#the contrast of ford and bill being the few who calls stan stanley | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

autisticmight · 6 years ago

Note

gimme that echoes commentary, bruh

one: i spent the entire time ruminating on past stangsts and which parts hurt you the most. i pushed them as far as i could go. this is your personalised angst

two: the opening paragraphs are just me being very gay about the ocean and open communication. i kind of wanted to get a scale of “hey, this is how big the ocean is. it’s full of unknowable mysteries. if they die out here, nobody will know. also they’re best friends and brothers and they love each other a lot yay”

three: i purposefully avoided dialogue for most of this fic. when you dream, some senses don’t make it through when you’re awake. i often used vague, imprecise descriptions in order to develop a sense of dissociation

four: i like my greek mythology references. i’m kind of very unintentionally pretentious. ford is my equal in that regard

“…as the nightmare goes crawling to the bottle with the metaphors and fears; a simple echo of an echo of a long-gone trauma.”

behold: one of the lines that sum up the fic. i think i meant like boats in a bottle, but that’s the thing about how i like to write. it means a lot

five: if i had the patience and ability to portray it, i would have drawn this as a comic. there’s something like oil pastels that i remember feeling when i wrote this, in buttercup yellow and the peachy-reds of sunsets, and midnight blue against lurid gold

six: mabel’s presence, as usual, is very important to contrast warmth and healthy coping skills, and, for a word i’m a little wary of using, purity, against all of ford’s neuroses.

seven: remember, every metaphor means something more. almost every sentence has at least two more that could extrapolate. these words are zip files. i’m very much avoiding a director’s commentary like this. fuck. lemme try this again

this is a story about addiction, and suicide, and paranoia, and most of the things we can extrapolate about ford’s mental state from gravity falls. those are the content warnings. heed them. this is echoes, and it’s all fex’s fault

i wanted to explore the stan twins’s decision to sail around the world in a tiny boat. i wanted to explore the fears of isolation and the claustrophobia of living so closely to someone you have a complex relationship with

honestly, i mostly wanted to see how melodramatic i could be

this story is mildly dissociative. it takes place in chronological order, but the thing is, time doesn’t feel like it exists when you’re isolated. that’s why the feeling was important. that[’s why it starts off simply; as simply as ford can get, because he’s verbose. i don’t have to hold back on my words when i write him

calling their communication a “dance,” and the lack of elaboration, also kind of sets them up as still not being fully communicative. they talk, but they still have barriers. there’s still a mutual unacknowledged fear of abandonment, that is only amplified by the isolation. there’s nowhere to hide from each other if you get mad and need some time alone. there’s nobody else to mediate. and they both have issues that they refuse to acknowledge

ford’s dreams, though i don’t mention it, seem to take place on a weird combination of my favourite beach, which is just off of a campsite in france called camping la plage, and glass shard beach, where stan and ford grew up, obviously. i’m not sure if there are more pebbles there or sand. his family being mermaids is about their connection to fancifulness, and the ocean, and him being away from them is. him being away from them. he still isolates himself, only he’s isolating himself in his head now

segment one is about love, and belonging, and the lies they tell themselves. it’s about the little things, and the small events, and living in the moment. it’s about the broad openness

segment two is about rocks. i like hag stones. i have quite a few. i love erosion, and how everything fades, and smoothens, and. it’s just really cool. the ocean does cool things. hitting things together, over and over, until they wear away. oh shit, that was the metaphor i was going for with the rocks. see! there were a lot of metaphors that i didn’t remember, because they were layered in the background. that’s how hag stones are formed. erosion that bores a hole through a rock. hit something for long enough, and a hole forms

it’s about the first segment becoming more corrupted. the fear starts to make itself known again, and ford tries to ignore it, and live in happy ignorance. it doesn’t work, of course

mentioning yellow means that bill is present, maybe. this fic was written with the same coin theory in mind, and deconstructing the misled belief that it erases the happy ending. bill’s existence is up for debate. schrodinger’s giant squid, if you will. the thing is, the same coin theory is canon to me. it’s the perfect culmination of both stan and bill’s arcs

then i did icarus references. then i ruined it with sex jokes and references bc i hate any non-platonic relationships between pineses

they mislead each other

the third segment amps up the contrasts. with mabel, as i said before, an element of purity is added. mabel’s morals and beliefs are strong. that’s why she’s pure. she loves her family. mabel’s just. she’s love central. you could say maji love 1000%. her association with yellow isn’t bill, but ford sees bill in it, because he’s seeing bill in everything

ford is unintentionally gaslit by his family because they don’t believe that he has been sleeping, because he is a known sleep hypocrite, so that adds to ford’s lack of trust in the outside world. and that also cuts into the time he has with mabel. it cuts into his time with purity

this segment’s dream involves bill more prominently, but with a little bit of mabel in the soft yarn. the softness also adds to the dissociation. it’s not real

then there’s a puppet metaphor. that’s. that’s pretty obvious

Stanley holds the hag stone to his eye, closing the other eye and laughing in an awful, vaguely familiar way.

“Hey, Sixer, I can still see you!”

this is bill and stan. bill or stan. maybe

the fourth segment is just a little way of contrasting the warmth of hot chocolate established in the previous segments. he pours away the hot chocolate; he throws away his family ties. stan thinks he drank the hot chocolate; stan thinks that ford is still with him

segment five! pattern recognition in the abstract! all these bills keep piling up, and ford can’t stop seeing them. i think he’s having a psychotic episode by this point, but i’m not sure. damn you, past len, for writing your vague dissociation fic in vague dissociative ways!!! i barely have any idea what i was thinking during this part!!!

…your ridiculous dreams that don’t even mean anything past the fact that you’re paranoid and not alone and still aching for the echoes of Bill.

this is just. i guess that usually, when i used the word “echo” or its derivatives, i was summing up the general emotions of the fic at that point

ford drinks fruity liquers, not only because i think that was fex’s headcanon, at least at the time, but also bc he’s a classy boi

the alcoholism themes start here. it’s more about secrets, but it’s also about the lack of control. addiction is, on and off, a special interest of mine, because of reasons

then segment six. it’s a full dream sequence, and it’s mostly just about how stan is also a liar. the mabel in this dream is distant and less real, because, to ford, she is less real. she’s kind of idealised, so for her to be on bill’s side, in ford’s head, kind of strips her of a lot of personality

stan is called “grunkle stan”, because that’s how mabel sees him, and spoke of him, and it’s ford’s frame of reference at that moment

the swig from the memory gun is something i keep forgetting but it’s very abstract. very meaningful or meaningless, depending on your viewpoint. very pretentious. 10/10, past len

the seventh segment, i believe, is the only one that is achronological. it’s just a flashback to jhselbraum, and the fogginess of a shifting brain chemistry, and also that ford feels like a failure for his relapses. it’s his rumination on his past

that segment is the shortest, which is why the last one is the longest

the final segment combines ford’s two places. i hesitate to call them “dreams” and “reality” because, for all intents and purposes, right now, for ford, they’re the same. it starts with bill, and how he enables ford’s self-destructive behaviours, and that ford still loves bill, on some level, even though he hates him, and how e’s scrutinised

he wants to disappear. he wants to die, and he wants to die, on some level, throughout all of the fic. i’m still a little ashamed to say that suicidality never really goes away, even when you think it’s gone for good

bill’s dialogue is intentionally slightly wooden. he gives an evil monologue. he does exposition in a story with little to no exposition. he doesn’t, ironically, fit into the dreamlike airs of the fic. his story has holes that ford doesn’t notice

ford, at this point, is terrified. obviously. he had his happy ending and it’s all gone. bill is poking at all of his insecurities. then he’s abruptly with stan, who is stan. he’s in the stanley body. he’s himself. but because of same coin, and because of bill’s words, ford doesn’t believe that

ford is continuing the conversation from his dream, but stan isn’t, because he wasn’t there. obviously

each time that ford tries to kill bill, he uses a gun. the first time, he’s in bill’s home, which isn’t actually his home but the in-between spaces of the multiverse that bill has invaded, and he fails. the second time, he’s in gravity falls, where bill has invaded, and he succeeds

this time, he is in the stan o’ war, which was supposed to be a safe and innocent and pure home, that “bill” has invaded

and ford breaks. in each segment, a string holding him together has snapped, and this one is the last string

so, ford has a gun, stan is crying, and ford’s lining up their temples so that a single shot can kill them both. it was something i read being attempted in a les mis fic before, and it stuck with me, because those fics were good, if kind of questionable. this is me pushing my angst limits. i did this for you, fex! i messaged you like “hey is this going too far” and you were just “you can never go too far”

ford loses his metaphors during the countdown. there were so many metaphors throughout this fic, but at this point, i was just like “meh idk” and it fitted thematically with the fact that ford has no clue what’s happening

then ford’s life kind of flashed before his eyes, and stan starts crying, but ford perceives it as laughter

wait fck i wrote an unreliable narrator fic. i’ve been thinking “damn unreliable narrator is so cool i wish i could do that” for a Very Long Time WELL GUESS WHAT

at the end, ford drinks from the bottle, despite having drunk from a glass beforehand, because he’s lost his dignity. but, also, his barrier has been torn down. he’s been left defenceless. both of them have been at the other’s mercy. ford has held and then relinquished some form of control, even if it’s a loose definition

it’s an abrupt ending, because sometimes thhings happen like that. if id stretched it for much longer, it would have been hurt/comfort and not stangst. hurt/comford. excellent

anyway bye

#helen stfu #fex #asks #i just spent like. an hour and a half on this

1 note · View note