeared to be some kind of sparkling stone in place of where its face should have been. For a moment, the most Ford could do was stare at this creature in both amazement and fear as it stood over him, growling ferally, but as quickly as it had pinned him down, it reared up on its hind legs, ready to crash down hard. And yet, before it could, something bright, fast, and pink rammed into its side, abruptly shoving it off the frightened young researcher. As disoriented as he was, Ford only had a moment to pick himself up into a sitting position and readjust his askew glasses before looking over to his saviors, who only managed to baffle him even more.

A group of four women had descended seemingly out of nowhere, each of them bearing some form of deadly combat weapon as they fought the gelatinous creature head on. The smallest of the bunch, short and almost childlike in statue and oddly predominantly purple in coloration, lashed a spiked whip out at the beast, wrangling it down securely. This gave her supposed teammate, a lithe, limber woman with porcelain white skin and a smooth stone of the same color on her forehead, a chance to swoop in with a courageous battle cry, a spear in hand as she skewered the monster down to the ground. From there, another one of the group, a taller woman with a cubical black afro and heavily-fortified battle gauntlets, delivered a powerful right hook to the creature, further incapacitating it to allow the last member of this apparent team to finish the job. By her presence alone, it was easy to tell that she was the leader, tall yet oddly genteel in her appearance, from her elegant white gown to her mass of pink, perfect ringlet curls as she stepped forward almost solemnly, an impressive claymore of a blade in one hand and a shimmering shield over her other. And then, as she stood right before the writhing creature, she lashed out, her sword cleanly hitting its mark; with a simple twist of the blade, the monster’s form completely dissipated, leaving only its bizarre stone behind. The pink-haired woman placed her hand over it, somehow forming a small, shimmering bubble around it before making it disappear into thin air before she turned to address her teammates.

“Excellent work, Gems!” she congratulated warmly, the other three clearly soaking up her adulation as their weapons seemed to vanish in bursts of sparkles. “It hardly took us any time at all to beat that one! Like I always say, its easier when we work together.”

“It certainly is…” the pale woman grinned proudly, intertwining her hand with her leaders, much to the smallest member’s playful annoyance.

“Aw, c’mon, Pearl, if you wanna have your ‘special time’ with Rose, then get a room,” she remarked, teasingly sticking her tongue out, much to the pale woman’s embarrassment. Still, the other two let out amused chuckles at this, though the second tallest one stopped short upon spotting Ford, who was still stuck on his spot as he started at them in immense awe and curiosity to learn more about these mysterious warrior women.

“Rose,” the taller Gem nudged her leader’s free arm, nodding in the young researcher’s direction. At this, the pink haired woman glanced over her shoulder, surprised at first, though her admittedly lovely expression soon broke out into a wide, cordial grin.

“Oh! Hello, there!” she greeted brightly as she turned to face him fully, revealing the bright pink gemstone where her exposed naval would have been. All the same, she headed over to him, her teammates following close behind as she extended a hand out to help him up. “I hadn’t noticed that monster was attacking a human! Looks like we got here just in time. Are you alright?”

For a moment, Ford couldn’t seem to find any words to say to the impressive woman before him, largely since he was so awestruck by whatever she apparently was. Of course, she had set the distinction herself that she wasn’t human, despite her very human-like appearance, which only made him wonder about her and her friends all the more as he took her hand somewhat apprehensively. “Uh, I-I… um… n-no—I-I mean, y-yes! Yes, I am,” he nodded as he rose to stand somewhat unsteadily, surprised by just how small he felt compared to the very tall woman before him.

“Pfft, doesn’t look alright,” the small, purple girl remarked with a sly sneer as she elbowed her paler teammate. “Pretty sure this one’s broken, don’t ya think, Pearl?”

“Oh please, Amethyst,” the pale woman scoffed, crossing her arms as she stole a somewhat disdainful glance at the young researcher. “Humans can’t break, isn’t that right, Rose?”

“Well, they can,” the pink haired woman chuckled. “But I don’t think this one is, are you?”

“Um… I don’t… believe so…” Ford replied, rather confused by such an odd question. In all honesty, he wasn’t entirely sure how to properly carry himself in front of such odd, yet ethereal women, but all the same, they seemed friendly enough. Which was a relief given some of the more dangerous creatures lurking in the woods around Gravity Falls.

“Could’ve fooled us,” the second tallest Gem remarked, her tone staunch and stoic.

“So, you got a name, not-broken human?” the purple girl asked quite casually, rocking back and forth on her feet.

“Oh, I-I… it’s Stanford. Stanford Pines,” he said as solidly as he could, extending a hand out for them to shake. The women were apparently not accustomed to this standard greeting practice, but the small one let out a surprised gasp as she suddenly grabbed his hand and pulled it down a bit, much to Ford’s alarm.

“Whoa! You guys, check this out!” she exclaimed, her expression awash in amazement. “This human’s got an extra finger!”

Upon being called out for this, Ford was quick to pull his hand away, his cheeks lighting up in a flustered red as he tried his best to conceal his hands, though the pink haired woman extended hers out to him, a small, eager smile on her face all the while. “Can I see?” she asked, her tone curious, warm even. Warm enough to, for whatever reason, convince Ford to hold his hand out for her to get a better look. “Oh, wow! It’s true!” she gasped, her smile widening as she looked back up to Ford, clearly impressed. “How remarkable! I’ve never seen a human with six fingers before! This really is something special, don’t you agree, Gems?”

The smaller and the taller women both nodded with intrigued smiles, though the paler one lingered close to their leader, giving Ford a critical, almost suspicious glance until she met the pink haired woman’s bright smile, making her harsh manner fizzle somewhat. “Mm… I suppose it’s… somewhat interesting,” she remarked dryly. “For a human that is…”

While Ford was somewhat confused by her strangely cold attitude, he couldn’t deny how caught off guard he was by the other three women. Specifically by the fact that they seemed rather amazed by his polydactylism rather than put off by it, which of course, only made him want to know more about these so called “Gems”. “Um… forgive me if this sounds a bit rude,” Ford began, his stone till somewhat uncertain. “But… what exactly are the four of you?”

“Oh! I’m sorry!” the pink haired woman laughed. “I were so fascinated by you that I didn’t even think to introduce us! Well, this is Amethyst,” she nodded down to the purple girl, who smirked wryly as she waved up to the young researcher. “That’s Garnet,” she placed a hand on the taller Gem’s shoulder as she greeted him with a casual nod. “And this is Pearl,” she smiled to the pale woman clinging tightly to her, still refusing to so much as even smile at Ford for some unknown reason. “And I’m Rose Quartz,” she finished sweetly, though her expression took on a bit of resolve as she motioned to the entire group. “And we’re the Crystal Gems!”

“Crystal… Gems?” Ford asked with a confused frown, taking another glance down at the gemstone on Rose’s stomach. “As in… gemstones?”

“In a sense…” Rose nodded, prompting Garnet to hold up her gem-bearing palms and for Amethyst to pull her top down a bit, revealing the gem on her chest. Pearl huffed impatiently as she pointed to the stone on her own head, allowing Ford to see that all four of these Gems were exactly that: Gems.

“Incredible…” Ford mused in apt amazement as he pulled out his journal and hurriedly began taking down notes. “Sentient humanoid gemstones! And the four of you fight monsters like that on the regular?”

“Yes,” Garnet nodded, quite sparse with her words.

“We just so happen to be the protectors of this town, the ones responsible for keeping it, as well as this entire planet, safe from harm,” Pearl remarked somewhat snidely, casting a brief, unfavorable glance down at Ford’s journal as he eagerly continued writing. “By the way… w-whatever you said your name was, you got to ask us a question, so now its our turn. What exactly is that?” she nodded to the journal as the young researcher happened to glance up from it.

“Oh, this?” he smiled, somewhat oblivious to the white Gem’s dry tune as he held the book up for the Gems to see. “It’s a journal that I’ve been using to take notes of all of the supernatural oddities I’ve come across in this town.”

“Uh… why do that?” Amethyst asked, rather confused as Ford handed the journal off to Rose so she could get a better look at it. “You could just go outside and look at all the weird stuff around here; that’s way easier than writin’ it all down.”

“Well, that’s because I’m a scientific researcher,” Ford proclaimed rather proudly. “I came here a few months ago and set up shop just down the hill,” he nodded to his house, which was still in sight at the bottom of the hill. “In order to study whatever strange, bizarre, or downright confounding anomalies Gravity Falls has to offer before one day sharing my findings with the world!”

“Hm… so that’s where that unsightly little building came from…” Pearl muttered, still somewhat cross.

“Anomalies?” Rose questioned with a soft, but enthusiastic gasp. “You’re here to figure out what makes this town so unique too? We’ve been looking into the exact same thing for over 100 years now!”

“Rose, are you sure we should-” Pearl attempted to intervene, though she was quickly cut off.

“Really?” Ford asked, very intrigued to hear that someone else shared his immense curiosity when it came to the odd facets of the town.  

“Of course!” the pink Gem smiled warmly. “Come with us to our temple, its right up the hill. We’d be more than happy to tell you, or rather show you everything we’ve learned so far!”

“Rose-” Pearl tried once more, appalled that her liege would make such an offer out of the blue.

“O-oh, well I’d be honored to!” Ford complied excitedly, gladly following after Rose as she began to lead the way up to the massive statue.

“B-but Rose!” the white Gem protested once more, though her frustration fell on deaf ears as Rose and Ford had already launched into conversation about the mysteries of Gravity Falls. Pearl let out a disgruntled sigh, far from happy about having yet another human around, especially since that was a problem she hadn’t really had to worry about much during their tenure in Gravity Falls. Of course, Amethyst only managed to rub salt in the wound as she skipped past her teammate, letting out a teasing laugh as she did.

“Aw, Pearl, I dunno what you’re so upset about,” she smirked as she flipped over to walk on her hands. “Looks like we got another huge nerd around here, so you and Science Man should get along great!”

“Amethyst…” Pearl grumbled bitterly as the purple Gem ran off, though as Garnet passed by her she paused to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” she said, adjusting her shades. “This one isn’t going to end like you think it will.”

Pearl’s angry expression lightened into a look of both surprise and confusion upon hearing this, but Garnet didn’t bother elaborating as she continued on ahead. “G-Garnet, wait!” the white Gem exclaimed, running after her teammate, anxious and hopeful all at once. “What does that mean? Garnet!”

Even from their initial meeting, it was easy for anyone to see that Rose and Ford had hit it off. They spent several hours sitting up near the entrance to the Gems’ obviously mystical temple, exchanging stories of the anomalies they had each encountered during their time in Gravity Falls thus far. While Pearl wasn’t initially interested in joining in on the conversation, Amethyst and Garnet did, interjecting with their own observations occasionally, all of which Ford made mental notes on to investigate further. The young researcher was so invested in this riveting discussion with these fascinating women that he found it hard to pull himself away and back down to his house, but eventually he did, though he left with the assurance that he could continue this exchange of information with the Gems tomorrow. A meeting that he gladly showed up to the following day. And the day after that. And the day after that.

In fact, nearly every day onward, Ford and the Gems encountered each other in some way shape or form, be it formal meetings or chance encounters as they explored the supernatural oddities of Gravity Falls on their own. In light of how many times they ran into each other, Ford and Rose eventually reached a conclusion: the five of them would be much more effective working together in their pursuit of knowledge than they were apart. And so, they decided to form something of a partnership, one in which they set out as a collective force, thoroughly searching the wilds of Gravity Falls for anything interesting they might find.

Researching alongside the Gems, Ford found himself learning more than he ever had about the supernatural than he had when he had worked alone. Rose knew the valley well, and she seemed to be on generally good terms with most of the strange creatures that lived therein, who were all naturally trusting of her kind, gentle nature. The in she provided him with greatly aided the young researcher, allowing him to investigate these anomalies up close and personal, granting him with so much new information that his initial journal all too quickly filled, prompting him to resort to a second one and eventually, even a third.

Of course, the longer he studied alongside Rose and the Gems, the more variety Ford saw in the oddities Gravity Falls seemed to innately possess. From unicorns to ghosts to even the egg to a bizarre, shapeshifting creature they had found, the supernatural was abundant in the backwoods town. Practically every new discovery left Ford and Rose both besides themselves with excitement, their zeal for learning more about the world around them completely parallel and passionate.

And through that zeal and passion, a deep, genuine friendship had formed through their initial partnership, one that both of them valued highly. An undeniable bond of trust came to exist between the pink Gem and the young researcher, to the point that any time they were in each other’s company, they were essentially as content as they could be.

Though it took a bit longer for the other Gems to warm up to Ford as Rose so quickly had, in time, they did as well. Amethyst was eager and curious, particularly when it came to what she had dubbed as “human things”, to the point that every time she stepped foot in Ford’s house, he often spent most of his time explaining to her what things like a radio or a refrigerator were. In something of a bittersweet way, her rouge, careless attitude sometimes reminded him a bit too much of Stan… but every time such thoughts of his distanced brother came to mind, Ford was quick to push them away.

Garnet was a bit of an interesting case, often silent and stoic and firm in words and action. For the first few months, Ford found it rather hard to strike up a conversation with her, that is until he learned of her unique ability in foresight, what she commonly referred to as future vision. From then on, the young researcher often found himself coming to Garnet for statistics and probability, things that she was rather adept at; such scientific inquiries soon led to the occasional offhand joke or complimentary remark between the two, forming a casual camaraderie as time went on.

Of course, it took the longest amount of time for Ford to form an actual working relationship with Pearl, who continued to show her initial unexplained bitterness towards him for even up to a year after they met. The white Gem refused to explain her reasoning for it and the young researcher never really thought to ask, even despite Rose patiently encouraging that they try to work together and get along. However, if there was one thing both Ford and Pearl could agree on, it was their love of science. While there were plenty of times where they’d argue over equations and theory, on the rare occasion when they’d agree on something, they’d do so with a surprising amount of forbearing and understanding. And as time went on, that understanding only seemed to grow as they continued sharing their mutual affinity for physics, astronomy, cryptozoology and more, to the point that something of a loose, compliant colleagueship began to form, one that, in time, eventually became a full-fledged friendship.

With such trust and companionship existing between Ford and the Gems, it didn’t take long for Rose to begin opening up on their end of things. For much like all of the other strange facets of Gravity Falls, the Crystal Gems were something of an anomaly in and of themselves, and the more Ford learned of their origins and their abilities, the more amazed he was. By far, the most incredible thing about them was the fact that they were actually essentially extraterrestrials, with origins going back to a mysterious planet called Homeworld, a place that none of them spoke too fondly of. The young researcher quickly discovered the reasoning behind this disdain upon learning the largely unknown history of the ancient war the Crystal Gems had fought against their home planet for the safety and freedom of the Earth, a battle long fought and hard won, but won nonetheless. Of course, history wasn’t all the Gems told Ford about; their biology was quite amazing, with regenerative properties and internal sustainability that set them quite apart from humans. Rose eagerly introduced the young researcher to a plethora of Gem-related concepts, from their shapeshifting abilities, to their weapon summoning, to their unique capacity to combine their forms in a process referred to as fusion, so even the various magical pocket dimensions contained within their illustrious temple. By and large, Ford found these discoveries to be some of the most fascinating ones he’d made during his time in Gravity Falls, and he readily documented everything he could concerning the Crystal Gems across all three of his journals.

Overall, Ford found the Gems’ help to be invaluable to his research, and their companionship to be more than he could have ever asked for. Amongst Garnet’s confidence, Amethyst’s playfulness, Pearl’s zeal, and Rose’s kindness, the young researcher realized he was in a place and position that made him happier than he could really ever recall being. After a whole life of what felt like unsteadiness and uncertainty, he had finally dug his roots among company that openly and warmly accepted him for who he was. Within the incredible strangeness of Gravity Falls and between the friendship of the equally amazing Crystal Gems, Ford knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was exactly where he belonged.

And yet… something was still missing.

Nearly six years and come and gone in a bright rush of new discoveries and exciting experiences since Ford had first arrived in Gravity Falls, but even despite his immense contentment there, several questions still hung at the back of his mind almost continually. Namely, why was Gravity Falls such a hotspot for the strange and the supernatural in the first place? Why did such oddities all seem to congregate to this one geographic place in particular? Where did these anomalies even originate from? And beyond all of that, were the answers to such questions even possible to find at all?

The more Ford pondered these wonderings on his own, the more frustrated he became by his own lack of any concrete answers for them. And so, one day he decided to take them to the Crystal Gems, hoping that, with their lengthy presence in the town, they’d have some useful insight on the matter.

“Why is Gravity Falls so strange…?” Rose repeated Ford’s initial question as she paced around his living room, the researcher and the other Gems all standing by expectantly. “That’s… a very good question…”

“A… question that you have some leads on, perhaps?” Ford ventured with a hopeful smile.

Rose took pause at this, taking a moment to exchange something of a stiff glance with her teammates before responding somewhat sheepishly. “Er… not exactly…”

“We’ve been trying to figure that out for decades now,” Pearl added, crossing her arms. “But it seems like no matter how hard we look, we never get any closer to finding any actual reasons as to why Gravity Falls is so bizarre compared to any other place on Earth. It’s been… aggravating, to say the least.”

“You don’t think there’s something you all might have… missed in your investigations, do you?” the researcher pressed, driven to get answers, as always.

“Nah, we’ve looked just about everywhere,” Amethyst remarked as she dropped down from the rafters, one of her favorite places to nap. “We’re just as stumped as you are, Science Man.”

“Perhaps this is something we’re not meant to know,” Garnet remarked, leaning against the nearby doorframe.

“B-but there has to be a reason!” Ford exclaimed fervently, pulling out his recently completed second journal and flipping through its pages. “All of this strangeness can’t just come from nothing!”

“Well wherever it does come from, we haven’t the faintest idea,” Pearl said, shaking her head empathetically. “Sorry, Stanford.”

“I can’t believe this…” Ford huffed, frustrated more with himself than he was with any of the Gems. After all, it was hardly their fault that this mysterious seemed so elusive. “Six years and three journals worth of research and I’m still no closer to finding answers than when I started! How is it so hard to figure out? How are all of these anomalies connected? And why here, of all places?!”

“It’s nothing to feel bad about, Stanford,” Rose interjected, placing a steadying hand on her partner’s shoulder as she offered him a small, reassuring smile. “After all, we’ve already discovered so many incredible, wonderful things here, and that’s something we should be proud of. Something that you should be proud of. And who knows? I’m sure if we keep looking, then one day we’ll find those answers you’re looking for. Together.”

Ford let out something of a disappointed sigh at this, but he found he was unable to remain upset for too long upon meeting the pink Gem’s warm, comforting smile. One that he only halfheartedly returned as he readjusted his lab coat with a hint of renewed resolve. “Hm, yes, well,” the researcher nodded staunchly. “In the meantime, I think what I need is to clear my head for a bit. A short walk in the woods might do me some good…”

“Oh, would you like us to go with you?” Rose asked with a willing smile.

“Normally I would,” Ford partially returned her grin as he escorted the Gems out. “But I think I’ll be fine on my own. And of course, if I manage to happen upon anything new out there, then you’ll be the first to know.”

Rose beamed at this, nodded in warm acceptance as the other Gems began the trek back up to the temple. Before she joined them, however, she stopped short, turning to Ford one more time as her expression turned a bit more sincere. “I meant what I said, Stanford,” she said, firmly, yet kindly. “I know you have what it takes to figure this out. It may seem impossible now, but I’ve seen humans overcome impossible odds before. And if there’s anyone who’s capable of doing just that, it’s you.”

Ford finally smiled fully at this, his spirits lifted by the pink Gem’s clear confidence in him, as often was the case. While still worried about his chances in solving Gravity Falls’ greatest secrets, at the very least, he could trust that he’d have her help in every step of the way. Which was why he fully meant what he said as he turned to head off into the woods before him, where one of his most life-changing discoveries yet was about to be found. “Thank you, Rose.”

The Gems were rather confused by Ford calling them down to his house for a very early meeting the next day, but immediately upon arriving, they could tell he was beside himself with excitement as he rushed about, preparing everything necessary before he began. And when he did, he started off with an elated announcement that he had, through what he only described as “divine intervention”, at last come across a lead as to how they might uncover the truth behind Gravity Falls’ strange properties. The Gems listened intently as the researcher presented his theory that the anomalies the town was so highly populated with came not from Gravity Falls itself, or even from their own dimension itself; but rather, they came from some other plane of existence, a dimension of weirdness that had somehow torn into Gravity Falls and leaked its strange anomalies into the town itself. Ford purposed that the only way to truly understand the connection between these two dimensions was to access this strangeness at its source: by constructing a machine, a portal namely, that could serve as a gateway to this world of weirdness that it all seemed to come from. And fortunately, the researcher had happened to come up with blueprints for such a machine, apparently all on his own.

Upon hearing all this, the Gems were somewhat skeptical to say the least. The vast majority of the explanation went over Amethyst’s head, while Pearl wondered if such a massive endeavor would even be feasible at all. Garnet admitted that her future vision gave her no clear answers as to what might happen if they went through with this project, and even Rose seemed somewhat hesitant, voicing her concern over what might happen if the Earth tried to connect itself to some distant, unknown world, much like what Homeworld had tried to do to it centuries ago. Ford was quick to placate her worries, however, by assuring her that this was vastly different from the now-defunct galaxy warp she had shown him on multiple occasions. And with this assurance and the trust Rose placed in it, she soon readily jumped on board, the other Gems following suit as they agreed to assist Ford with this project in any way they could, all in the hopes that they’d finally uncover the truth they had so long been searching for.

Of course, even in the midst of planning, the intrepid group was quick to realize just how arduous of a task this was going to be. They would require rare, fortified materials, ones that were not commonly purchased, and even they were, they’d be more than Ford could reasonably buy with what was left of his grant money. And while the Gems presented a suitable solution to that problem, there was still the issue of engineering. Pearl was rather well versed in the subject, but not necessarily to the extent that the portal would require, and Ford found himself falling short in the field himself, even despite his extensive studies in other sciences. Fortunately though, the researcher knew exactly who to recruit for the task: a former classmate and close friend he had made during his time at Backupsmore, Fiddleford McGucket.

Despite his obvious rural southern upbringing, Fiddleford was, by all accounts, completely brilliant when it came to engineering and mechanics. After graduation, Ford had remained in touch with him, and had learned that he had moved to California with his longtime sweetheart, settling down in Palo Alto to raise a young son in a nice home. Of course, Ford questioned his friend’s apparent dream of starting a portal personal computer company, believing that such an invention would certainly never catch on and that Fiddleford was largely wasting his impressive talents. But all the same, he was delighted to hear the mechanic’s solid agreement to journey up to Gravity Falls for a time to assist in the portal’s construction, ready to lend his skills to the effort wherever needed.

However, what Ford hadn’t made Fiddleford aware of prior to his arrival in Gravity Falls, was that they wouldn’t be alone in working on the project. The mechanic was somewhat caught off guard by the Gems at first, who welcomed him warmly as soon as they heard he was a friend of Ford’s. But as overwhelmed as he initially was, Fiddleford soon enough formed a loose camaraderie with the four of them, nothing as close as what Ford had with them, but still it was a mutually working relationship nonetheless. The researcher noticed that he worked well with Pearl in particular, the two of them passionate for their engineering craft as they collaborated on fixing up the final touches on the blueprints for the portal. And, once they had gathered the necessary supplies and everything was checked and double checked and even triple checked, the construction for the machine finally commenced.

They had decided to build it right underneath Ford’s house, in a deep, almost cavernous basement lab the Gems helped him dig out even prior to Fiddleford���s arrival, in preparation for this project. It was a spacious place, one that gave them more than enough seclusion to work on the portal unfettered by any external forces. The Gems’ physical strength was a massive asset in the physical labor of the construction, to the point that they even sometimes utilized fusions to get the bigger jobs done. Many a sleepless night was spent putting it together, the blueprints serving as their guide for what they were optimistic, almost certain even, would be their key to a world unknown. A world that certainly must have been filled with endless discoveries and possibilities just waiting to be found.

But in reality, it would be the key to a world that was anything but that.

After almost a year of tireless work and seemingly endless preparations, the portal was finally complete and functional. Of course, before anyone even thought of venturing through it to see what lay beyond its wall of radiantly glowing energy, it would need to be tested extensively to ensure everything was in safe, working order. And, despite some whispers of worries and concerns going in, the collective group met in the portal room one night, prepared to do just that.

They had wisely decided to send a dummy into the portal first, one that was tethered to their reality by a rope in the event that they could pull it back over as needed. The Gems hung close by as the portal roared to life, the mock representations of their gemstones glowing upon it as proof of their hand in its creation. At the same time, Ford and Fiddleford approached the safety line before the machine, a dummy held between them as they prepared to toss it in. There was an admirable amount of tension hanging within the room, tension that had been accumulating amongst the group for quite some time as a result of a number of current, alarming events. The one who was by far the most vocal about his anxieties concerning the project was Fiddleford, to the point that his ongoing pessimism and doubts had partially passed onto the Gems as well. Ford couldn’t help but be somewhat frustrated with their lack of resolve, including Rose’s as she had pulled him aside only a few hours prior and asked him if he was entirely certain he wanted to go through with this, a look of obvious dread on her expression clear. Of course, the researcher had quickly pushed her worries aside, assuring her that everything would go exactly according to plan and he meant it. He had come to far to back down now, when the answers he had searched so long for where finally within his reach. He wasn’t about to give up the chance to achieve greatness beyond his wildest dreams just because of a few unfounded fears and superstitions. He was a scientist; and after tonight, he’d be a great one.

And so, without any further deliberations, Ford and Fiddleford let the dummy go, the portal’s artificial gravity field pulling it forward towards its central glow. However, what none of them had anticipated was that the rope tying the dummy down would accidentally end up wrapping itself around Fiddleford’s leg just as the dummy glided towards it. The mechanic let out a fearful cry as he lurched forward as well, one that startled Ford and the Gems as they rushed to try and rescue the now airborne Fiddleford.

“Wait!” Ford exclaimed to the Gems as he tightly gripped the rope, noticing that they were all running forward towards the portal to try and save Fiddleford, who was now partially within the portal itself. “Stay back, its too dangerous!”

“For you, maybe!” Pearl retorted hotly, knowing that they couldn’t just leave the mechanic to his doom.

“But not for us!” Rose finished boldly, instructing her other teammates with a nod. Garnet, Pearl, and Amethyst rushed to grab the remainder of the rope behind Ford, all four of them giving it a mighty pull.

“W-we got you, buddy!” Ford shouted to Fiddleford, whose limbs were flailing wildly as his head remained on the other side of the portal. Fortunately, with the Gems’ help, he was able to swiftly yank the mechanic out of the machine and back into their dimension. As he began to fall back to the ground, Rose readily jumped to catch him, securely doing so before landing near the others and gently putting Fiddleford down. Ford and the other Gems were quick to group around him, though Rose held up a hand to stop them, her eyes already wet with healing tears in case they were needed.

“Give him some space,” she advised calmly, nodding down to the clearly shell-shocked mechanic sprawled across her lap. His eyes were huge, his pupils absolutely dilated as he seemed to stare up at nothing at all amidst his frantic, hurried breathing, near-constant trembling, and frantic, full-body twitching. While initially quite concerned for his friend’s wellbeing, Ford quickly got to the point that he was unable to contain his curiosity about what lay on the other side of the portal as he inched forward a bit, leaning down next to Fiddleford as he took his hand tightly.

“What is it? Is it working?” he pressed anxiously, ignoring the mechanic’s ongoing panic attack. “What did you see in there?!”

Fiddleford flinched at this, his twitching growing wildly out of control as he finally spoke. However, as he did, his words were a jumbled mess of nonsense that none of them could even hope to decipher: “VOTMZRIG IVSKRX OORY!”

“Fiddleford?” Ford asked, his worry returning as he exchanged a confused glance with Rose. However, before of them could try and figure out what was going on, Fiddleford suddenly sat up, his manner stark, almost robotic even as he continued staring forward, his eyes huge as he muttered something that left them all in absolute bewilderment.

“When gravity falls and earth becomes sky, fear the beast with just one eye…”

“Beast with one eye…?” Rose repeated, her brow furrowing in worried confusion upon hearing this.

“Fiddleford, get ahold of yourself,” Ford urged, placing a steadying hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You’re not making any sense.”

Fiddleford finally seemed to snap back to his senses at this, though he was hardly at ease as he jerked his shoulder out of Ford’s grip and sent the researcher a bitter glare filled with nothing less than absolute resentment. “This machine is dangerous,” he said coldly, shuddering as he glanced back towards the portal. “You’re playin’ with fire here, Stanford. This thing could bring about the end of the world! Destroy it before it destroys us all!”

“D-destroy the world?!” Rose exclaimed, quite alarmed by this as the other Gems let out startled gasps of their own.

“W-wha—I can’t destroy this!” Ford countered intently, knowing that Fiddleford had to be mistaken somehow. “It’s my life’s work, the key to answering everything!”

“I know what I saw in there!” Fiddleford shouted back as he stood, his hands in tight fists at his sides. “It was a nightmare, plain n’ simple! I fear we’ve unleashed a grave danger on the world. One that I’d just as soon forget. I quit! And I’d urge you ladies to do the same.”

And with that, the mechanic promptly turned and left, sparing not a single word to his former friend as he went to put as much distance between himself and this failure of a project as possible. For a moment, the most Ford could do was sit there, completely baffled by Fiddleford’s staunch departure, anger and betrayal building up within him until he happened to glance over and make eye contact with the Gems. All four of them were looking to him in apt shock, the slightest hints of suspicion and wariness filling their expressions as a beat of tense silence lingered before Rose finally spoke up.

“S-Stanford…” she began apprehensively, the portal casting looming shadows over her as she stood. “What did he mean when he said this machine could destroy the world?”

“R-Rose, I…. I don’t…” Ford trailed off, his manner somewhat shaken himself as he looked back to the portal. “F-Fiddleford didn’t know what he was talking about. After all, you know how anxious he can be.”

“That didn’t sound like mere anxiety,” Garnet remarked, her tone rather cold. “That sounded like fear.”

“What is on the other side of that portal, Ford?” Rose asked, not harshly, but very seriously all the same. “What did Fiddleford see in there that made him react like… like that?”

“I… it… i-it’s exactly what I said it would be!” Ford protested as he also stood, growing frustrated with Rose’s apparent doubt. “It’s the dimension where all of the anomalies here in Gravity Falls comes from!”

“But how do you know that for sure?” Pearl asked, raising an incredulous eyebrow. “What did you really have us build down here, Stanford? A portal to another dimension? Or something far more sinister?”

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me!?” Ford huffed angrily. “The five of us have been working together for years now! How could you possibly think I’d ever even entertain the thought of building something that’s a detriment to mankind!? This portal is to provide humanity with answers, not senselessly destroy it!”

“Stanford…” Rose bowed her head somewhat, to the point that the shadows practically concealed her eyes altogether. “Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and I have been protecting humanity for centuries. I started an entire war just to protect it from our own kind. Nothing matters more to me than keeping this planet and everything on it safe. I want to believe that what we built together can benefit humanity just as much as you do… but if its true, if this machine really does have the potential to destroy this planet… then we have no choice. You have to destroy it, just as Fiddleford said.”

“B-but… but I…” Ford took in a sharp break, his hands curling into tight fists as he took in everything the pink Gem had just said to him. He could scarcely believe that Rose, of all people, was standing before him, telling him to abandon his quest for the truth for the sake of nothing more than tawdry safety. Which was why he needed to make her see reason, even where Fiddleford hadn’t. “N-no. He was wrong. This portal isn’t dangerous! It’s a tool to gain knowledge, not a weapon of mass destruction, I know it!”

“Are you sure, Ford?” the pink Gem asked as her teammates gathered close to her, unanimously looking to the researcher with growing distrust. “Can you look me in the eyes and tell me that this machine can be used for good? That it won’t cause the kind of destruction and devastation that could potentially wipe everything on this planet out? If you can honestly stand there and tell me that, then I’ll believe you.”

Ford was prepared to do just that, though as he did, he couldn’t help but hesitate as he looked past Rose and to the portal instead. And as he did, he was unable to deny the small burst of worry growing inside of him that perhaps Fiddleford had been right, that the portal’s purpose wasn’t as pure or altruistic as he had been led to believe. It was a preposterous thought, for sure, but even so, his obviously uncertain silence told Rose everything she needed to know.

“…Right…” she sighed sadly, glancing down morosely to avoid eye contact with the researcher. Her voice was soft, almost pained even as she shook her head before finally looking to Ford, grief-filled tears welling up in her eyes as the other Gems pressed even closer to her. “Then we’re done here.”

“W-what?” Ford asked, caught off guard.

“I said, we’re done,” Rose’s tone was a bit firmer now, as was her expression. “We’re not going to lend our help to something that could very well end up destroying this planet, a planet we fought so hard for and lost so much to protect. So that leaves us no choice but to cut our ties from this… a-and… and from you…”

The most Ford could do upon hearing this was shake his head, sudden grief overwhelming him as he realized exactly what he was losing here. Not only were the Gems leaving, but they were taking their help, their knowledge, their friendship with them. Friendship that he had come to value so highly and would be completely lost without. “R-Rose, no… y-you…”

“Let’s go, Gems,” Rose said simply, nodding for her teammates to leave. They did so, each of them sending Ford a rather unsavory, disdainful look as they did, all three of them quite upset with him for the kind of damage his machine stood to cause and how they had been dragged into helping create such a disaster in the first place. The pink Gem was the last to leave, though she did happen to linger near the door to the lab for a moment, letting out a dejected sigh as she briefly glanced back to the distraught researcher behind her. “I’m sorry, Stanford, but… this is just how it has to be. But… I do hope that all of this doesn’t turn out as badly as I think it might… And perhaps if it doesn’t… then we can start things fresh and new. But until then… this is goodbye…”

Without another word, the pink Gem departed, leaving Ford completely alone with his machine and nothing else. He couldn’t even think of anything to say to try and stop Rose as she left, torn amidst his palpable despair and his growing anger. And, soon enough, that anger at the thought of being abandoned by those closest to him, those who refused to share the same glorious vision as he did, those who only wanted to hold him back, just like everyone else in his life, completely took over. “F-Fine!” Ford shouted hotly, even though Rose had already left. “I’ll do it without you! I don’t need you, or the other Gems, or Fiddleford! I don’t need anyone!”

Almost as soon as the researcher had made this fierce proclamation, however, Ford’s intense manner quickly snapped the moment he heard a soft, almost indiscernible whisper come from seemingly nowhere. “W-what?” he asked, glancing around for anyone else only to find that he was the only one in the lofty room. “W-who’s there? Who said that?” Of course, he received no answer, the whispers only multiplying and growing in intensity, though he couldn’t make out a single word of what they were saying. And yet… by their tones, in a strange way, it almost seemed as though they were… mocking him. Laughing over a victory he had no clue about. Alarmed, Ford stumbled back into the far wall of the room, a hand placed against his head as he tried his best to quiet these almost deafening whispers, though to no avail.

In fact, if anything, the whispers only seemed to intensify in the following weeks, and they were far from the only thing the researcher had to deal with. His nightmares were abundant, his thoughts plagued by doubt, guilt, and terror of an unseen evil. He couldn’t so much as even look at the portal without recalling Fiddleford’s panic-stricken words or Rose’s intent, firm warnings. Warnings that he feared he had failed to listen to and now it was far too late. For as time continued slipping by, so too did Ford’s own sanity begin to slip, leaving way for intensive paranoia and practically soul-crushing dread. With the Gems and Fiddleford no longer around to keep him anchored and active, the researcher fell into a deep seclusion, desperately pouring over his notes all hours of the day and night to try and find a solution to the problem he had caused. He had abandoned the thought of sleep entirely, knowing that he couldn’t risk wasting even a single second, lest he leave himself vulnerable to the forces of darkness lurking all around him. The notes in the remaining pages of his third journal became frantic, sloppily written and completely telling of the deep fear of the man writing every single word of desperate warning and unending regret. By all accounts, he felt trapped, lost in a sea of anxiety, remorse, terror, and confusion that he was powerless to escape from. And yet, in the din of his growing mania, Ford did manage to reach one clear conclusion: that in light of the clear and proven danger that it could bring about, the portal could no longer remain operational. Even despite all of the time and work and effort that had gone into it, none of that mattered for the sake of protecting the world, just as Rose had said. Which was why Ford readily dedicated himself to undoing his grave mistake, his pride and passion all but forgotten in place of an overwhelming desire to set things right.

The researcher knew that the first and most essential step to doing so would be to separate his journals; the trio of books held not just the portal’s blueprints, but also instructions on how to get it running. Kept together, they could easily fall into the wrong hands and ensure global destruction. And so Ford hid his second journal away on his own accord, out near the local elementary school, where he assumed no child would ever be clever enough to find it and dig it up. For his first and third, journals, however, the researcher wanted to be completely unaware of their whereabouts, knowing that it would be impossible for someone to amass their locations from him if he was ever put in such a forced position. Ford knew that his research should be left in the hands of two individuals he trusted above all else; though giving his rapidly increasing paranoia, such trust was hard to find. However, he did manage to eventually come up with the only two people he could turn to amidst all this upheaval, two people that he could only hope with every fiber of his being would not fail him now.

Winters in Gravity Falls were known for being absolutely brutal and this one was no exception. The brisk, frigid, snow-filled air left Ford in quite a shock as he ventured out into it, making the relatively short trek up the hill towards the Crystal Temple. It was a voyage he had made more times than he could even count, but something about this trip up there felt so incredibly different than any other he had made before. Perhaps it was the unbearable wintry chill, perhaps it was journal 3 tucked securely into his coat, or perhaps it was his own growing dread and fear, but Ford could feel a sense of finality with every step that he took up to the temple. Even as he came to stand before its sparkling gate, he found his hand hesitating to knock upon it, knowing that doing so would, in many ways, be an admittance of defeat. The confession that he hadn’t been able to solve this problem on his own, that he needed outside help, that he had to trust someone as opposed to trusting no one. And yet, for as much as he hated that vulnerable, constricting feeling, Ford knew he had no other choice. So he knocked.

As he had hoped, Rose’s specific door slid open smoothly, the pink Gem standing in the frame of the gate as she looked down to the researcher, clearly perplexed by his unexpected visit. Ever since the disastrous portal incident, the two of them had only seen each other a handful of times, chance encounters ranging from rather awkward to tension-filled. In each of them, Rose had noticed how Ford’s mental state was steadily falling apart at the seams, and despite her cutting her ties with him before, she had made the selfless offer to try and help him, an offer that had always been bitterly rejected. In light of everything that had happened even the researcher’s once strong trust in the pink Gem had eroded away as he blamed her for not knowing of the true dangers that lurked within the town she had called home for much longer than he had. Dangers that, had he been warned of in a more timely manner, would have perhaps been foiled and evaded altogether.

Still, it was too late to change the past now, something that Ford knew all too well as he stood before Rose, who was still admittedly quite confused even as she addressed him. “Stanford…” she said, her voice soft and sad. “W-what… what are you doing here?”

Ford took in a deep breath to steady himself, deciding to get right to the point as he pulled journal 3 out of his coat. “I need your help,” he said, presenting the book to the pink Gem. “There’s not much time left and I have to get rid of this in a secure way before its too late. I’ve already hidden the second one a-and I have someone coming to take the first one away. And so… I was hoping that you would take the third one…”

“Why?” Rose asked, her expression unreadable as she looked between the researcher and his journal.

“Keeping them together is far too much of a risk,” Ford said rather matter-of-factly. “If someone were to find the portal’s blueprints contained within them, then the entire universe could-”

“I know why we need to separate the journals, Ford,” the pink Gem interjected. “What I meant was why do you want me to take one of them?”

Because I trust you was what Ford wanted to say, but of course, his pride wouldn’t let him. So instead, he went with the easier option. “Because you have the resources to properly protect it, o-of course.”

“…Right…” Rose sighed, her already saddened expression growing even moreso as she took the journal out of Ford’s hands. “In that case… I… I’ll find someplace for it… A place where it will be safe from… f-from him… and from anyone else who might want it for the wrong reasons…”

The researcher only nodded at this, far too burdened by so many thoughts at once to think of much else to even say to the pink Gem at this point. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have anything to say to him. “Stanford, I…” she hesitated, pulling the third journal close to her before she continued on a different tangent entirely. “I-if you don’t mind telling me, what are you planning on doing next?”

Ford sighed, shaking his head in slight shame as he turned away from her. “After the first journal is safely taken care of, I’ll be making a trip to the caves where I first happened upon the knowledge of… of you know who… Hopefully something there will be able to give me an idea of how to vanquish him from our world, once and for all.”

“T-then let me go with you,” Rose insisted, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure that together, we can-”

“No,” the researcher remarked coldly as he pulled away. “This is my mistake. I need to be the one to fix it.”

“But you don’t have to do that on your own!” the pink Gem urged earnestly. “I can help you, Stanford, I want to help you! You’re forgetting that I care about keeping this world safe just as much as you do, especially from someone as dangerous and demented as him. But I can’t do that unless you let me in again, please. We used to be such close partners. Such close friends… I’ve lost so many humans I’ve cared so much about in the past… I don’t want to lose you too…”

“Rose…” Ford began, finally glancing back to look at her and meeting her pained expression with one of his own. As much as he wanted to take up her offer for solidarity and support, he knew that he couldn’t. Largely because he knew her kindness and caring were things that he just didn’t deserve anymore. “I… I have to go it alone. I just… i-it’s the only way…”

The pink Gem moved to protest this decision, but for whatever reason, she held herself back, instead opting to glance down morosely, tears nearly welling up in her eyes but still not falling. “Well then… at least… be careful out there…” Ford nodded once again to this, making no promises, for he wasn’t sure exactly what he was about to face, though he resolved himself to be ready for it nonetheless, no matter what might happen. However, before he could depart, Rose stopped him one last time, a few of her pressing tears finally falling as her long pink curls were gently tossed by the winter winds rather solemnly. “Stanford…” she began despondently, her tone and expression creating a tight, almost unbearable pit inside of his heart as he listened to her fretful farewell. “…I’m sorry… for everything…”

The researcher’s shoulders hitched upon hearing this, and it took everything in him to not turn around at face the pink Gem and return her sad, sincere words in full. But once again, what little logic he felt like he had left overruled his emotions, to the point that he simply left her in silence, knowing that nothing he could say could ever hope to undo all that had gone wrong between them. Still, as lost and hopeless as he continually felt, a part of him hoped that someday he’d have the the chance to truly make things right with her once and for all, a chance to show her just how much he appreciated her, a chance to fix what had been broken.

A chance that, unbeknownst to him, he would never get to have.

New Mexico, 1982

In all the ways Stan had expected his life to go, this wasn’t exactly anything close to what he had been hoping for. The past several years had been a rough, wild string of scams, arrests, escapes, and almost countless near-death experiences. All of his plans to make a fortune for himself had failed completely, sometimes in quite disastrous ways, to the point that Stan had eventually given up on them entirely simply for the sake of surviving. Whatever necessities he had he usually acquired by stealing them, giving him experience enough that he had practically mastered the craft of thievery, among several other illegal acts. Of course, it didn’t help that he had more than his fair share of dangerous foes and rivals who wanted to do him in as a result of him either fooling them, robbing them, or giving them the slip. Still, with so many hungry for his demise and so few willing to help him out or take him in, Stan found himself quickly running out of options as well as out of hope that things would really ever get better. After all, he had been on his own in a constant state of “in betweens” for an entire decade now and despite all of his tireless efforts to make something of himself, it seemed like he never made any hint of progress a life that wasn’t completely in shambles. There had been the occasional moment where he wondered whether or not all of his struggling to simply get by was even worth it, if there really was ever a chance, no matter how slim that he could one day rise up from the rock bottom he seemed so deeply rooted in. And while some small voice inside his head often told him to give up on it all in those moments, another part of him, one that sounded suspiciously like a certain twin brother of his, urged him to keep on going, to hold onto his long-lasting stubborn nature and fight his way through the trials life threw at him, no matter how hard it might be.

And so he did.

Though really, Stan wasn’t sure exactly how much longer he could hold out as he sat alone in the cramped, filthy, bug-infested motel room he had somehow scrounged up enough money to afford for the night. Anything was better than sleeping in his car after all, and it also made him a little less vulnerable to all of the thugs who wanted his head. Still, that didn’t mean he was able to suppress a frightened flinch as a sudden knock sounded on the door of the room, a knock that prompted him to quickly grab his baseball bat before he even thought of going to answer it.

“J-just give me a few more days, Rico!” Stan shouted, knowing that the aforementioned cartel boss was his most recent and most dangerous foe at the moment. “I’ll pay your goons back, I swear!”

Fortunately, on the other side of the door wasn’t any murderous mafia member or belligerent brute, but rather only a mailman, who stopped by just long enough to slip a postcard through the door slot before going on his way. Of course, Stan was rather surprised by this as well, especially since he couldn’t recall the last time he had gotten any mail from anyone, especially such an odd looking postcard from some place he had never heard of called Gravity Falls. But as he turned it over, he was quickly met with a message that shocked him more than almost anything he had seen in his travels thus far:

“PLEASE COME!” – FORD

Needless to say that upon seeing such an urgent plea from his brother of all people, Stan was completely floored. Ford hadn’t tried to get in contact with him even once since he had been kicked out by their father years ago, yet all of the sudden, he was reaching out to him, seemingly out of nowhere with such a terse, mysterious request to make such a long journey out to see him? Stan could scarcely believe it and even beyond that disbelief he could hardly be happy about it. After all, Ford had just as much of the blame for the disaster his life had become as anyone else, maybe even moreso given that he could have at the very least stuck with him as opposed to leaving him lost and alone for his own selfish purposes. A years’ old anger burned within Stan’s gut as he thought about his brother’s callous betrayal, and it was almost enough to get him to crumble up the postcard and throw it in the trash without a second thought. And yet… he couldn’t deny that he was also curious. Ford must have requested him to come for a reason, one that he hadn’t the faintest clue about but wanted to know nonetheless. And as much as he knew he shouldn’t even give his brother the time of day after what he had done a decade ago, Stan ultimately knew that he couldn’t stay away.

And so with nowhere else to really go, Stan figured he might as well at least go check things out on Ford’s end. After all, what was the worst that could happen?

The drive from New Mexico to Oregon was a long, boring one, but Stan made reasonably good time, only taking stops to siphon gas from other cars at the occasional fuel station or raid an unattended check-out counter for snacks. And soon enough, he reached the backwoods town of Gravity Falls, which was completely buried by snow, much to Stan’s immense aggravation as he made it there with only a light, soiled jacket to keep him warm. All the same, the cold didn’t bother him as much as his growing dread did as he approached Ford’s door, knowing well that this meeting could be the second chance between them that he had always secretly hoped for. Either that, or it would serve to tear them apart even more than time and distance alone already had.

“Alright, Stan,” he said to himself, trying to instill as much confidence as he could as his hand hung over the door, ready to knock. “You haven’t seen your brother in over ten years. But its ok. He’s family. He won’t bite.”

With this final self-assurance, Stan knocked on the door, only for it to partially swing open seconds later, revealing a crossbow-wielding Ford behind it. “Who is it?!” he demanded sharply, his exhaustion-marred face awash in paranoia and anxiety as he aimed his weapon directly at his startled brother. “Have you come to steal my eyes?!”

Stan hesitated before saying anything as he leaned away from the tip of the arrow being pointed at him, knowing that for all of the possible greetings he had been expecting from Ford, this had not been one of them. “Well, nice to know I can always come to you for a warm welcome,” he remarked, not really knowing how else to start but with dry sarcasm as he raised an eyebrow at his brother.

“Stanley,” Ford sighed in slight relief as he lowed his crossbow a bit, though he still kept a firm grip on it nonetheless. “Did anyone follow you? Anyone at all?”

“Yeesh, no,” Stan scoffed, rolling his eyes. “By the way, hello to you too, pal—whoa!”

Quite unexpectedly, Ford pulled him inside the house, slamming the door shut behind them and locking it tight before pulling a flashlight out and shining it directly in his brother’s eyes. “Ah! Hey!” Stan protested, pushing Ford away from him as he blinked the painful light out. “What’s the big idea here, poindexter?!”

“S-sorry, I just had to make sure you weren’t…” Ford trailed off, a brief look of fear flashing over his features before he quickly shook it out of his head. “Uh… i-it’s nothing. Come in, come in,” he motioned to the next room, swiftly walking into it as Stan followed, quite confused about his brother’s apparently frantic manner.

“Uh, you gonna explain what’s going on here?” he asked with something of a worried frown. “You’re acting like Mom after her tenth cup of coffee.”

“Listen,” Ford spun around intently, gripping a burgundy book with a golden six fingered hand on its cover tightly. “There isn’t much time. I’ve made huge mistakes and I don’t know who I can trust anymore. What I’ve done could end up putting the entire universe at jeopardy and for all I know it might be too late to stop even that.”

Stan paused upon hearing this, his concern turning into surprise as he looked at his distraught brother with wide eyes. While he had no real clue about what Ford was talking about, he still acted against his better judgement and placed a hand on his shoulder, hoping that he could offer him some kind of much-needed emotional support. “Hey, uh, easy there. Let’s talk this through, ok?”

Ford shook his head bitterly, almost smiling sardonically though not quite. “I’m afraid this isn’t something that can simply be ‘talked through’, Stanley… Instead… I have something to show you. Something that you won’t believe.”

“Look, I’ve been around the world, ok?” Stan remarked dryly. “I’ve seen more crazy shit in my time than you probably have sitting here in this comfy cabin of yours. Whatever it is, I’ll understand.”

“There is nothing about this I understand,” Stan said stiffly as him and Ford stood in the shadow of the massive machine in the basement. By all accounts it looked like something out of a bizarre sci-fi dream, with its incredible metallic structure and the arrangement of various gemstones fixated to its edges. Fortunately though, despite Stan’s absolute bewilderment by it, Ford was quick to explain.

“It’s a trans-universal gateway,” he began, sending the portal something of a bitter glare in light of all it had helped take from him. “A punched hole through a weak spot in our dimension. I created it to unlock the mysteries of the universe, but it could just as easily be harnessed for terrible destruction. That’s why I shut it down and hid my journals, which explained how to operate it. There’s only one journal left, and you are the only person I can trust to take it, Stanley.” With this, the researcher handed his first and final journal off to his brother, his expression deeply sincere, pleading almost as he continued. “I have something to ask of you. Remember our plans to sail around the world on a boat?” Stan couldn’t help but smile, hope filling his expression and his heart for the first time in years at the mention of the mention of his long-lost childhood dream. A dream that Ford was all too quick to shoot right to the ground once more. “Take this book, get on a boat, and sail as far away as you can!” he demanded urgently. “To the edge of the Earth! Bury it where no one can find it!”

For a moment, Stan was completely dumbfounded, especially as Ford turned away and stepped towards the portal without sparing him another word. But after his initial shock wore of, absolute rage replaced it instead, because how dare Ford tell him to come all the way up here just to take some dumb book and hide it far away, how dare Ford hardly even consider the possibility that they could use this chance meeting to reconcile again after all these years, how dare Ford get his hopes up for them being actual brothers again, only to dash them all so openly and so completely. “T-That’s it?” Stan spat harshly, glaring at his brother in absolute disbelief. “You finally wanna see me after ten years and its to tell me to get as far away from you as possible?!”

“Stanley, you don’t understand what I’m up against,” Ford rationalized frenetically. “What I’ve been through!”

“No, you don’t understand what I’ve been through!” Stan countered fiercely. “I’ve been to prison in three different countries! I once had to chew my way out of the trunk of a car! You think you’ve got problems?! I’ve got a mullet, Stanford! Meanwhile, where have you been? Livin’ it up in your fancy house in the woods and selfishly hoarding your college money because you only care about your damn self.”

“I’m selfish?” Ford scoffed, completely appalled at such an accusation. “I’m selfish, Stanley?! How can you say that after you cost me my dream school!? I’m giving you a chance to do the first worthwhile thing in your entire life and you won’t even listen!”

“Well, you listen to this: you want me to get rid of this dumb book so badly? Fine,” Stan growled, pulling a lighter out of his pocket and striking it as he held the flame right underneath journal 1. “I’ll get rid of it right now!”

“No!” Ford gasped, launching forward in an attempt to grab the book out of Stan’s hands before it could catch fire. “You don’t understand!”

“You said you wanted me to have it, so I’ll do whatever the hell I want with it!” Stan contested, yanking the journal back from him, even as Ford continued to struggle desperately for it.

“My research!” Ford cried just as the fire started to hit the journal. Unable to bear the sight of everything he had worked so hard for go up in flames, he did the only thing he could think of. In a fit of building panic that finally rushed to the surface at that moment, Ford pounced at Stan, who easily tripped his much less physically adept brother up before taking the journal and running back towards the nearby lab with Ford in hot pursuit. “Stanley! Give it back!”

“You want it back?!” Stan snapped as Ford roughly shoved him against the portal’s control panel. “You’re gonna have to try harder than that!” Of course, what neither of them noticed as they continued their heated physical struggle was that, in their carelessness, they had slammed against several of the key buttons that activated the portal, and in the midst of their furious fighting, they hardly even noticed as it began to roar to life in the other room. “You left me behind, you jerk!” Stan shouted as he pulled his hardest against the journal. “It was supposed to be us forever! But then you went and ruined my life!”

“You ruined your own life!” Ford shot back, acting on impulse alone as he kicked Stan squarely in the chest. It was enough to get his hands off the journal for sure, but it also inadvertently ended up knocking Stan right into the portal’s operating console. Or rather, the glowing, red hot symbol emblazoned on its side.

Stan let out a sharp howl of agony as his back slammed into the mark, which burned him instantly upon contact and branded itself heavily upon his skin. The pain felt so intense that it was practically white hot as Stan collapsed to the ground, anguished tears pricking in his eyes though he refused to let them fall amidst his continued outrage. All the same, Ford could only watch in newfound shock as his brother writhed in pain on the ground before him, knowing that he was completely responsible for this horrific accident. “Stanley!” he cried fearfully, unsure of what to even to do help him. “Oh my gosh! I-I’m so sorry! Are you alri-”

Ford was abruptly cut off by a sudden left hook as Stan jumped upward, still reeling in pain from the burn on his back, though he hardly let that stop him now. After all, he had been holding back years of frustration and fury towards his brother; as far as he was concerned, there was no better time to let it all out than right there and right now. “Some brother you turned out to be!” Stan growled bitterly as Ford stumbled backwards, tripping over the portal switch, though he was quick to catch himself, ignoring its ever-intensifying glow. “You care more about your dumb old mysteries than your family? Well then you can have them!” With this outraged proclamation, Stan shoved the journal into Ford’s arms hard, not noticing as he pushed him over the line on the ground before the portal. And sure enough, as soon as the researcher was over it, the portal’s gravitational pull began dragging him up in the air towards it, much to the shared alarm of both brothers. “W-whoa! Hey, what’s goin’ on?!” Stan exclaimed as he ran forward a bit, especially as Ford let out a terrified cry of distress as he drew ever closer towards the portal’s all-encompassing light.

“S-Stanley!” he shouted, desperately struggling to tether himself back down to the ground and away from the portal, for he now knew exactly where it led. And, considering everything, it was no place that he ever wanted to go to. “Stanley, help me!”

“W-what do I do?!” Stan exclaimed, anxiously looking around for any way to stop this amidst his practically paralyzing shock.

“D-Do something!” Ford begged, flailing wildly in the air as his lab coat began to be sucked into the portal behind him, the rest of him quickly going right along with it. Which meant that, even if there was something Stan could do, it would be far too late. “Stanely!” he cried, knowing he had only seconds left as he threw the journal as far away from him as he could. “Please! Tell Rose Quartz I’m sor-”

The researcher never got to finish this final plea. For in a blinding flash of light, the portal swallowed him completely, whisking him away to whatever nightmares awaited on the other side. The force of this explosion of energy was enough to knock Stan back towards the other and of the room, the journal flying somewhere behind him. And when the light faded and everything had settled, he was able to gather his bearings only enough to notice two things: the portal was shutting itself off upon this great explosion of power.

And his brother was gone.

“S-Stanford?” Stan asked quietly, his entire body trembling from the lingering pain on his back as he slowly picked himself up. Indeed, the only thing of Ford that remained in the room where his glasses, which must have fallen off and landed near the portal in all of the chaos. But all the same, the realization of what had just happened was enough to shake Stan out of his initial shell-shock and right into frantic, distraught action. “Stanford! Come back! I-I didn’t mean it!” The last of the energy was fading from the portal as Stan reached it switch, and even despite yanking it as hard as he could, the machine remained devoid of any newfound activity. “I just got him back! I can’t lose him again!” he cried desperately, doing everything he could to try to get some kind of reaction from the portal, some kind of hope that Ford was still somehow within his reach. “Augh! Come on! Stanford!”

Stan froze as he heard only his own voice echo through the portal’s empty center, which Ford was now completely lost to. And at that moment, the reality of it all came crashing down at him all at once; his brother was gone, and all because of his own frustration and foolishness. For in the thoughtless heat of the moment, he had pushed Ford over that line and into that portal, launching him into whatever unknown, distant dimension it likely led to. Honestly, for all Stan knew, Ford’s life could have ended the moment he passed through the now-defunct machine, a thought that certainly terrified him, but an actual possibility nonetheless.

There was simply no way to know where or how his brother was, which was why the most Stan could really think to do was retrieve journal 1 from the floor and frantically flip through its pages, hoping that it provided some kind of answer. However, he was quick to find that its information was fractured and incomplete, the tail end of the book only referencing that its chronicles were continued in some unknown second journal. A rush of despair filled Stan as he realized he had no idea what to do about any of this, especially with only the scattered bits and pieces of instructions he had at his disposal. Yet he didn’t have much of a chance to think about what he could possibly do before the elevator in the lab suddenly burst open, a large, pink-haired woman rushing out of it and running into the portal room with wide eyes of alarm.

“Stanford!” she cried, clearly distraught as she came to stand before the portal, not even noticing Stan’s presence as he hung back towards the other end of the room, watching the woman in surprised confusion. “N-no… H-he… he didn’t… H-he said he was only going to… I didn’t think…  How could he just… leave like this?”

“Uh…?” The woman gasped as she overheard Stan behind her, spinning around swiftly to face him. He flinched under the tearful, wide-eyed intensity of her gaze, though the way she spoke his brother’s name, so softly and so painfully, was what rattled him more than anything else.

“S-Stanford?” she asked, her movements slow and uncertain as she approached him. “What… w-why do you look so… How did you…?” she paused, bewilderment washing over her expression before stark realization and deep suspicion filled it instead. “Wait… you’re not… w-who… who are you? And why do you look so much like… like him?”

Stan didn’t answer right away, mostly since this woman’s sudden appearance and confusing line of questioning had caught completely off guard amidst his still ongoing shock from what had just happened with the portal. Nonetheless, he answered her rather stiffly and awkwardly all the same. “Who, you mean Ford? Uh, that’s cause I’m his twin brother: Stanley.”

“T-twin… brother?” she asked, apparently baffled by even the idea alone. “Stanford never… he didn’t say anything about having a brother…”

“Ugh, why does that not surprise me?” Stan huffed, a bit of his former bitterness towards Ford returning upon hearing this. “And who exactly are you supposed to be, pinky? You can’t be his girlfriend; there’s no chance in hell a nerd like him would ever be able to land a looker like you, so what, are you like his secretary or therapist or something?”

“Wha—no,” the woman shook her head, still clearly confused. “I’m Rose Quartz, leader of the Crystal Gems. My teammates and I are… o-or rather… we were close friends and research partners with Stanford… But now…” She trailed off as she looked back at the portal before turning back to Stan intently. “Please, tell me what happened here. Did Ford really just… walk into that awful machine willingly?! Even though he knows exactly what and who is waiting on the other side of it?!”

“Uh, he didn’t just walk into it,” Stan remarked, scratching the back of his neck guiltily. “I sort of—I-I mean, he kinda… fell into it… on accident?”

Fortunately, Rose seemed to buy this lie, though all the same, her lovely expression marred with grief and misery it fully hit her that Ford was seemingly lost forever. Tears, ones that were lightly sparkling with what looked like some kind of magic, flowed down her cheeks as she let out a broken, despondent sob. She shook her head sadly as she took a step towards the deactivated portal, looking towards the copy of the gemstone resting over her own navel that was positioned near its base. “T-this is all my fault…” she muttered morosely. “If only I had shown up sooner… I-if only we hadn’t built this… disaster in the first place, then maybe he’d still be here… But I wasn’t and we did… and now… he’s gone…”

“Uh… look,” Stan said, unable to keep himself from empathizing with the mournful pink Gem as he shared much of her heartbreak himself at the moment, though he didn’t let his show as clearly. “I… I don’t know what things were like between you and my brother, but, uh… don’t worry. I’m gonna do everything I can to open this thing back up and get him outta there, not matter how hard it is or how long it might take.”

Rose jolted at this, her tears practically freezing as she looked back to Stan in apt alarm. “W-what?”

“Um… I said I’m gonna figure out a way to get this machine working and bring Ford back,” Stan repeated, rather surprised by her suddenly intense manner. “He left one of his creepy journals here with me, so I guess all I gotta do is find the other ones and then they’ll tell me how to open that portal thing again and he’ll be as good as saved. R-right?”

The pink Gem’s expression was severe as she turned to face him fully, her sadness fading away into authority as she stood, towering over him almost menacingly. “No,” she said, her gentle tone strangely rigid and harsh. “This portal is never going to be opened again. Not my you, or by me, or by anybody else.”

“W-well what about Ford?!” Stan snapped in sudden anger and disbelief. “We can’t just leave him on the other side of that thing! I thought you said you were his friend, why wouldn’t you wanna help him?!”

“I do want to help him!” Rose retorted earnestly. “More than anything else! But we can’t. This machine is a huge risk to this entire planet! Starting it up again could result in the end of this world, of all worlds! For centuries, I’ve taken up the responsibility to protect the Earth and everything on it and that comes first. Above everything… or everyone else.”

“But that’s my brother in there!” Stan exclaimed hotly. “He may be a stubborn know-it-all who left me behind years ago, but he’s still my family! And I’m not about to walk out on him like he walked out on me; I’m stayin’ right here and doing everything I can to get that portal up and running again. I don’t care how risky it might be or what it might cost, I’m saving my brother! Whether you or anyone else likes it or not!”

Rose took in a deep, evening breath at this, her manner cold but not hostile as she stared down at Stan intently, firmly asserting her position as intently as she could. “I can’t—I won’t let you do this. If there was any other way to save Stanford then I would take it in an instant. But as it stands, this portal must remain shut down, it not destroyed entirely. And I’m prepared to do whatever I must to keep it from causing any more harm than it already has.”

“S-so what?” Stan shout back defiantly. “You’re gonna try and stop me, pinky? Is that how this is gonna be?! What makes you think you’ll even be able to keep me from blowing that damn portal wide open, huh?”

“Because,” Rose said staunchly, calmly even. “I know where the third journal is. It’s hidden somewhere safe and secure, a place only I know about. And without it, you’ll never be able to get this portal running again.”

Stan took pause at this, his jaw dropping in surprise at such a pertinent revelation. Of course, his shock only lasted for a moment before it exploded into desperate fury once again. “Y-you have to give me that book!” he shouted almost pleadingly. “It’s the only way I’ll ever be able to save him, please, just-”

“No,” the pink Gem harshly cut him off. “He asked me to keep that journal from falling into the wrong hands, and that’s exactly what I intend on doing. It’s the least I can do for him after… all this…”

“B-but I need it! You don’t understand, I-”

“No, you don’t understand!” Rose interupted intensely. “I’ve given up so much to keep this planet safe; I refuse to let it meet its end as long as I’m around to stop it. This portal is far too dangerous to even exist. It was a mistake to build it. We should have never tried to tamper with forces we didn’t understand, but we did. And while its too late to take that back now, its not too late to keep those forces at bay. Even if that means… even if that means we’ll never see Stanford again…”

By now, Stan’s fists were clenched so tightly at his sides that they were shaking. Still, he kept his violent urges held back against the pink Gem, though he was more than fine with letting his outraged words fly freely. “Fine! If you won’t help me, then I’ll figure out a way to do it without those other two stupid journals! You can try to stop me all you want, pinky, but I’m not giving up until Ford is back here safe and sound, even if it takes the rest of my life! And no one, especially not you, is gonna keep me from bringing my brother back home!”

Rose sighed, clearly exasperated, though for whatever reason, she didn’t react in anger as she simply walked past Stan, intending on leaving. “There really is no changing your mind, is there?” she asked, glancing back over her shoulder at him. “Well, that’s alright. Go ahead and do whatever you feel like you need to. But you should know that I’m going to do whatever I have to do to keep that journal away from you, to keep you from reopening this portal, and to keep this planet safe. And… I’m sure that if Stanford was still here… he’d do the exact same thing.”

Without another word, the pink Gem left, her resolve every bit as clear as Stan’s as he remained standing before the portal, journal 1 still held tightly in his grasp and guilt still weighing heavy on his heart.

Guilt that would linger over him like a constant shadow for the next thirty years.

The next several weeks went by in a dreary, exhausting blur. Stan spent every waking moment down in that basement lab, pouring over every tiny piece of information journal 1 had to offer on the portal as he tried everything he could to get it up and running again. Unfortunately, even with the notes that he had, his knowledge on any of the technology or science behind the machine was next to none, making things all the more difficult. His nights were sleepless, lost to worries and anxiety and remorse and so many other emotions it was hard to keep track of them all. The one upside to all of this was that he hadn’t heard from that pesky Rose Quartz woman since their first encounter, though the thought of her alone was enough to practically enrage him. To think that she had the very information that he needed to reactive the portal and get Ford back, but she refused to relinquish it out of some nonsensical altruistic duty of hers! Certainly, Stan reasoned, that in light of her staunch refusal to so much as even offer a hint of advice in the matter, Rose must not have cared about Ford as much as she claimed to. Then again, Stan hardly felt like he was much better on that front, seeing as how the only reason why Ford was now gone was entirely because of him.

Still, Stan knew that he couldn’t give up, no matter how impossible his odds were proving to be. Because giving up meant never seeing his brother again, and despite all of the mistakes they had made and the bad blood between them, that was one thought he simply couldn’t bear.

Yet even despite his resolve, as the weeks went by, Stan grew weary. Winter was finally starting to ease up somewhat, but that didn’t mean Ford’s house was any less drab and lonely. With most of his time spent working on the portal, Stan didn’t really get much of a chance to clean the hectically cluttered place up, though it wasn’t like he hadn’t lived in squalor before. Rather, what bothered him was that the already rather sparse supply of food in his brother’s cabinets was starting to run dangerously low. Which meant that Stan really had no other choice: he’d have to make a trip into the nearby town for supplies.

Journal 1 had already made mention of the Crystal Gems’ temple base just up the hill from Ford’s house, so Stan made sure to steer clear of it as he made his way downtown. Gravity Falls was apparently a rather small community, and he knew well that rumors traveled fast in small towns, much as they had in Glass Shard Beach, which meant that he’d have to keep a low profile, lest anyone become suspicious. While he didn’t really have a criminal record in Oregon yet, the last thing he wanted was to be reported to any police and hauled away, leaving the portal forever shut down and Ford forever trapped inside it. No one really seemed to pay him much mind, however, as he arrived at a small convenience store to grab a loaf of bread, the most he believed he could reasonably afford on what little money he had to his name.

“Just the bread then, stranger?” the elderly woman at the counter smiled warmly to him as he put it down. “That’ll be 99 cents.”

Stan simply nodded, reaching into his pocket to find only to find a packet of sugar, a paper clip, and a single peso. Nowhere near enough to buy anything really, much to his disappointment.

“Hey, that’s no stranger!” Stan flinched upon hearing a middle-aged woman behind him speak up. “That must be the mysterious science guy who lives in the woods!”

“You mean the one who’s always hangin’ out with those four magical women?” a widely smiling young teenager asked. “He almost never comes around here!”

By now, a curious crowd had started to gather around Stan, who simply tried his best to conceal himself by pulling his hood tighter. Clearly, these people were mistaking him for Ford, an idea he really didn’t want going around, considering the circumstances. “Uh, n-no, no, you’ve got the wrong guy,” he shook his head, trying his best to drive the attention away from him, though still the bystanders persisted.

“I’ve heard some strange stories about that old shack!” another teenager, and a quite awkward one at that, quipped.

“Yeah! Mysterious lights and spooky experiments,” the store’s young employee regaled, much to the rest of the crowd’s interest.

“They say it is full of magic and mystery!” a short-statured woman whose hair was in a large bun remarked brightly.

“Uh, i-it’s really not-” Stan protested, growing more and more nervous by the second.

“Gosh, I’d pay anything to see what kind of shenanigans you get up to in there,” the clerk’s husband said, putting an arm around his wife.

“Oh, me too!” the red-haired woman from before exclaimed. “Do you give any tours?”

“No, really, I-” Stan stopped short, glancing down at the severe lack of money in his hand as a newfound idea came to him. It was a risky one, given what lay buried just underneath the house, but he had find a way to be able to afford the essentials somehow. Which meant that at this point, he really didn’t have too many other options. “Um… y-yes! I do give tours! Ten, n-no, fifteen bucks a person!”

While he hadn’t expected too many takers to agree to such a high price, Stan was reasonably surprised when all of the townsfolk in the store eagerly cheered and presented their cash to him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen so much money, much less money that was intended for him. Money that he’d be more than happy to take if it meant keeping both himself and his mission to rescue his brother alive.

“Sir!” the first woman spoke up with an excited smile. “What did you say your name was again, you man of mystery?”

“Oh, uh, Stan…ford,” he said, somewhat uncertain at first as he quickly convinced him that he had done this before. He had taken up plenty of false names in the past, and while this particular one belonged to his brother, he knew just how much trouble it could keep him out of. So he took it. “Stanford Pines.”

With their money already in hand, Stan lead the eager crowd of townsfolk over to Ford’s house, escorting them into the foyer, which was packed with his brother’s impressive collection of scattered tech and various notes. Certainly if there was anything that would impress this excitable group, it would be found here. “Step right up, folks, to, uh… a world of, um… enchantment or whatever,” Stan said, somewhat uncertain about how to present any of this. Still, he grabbed the first thing he saw, which was some small, strange readio-like device, the functions and purpose of which he had no idea. “Behold, uh, the… nerdy science box.”

The red-haired woman leaned forward a bit to get a better look at the device, only for a sudden spark to burst out of it and strike it squarely in her eyes, making it go lazy before shutting entirely. “Augh! My eye!” she cried, reeling back in pain as the other townsfolk gasped in surprise.

“Oh! Uh, I-I can assure you that’s in no way permanent!” Stan quickly promised, though he had no real way of knowing that himself.

“I paid fifteen dollars for this?!” the woman scoffed, sending him an angry glare as the rest of the crowd began to mumble their disapproval amongst themselves.

“Uhh…” Stan glanced around, desperate to salvage this in any way he could, especially as he heard the first whispers of refunds among the group. Refunds that he couldn’t really afford to give, all things considered. Fortunately though, quick thinking was what he did best. “Y-you’re lucky you weren’t part of the last tour group…” he began, somewhat unsteadily as he grabbed the nearby scientific skeleton and dressed it up in a tropical shirt and shades. “They never made it out alive! …R-right?”

A beat of awkward silence passed at this, but fortunately it was soon broken by the slow-starting laughter of his audience. As it steadily grew into genuine amusement, Stan couldn’t help but let out a small sigh of relief as he realized that this could work. This could be just the of break in his almost constant string of bad luck he needed.

So he ran with it. It took a roughly a week for him to figure everything out, but with a little time and a little elbow grease, he began his latest, most promising business venture yet. After tying up the house, setting up ample flashy signage all around it, and using what he had on hand to create as many bizarre attractions as he could, Stan formally opened what he had decided to call the Murder Hut (though its name would eventually be changed to the Mystery Shack upon the suggestion of a certain purple Gem). The tourist trap did exactly as it advertised, luring people in from all over town and even beyond it to see the oddities put on display. Fortunately for Stan, Gravity Falls already had something of a reputation of being a strange little town, so the folklore basically wrote itself, allowing him to profit off of it even more. And profit he did. In just a matter of months, he had accumulated more money that he had to his name his entire life, money that he put to good use by paying Ford’s bills and keeping things up and running so he could continue on in his still quite tireless mission to rescue him.

If he was perfectly honest with himself, Stan found the tourist trap business to be by far the easiest thing he had ever tried his hand at; it played well to his ability to lie and scam and fool the masses into believing anything he said. After all, it was all part of the fun, so there was really no harm in it. Truly, this was a fresh start, one that came about from the very worst of circumstances, but proved to work out well enough in the end. Still, he made sure to cover his tracks well, formally burying any remnants of his harrowing former life in the remains of a faked car crash, his fake IDs and former crimes tucked away in a hidden box inside his newly created office. In fact, as time went on and his profits and his business grew, there were points where it felt like the mistakes of his tattered, poverty-stricken past didn’t even exist at all.

Still, not all was completely well. After all, Rose Quartz still resided up at the temple just a few minutes up the hill from the shack, and every single time her and Stan happened to encounter each other, tension and conflict usually ensued. Their disagreement over the portal situation was something neither of them could compromise on, to the point that their bitterness towards each other, as well as their harden resolves remained firmly in place for years. They were never able to reconcile over it, even as Stan ended up hiring a young musician who was infatuated with Rose, the other Crystal Gems somehow lost their memories of the entire ordeal, even as Stan ended up developing a close friendship with the small purple one, even as Rose herself gave up her form to bring a half-human child into the world. The contention between them always remained, just about up until the very end of the pink Gem’s existence. And really, considering all of the toil and frustration he had endured over the years as a result of having to do it all on his own, Stan couldn’t really say he held any regret over their rigid relationship. Perhaps, in different circumstances, maybe they could have been on good terms, just Rose apparently had been with Ford, a sentiment that the pink Gem had expressed to Stan herself just a few days before her end, but when it was all said and done, mere sentiments were nowhere close to enough.

Still, even despite Rose’s opposition, Stan remained hard at work on the portal for the next 30 years, to the point that he had developed a fairly steady routine. By day, he’d operate the Mystery Shack, conning tourists and raking in profits without hitch. But at night, he’d make the trip down to the basement, pouring over Ford’s old notes, teaching himself advanced scientific concepts, and working tirelessly towards one single essential goal:

Bringing his brother home.

Present Day

“I couldn’t risk letting anyone learning the truth and sabotaging my mission,” Stan said as he finally concluded his long tale. “So I lied to everyone: the town, my family, you three,” he nodded over to the Gems, who looked less than pleased with everything he had just heard. Even so, the conman decided to deal with them later as he instead addressed his nibblings. “Your parents, even you kids. I gotta admit it’s… been rough, working on this thing all these years all by myself. But in the end, I guess it all finally came together.”

“Came together?” Ford scoffed in appalment. “You could have destroyed our entire reality with this machine! How in the world can you actually stand there and be proud of that fact, Stanley?!”

“Well I would be proud if you would just thank me for finally coming through for you after all these years,” Stan retorted, crossing his arms. “But I guess that’s not good enough for you, is it, Ford? Should’ve expected that, seeing as how nothing ever is!”

The author was more than ready to shoot just as bitter of a retort right back at his brother, but before he could, Steven suddenly interjected. “Whoa, hey, wait!” the young gem implored fretfully. “You guys are brothers! A-and you’ve been apart for so long! You shouldn’t fight; instead you should be happy finally see each other again!”

“Yeah, that’s right!” Mabel added just as fervently. “Like I said earlier, you two gotta hug it out!”

“Pfft, yeah right,” Stan rolled his eyes with a cold scowl.

“Absolutely not,” Ford added, turning his nose up at his brother.

“…Well… at least they agree on something?” Steven shrugged, exchanging a concerned look with Mabel. At the same time, the young Gem happened to glance past her over at Dipper, who had said nothing since Stan had finished his story. Instead, he sat, his gaze fixed on the ground and his expression tight with what almost looked like conflict mingled with frustration, as if he didn’t know what to really make of everything he had just heard. And of course, in light of it all, his apparently bitter silence was more than enough to make Steven worry. “Um… Dipper? Are… are you ok?”

Dipper flinched at this, briefly glancing up at both the young Gem as well as his sister who looked to him with equal concern. Concern that, considering where he currently stood with both of them in light of what had happened in the moments preceding the portal’s activation, he really didn’t want. “Uh, yeah, I’m fine,” he quickly brushed the matter aside, still not saying much to either of them as he turned his attention to Stan in slight shame. “Um… Grunkle Stan? I, uh… I’m… sorry I didn’t believe you…”

“That’s ok, kid,” Stan nodded with a small smile of acceptance. “I probably wouldn’t have believed me either.”

“Alright, so now we know about everything that apparently happened,” Pearl interjected with an exasperated sigh. “But that still doesn’t explain we don’t remember any part of it that involved us! Right?”

“Right,” Garnet said as Amethyst simply nodded absently. “Our memories are still missing and we still need to get to the bottom of what happened to them.”

“So its time for one of you to start explaining things on that front,” Pearl said, glaring between Stan and Ford. “Particularly you, Stan, seeing as how you seemed to have apparently known something about this all these years!”

“And you didn’t bother to even tell us…” Amethyst muttered despondently, still averting the conman’s gaze as she scowled at the floor. “Just like everything else, I guess…”

Stan hesitated, frowning sympathetically to the purple Gem before he addressed her teammate’s concerns. “What, you think I have something to do with what happened to your memories? Please,” he scoffed. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about who or what jacked them, and I definitely don’t know why. But if you had wanted to talk to someone who might have known about all that, then you should have asked Rose before she up and left you three on your own.”

The Gems couldn’t hold back a collective gasp upon hearing this, all three of them silent for a moment as they exchange an appalled, yet slightly nervous glance. Steven shared in their stark concern, looking to them with wide eyes as he noticed just how doubtful they all seemed to be. Doubt that perhaps wasn’t reserved for what the conman had just said, but rather for what their beloved leader might have hidden from them for so very long.

Still, the Gems had no time to even question this line of logic before the lab monitor blared out once more with a proclamation from Agent Powers from above that quickly startled the entire group below. “I heard talking! It’s coming from downstairs!”

“Oh no! Its too late!” Stan exclaimed in apt alarm. “Those agents are coming for us!”

“Aw man, I was so spellbound by your dramatic tale I forgot all about those dudes!” Soos lamented.

“W-what do we do?” Mabel asked anxiously.

“Finally Gem-up and kick their butts is what we do,” Amethyst growled, a glare still dominating her expression as she pulled her whip out.

“We can’t,” Garnet asserted authoritatively. “Remember Amethyst, they’re after us too.”

“Wait a second… remember… that’s it! I think I know a way we might be able to defeat those agents!” Dipper exclaimed with a gasp of realization, reaching into his bookbag and pulling out the memory gun they had all taken from the museum after shutting the Society of the Blind Eye down. It had been a precaution that the Gems had suggested, though they wanted really no parts in handling the device themselves so Dipper had volunteered to do so instead. And it turned out this was a wise move, seeing as how it could certainly be put to good use for getting the agents off their tail now.

“Of course!” Ford grinned as Dipper handed the memory gun over to him and smiling every bit as brightly, clearly glad for the author’s excited adulation. “I don’t know how you managed to get ahold of one of these, but this is perfect! If I can just amplify the signal to a radio headset frequency…” Ford trailed off, doing just that as he connected the device to the radio tower he knew was above ground and working quickly since he knew well that the agents were on the approach. “Alright, that should do it. Now, everyone, plug your ears and get down!”

“That won’t be necessary,” Garnet interjected quickly before looking to the young Gem beside her. “Steven, you know what to do.”

“Right,” he nodded, throwing his arms out wide as a large pink bubble surrounded the entire group. Upon seeing this, Ford paused, his jaw dropping in apt surprise at the sight of the all-too familiar sphere, though the amazement and curiosity on his expression only seemed to grow as he glanced back down to the young Gem who had created it. Curiosity that was not lost on Stan as he noticed his brother’s marveling expression, one that he instantly understood and instantly disapproved of.

There was no time to address it however, as the blast from the memory gun charged up, unbeknownst to the agents still congregated outside the shack. “Sir, look! There’s a hidden door behind the vending machine!” Trigger exclaimed as he ran out of the house to meet Powers.

“Excellent,” the agent grinned in satisfaction at the near end of this lengthy game of cat and mouse. “Get me Washington on line 1! I’ve been practicing sounds of excitement for this very occasion. Hey, do you hear that?” he asked in reference to the steadily growing whirling sound, one that quickly grew to deafening levels as a heavy flash of energy poured out of the antenna hidden within the shack’s totem pole. The group in the basement was completely protected from its memory-wiping effects thanks to Steven’s bubble, but the agents above ground weren’t so lucky, as their sudden disorientation quickly proved.

“What? Where am I?” Powers asked as he placed a hand against his now throbbing head. “Why am I standing in front of some goofy, fun knick-knack house?”

“Stand down, gentlemen!” Ford ordered as he came to stand on the porch before the agents, acting on the impromptu plan they had all quickly devised in the basement. “I’ve been sent with the latest intel from Washington,” he took out the papers Mabel had handed him right before walking out, filled with zany colorful pictures she had drawn. Still, even despite their random silliness, Ford kept a completely straight, authoritative manner as he continued. “According to this very real report, the power surges in Gravity Falls were actually due to radiation from an unreported meteor shower. As for the claims of ‘aliens’ in the town, the images you apparently have on file were traced back to some young local prankster, making them completely and utterly invalid. A total embarrassment for your whole department. Luckily, I’m here to take this mess off your hands, but I’ll need all of your… floppy disks and 8-tracks… right?”

“Uh, everything about this case is contained on this drive,” Powers said, presenting said flash drive, which Ford quickly took.

“Well, what are you waiting for, a kiss on the cheek?” Ford asked quite harshly. “Get out of here before I have your butts court-martialed!”

“Uh, y-yes, sir!” Powers exclaimed, saluting as he quickly turned to his fellow agents. “False alarm, everyone!”

The rest of the squadron swiftly followed this demand, packing up into their cars and helicopters and leaving the property once and for all. As soon as they were gone, Ford disposed of the flash drive by handing it off to Gompers, who readily took it in his mouth and chewed away before running off. With the coast clear, everyone hidden inside the shack was quick to emerge, the kids rushing forward first, all three of them in equal excitement over the impressive act the author had just put on.

“Great Uncle Stanford, that was amazing!” Mabel exclaimed with a wide smile.

“Yeah! You nearly had me believing all that stuff you were saying, and I know the truth!” Steven said just as brightly.

“Let’s not go crazy,” Stan spoke up dryly. “It was serviceable.”

Ford ignored his brother’s sardonic remark, instead taking in the kids’ praise somewhat bashfully as he let out a small chuckle. “Thank you, kids, but please, call me Ford.”

“Sure, thanks, G-Great Uncle Ford!” Dipper interjected, both anxiously and excitedly, still quite starstruck by the author himself as he pulled out a pen and notepad. “So, uh… Would you mind if I asked you a couple million questions about Gravity Falls?”

“Um, w-well, I… uh…” Ford trailed off, his smile fading as he glanced up towards the Gems, none of who were looking to him rather fondly. Luckily, before he really needed to say anything, Stan stepped in.

“Alright, kids, its been a long day,” the conman said, already starting to usher them away. “Me and my brother have a lot to talk about. Why don’t you hit the hay, huh?”

“B-but, it’s the author!” Dipper protested, rapidly clicking his pen. “I’ve been waiting so long to ask questions about-”

“I said hit the hay!” Stan snapped, pushing both of the twins into the house, much to Dipper’s disappointment in particular.

“The same goes for you, Steven,” Pearl said to the young Gem, gently motioning up to the temple. “A… a lot’s happened today and… um…”

“You need your rest,” Garnet finished, though it was clear her tone wasn’t as steady as it usually was. “In fact, we all do.” She placed firm hands on both of her teammates’ shoulders at this, leaving them with the implication that their night would involve much less rest and more intensive discussion on exactly what was unraveling here.

Steven wanted to say something to both his guardians and the author at this juncture, but he didn’t exactly know what. So instead, he let out a small, sad sigh, following their instructions as he began the trek back up to the temple. The Gems began to follow him, but before they could get to far, Ford hurried after them.

“Wait!” he exclaimed, pausing briefly as they turned to face him, their expressions still as distrustful and uncertain as they had been the moment he stepped out of the portal. Something that honestly didn’t surprise the author that much, given their lack of knowledge of their former friendship, though in a strange way, it still hurt him nonetheless. “Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, I-I…” he hesitated once more before dropping his voice down into a whisper only they could hear. “Is it true? Is she really gone?”

Pearl let out a sharp sigh at this, her glare deepening as she looked away from Ford fiercely. Amethyst still didn’t have much to say at all, which was why Garnet was the one to answer with only a solemn nod. A nod that, in a way, served to confirm what he had desperately not wanted to believe. “W-well then… I suppose the apology I had intended for her all these years will just have to pass along to all of you…” he continued with a remorseful frown. “I truly am sorry for everything that happened between us all those years ago. I made such a momentous mistake and I dragged you three and Rose into it right along with me. B-but… I intend to make up for the wrongs of the past in the present. I know you might not have much reason to trust me now, but I promise that I’ll do whatever it takes to help you three recover your lost memories. It’s the least I can do after… well, you know…”

The Gems were still silent upon hearing this, Amethyst hardly even paying much attention as she instead set her petulant sights on Stan in the distance, who only returned her thinly-veiled glare with a look of silent apologies that were nowhere near sufficient enough. Pearl briefly glanced up at Ford before wrapping her arms around herself tighter, closing her eyes as she refused to offer him so much as even a word. Which once again, left Garnet to be the team’s anchor, even if her manner was anything but strong and steadfast as it usually was when she let out her simple, yet sincere response. “Thank you,” she said, and with that, the Gems turned and began heading for the temple, leaving Ford with age-old regrets that only seemed to weigh all the heavier on him as he watched them go.

Of course, Stan was reminded of quite a few of his own regrets as Ford turned to him, tension filling both of their expressions as they knew they had much to sort out now. Aside from them, the only one still present was Soos, though he was quick to excuse himself in favor of leaving the incoming awkwardness behind. “Uh… I’ll just… let myself out…” the handyman said, though as he ran off, he was quick to excitedly dial is coworker up in order to fill her in. “Wendy, I’ve got something amazing to tell you. Clear the next fourteen hours!”

The Gems had sealed themselves away inside the temple ever since they got back, something that Steven honestly didn’t question that much as he got himself ready for bed. Still, the young Gem’s thoughts were far from quiet as he went about his normal routine, something that felt so strange in light of just how much had changed over the past several hours alone. However, it all came to a grinding halt the moment he happened to stop short and take a glance up at the picture of his mother hanging from the wall above the door.

From Stan and Ford’s respective recollections alone, Steven had managed to learn so much about Rose that he had never really known before. Of course, both of the brothers had told vastly different accounts based on their interactions with the pink Gem, one of them clearly viewing her very highly while the other one only held disdain towards her. And based on these two incredibly conflicting viewpoints, Steven was left not really knowing what to think at all.

On one hand, Rose and the other Crystal Gems had saved the earth from Homeworld. They protected humanity and still strove to do so. They curiously explored the mysteries of Gravity Falls alongside Ford, hoping to find tangible answers that could enlighten mankind. And yet… they had also unwittingly built an effective doomsday device, one that threatened the universe’s safety on more than one occasion. Even after learning about the machine’s true nature, based on what he had heard, it seemed to Steven like Rose didn’t really make any real efforts to try and fix this major mistake she was partially responsible for. The most she had ever really done was keep journal 3 away from Stan, but even that was a very touchy issue. For in doing so, she had effectively barred the conman from the information he needed to save his brother, which was, to the young Gem, a noble, selfless pursuit by all accounts, even despite the relative risks. A pursuit that Rose had fiercely, adamantly tried to stop up until her very end.

But then there was the implication that had left even the Gems reeling, that Rose might have known something about her teammates’ missing memories, that she might have even had something to do with their removal in the first place. It was something that Steven really didn’t want to believe, even despite the long-awaited answers it could possibly point towards if it was true. Because in all honesty, it just didn’t make sense. If Rose had cared about her fellow Gems and supported them as much as Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl always claimed, then why would she keep this part of the past hidden away from them? Why would she have left them in the dark for so long? Why would she have left them behind without even the faintest clue that a piece of each of their memories was missing, leaving them lost, confused, even fractured?

Steven shook his head, his brow furrowing in frustrated confusion as he headed to bed, finally looking away from the peaceful portrait of his mother. His mother, who always seemed to be at the center of so many mysteries that she had now become a mystery herself.

“Ugh, look at us,” Stan remarked as him and Ford stood side by-side in front of the downstairs mirror. The author had traded out his worn, ragged portal gear for more simpler attire: his favorite old tan lab coat over a red sweater and black pants. Yet even despite this shift in clothes, that didn’t mean the brothers didn’t look any less similar, even despite all of the years that had gone by. “When did we become old men?”

“You look like Dad,” Ford remarked with a bit of a wry smirk.

“Ugh, don’t say that,” the conman rolled his eyes, a hint of bemused disgust in his tone as both him and his brother broke out into a small bout of almost bittersweet laughter. Laughter that was, of course, all too quickly replaced with rigid formality once again.

“Ok, Stanley, here’s the deal,” Ford began with a small, somewhat tired sigh. “You can stay here for the rest of the summer to watch the kids. I’ll stay down in the basement and try to contain any remaining damage from the portal. But when the summer’s over, you give me my house back, you give me my name back, and this Mystery Shack junk is over forever. You got it?”

“You really aren’t gonna thank me, are you?” Stan asked, quite taken aback by all these rather harsh demands. Ford simply glanced downward, not even showing a hint of breaking his stoic, cold resolve on the matter, much to Stan’s frustration. “Fine,” he begrudgingly agreed, knowing that he didn’t really have much of a choice. “But on one condition: you stay away from the kids. They’ve already gotten in way over their heads getting involved with all this Gem stuff, and I don’t want them in any more danger. Because as far as I’m concerned, they’re the only family I have left.”

Stan made his point quite clear as he turned and began to head upstairs at this, though he did briefly stop short to glance back at his brother again. “Oh, and one more thing,” he said, his tone still firm and unyielding. “Don’t think I didn’t notice how you looked at Steven down in the basement earlier. Just so you know, Sixer, he’s not Rose. He never has been and he never will be, and he doesn’t need you poking and prying at him trying to figure out how that works. He already gets enough of that from the Gems. So don’t be trying to always compare him to her like they do. Because whether you like it or not, Steven’s way better than Rose ever was.”

Ford said nothing in response to this, his glare sharpening just the slightest bit, though Stan didn’t see it for too long as he turned and continued on his way. In fact, neither of them made much of an effort to say anything else at all, for really, what could be said? So much had changed over the past thirty years, but for as much as had shifted, so much of it had also stayed the same, especially between the two brothers. Even despite the years of separation and doubt, they were still back the same place they had been when their close knit bond had fallen apart on that miserable night when they were teenagers. They were still so far away from the camaraderie and companionship they had always found in each other when they were simple, innocent children, cheerfully running across a sunny shore that now only existed in the bittersweet past.

A past that held no place in the now-tarnished present and the uncertain, unsteady future.

“Did you hear what they said?” Mabel asked Dipper as she stood near the attic door, trying her best to overhear what their uncles had been discussing. “I think Grunkle Ford said they’re gonna buy us puppies made of ice cream. Might be wishful thinking though…”

“Uh huh,” Dipper absently replied as he continued working on patching the pieces of the torn photos of himself and Lapis up, a project he had undertaken for the past several weeks and seemed quite deadest on now for some reason. “That’s nice.”

Mabel frowned at this, stepped away from the door as she noticed her brother’s refusal to so much as even glance up at her in his irritated manner. “Uh… w-well, aren’t you excited? I mean, you’ve always wanted to meet the author, and um, bam! Come to find out he’s our grunkle so… that’s pretty cool, i-isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is,” Dipper said, letting out something of a small sigh of annoyance as he continued taping picture scraps together. “It’s… really cool…”

“Um… Dipper?” Mabel began without really thinking, wanting to ask him exactly what seemed to be bothering him. Though given that she already had a pretty strong hunch as to what the problem was here, her nerves held her back as she went off on a different tangent entirely. “You… you don’t think we’ll turn out like Stan and Ford… d-do you?”

Dipper finally glanced up at this, stilling his progress on the pictures as he looked to his sister in slight confusion. “W-what do you mean?”

Mabel let out a worried sigh as she flopped down onto her bed, not hiding her growing concern this time. “I mean… they used to be best friends, but then they got all stupid. C-can… can you promise me you won’t get stupid?”

Dipper hesitated, something that alone made Mabel’s heart sink, though the flash of what almost looked like appalled anger at her question that ran across his expression did so even more. Still, whatever he might have wanted to say, he kept it to himself, instead simply looking down as he began putting the picture scraps away for the night and answered her in an unresolved mutter. “S-sure… Whatever you say…”

Mabel took in a deep breath at this, guilt filling her slowly as she kept her gaze towards him, even as he reached to turn the light out. “Uh… w-well, I’m… glad to hear that…” she said with a weak, fake smile. “Good night, bro-bro.”

“Yeah…” Dipper sighed as he lay down and purposefully turned away from her, the dejection in his tone clear. “Good night…”

Mabel sighed herself as she set her sights on the ceiling above, restlessness overtaking her amidst her ever-growing Fear. Fear that things were so incredibly possibly different now that it was almost impossible describe everything that had just changed. That tension and anxiety would wash over the tide of togetherness and fun they had known all summer. That the past would soon repeat itself in the present, no matter how much they tried to avoid it.

And that perhaps it had already begun to do just that.

[zhangedward]

Scoe 10x Cat Urine Astounding Ideas

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How To Stop Neutered Male Cat From Spraying In House

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How To Remove Cat Spray Smell

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[ahnsael]

Woke up today to an email from a fellow manager, asking if I could call her as soon as I got the email. She sent it at about 9:30 this morning...I didn’t get up until almost 5:00pm.

But this is a manager I have enormous respect for, so I called. She wanted to meet “anywhere but at work” to talk about some drama that went down (this being my night off, the subject of the conversation was managing at our own casino tonight). So we met at another local casino to talk things out over a drink.

One of the other managers (who very few respect -- he doesn’t have mine) went off on one of my shift’s employees on Tuesday night over nothing at all (she was doing as her department manager has told her to do). I gave this employee’s direct boss a heads up over the situation, and she sent an email telling him that he had crossed the line, and that he owed the staff member an apology.

He sent an email back chastising her and the employee, and demanding an apology from HER. The manager she worked with today was nervous that things were going to get ugly when the jerk manager came in, so he recommended that she leave early, and she agreed in an effort to diffuse the situation. The jerk manager came in, looked for her, and then commented that she had left “with her tail between her legs.”

Now, she’s our only female manager. Once she heard about this, she knew that she HAD to stand up for herself -- she couldn’t be seen as the “woman running away” from the wannabe “manly-man.”

So she came back to work, found the jerk, and said “I’m here. Let’s do this.” Then she went into the office and waited for him.

It took him a couple minutes (probably to work up the courage), but he finally joined her in the office.

Thankfully, our collective boss was also in the office, and aware of the situation, and he put the kibosh on any further discussion until the situation is investigated.

So the property manager is now involved, as is Human Resources. Video is being looked at. And I now know, based on my conversation with the manager tonight, that when I get to work tomorrow, I’m going to be questioned about the situation (since I was the manager on duty when it went down). And honestly, I’m looking forward to it. Because I have a feeling that, when I give my own perspective on things, it’s going to go well for the respectable manager and not so well for the jerk.

I assured this respectable manager that I’ve got her back, as well as the back of the employee. I also assured her that tonight’s conversation “never happened” as far as the information I’ll provide.

The other manager was in the wrong. I’m in complete agreement with her. I didn’t tell him so at the time because we were on the casino floor and that is not the place to air grievances (even though he aired his to me on the casino floor -- and right in front of the employee). And he said in his email back to the respectable manager that he’d had a couple drinks, yet he wrote up the employee over the situation after receiving the respectable manager’s email (which our collective boss tore up -- if you’re off-duty and have been drinking, you don’t get to write up an employee in retaliation over an email you didn’t like from another manager).

I’m not looking to cost anyone their job (and I don’t think it’s going to go that far -- he may get written up, but we’re too short-staffed to fire him, and he’s our promotions guy who runs our parties and giveaways), but he’s had it out for this employee for a while. This shit has got to stop.

So there will be individual conversations with those involved (including the sports book employee who was conducting the transaction with my employee, even though he works for a different company that leases their space in the casino), and then there will be a group discussion among those involved so we can put this crap behind us and hopefully move on with us on the same page. I don’t know if jerk-manager will cooperate, but that’s on him. As for the rest of us, we’ll come to an agreement on how things should be done, we’ll (I assume) agree that the employee was right to page me instead of interrupting her transaction and leaving thousands of dollars sitting on the counter while she ran a promotion where someone might win $50 free play (they have a 10% chance of winning free play, and then if they do get the free play, there’s a 95% chance that it will be $5, and a 5% chance that it will be $50)...especially when I would have had to disqualify jerk-manager anyway if he had started the game without me there to witness it.

I mean, yes, I was dealing with a pretty major malfunction in our live Keno, but...I can multitask. I had actually just finished mitigating the problem (as far as I know it’s still a problem, but I had just learned how to solve it in the most fair way possible -- maybe I’ll post about that separately because this post is already long). But even if I hadn’t mitigated it for the moment, I’ve got my employees’ backs, and if they need help, that’s what I’m there for. That’s why I get paid lunches -- because if I’m needed on the floor, my lunch is over (which is why I take multiple short breaks and no long ones, because I don’t think a half-hour period EVER transpires at work where I’m not needed for something or another).

Schedules will be changed so this employee doesn’t have to work with that manager on my nights off. That may mean a change in the employee’s days off, or it may mean a change in my own days off. But he has been out to get this employee for so long that something has to be done to keep them separated.

She is by no means a perfect employee, but she knows her stuff, and does things (mostly) right (she does have a habit of spending too much time talking to some people, but...in this case the jerk manager came down on her for not interrupting a cash transaction to run a promotion for this other manager -- one that I have to be present for anyway when an employee participates). She paged me for assistance, which is all I ask (especially when I have to observe the employee’s turn anyway). I’m there to help. If the employee is doing one thing and something else comes up, I want to be paged so we can take care of both things at once.

Our boss even sent out an email not long ago, saying that we are there to assist, not just give directives (this jerk manager will see an empty glass and call a casino attendant over to pick it up; whereas I will see an empty glass and I’ll pick it up my damned self, because I’m not a lazy jerk). Our job, as managers, is to make our staff’s jobs easier, not to ride their backs over every little thing until they quit. Yes, there are times where we have to be the bad guy and correct behavior, but this was not one of those times -- the casino attendant did nothing wrong.

We have enough of a problem retaining staff as it is, paying $1 less than minimum wage. And this is an employee that we CANNOT afford to lose.

Oh, and remember how I was called in to work yesterday and decided not to go? Had it not been for this situation, I totally would have gone in. I mean, four hours of $18/hour overtime? That’s an extra $72 in my pocket on the next paycheck (less taxes, of course). But I was still pissed off about the situation, and I’d be working with the jerk manager, so that was why I didn’t go in.

I have to work with jerk-manager tomorrow for the first four hours of my shift (he’s actually scheduled for the first FIVE hours of my shift, but he ALWAYS leaves at 7:00 even though he’s scheduled until 8:00 -- something I may bring up in the conversation with my boss tomorrow to show that jerk manager doesn’t even work his full shift, since he’s taking advantage of his salaried status to work less for the same pay). So...that should be fun.

If he doesn’t bring up the situation, neither will I. I’ll have my chat with my boss and then let it go (depending on his behavior during the shift, of course). But if he does, I’ll ask him to join me in the office and have it out with him, but I am NOT having the discussion on the casino floor within earshot of guests and employees.

I’m gonna keep my nose clean in this. Well, at least I’m gonna try. I mean, yes, things may get ugly, and my nose may get a little dirty. But it’s not gonna happen in public. It’s gonna happen on MY terms, not his.

This is the guy who trained me when I hired in (people are always surprised that he’s the one who trained me, because...well, I’m actually good at my job, unlike him; I’ve learned from my experiences over the past year and a half and applied that knowledge instead of spending my time doing the same tree magic tricks for guests while ignoring actual casino issues).

While he may be a great guest relations-type person, he is NOT management material when it comes to dealing with employees.

Anyway, I’m glad I met with the manager I respect tonight to get more of the story (even though I have to pretend that conversation never happened when I give my side of the story to my boss tomorrow). It was work drama on a day off, but...it was also profitable (the casino I suggested we meet at had given me $10 free play, which I turned into $20 cash as I absent-mindedly played video poker during the conversation -- I wouldn’t have played at all, but if I wasn’t playing, I wouldn’t have gotten the free drink [well, with a $2 tip -- because when I tended bar at my own casino on graveyard, may favorite guests were the $2 tippers; I could have gotten away with $1, but this bartender, while he hasn’t seen me for a while, knows me as a $2 tipper]).

Usually a situation like this would make me nervous as hell. I would NOT be looking forward to the interview that’s to come. But in this case, I’m MORE than happy to present the situation as I know it (my biggest fear is saying something that shows that respectable-manager and I had a conversation about it tonight, but our conversation didn’t change anything in my view of the situation; it was more about her venting so she could enjoy her days off without dwelling on this situation; I plan to uphold my promise to her that, as far as our boss is concerned, “this conversation never happened”).

[mariastylinson28]

Chapter one of ROLLERSKATE-taekook

" Jimin, I already told you. I don't want a one night stand! I can't handle the stress.." Tae said quietly.

" Fine! It was just a suggestion.  I just wanted to help you out."Jimin said, sounding somewhat sincere.

"  You never help anyone without something in return...what do you want? "Tae asked hesitantly.

Jimin seemed offended for a second, mouthing, "How dare you." 

" Okay ... I might have found a sexy guy the other night, and I wanted to hang out with him again, but not seem desperate, so I signed us both for a date. " He admitted, making Taehyung sight in annoyance.

" And before you deny me completely, I have to remind you that you owe me big time. Plus, his friend, it's a real hottie. You could use the distraction."

V fake smiled, cursing himself. If he knew Jimin would be such a bitch, he wouldn't have land money from him so many times. Who gives the money back anyway? No one.

Jimin continued rambling about nonsense, while Tae was trying to finish his homework before the next class. It wasn't easy.

" Can you stop speaking for a second and pay attention in class? I am tired of giving you my notes every single day. "

Jimin stopped talking, assimilating the words.

" But you give them to Yoongi since forever. Are you picking favorites, Tae? Is he prettier than me? Jimin interrogatories, offended.

Taehyung laughs, not bothering to answer. 

Yoongi was his best friend since they learned how to walk. They knew everything about each other.  A lot of embarrassing stories about their childhood and inside jokes were always brought up by one of them. He was not getting into a fight with the two of them.

The teacher entered the classroom, saving Taehyung from his thoughts.

"Hello, class! My name is Morgan Grace," she said, writing her name on the whiteboard." I will be your substitute teacher this semester. Do you have any questions?"

Jimin glances at her, not interested.

" She is hot, too bad she's a teacher, "He said, looking at her butt.

V looked at the professor for a second. She was tall for a woman, at least. Her face was beautiful but tired, her glasses failing to hide her dark circles. The dress she wore was hugging her in all the right places, but it was a bit too tight for the occasion, trying to hide the fact that she was probably in her late twenties. 

Their high school started hiring more attractive teachers lately. They were increasing each year, and the students were not mad about it.                                                                                    Maybe it was a strategy to make students attend class more often. It was working quite right.

When the class ended, after a full 50 minutes of mayhem, Taehyung was more than happy to do his favorite activity, eating his launch finally.

He took out a Nesquik bar from his backpack, taking a big bite of it while waiting for Jimin and Yoongi to arrive. They were taking forever. Was it that hard to buy a pack of chips?

After a good 10 minutes, in which Tae finished his little snack and waited patiently to go home finally, he saw his friends coming towards him, laughing at each other.

" Fucking ...Finally! Did you have to take this long? We're you two making out or something?" Taehyung asks jokingly, making the 'couple' shake their heads, looking disgusted. 

"A new student transferred, and people were blocking the corridor to see who it was. " Yoongi answered uninterestedly. " That's why we're late, sorry ."   

" We have a new student? "Taehyung spoke, surprised ."I thought the principal didn't want to accept anyone this year ."

" Maybe he made an exception. Money can easily have that effect on people." 

They were right; the students were more hectic than usual. In the middle of them all, like a shadow, almost trying to blend in the background stood a dark-haired boy, dressed in black.

He had a blank face, his pale complexion contrasting the rest of his appearance. It was hard to look away.

Taehyung was dazed. He wanted to annalize the ghost of a boy a little more, afraid he might disappear any moment from his sight.

" Do you know anything about him? " Tae asked, still watching the younger boy. He almost seemed desperate, trying to find some light into the dark.

" Not really. He hasn't spoken a word to anyone yet. " Jimin answered, looking at the boy as well. " I don't think he wants the attention." 

Taehyung threw a last glance at the boy. He didn't want to be watched, avoiding eye-contact with everyone he could.  Still, V felt the need to meet his eye, to stare into his eyes, to get lost.

It didn't happen, though. The boy never looked up - he just walked the corridor in silence, losing into the crowd.

You can find the rest of the story on wattpad, https://my.w.tt/NnjQZ4x884💞💞

[mastcomm]

With His Fourth Book, Charles Yu Finally Feels Like a Writer

IRVINE, Calif. — Charles Yu is very interested in stories, both the stories we tell ourselves and the stories that are told to us, so let’s start with a story about him.

Once upon a time, there was a boy born in Los Angeles to a Taiwanese mother and father. The boy spent his days watching “The Twilight Zone” reruns, playing Street Fighter II, reading “Choose Your Own Adventure” books and thinking about where he might fit in. When he grew up, he became a corporate lawyer.

The end.

Except, as with all good stories, there’s more to the story than that.

The boy also wrote fiction, but not until he was an adult. He worked as a lawyer by day and wrote late into the night. He published three books, and his fourth, the novel “Interior Chinatown,” is set to come out at the end of this month.

It’s the story of Willis Wu, a young man who’s struggling to figure out what his role is in life, literally. Wu resides in a version of Chinatown that’s both a real place and the backdrop to an ongoing police procedural TV show called “Black and White.” Its inhabitants live their lives as well as the parts assigned to them: Disgraced Son, Delivery Guy, Young Dragon Lady, Silent Henchman or the most coveted role of all, Kung Fu Guy. “Interior Chinatown” — the title puns on the screenplay convention for describing locations — recalls the humorous and heartfelt short stories of George Saunders, the metafictional high jinks of Mark Leyner and films like “The Truman Show.”

“I feel like I was an existentialist from the age of 5,” Yu, 44, said last month over dim sum near his home in Irvine. He’d suggested we meet at this restaurant in the Spectrum Center, a sprawling, pleasantly engineered outdoor mall that functions as Irvine’s de facto civic space. It’s the kind of place that, frankly, might serve as a setting for one of Yu’s stories, which are often about the uneasy feeling that something’s not quite right with the world. “Even as a kid,” he said, “I was always obsessed with these questions. Who am I? How did I get here? What am I doing in this place?”

Image

Charles Yu’s novel “Interior Chinatown” comes out Jan. 28.

Despite these inclinations, he never believed he would be a writer. Instead, he went to law school at Columbia. It was there, while studying for the bar, that he picked up books of fiction that blew his mind: Saunders, A.M. Homes, Donald Barthelme — writers who grappled with those same questions in bracing ways.

So Yu started writing short stories of his own. He sent them out to literary journals. “I got hundreds of rejections,” he said. “I started posting them on a wall. But one in 50 stories would get published.” The stories were examinations of anxiety and heartbreak, usually framed by a high-concept conceit, such as the travails of a sad-sack superhero named Moisture Man. An agent read one and contacted him. Together they sold his first collection, “Third Class Superhero,” which was published in 2006.

The book was well-reviewed and sold decently. Still, in Yu’s mind, he wasn’t really a writer. He was a lawyer. “Not having an M.F.A., having a day job, there was always a feeling like I came in through the back door, or at least the side door,” he said. “Even to this day, it all feels a bit D.I.Y. It’s like I don’t play an instrument, I play a shoebox guitar I made in my garage.”

This is where Yu’s story takes an improbable twist. His collection fell into the hands of the novelist Richard Powers, who championed Yu to be named one of the National Book Foundation’s Five Under 35 most promising writers in America in 2007. Yu was flabbergasted. He’d never met Powers.

The encouragement was enough to spur him to finish his first novel, “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe,” about a time-machine repairman who’s willfully stranded himself between moments in time, even as he searches for the father who disappeared from his life. That book also did well, critically and financially, so he followed up in 2012 with the short-story collection “Sorry Please Thank You,” which was not quite as successful, either critically or financially. He still owed his publisher another book but Yu recalls feeling self-doubt once again, thinking, O.K., that was fun, but maybe this is it.

Then he got a call from HBO.

Here, the story goes from slightly improbable to downright implausible. Yu had had enough interest from TV executives in his earlier books that he’d done a “water bottle tour” — meeting with studios to talk vaguely about potential projects — but he had never considered himself a TV writer. One executive he’d met, though, disagreed. David Levine, who at the time was the co-head of drama at HBO (he’s since left to join Anonymous Content), orchestrated a meeting between Yu and Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the showrunners developing “Westworld.” “He was so self-deprecating,” Levine recalled. “He told me, I have this other life, I’m never really going to be a writer, this was always a side career. Writing was still a middle-of-the-night business for him. I just said, Why don’t you do it full-time?”

Yu quit his job as a lawyer and started writing for “Westworld.” From there he went from one TV job to the next, eventually landing at “Lodge 49,” the sweet and surreal drama on AMC created by the fellow novelist Jim Gavin. “Here was this incredibly smart guy who could really be doing anything he wanted,” Gavin said. “What I could sense in his fiction is this strain of comic humanism that underlies the larger conceptual frameworks — that notion that his characters exist in an absurd universe.”

TV writing kept Yu so busy, in fact, that it became another day job. He had two children by then, his novel had stalled, and he was feeling overwhelmed. In 2017, he told his wife he’d decided to abandon the novel and quit writing fiction. She heard him out, then encouraged him to get back to work. After many delays and false starts, he finished “Interior Chinatown,” a book focused, not coincidentally, on the mythmaking machinery of Hollywood. “I was walking one day and the first line came to me: ‘Ever since you were a boy, you’ve dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy,’” he said. “As a kid, in pop culture, there was really only one truly cool Asian-American stereotype, which is, ‘You might know kung fu!’ There was Bruce Lee. There was Jackie Chan. That’s it.”

Yu started thinking about the immigrant experience of his parents, the experience of his children, his own experiences, and who gets to be the star of his or her own story, rather than a supporting character in someone else’s. “The elevator pitch for the book became, ‘You know that “Law & Order” episode we’ve all seen that’s set in Chinatown?’” Yu said. “I want to know about the life of that guy in the background — the one who’s unloading the van and who got one line.”

It’s been nearly 15 years since the National Book Foundation anointed Yu as one of the best young writers in America, yet for the first time, he’s starting to believe he’s a writer. Maybe he’s not an impostor after all. “If anything, it’s feeling confident that if I say the thing I’m trying to say in the way that I know how to say it, that will be interesting to at least some people,” Yu said. “It’s nice when you feel like you kind of know what you’re doing, a little bit.”

After dim sum, we head out to stroll the manicured laneways of the Spectrum Center. We joke that the mall, with its cheerful storefronts and town square built around a Ferris wheel, feels like the Matrix, or “The Good Place” from TV — an artfully rendered simulacrum of happiness. But maybe it’s O.K. to find your Good Place.

“You know what else is a simulacrum?” Yu said. “A dream! And this” — he looks around — “feels like a dream.”

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Target Size and 2.5.5 | Adrian Roselli

June eight, 2019; 5 Comments

TL;DR: No matter what accessibility conformance degree you target, attempt to make sure that interactive controls are at the least 44 by 44 pixels in measurement. Hyperlinks in blocks of textual content are exempt.

Overview

In real life there’s sometimes both a visual and tactile element to an interface. You’ve got to be able to feel the button splits or ridges of your automotive’s local weather management should you don’t need to take your eyes off the street. Contact typing depends on sensing the F and J nubs (for U.S. English keyboards, at the very least) and the gaps between keys. Fumbling with a light-weight change at the hours of darkness is about sliding your hand across the wall.

With computer systems operating a graphical consumer interface (GUI), clicking a button or link is a matter of getting both a proxy on your finger or your finger itself into the fitting spot and not lacking. You’ll be able to swing a mouse pointer round a display with out clicking and nothing dangerous happens, but you can’t drag your finger across your telephone to really feel the quantity pad. A stylus might do both, depending on the developer’s intent.

Actual life elements reminiscent of bumpy roads (as a passenger in a automotive, not a driver), palms sticky with ice cream, single-handed use of big shows, previous ball mice filled with desktop lint, or mobility impairments can make a graphical interface confounding to use. Luckily some individuals have been considering these challenges for quite a while.

Fitts’ Regulation

The GUIs we use immediately are informed each by expertise going back millennia and research that is a little more current. For example, in 1954 Fitts’ Regulation put to phrases one thing we might have have innately understood — the time to get to a goal is said to its distance from our start line and its measurement. The result of testing this with customers is that small targets end in larger error charges.

I am oversimplifying a bit, but the gist is that the world of interplay design has recognized concerning the need for bigger targets for longer than there has been a subject of interplay design, not to mention GUIs. Nevertheless, there’s loads of proof that individual interplay designers perhaps do not know this.

That’s part of how we received to a state where we have to mandate bigger goal areas inside WCAG.

WCAG

WCAG 2.1 brought with it a couple of new success standards. 2.5.5 Target Size requires a goal space for a pointer interplay (touch or mouse, for example) to be 44 × 44 CSS pixels. This equates to a visual angle of about 0.9372 degrees, or no matter you get if you make a 44 pixel block and view it in your browser with default zoom.

There are exceptions:

If there is a duplicate or equal version of the control at the minimum measurement, then an occasion could be smaller;

If the control lives inside the move of a piece of textual content;

If it’s a default control from the browser with no types applied;

If its smaller measurement is important to accurately conveying info.

2.5.5 is a degree AAA success criterion, which suggests organizations concentrating on AA compliance (primarily all of them) are more likely to ignore it. Which is unlucky, given the potential benefit. Causes for why this was categorized at AAA are past the scope of this publish. Fortunately, there are platform tips and interface design names that advocate for a bigger goal measurement, unbiased of WCAG.

Apple

Apple offers design ideas for contact goal sizes throughout its units. For iOS, it recommends 44 points × 44 points (not pixels) at least.

For buttons on watchOS, Apple recommends totally different minimums based mostly on the form of the button using the next (complicated to me) desk.

Dimensions as pulled from the Apple website Button sort 38mm (minimal) 42mm (minimum) Round 75 pixels 80 pixels Spherical rectangular 50 pixels high 52 pixels high

There look like no minimal management sizes for macOS, nor for its Contact Bar, although the Touch Bar most peak is 60 pixels, with 44 pixels advisable as the utmost peak for icons.

Pulled from the Hit Targets part of the UI Design Do’s and Don’ts web page.

Microsoft

Microsoft offers tips for touch targets in Fluent, its design system, as 7.5mm sq., or 40 × 40 effective pixels (epx) on a 135 PPI display, at default zoom. This was a lower from 44 pixels (epx), which was the Common Home windows Platform commonplace prior to the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809).

The web page additionally outlines what to think about as you measurement touch controls:

Frequency of Touches — think about making targets which are repeatedly or often pressed larger than the minimum measurement.

Error Consequence — targets that have severe penalties if touched in error should have larger padding and be placed further from the edge of the content space. That is especially true for targets which are touched incessantly.

Position within the content area.

Type factor and display measurement.

Finger posture.

Contact visualizations.

These sizing standards will not be brand new in Fluent. When you return to 2017, you’ll be able to see Microsoft advisable a minimum goal measurement of 60 pixels, or 11mm square, which included 2mm of padding to the subsequent target. Observe that right here it referred to targets, not touch targets.

Microsoft’s no-longer-current recommendation on the right track sizes, circa 2017..

Android

The Android Developer Guide recommends a minimum touch target of 48 × 48 system pixels. Unfortunately, this info is buried in the Accessibility section of the Greatest Practices portion of the guide as an alternative of alongside or embedded inside the documentation for constructing contact controls.

Google reinforces this sizing in the Net Fundamentals course in the part for accessible types. Along with noting that 48 gadget pixels is 9mm (which it asserts is the dimensions of an individual’s finger pad area), it also suggests an eight pixel hole between controls to attenuate mis-taps.

This image is from the Net Fundamentals course, not the Android Developer Information.

BBC

BBC’s Cellular Accessibility Tips are a set of standards for BBC staff and its suppliers when creating net or native content or apps. They defer to the Android and iOS platform tips for native apps and advocate a minimum 7mm touch target.

International Expertise Language (GEL) is BBC’s design system for all of its on-line presence. GEL recommends a minimum contact measurement of 7mm, with 5mm in special instances. For instances the place either dimension can’t be 7mm, then it mandates a 5mm exclusion zone. It also supplies these dimensions in pixels — advisable 44 pixels with a 32 pixel minimum, and for particular instances a 24 pixel minimum.

One of the examples out there on the GEL website.

Nielsen Norman Group

Nielsen Norman Group recommends a touch goal measurement of 1cm (0.four inches). NNGs touch goal article cites research of finger sizes, references Fitts’ Regulation, and shares a number of examples. It’s a good resource if it’s worthwhile to persuade others on your workforce of the significance of affordable sizes but who will not be interested within the platform tips nor the WCAG SC.

The article declines to offer pixel sizes. This is recognition of the variation of displayed physical pixel dimensions throughout units. That brings us again to the impracticality of holding a ruler to a display, not to mention holding a rule to each of a sampling of screens that correspond to your viewers.

Testing Reference

44 pixels may have totally different bodily sizes across units, even with no zooming applied. For example, 44 pixels on an iPad might be physically larger than 44 pixels on an iPad Mini, owing to them having the same pixel rely but in hardware with totally different display sizes.

You cannot be anticipated to seize a ruler and measure every system. You’ll be able to, nevertheless, create a reference field at that measurement and view it across units, evaluating it to the controls you’ve in your design and making certain they are at the least that enormous. I made a 44px reference sq. and embedded it under.

See the Pen 44px Square for testing 2.5.5 Target Size by Adrian Roselli (@aardrian) on CodePen.

Wrapping it Up

For controls that may be activated by touch, with a pointer a stylus, or another physical gadget, ensure they are giant enough to hit simply and have enough lifeless area between them to assist avoid mis-clicks or mis-taps.

Even if WCAG AAA compliance isn’t your objective, lean on the guidelines from locations who have been doing this some time and affirm those sizes work in your users of their contexts (akin to a pitching fishing trawler versus a front room Davenport).

44 pixels might be an excellent minimum, provided that it or a worth close to it’s persistently beneficial throughout specialists, requirements, and platforms.

The opening picture is from I Contact Myself by Divinyls, fronted by Chrissy Amphlett. In 2013 she died of breast most cancers and problems from a number of sclerosis and this track soon turned the anthem for the Australian breast cancer awareness challenge “I Touch Myself.” The U.S. Facilities for Disease Control has info on breast most cancers awareness.

Update: 10 June 2019

Shortly after posting, I used to be asked concerning the problem making footer links conform to WCAG 2.5.5. Patrick Lauke walks via a bit of the history of the SC and his final suggestion.

The overall argument I’m making is much less about WCAG conformance and extra about making a usable interface whereas leaning on the teachings of past analysis and tips. However principally, in instances like this, ensure a consumer can’t easily mis-tap the flawed thing however can still get to the factor you want.

Tags

accessibility, standards, usability, UX, W3C, WAI, WCAG

Other Posts

Earlier submit: A Model for WordPress Accessibility

Newer submit: Scraping Burned Toast

The post Target Size and 2.5.5

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Target Size and 2.5.5 | Adrian Roselli

June eight, 2019; 5 Comments

TL;DR: No matter what accessibility conformance degree you target, attempt to make sure that interactive controls are at the least 44 by 44 pixels in measurement. Hyperlinks in blocks of textual content are exempt.

Overview

In real life there’s sometimes both a visual and tactile element to an interface. You’ve got to be able to feel the button splits or ridges of your automotive’s local weather management should you don’t need to take your eyes off the street. Contact typing depends on sensing the F and J nubs (for U.S. English keyboards, at the very least) and the gaps between keys. Fumbling with a light-weight change at the hours of darkness is about sliding your hand across the wall.

With computer systems operating a graphical consumer interface (GUI), clicking a button or link is a matter of getting both a proxy on your finger or your finger itself into the fitting spot and not lacking. You’ll be able to swing a mouse pointer round a display with out clicking and nothing dangerous happens, but you can’t drag your finger across your telephone to really feel the quantity pad. A stylus might do both, depending on the developer’s intent.

Actual life elements reminiscent of bumpy roads (as a passenger in a automotive, not a driver), palms sticky with ice cream, single-handed use of big shows, previous ball mice filled with desktop lint, or mobility impairments can make a graphical interface confounding to use. Luckily some individuals have been considering these challenges for quite a while.

Fitts’ Regulation

The GUIs we use immediately are informed each by expertise going back millennia and research that is a little more current. For example, in 1954 Fitts’ Regulation put to phrases one thing we might have have innately understood — the time to get to a goal is said to its distance from our start line and its measurement. The result of testing this with customers is that small targets end in larger error charges.

I am oversimplifying a bit, but the gist is that the world of interplay design has recognized concerning the need for bigger targets for longer than there has been a subject of interplay design, not to mention GUIs. Nevertheless, there’s loads of proof that individual interplay designers perhaps do not know this.

That’s part of how we received to a state where we have to mandate bigger goal areas inside WCAG.

WCAG

WCAG 2.1 brought with it a couple of new success standards. 2.5.5 Target Size requires a goal space for a pointer interplay (touch or mouse, for example) to be 44 × 44 CSS pixels. This equates to a visual angle of about 0.9372 degrees, or no matter you get if you make a 44 pixel block and view it in your browser with default zoom.

There are exceptions:

If there is a duplicate or equal version of the control at the minimum measurement, then an occasion could be smaller;

If the control lives inside the move of a piece of textual content;

If it’s a default control from the browser with no types applied;

If its smaller measurement is important to accurately conveying info.

2.5.5 is a degree AAA success criterion, which suggests organizations concentrating on AA compliance (primarily all of them) are more likely to ignore it. Which is unlucky, given the potential benefit. Causes for why this was categorized at AAA are past the scope of this publish. Fortunately, there are platform tips and interface design names that advocate for a bigger goal measurement, unbiased of WCAG.

Apple

Apple offers design ideas for contact goal sizes throughout its units. For iOS, it recommends 44 points × 44 points (not pixels) at least.

For buttons on watchOS, Apple recommends totally different minimums based mostly on the form of the button using the next (complicated to me) desk.

Dimensions as pulled from the Apple website Button sort 38mm (minimal) 42mm (minimum) Round 75 pixels 80 pixels Spherical rectangular 50 pixels high 52 pixels high

There look like no minimal management sizes for macOS, nor for its Contact Bar, although the Touch Bar most peak is 60 pixels, with 44 pixels advisable as the utmost peak for icons.

Pulled from the Hit Targets part of the UI Design Do’s and Don’ts web page.

Microsoft

Microsoft offers tips for touch targets in Fluent, its design system, as 7.5mm sq., or 40 × 40 effective pixels (epx) on a 135 PPI display, at default zoom. This was a lower from 44 pixels (epx), which was the Common Home windows Platform commonplace prior to the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809).

The web page additionally outlines what to think about as you measurement touch controls:

Frequency of Touches — think about making targets which are repeatedly or often pressed larger than the minimum measurement.

Error Consequence — targets that have severe penalties if touched in error should have larger padding and be placed further from the edge of the content space. That is especially true for targets which are touched incessantly.

Position within the content area.

Type factor and display measurement.

Finger posture.

Contact visualizations.

These sizing standards will not be brand new in Fluent. When you return to 2017, you’ll be able to see Microsoft advisable a minimum goal measurement of 60 pixels, or 11mm square, which included 2mm of padding to the subsequent target. Observe that right here it referred to targets, not touch targets.

Microsoft’s no-longer-current recommendation on the right track sizes, circa 2017..

Android

The Android Developer Guide recommends a minimum touch target of 48 × 48 system pixels. Unfortunately, this info is buried in the Accessibility section of the Greatest Practices portion of the guide as an alternative of alongside or embedded inside the documentation for constructing contact controls.

Google reinforces this sizing in the Net Fundamentals course in the part for accessible types. Along with noting that 48 gadget pixels is 9mm (which it asserts is the dimensions of an individual’s finger pad area), it also suggests an eight pixel hole between controls to attenuate mis-taps.

This image is from the Net Fundamentals course, not the Android Developer Information.

BBC

BBC’s Cellular Accessibility Tips are a set of standards for BBC staff and its suppliers when creating net or native content or apps. They defer to the Android and iOS platform tips for native apps and advocate a minimum 7mm touch target.

International Expertise Language (GEL) is BBC’s design system for all of its on-line presence. GEL recommends a minimum contact measurement of 7mm, with 5mm in special instances. For instances the place either dimension can’t be 7mm, then it mandates a 5mm exclusion zone. It also supplies these dimensions in pixels — advisable 44 pixels with a 32 pixel minimum, and for particular instances a 24 pixel minimum.

One of the examples out there on the GEL website.

Nielsen Norman Group

Nielsen Norman Group recommends a touch goal measurement of 1cm (0.four inches). NNGs touch goal article cites research of finger sizes, references Fitts’ Regulation, and shares a number of examples. It’s a good resource if it’s worthwhile to persuade others on your workforce of the significance of affordable sizes but who will not be interested within the platform tips nor the WCAG SC.

The article declines to offer pixel sizes. This is recognition of the variation of displayed physical pixel dimensions throughout units. That brings us again to the impracticality of holding a ruler to a display, not to mention holding a rule to each of a sampling of screens that correspond to your viewers.

Testing Reference

44 pixels may have totally different bodily sizes across units, even with no zooming applied. For example, 44 pixels on an iPad might be physically larger than 44 pixels on an iPad Mini, owing to them having the same pixel rely but in hardware with totally different display sizes.

You cannot be anticipated to seize a ruler and measure every system. You’ll be able to, nevertheless, create a reference field at that measurement and view it across units, evaluating it to the controls you’ve in your design and making certain they are at the least that enormous. I made a 44px reference sq. and embedded it under.

See the Pen 44px Square for testing 2.5.5 Target Size by Adrian Roselli (@aardrian) on CodePen.

Wrapping it Up

For controls that may be activated by touch, with a pointer a stylus, or another physical gadget, ensure they are giant enough to hit simply and have enough lifeless area between them to assist avoid mis-clicks or mis-taps.

Even if WCAG AAA compliance isn’t your objective, lean on the guidelines from locations who have been doing this some time and affirm those sizes work in your users of their contexts (akin to a pitching fishing trawler versus a front room Davenport).

44 pixels might be an excellent minimum, provided that it or a worth close to it’s persistently beneficial throughout specialists, requirements, and platforms.

The opening picture is from I Contact Myself by Divinyls, fronted by Chrissy Amphlett. In 2013 she died of breast most cancers and problems from a number of sclerosis and this track soon turned the anthem for the Australian breast cancer awareness challenge “I Touch Myself.” The U.S. Facilities for Disease Control has info on breast most cancers awareness.

Update: 10 June 2019

Shortly after posting, I used to be asked concerning the problem making footer links conform to WCAG 2.5.5. Patrick Lauke walks via a bit of the history of the SC and his final suggestion.

The overall argument I’m making is much less about WCAG conformance and extra about making a usable interface whereas leaning on the teachings of past analysis and tips. However principally, in instances like this, ensure a consumer can’t easily mis-tap the flawed thing however can still get to the factor you want.

Tags

accessibility, standards, usability, UX, W3C, WAI, WCAG

Other Posts

Earlier submit: A Model for WordPress Accessibility

Newer submit: Scraping Burned Toast

The post Target Size and 2.5.5