#theorizes on mysteries with dipper

[kai-nyktos]

what if bill is jealous of the pine family because they remind him that he doesn’t get to have a happy family because he burned them all. and ford having almost gone down the same path as him (unappreciatedly smart, weird, outcasted, and then gaining access to greater knowledge and almost destroying the world) but stops and saves his family even after all the shit that’s happened (this is the one timeline where both dipper and mabel survive, after all). he gets to be happy. they all get to be happy, together.

he must hate them as much as he hates himself, doesn’t he?

[dragonpikachu]

List of old Gravity Falls things

because fans today probably don't know about all the batshit stuff that used to happen, here's some of the stuff I remember in no particular order:

People theorizing Robbie was a zombie

People also theorizing Gompers was connected to Bill because his eyes looked like that

Mystery trio

That time when Dipper got possessed by Bill, he stuck Dipper's arm in a silverware draw and then there was an avalanche of fan art with forks stuck in the poor kid's arm

The fact people guessed Stan had a twin actual years before the reveal, somehow even getting the name Stanley right, and then it turns out the names were swapped (there's so much old fan art calling Ford "Stanley", how could we have known)

All the crossover art with Over the Garden Wall

The fact Tad Strange's name was leaked and people came up with an entirely made up story about who he was, thinking he was some kind of weird shape demon like Bill, only for him to be a small 8 second gag character

When "Not What He Seems" can out and Stan's quote of "The Author of the Journals, my brother" somehow became a meme

When Steven Universe ended and somehow we got a bunch of fan art of him working at the Mystery Shack

That time "A Tale of Two Stans", the Steven Universe episode "Cry for Help" and the FNAF 4 trailer were all released on the same day, July 13, 2015

This:

I know there's other shit I'm forgetting so feel free to add some if you know any

[mycartoonmonster]

With the context of the Book of Bill and the characterisation of Bill, I ended up finding that all the members of the Zodiac have a thing or two in common with Bill Cipher.

Six fingered hand-Stanford Pines

-Both have a genetic mutation which they got ostracized for but made them interested in the worlds beyond.

- Both are egocentric and smart.

-Both have a thirst for revenge to prove the people around them they were wrong about them.

-Both didn't mean to endanger their dimension (Ford wanted knowledge and Bill wanted to show them the stars)

-Animals aren't safe around them (Ford set a bird on fire by mistaking it as a Phoenix and Bill ripped out a deer's teeth in his debut and in the storyboards of Weirdmageddon P1 he uses a deer to forcibly kiss Ford's statue as if they were his Barbie and Ken)

-Both have a weird sense of humor

-Both are considered criminals in the multiverse (Theft in Ford's case and Manslaughther, Murder alongside other stuff like mass property destruction in Bill's case)

-Both project onto others they see as similar to themselves (Bill with Ford-and on a minor scale Pacifica-and Ford with Dipper)

-Both ended up getting tricked by a conman (Ford by Bill and Bill by Stanley)

-Both are authors! (The Journals and the Book Of Bill, which are essentially diaries that talked about what their lives were, a bit about themselves and the creatures they found through their life)

Crescent symbol/Fish-Stanley Pines

-Both are scammers

-Both share mannerisms, one of them being referring to Ford as Sixer(which led to people theorizing Stan was Bill's reincarnation)

-Bad relationship with their parents but seem closer with their mom (Bill's parents tried to make him blind to the 3rd dimension but it seems Bill genuinely loved his mama Scalene while Fildbrick didn't value Stan as much as Ford and Caryn was the only one worried about Stanley and was one of the 2 persons that assisted his fake funeral)

-Both were seen as a bad kid growing up (Bill by the people on his dimension due to his mutation and the habilities this granted him while Stan was seen as lesser than Ford due to the latter's gigantic IQ and his rebellious nature)

-Both made one mistake that heavily affected the course of their lives and can never return home because of it (Stan ruining Ford´s project and Bill setting his home ablaze)

-Both didn't mean to push Ford away from them nor put their families in any danger initially(Bill wanted Ford to continue with the portal and got sad after their fallout and Stan did what he did in a moment where he wasnt thinking rationally and it cost him 30 years of loneliness and guilt)

-Both went to jail on different occassions (Stan on Colombia and Bill after going on a rampage in the bar while drunk after the fallout with Ford and the Theraprism if you wanna add it)

-Both tend show only 1 eye to people as well as a cane (Bill only has 1-although he can shapeshift and have multiples as seen in his demon form- and he uses the cane mostly in Dreamscappers, a bit in Sock Opera and in the intro for Weirdmageddon while Stan uses a patch and an 8 ball cane for tourists during his mystery man persona)

-Both used their art to influence people (Stan with the Mystery Shack's attractions and Bill using animation and figurines which failed, unlike Stan's works, unless you count the Lil' Stanley comic)

-Both have used a red demon costume once (Bill in the book and Stan in a picture in Gideon Rises)

-Both wanted to set the journals on fire (with Bill actually doing it in Weirdmageddon Part 1)

-They find Dipper's disstress/fear and annoyance hilarious (Stan teasing him vs Bill terrorizing him)

Glasses-Fiddleford McGucket

-Both end up going insane after a traumatic event (The destruction of his home dimension in Bill's case and McGucket taking a peek into Bill eating his own exoskeleton after crossing the portal)

-The times they helped/aided people it ended bad for them (In McGucket's case, Dipper with his new voice and the Gideon Bot that ended up getting destroyed in the scuffle with Dipper and in Bill's case; Dipper became Bill's puppet and Gideon didn't get the Shack's signature hence he had to use dynamite as a plan B and Weirdmaggedon only lasted 4-5 days for the Henchmaniacs while in McGuckets case's Shacktron didn't survive against Bill as they didn't consider protecting the arms and legs the same way that the Shack was protected)

-Both played a part in the creation of secret societies (Fiddleford by creating The Societyvof the Blind Eye and Bill by the Ciphertologists and inderectly creating the Anti-Bill Cipher society by terrorizing 4 persons)

-Underneath all that insanity and very deep in that broken mind, there is one very smart broken guy.

-Both lost their families (At least Fiddleford could reconciliate with some of it but Bill doesn´t have the same chance anymore)

Bag of ice-Wendy Courdory

-Both are rebellious and dislike authority figures.

-They like to do what they want with no regard for rules

-Both abused their power on more than one occasion (Wendy by stealing snacks and throwing water balloons at the elderly when working at the pool and Bill throughout his deals and in Weirdmageddon)

-They've had guts to face powerfull creatures (Bill the Time Baby and Wendy stuff like the ShapeShifter, the Unicorns or the Eye Bats in Weirdmageddon)

-Both lost a mom when they were young.

Questioning Mark-Soos Ramírez

-Both are smarter than what they look like upon first sight.

-Both lack a dad (Bill's died while Soos's left him)

-They have a funny side to them (Bill more leaning to sadism though)

-Both had their eyes damaged by Mabel (Soos by getting attacked with glitter in Stan Is Not What He Seems and Bill by getting sprayed with graffiti paint in Weirdmageddon Part 3)

Stiched heart-Robbie Valentino

-Both had their relationships ruined by their own arrogance, negligence and dishonesty (Bill being an abusive partner while Robbie was immature).

-They did not take the fallout with their partner well (at least Robbie would never dare to do anything similar to what Bill did)

-They tried to pursue their partner after the break up but to no avail (Bill with threaths and later on with offers of power and Robbie by using music as seen in Gideon Rises and both actually using messanges-Bill wasting Ford's Post-it notes and Robbie sad emails and texts to Wendy)

-Both are good with music (Bill can play the piano and xylophone as seen in his apology video and Robbie can play the guitar and both can sing)

-Both insulted Soos or referred to him in condescending ways (Robbie called him Big Dude and Bill adressed him as "the fat one")

-Both had beef with a 12 year old and wanted to harm them (Robbie wanted to fist fight a child aka Dipper and Bill planned to commit suicide in Dipper's body, turn the mystery twins into corpses, disassamble their molecules and almost kills Mabel in the series finale)

'Both got turned to stone at one point in Weirdmageddon (Robbie when it started and Bill at the end of it)

One eyed Pentagram-Gideon Gleeful

-Having too much power that they acquired at a young age which heavily affected them and began their rise to villainy

-Both have a hatred towards Stanley Pines for meddling with their plans to obtain absolute power and ultimatetly ruining their plans which ended with them in prison.

-Both burnt a picture of the object of their affections; destroying the section with the rest of their family and leaving their faces untouched.

-Both planned to use Mabel and Dipper to get one of the original mystery twins to give them what they wanted

-Both left the Pines Twin they were interested on imprisoned during Weirdmageddon.

-Both deep down craved adoration and attention.

-Both lead a gang of criminals but dont treat them with a much respect as the one Pines Twin they are pining on while hating the other twins for thinking they turned them away from them when in reality it was their actions that did.

-Both got punched in the face by a Pines Twin in a season Finale inside someone´s head (Gideon Bot's and Stanley's)

-Both seem to care about their appearance (Gideon worrying about his hair the most and Bill about his bowtie, given the scream he lets out when Dipper blasts him and him readjusting it a couple of times during Weirdmageddon)

-Both ended up in prison after acquiring a position of absolute power where they do art therapy

-Both are snappy dressers and use their charm to trick people

Llama-Pacifica Northwest

-Both had messy childhoods that turned them into who they are now.

-Both are pretty good liars and can trick people very easily (Bill with his deals and Pacifica in the Lost Legends comic)

-Both look down on people they see as inferior to them(Bill with humans and Pacifica with the working class, hillbillies and the Pines before the events of The mystery of the Northwest mansion and Weirdmageddon)

-Both see themselves as monsters that cause havoc no matter where they go or what they do (Pacifica in dreams and Bill due to what he did in his home)

-Both were forced by their parents to act in a certain way (Bill´s at least loved him and were good intentioned)

-Both are fighters (Pacifica by defying her parents wishes, facing against the ghost and the face stealer in Lost Legends and refusing Bill's deal in her dream and Bill could stand a fight with Shacktron which he ended up defeating and in his book its implied he can fight easily against demons or ghosts)

-Both have wore a crown (Pacifica in her debut episode and Bill in his portrait in the Penthouse suite of the Fearamid)

Shooting Star-Mabel Pines

-Both are agents of Chaos (Mabel being Chaotic Good/Neutral and Bill Chaotic Evil).

-Both enjoy partying and to have fun.

-Both have a wild imagination and a sense of style.

-Both like karaoke and have had a karaoke night with one of the original mystery twins

-Both have eaten stuff normal people shouldn't eat/gross things(Bill his exoskeleton and illegal punch and Mabel getting wasted with Smile Dip, a leaf, huge amounts of sugar that would end with her sick, Mabel juice and she once got hospitalized by eating sniff and scratch stickers)

-Both like makeovers (as seen in a part of the book of Bill where he talks about hiding the blood of his past)

-Both think highly of themselves (Bill's bottomless ego vs Mabel being secure about her talents, qualities and appearance)

-Both have social skills that made others attracted to them, mostly loners or freaks (Bill with his Henchmaniacs for their shared love of chaos and Ford with his smarts and cosmical knowledge and Mabel with Candy and Greta by being weirdos and not being as popular as Pacifica and her posse)

-Both adress Ford as "Fordsy"

-Both have rolled in the grass in Gravity Falls(Bill while possesing Ford during puppet hour and Mabel in Tourist Trapped)

-Both put their wants over other people's and/or their needs (Like in Sock Opera but even if Mabel is sometimes selfish at least apologizes and learns from her mistakes while Bill doesn't care who he hurts and would never apologize)

-Both use white out to exclude certain stuff they dont like from reading material to "fix it" or crayons/markers to cross them (Mabel with the dialog in the Comix Up story in Lost Legends or certain things such as her summer romances and in the Mabel´s guide to color with the picture and Bill with a section where part of The Great Gatsby is shown on his book where he mentions assigned reading or stuff like his exes and his former friend The Oracle/Seven eyes)

-Both became gods of destruction, first time by accident and the second with full intention(Mabel by accident with the rift and ending with MabelLand and Bill with the accidental destruction of his home and with Weirdmageddon)

-You could argue they're awfull when it comes to romance (Mabel's attempts always end in failure and Bill fumbled Ford so so hard)

Pine Tree-Dipper Mason Pines

-Both are good at decoding codes and solving mysteries and have good academic skills.

-Both didn't have many friends growing up and were picked on as kids (Bill for his mutation and Dipper for his birthmark)

-The times they wanted to prove themselves to others ended badly for them (Dipper caused a zombie apocalypse and Bill destroyed his dimension by accident)

-The names they use aren't their real names (Bill confirmed in an AMA years ago that Bill Cipher is just a name he picked so humans could converse with him without going bonkers upon first contact and Dipper's name is actually Mason but everyone refers to him as Dipper due to his birthmark)

-Has cloned himself (Bill's are a natural hability for him while Dipper made copies of himself via paper-rest in piece Tyrone)

-Both were adorable as babies.

-Both got obsessed with someone to the point of messing with their personal lifes (Dipper with Wendy during her relationship with Robbie and Bill with Ford and his relationship with McGucket)

-They changed hats at different points in their life; Dipper in Tourist Trapped changes from his green hat with a five point star to the classic blue pine tree while Bill sported a multicolor hat as a kid before changing into a tophat (if we take the theory that Bill's hat was originally his father's then both Dipper's and Bill's were owned by a family member before being passed on to them, Dipper's belonging to Stan)

I know this is probably just a coincidence (save the stuff with Ford as some were meant to highlight the bond these two had and establish parallels between the two, making them doomed soulmates and adding another layer of sadness over the toxic yaoi) but a fun one still.

Thanks for reading!

[ckret2]

Chapter 42 in human Bill Cipher's imprisonment in the Mystery Shack about to get a whole lot worse, featuring:

A history lesson on a second dimensional cult and its obnoxious child leader.

And Dipper making the mistake of asking Bill what "reality is an illusion" means.

And most importantly... The Eclipse: Prologue.

####

The source of light is a completely hypothetical phenomenon.

Just a couple of centuries ago, scientists postulated that perhaps light was a side-effect of magnetism generated by the poles of planets, and that someday the study of magnets might explain how light shifted over the course of a day.

But modern scientists theorized that light emanated from some force or object in a higher dimension, and that the unseen movements of this source-of-light explained how light ebbed and flowed around the perimeters of objects over the course of a day. Physics experiments backed up this hypothesis of a "third dimensional" origin of light.

Scientists adopted the term "sun" to describe this hypothetical light source. Experiments also suggested the third dimension might have a multitude of weaker light sources that provided much less illumination—perhaps spread across the third dimension like water droplets suspended in fog—which they dubbed "stars."

Roughly once a year, light (or rather, the "sun") was eclipsed. This was a very long time; a child born just after an eclipse might already be in school, have mastered measuring angles and reading, and begun learning multiplication and division by the time they saw their first eclipse. Some years were skipped, such that they wouldn't have an eclipse for two, three, sometimes even four or five years—it was possible to almost reach middle age without seeing an eclipse—with no discernible pattern to these gaps. Eclipses usually occurred around the new year—indeed, New Year's Day was fixed to the average date of the eclipse—but eclipse season ranged up to three months in either direction.

Experiments were being conducted to test ideas about the nature of eclipses—the two most prominent theories were that the sun naturally flickered off and on like a lamp, in a rolling pattern that accounted for how eclipses didn't affect the whole plain simultaneously but had been proven to move; or that the sun was obscured by some object in the third dimension, like a ball thrown in front of a lamp. There were solid arguments in favor of either theory, and thus far the data on hand couldn't disprove either.

But where science petered out, religion took up the baton.

A new religious movement called the Higher Dimensional Gate was picking up steam in the northwest. The cult (as some watchdog organizations called it) had been started a few years ago by a married couple—line and trapezoid—who gave largely inoffensive New Age-flavored sermons about spiritual purity and enlightenment. Their shows would have been unremarkable if not for their inclusion of their child—a charismatic young equilateral triangle they claimed had an "inner eye" that granted him clairvoyance. Every show, they put him on stage for a few minutes, where he'd point out audience members and offer seemingly-psychic insights into their lives. As he approached adolescence, he was given more and more stage time, which he'd use to recite the same sort of rhetoric as his parents while tossing in some novel claims about the third dimension that reflected the public's modern scientific fascinations.

It wasn't until the line's death that they evolved from a traveling psychic sideshow with a few zealous supporters into a burgeoning religious movement. The trapezoid adopted a background role as the precocious triangle took over all their speaking engagements, which he used to spin a novel mythology describing the third dimension as a separate spiritual plane found in an unseeable direction "upward, but not northward" from the mundane mortal plane. It was at this time that they adopted the name Higher Dimensional Gate, and their young leader announced that his spiritual contacts in the third dimension had granted him the title Magister Mentium—teacher of minds (or, perhaps more ominously, master of minds).

Higher Dimensional Gate aggressively recruited new followers, with the Magister leaving school to support a frenetic pace of traveling speaking engagements. More and more devotees followed him from town to town, overfilling hotels wherever they went and flooding parking lots with a caravan of RVs and trailers. Fliers they left in their wake offered mail-order pamphlets, sermon recordings, and religious paraphernalia. But the cult didn't break into the national consciousness until a couple of theoretical astrophysicists published a paper debunking pop culture misinformation on the third dimension.

Along with referencing several sci-fi shows spreading the idea that the third dimension allowed time travel, the authors dove into the bizarre beliefs of several New Age authors, speakers, and religious movements. They particularly maligned the ideas put forth by Higher Dimensional Gate, calling their descriptions of angelic aliens and spirit guides "misleading fairy tales" with no scientific basis in reality. They said the Magister Mentium would have done better to finish a basic public education before making claims about the third dimension.

The paper didn't receive much notice outside popular science magazines—until the Magister Mentium released a vicious public rebuttal that made national news for its absurdity.

Soundbites from his twenty-minute rant were broadcast in news segments about fringe religious movements and scientific literacy. Talk shows played quotes as fodder for jokes. Editorialists predicted that the young triangle was the sort of crooked cult leader who'd be on trial in a decade for cheating his worshipers out of their life savings. Only a few programs played even as much as a full minute from his speech:

"These scientists want you to think that the third dimension is some dead realm hidden behind a door you'll never see—and I'm telling you it's not! It's the dream realm! It's the realm of spirits and positive energy! It stretches into all possible futures, and if you could peer into it, you'd see the road to your own best possible future!

"And I know this. Because unlike these pessimistic brainiacs who mock what they don't understand, I can see the third dimension. I can witness the 'sun' in all its glory—a blazing white circle, more dazzling than anything you've ever seen, so bright it burns like fire to stare at it! I can see it pass through the pinpoint white lights of the 'stars'!

"And I can prove it.

"The most 'educated' minds in the scientific community can't predict an eclipse. They look at their historical records and they do a little math, hope they'll get lucky, and shrug if they're wrong—what do they know? All they can do is guess! 

"But with my own all-seeing eye, I've personally witnessed a phenomenon that scientists can't even imagine. I know what passes between the sun and our plane—and I know when it's coming.

"I note all my detractors are in the camp that thinks the sun flickers.

"So let's run a scientific experiment. I challenge the scientific community to predict the next eclipse more accurately than me. I'll give it to you within the minute. In fact—I'll sweeten the deal! I'll give a million dollars to any nerd who can guess more accurately than me! I will personally hand you the prize money!"

"But if you want the prize, you'd better guess soon. Because the eclipse will be here in two weeks. I can already see it on the horizon."

It was nearly seven months until New Year's.

Sources close to the Magister's family claimed he was a spendthrift with nowhere near a million dollars on hand.

When asked to comment on the public ridicule his challenge had inspired, the Magister snidely replied, "We'll see who's laughing after the eclipse."

####

Gideon approached the Mystery Shack disguised in a pair of sunglasses and a camo jacket from his father's closet. The jacket was as long as a dress on him. It was hot.

He kept outside the tree line as he circled the shack, passing the gift shop, the house door, and finally the long side of the house where tourists never parked and the residents rarely ventured.

Gideon peered anxiously at each window for witnesses. He looked up at the attic dormer which once held the window of Bill's face; he caught a flash of bright golden curls pulling out of sight, and flinched. No, that was fine. That was who he was here for. Weren't any other blondes in the house.

When he was sure the coast was clear, he ran across the open ground from the trees to the side door, heart threatening to beat out of his chest. By the time he reached the door, Bill was already downstairs in the floor room, hands and grinning face pressed to the window like a child awaiting a special delivery. He waved excitedly at Gideon.

Gideon hissed, "Shh!" and immediately felt stupid about it.

He partially unzipped his jacket, pulled a manila envelope out of an inner pocket, knelt, and shoved it under the door. As Bill had promised, the door had poor weatherstripping and the envelope slid in easily.

A napkin covered in faint dry marker writing slid out. Gideon picked it up and read it. "Nice work ☆ Boy! I'll pass you the next message at Town Hall. Get yourself something nice, my treat. ◡̈" Inside the napkin's fold was a $5 coupon to the hardware store. It was expired. 

Looking at the coupon, Gideon asked himself what a powerless imprisoned demon could really do to help his father's business.

Inside the shack, Bill checked the doorway to ensure no humans were coming for a few minutes, flopped onto the flat old sofa, and pulled several sheets of notebook paper out of the envelope: the answers to all the questions he'd told Gideon to ask his worshiper. He skimmed past her name to the second question: how had they located Bill?

At the sight of a familiar name, his heart leaped into his throat, then slowly sank into its cage again as he read the rest. "Someone calling himself Stanford Pines reached out, claiming to be an ex-cultist wanting to help other victims of the cult. He said the cult's 'founder' was incarcerated. He sounded like an enemy, but they thought he might know something about your disappearance and sent Sue."

Until the last moment, Bill had held onto a sliver of hope. As much as Ford said he couldn't stand Bill, somebody had had to contact his artists, and who else...?

But there it was. It had been Ford; but he hadn't been trying to save Bill. He'd just been trying to rip the nails out of one more thing Bill had built.

Fine. Bill wasn't wasting time on lost causes. He'd never really seen Ford as a friend, anyway. If Ford was stupid enough to throw away a god's favor, that was his loss. Bill could kill him with the rest when he had his power back. He didn't care. He'd just... really thought he could win him back over.

He crumpled up the pages, tossed them on the floor, and hunched forward to rub his eyelid with his hand.

Well, trying to get Ford back on his side had just been a way to pass the time. He hadn't taken it seriously. Not really.

He leaned back, flopped his head on the backrest cushion, and sighed; and then he fished the pages off the floor and smoothed them back out.

He read through the rest of the information Gideon had obtained. His girls in Death Valley had indeed been awaiting his arrival "as Bill requested"; and when he didn't show up on schedule, they'd taken to waiting for him in shifts for half a year before giving up. The way Bill had "requested" was to stack themselves into a human throne for him—he imagined Sue hadn't wanted to mention that detail on the phone with a kid. And they'd kept that up for six months? In shifts? That was hysterical. What a bunch of lunatics. He couldn't wait to meet the gals in person, he was just going to love them. Sue was set up at an inn a few towns west—not a lot of motels in this lonely part of Oregon—and there were a couple more girls in Portland who could be here in an hour.

They'd also made contact with a few devotees of Bill's teachings in Washington, but hadn't told them his exact location. Unsurprising—if they were the devotees he was thinking of, they were less "hardy New Age hippie spiritualists looking forward to the creation of a bright new world" and more "paranoid doomsday preppers anticipating being the last survivors of the doomed old world." The Death Valley group probably didn't trust them. Just about all of Bill's "students" were freaks of one sort or another—if not when he met them, then by the time he was done with them—but different varieties of freaks usually clashed. He had to keep them safely corralled into separate sects to maintain the harmony and their loyalty.

They were all so, so close—all these humans just waiting for an opportunity to meet him, touch him, save him, serve him, love him. They were so close he could almost reach out and grab them.

But "almost" wouldn't get them into his hands.

Something would come up soon. He was sure. He could feel it.

####

Sometimes, stairs just weren't worth the effort.

Bill understood, intellectually, that stair steps had a "top" surface and a "side" surface. He also understood that, given how gravity worked in this dimension, you could only step on their top surfaces. He knew this. He was smart. He'd personally worked out the equations to calculate how gravity worked in this dimension ages before an apple beaned Newton.

It was just that, when he looked at a staircase, he couldn't shake the impression that someone had simply taken a 2D plane and artistically folded it into a zigzag. And on a folded 2D plane, there wasn't a "top" surface and a "side" surface; there was just the surface, and a 3D body could stand anywhere atop the surface with no problem.

So he would try to get from the attic to the kitchen, subconsciously decide that rather than walking "down" the stairs standing vertically he wanted to walk "up" the stairs standing horizontally, and he'd try to lean forward to put his foot on the side of a step—and then his face was on the floor again.

And even when he kept his ups up and his sides sideways, sometimes over-concentrating on where to step distracted him into tripping anyway.

The stairs in the Quadrangle of Qonfusion never gave him trouble. They worked fine both vertically and horizontally, he'd designed them that way. And also he didn't need to use them. He could float. They were mainly there for the outerplanar Henchmaniacs and because Bill liked the zigzag motif. He was much less fond of stairs these days. When he got home, he was ripping them all out and replacing them with ladders and slides.

He was better with stairs than he'd been when he first occupied this body. But when he didn't focus on every single step, he still tended to slip up. He often got to the stairs and saw his body crumpled on the landing fifteen seconds in the future. If the damage wasn't too severe, sometimes he just resigned himself to the bruises and stepped off the ledge. Had to get downstairs somehow, after all.

But sometimes the future held a broken leg, or an unconscious heap, or a lot of blood. When that happened, sometimes he'd shuffle his footing a bit until the future looked less painful and then try descending. Sometimes he'd creep down to the last safe step and then look for a less fatal route the rest of the way down.

And sometimes he got halfway down the stairs, saw looming disaster, couldn't for the life of him figure out how to avoid it, and thought forget it and just sat down in the middle of the staircase. If he waited there long enough, eventually whatever he'd been about to instinctively do would change, and he could safely finish his journey.

Stairs were, by far, the most frequent and most stupid of his inconveniences as a human.

He never thought to bring something to read in case he hit unexpected delays on the stairs. There was nothing interesting to do, and he didn't so much as have a window to look out of. He got bored. He was constantly sleep-deprived. Sometimes he fell asleep, leaning against the wall.

He'd overheard the humans speculating on why he liked to nap on the stairs. The leading theory was that it had been normal in his home dimension, followed closely by runner-up theory "just to annoy us." None had asked him directly. They usually just left him alone on the stairs. But not today.

Bill flinched out of sleep as his leg was kicked. A fizzling field of white pinpricks filled his vision and faded as he opened his eyes. "Mruh?"

"You're blocking the stairs," Dipper said. This time Bill had fallen asleep on the stairs below the landing, slouched down with his shoulders and head against the wall, legs stretched across two stair steps and knees raised.

"And you're disturbing my sleep." Bill yawned and glanced downstairs. Coast was clear. He could get to the living room with nothing but a fumble on the next to bottom step now.

"Get out of the way." Dipper kicked his leg again.

Well, now Bill didn't want to get up. He kicked Dipper back. "No. Your ancestors lived in trees, act like it."

"What?"

"Climb, monkey boy."

Dipper grumbled, but surveyed his roadblock thoughtfully. He experimentally lifted a foot over Bill's abdomen, considered how far down it was to the next step, and scooted down to Bill's feet instead. Bill watched with a smirk as Dipper clung to the railing and gingerly stepped over one foot to the edge of the stair step, and then the next. Bill briefly considered tripping him, decided it wasn't worth getting in trouble, and instead twitched a foot up as Dipper passed over and laughed when he jumped.

"Jerk," Dipper muttered. "This is why you only have one friend."

The jab ripped at a raw sore in his chest. Ex-cultist. "Whatever!" He laughed loudly. "My real friends are all one little interdimensional rift away, I didn't come here to make pals with humans." He jerked his hood down over his eyes and slouched lower, arms crossed tight. "I don't even care. This entire universe is a hologram and nothing's real anyway."

There was silence. Bill congratulated himself on getting the last word in; and then Dipper said, "What does that mean?"

"What kind of stupid—it means I don't care about you, what do you think it means? You're made from the exhaust belched out of a star's tailpipe—"

"I meant, the hologram thing. You're always saying stuff about the universe not being real, what are you talking about."

Bill thumbed the hem of his hood up and glanced down at Dipper. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up determinedly. He'd pulled out his journal and pen. He was serious. He was all ready to learn about the secrets of the universe.

Ford's little wanna-be protégé with his little knock-off Journal, wasn't he adorable. He wanted so much to be just like his great uncle. And in many ways, he was like a younger Ford. The ignorant, arrogant, insecure, naïve, easily-flattered, easily-exploited younger Ford, back before he grew a personality. Except even back at his most boring, Ford had found the strange beautiful where this kid only found it interesting. You don't have what it takes to be Ford.

Bill was already filling this brat's head with gunk—bogus conspiracy theories, wild goose chases after lucid dreaming, nightmares about whole dimensions that existed only as parables for somebody else. What was a little bit more? He could give this kid something to talk to his therapist about. Something that—in his darkest, lowest, loneliest moments—would come back to mind, and remind him that nothing he did would ever matter.

Plus, he hoped Ford would look in on the living room and seethe about not being his student anymore.

"All right kid, sure! Fine. You just so happened to catch me on a day when I've got nothing to do." Bill stood, stretched, and sauntered down the stairs. He fumbled on the next to bottom step. "You wanna know about the universe? You wanna know the big secret?"

"Uh..." Dipper eagerly flipped through his journal, looking for a blank page. Apparently he hadn't expected Bill to actually indulge his curiosity. "'Secret'?" He trailed after Bill into the living room.

"Okay, okay, maybe it's not a 'secret'—a secret suggests somebody's trying to hide it. It's just that nobody thinks you're important enough to tell and you're too primitive to see it for yourself."

Bill turned around, a lecturer on a stage. Dipper sat on the couch and tried to position his journal on his knees to take notes. He looked so attentive. He thought he was going to enjoy this.

"So you remember what I told you about the second dimension. That from the third dimension's perspective, it's nothing but shadows cast on a wall."

"Plato's cave. Yeah."

"Your dimension is a lot like that. There are higher dimensions than this, and your entire universe is being projected down from one of them. If being in the second dimension and seeing into the third is like being a shadow looking at the entrance to the cave, then being in the third and seeing into the fourth is like a character on a movie screen looking out at the film projector. While you're distracted by the movie, I'm studying the film reel and watching the frames coming up. It's how I tell the future—and you can't even tell yourself I'm lying about that, because you've seen me do it."

Dipper grumbled, "You've spoiled the killer on Duck-tective."

"I've spoiled the killer on Duck-tective! Twice!"

Dipper was furiously taking notes. "Wait—so, the fourth dimension really is time? Mabel and I kinda visited the fourth dimension once, but I wasn't sure if it being 'time' was, like, some kind of metaphor..."

"Ha! Listen to you! That's like asking if the third dimension is light. No. Time isn't the fourth dimension. It's just in the fourth dimension," Bill said. "And for the record you didn't really visit the fourth dimension. The glowing blue tunnel with floating clocks and calendars? That was a metaphor."

"Aw man," Dipper muttered, disappointed.

"So when you say you can see the future, you mean—you literally see it? With your eyeballs?"

"All-seeing eye," Bill said smugly.

"Can... you teach me?"

"No. It's not a learnable skill. You're either born with an inner—what's the human phrase?—a third eye, or you aren't."

Dipper processed that. "How do I find out if I have—?"

"You don't."

"Aw."

Bill waited for Dipper to scribble down a couple more lines before he casually dropped the next bombshell: "In fact, not only have you never been 'in' the fourth dimension—your universe isn't really even third dimensional."

Dipper's pen gouged into the page. "What do you mean, it's not third dimensional!"

"I mean you've got two dimensions and the third's an illusion. Hologram, remember?"

"What are you—" Dipper waved a hand around in the air. "I'm moving my arm through the third dimension right now!"

"No you're not."

Dipper threw his pen on the ground. "Okay, you're messing with me!"

"Not this time. Listen. Got a little riddle for you: what do Plato's cave and a movie theater have in common?"

Dipper pursed his lips angrily, but he'd been issued a riddle and couldn't resist trying to solve it. "Sitting in the dark, staring at shapes?"

"Ha! Look at it, it still thinks it's part of the audience!" Bill wagged a finger disapprovingly. "In both cases, everyone and everything in the show is an illusion—just light and shadows projected on a flat wall."

"But—! The world would look flat if it was 2D—"

"It does look flat. 2D is all you've ever seen," Bill said. He held his hands out, thumbs and forefingers forming a rectangle like a picture frame, his exposed eye staring through it at Dipper.  "Your eyes only see a pair of two-dimensional images that your brain interprets as 3D because it's been trained to. Depth perception is an optical illusion! You can't actually witness the depth of an object—your brain uses context clues to guess it! And the context clues are lying to you."

Dipper scowled. "But." He paused. "It's different."

"Uh-huh." Bill leaned against a wall, feigning a yawn. "Okay, wow me with your philosophy."

"Pictures on paper are 2D, and they don't look 3D, so since the real world does look 3D..."

"Hey, you know that autostereogram art your sister's friend likes so much? Magic Vision Posters?" Bill asked. "Cross your eyes a little and a 3D illusion pops out of the page?"

Dipper's frown deepened.

Bill's smile widened. "And those are just manmade pictures. The projectors I'm talking about are cosmically complex. If it's so easy to trick your brain into seeing something three dimensional in a flat image, then how do you know, really know, that everything around you is 3D rather than an infinitely complex 2D hologram?"

"Be... cause..." Dipper looked around, grasping for another defense of reality as he knew it. He picked his pen off the floor. "Because I can touch an object and feel it's 3D! Even if my eyes can be fooled, I can... look, I can feel the curve of the barrel and everything."

"And?" Bill asked. "If your laundry comes out of the dryer unexpectedly cool, you think it's damp because your species didn't evolve wetness-sensing nerves. And you still trust your sense of touch?"

"Wait, that's why that happens?"

"Uh-huh. Water is wet, your t-shirts aren't, and your third dimension's an optical illusion."

Dipper slouched back on the couch, arms crossed, chewing his pen, brows drawn and eyes unfocused. Bill watched with a smirk as Dipper's faith in an objective observable reality slowly eroded before his very eye. For someone so eager to burrow into the strange, Dipper wanted so much for the world to make sense. That was why he was burrowing into the strange in the first place: to shine a flashlight on the things that go bump in the dark.

Maybe that was what rubbed Bill so wrong about this kid. Bill was sure that, deep in his heart, Dipper didn't really know how to celebrate the weird; he only wanted to expand the boundaries of normal. Disgusting.

Finally, Dipper mumbled, "How did you find this out?"

"This little shadow peeled itself off the wall and flew out of the cave—do you think I stopped there? I've seen further! What looks like an inescapable labyrinth to a two-dimensional Minotaur is nothing but a fun maze in a puzzle book when you can see over the walls from the third dimension's perspective. And once you can see the fourth dimension, your so-called 'third' dimension looks no different! I can see through walls, into boxes, past barriers; and I can see just how flat your world really is. Like taking a photo and looking at it from the edge."

"Hm." Dipper was still staring into space.

Bill's smug smile drooped into a frown. Dipper didn't look like he'd absorbed anything Bill just said. He hated an inattentive audience.

He crossed the room, planting a hand on the couch backrest by Dipper's head to lean over him, and waited until Dipper looked up into his eye. Bill said, "And I can tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt: you're no more real to the things projecting your universe than the shadows in Plato's cave are to you. This. Entire. Universe. Doesn't. Exist. And nothing that happens here matters."

That little look of doubt edging into dread was so, so satisfying.

Bill pushed himself upright and sauntered to the door, his hex cast, ready to leave Dipper alone with his budding existential crisis. "So that's why I try to have fun with it! Your whole dimension is like an amusement park. Why hang out in a cave unless you're leaving cave paintings, who cares what the shadows think about the graffiti?"

"What's in those higher dimensions?"

Bill paused, glancing over his shoulder. "'Scuse me?"

"Something's gotta be running the 'projector' or whatever, right?" He asked it with an edge of desperation, like if Dipper could just make it that far, the world would make sense again. "Movies have audiences. Who're they?"

Bill stared at Dipper—and then slowly grinned again. What a glutton for misery. Feed him a bitter spoonful of poisonous knowledge and he asks for the bowl. But of course—tell him that reality isn't real and the next thing he wants to know is where to find reality.

Okay, fine, Bill would keep playing—this was almost fun. "Higher dimensional beings! Duh."

"What are they like?"

"Wretched incomprehensible shapeshifting contortions of flesh and bone that appear to gorily mutate as their vast bodies pass through the dimensions your limited eyes are capable of viewing. Seeing them will drive you mad."

"Ah. Great," Dipper said. "But what are they like as people?"

"From your perspective, all-knowing and unknowable. Talking to them will also drive you mad."

"I'm detecting a theme here," Dipper grumbled.

Bill gave him a polite golf clap. "Another win for human pattern-detection instincts! Give 'im a hand." (Oh, Bill wished he had his powers. It would be so funny to give Dipper a giant disembodied hand.)

In spite of his visible irritation, Dipper was still taking notes. "Is it possible for a human to meet one?"

"You've got more pattern-detection instincts than self-preservation instincts," Bill said wryly. "But sure, of course it's possible. In fact, I think you already met one."

That got him looking up from his journal. "I did?"

"Sure! Not here, but in a parallel universe that doesn't exist anymore. No clue what you talked about, I steer away from that guy when I can. But hey, maybe you'll remember it someday."

"How can I remember it if it happened to a parallel me in another universe?"

"When things like him speak, they leave vast echoes. Even across timelines."

Dipper considered that. "Could I meet him again?"

"Maybe if he takes an interest in you. Pray he doesn't. Prayers won't actually help, but it's something to keep your mind occupied!"

"Is it possible to be more proactive about meeting one of them?"

Bill laughed. "Kid, you're stupid. And that makes you very entertaining."

"Great?"

"But if you wanna break into some cosmic horror's living room, sure! If they don't come down here, all you need to do is go up there."

And back to taking notes Dipper went. "You gonna elaborate, orrr..."

"Ha, fine. The issue is you're not built for higher dimensions. Like I said, you might seem real to yourself here, but there you'd just be a light on a wall." He made a circle between his forefinger and thumb, turned his hand upside down, and peered through the circle like a monocle. "If you want to ascend, you need an aperture to translate between dimensions—something through which fourth-dimensional spacetime can be compacted enough to appear three-dimensional, or pseudo three-dimensional spacetime can be augmented with a fourth dimension. With an aperture like that, you can climb up and down the dimensional ladder to visit anywhere level of reality you want—from the zeroth dimension to the billionth."

"Including wherever our universe's projector is?"

"Bingo. Unfortunately for your suicidal ambitions, inventing an aperture capable of manipulating spacetime like that needs a lot of science humanity is nowhere near mastering; but with the materials humanity currently knows how to manufacture, I bet building one would be pretty simple if you got instructions from a species that's already done it." Bill arched his brows mockingly. "Hey, might even make a fun little summer project, if you don't mind going insane. Something to take to the science fair next year, huh?"

"Shut up," Dipper said. "And—if you got out of your dimension—do you know about species that can give those instructions?"

"Suuure! Heck, give me a couple pieces of paper and a pen and I could probably whip up the blueprints myself."

Dipper nodded. Dipper processed that. Dipper glared at Bill. "Wait a minute. Are you trying to get me to build another portal for you?!"

Bill cackled, doubling over. Voice shrill, he said, "I was wondering how long it'd take you!"

"Oh my god."

He groped for an arm chair and dropped down, still laughing. "I was this close to saying 'why don't you ask your uncle for the blueprints' to see if you'd get it!" He wheezed, "Can you imagine the look on his face!"

Dipper chucked his pen at Bill. "I hate you."

"Hook, line, and sinker! You idiot!" He slid halfway out of his seat, covering his face with his hands.

Dipper groaned. "So you made up all that stuff about the third dimension being fake and the universe being a hologram?"

Bill struggled to control his laughter enough to catch his breath. "No—no, all that was true. A hundred percent scientifically verifiable!"

"Shut up, man." Dipper got off the couch, kicked the back of Bill's armchair as he passed, and trudged into the gift shop.

####

"Hey Grunkle Ford? Is the third dimension actually an illusion being projected out of the fourth?"

"Been talking to Bill again, have you?"

Dipper winced. "I mean. Well. But he's not telling the truth, is he?"

"Mmm..." Ford waggled a hand uncertainly.

"What."

"Based on our current knowledge of quantum mechanics, it's not impossible," Ford admitted. "And it would explain some things about black holes."

"Ugh. That's the worst thing I've ever heard." Dipper rubbed his eyes. "How do you live with that?"

"With what?"

"Thinking the entire universe might be, just... some kind of projection? Like a movie?" Dipper said. "I mean... what's the point of doing anything if everything's fake. That's awful."

Ford pressed his lips together.

####

1981

"The universe is what?" Ford asked.

His muse shrugged apologetically. "Sorry to break it to ya, kid! I figured you'd rather hear it from me than—"

"But—but that's amazing!" Ford started pacing across the dreamscape's translucent grid floor. "The implications for physics, for faster-than-light travel, for, for—for religion?" He looked at Bill. "Is the projection a natural phenomenon or someone's creation."

"Uh," Bill said. "Creation?"

"Then who made it? Descartes' 'evil genius'? A demiurge? God?"

Bill laughed. "Kid, depending on your interdimensional political opinions, those are three names for the same guy."

"He's real?"

"Define 'real'," Bill said. "And 'he.' And 'is.'"

"I... I cannot do that!" Ford resumed pacing, muttering again about the implications.

Eye crinkled in amusement, Bill said, "I've gotta say, Stanford, you're taking this pretty well. Most humans don't like hearing they're secretly flat."

Ford barked a laugh. "'Most humans' didn't like hearing that the Earth isn't the center of the solar system. I'm a man of science! If we could prove this, it would be the biggest leap forward in physics since special relativity!" He beamed at Bill. "Do you realize what this means?"

Bill pointed at their portal calculations. "It means if you want to get this working, you need to zero out all the depth values."

"Ah." Ford's shoulders sagged. "Yes. That too."

"Wish you'd taken that fourth semester of Fifth-Dimensional Calculus now?"

"Hush," Ford said sourly, and was immediately mortified at himself for being so disrespectful to his muse; but Bill laughed with what sounded like genuine delight.

####

2013

"Right," Ford said self-consciously. "Awful."

####

At three a.m., Dipper lay in bed, gnawing at his shirt collar, staring at the ceiling.

Yeah. Oh yeah. He could feel it. Wondering whether reality was real would haunt him the rest of his life.

####

Bill slept like a baby.

Nothing like bullying a child to improve a miserable day.

####

Bill woke the next morning from a nightmare about—what had it been about. Being trapped in the bathroom as a metaphor for... something or other. Being trapped in general, probably. Great, had that incident given him trauma? Was he gonna start having recurring nightmares? Would this be a thing he had to deal with? What a miserable malfunctioning species humans were.

He could see the beforeimage of Mabel coming upstairs; not enough time to pull out his dream diary. He'd just have to remember it to write down later. He sat up, cracked his sore neck, and shuffled to the stairs in search of breakfast.

His foot missed the first step and landed on empty air, his stomach lurched, and he braced for a rough landing. In the split second he hung in the air, he thought that he wasn't supposed to fall, he'd looked. Hadn't he looked? He was sure he had—he didn't remember looking, but he could always see, if there'd been an injury in his imminent future he would have subconsciously noticed it and stopped to evaluate, the fact that he'd just walked meant there was nothing for him to notice—right? Idiot, why hadn't he double checked before he just walked off half-asleep—

It occurred to him that this split second was lasting a lot longer than it was supposed to.

He caught the handrail. His fall stopped as he gently bumped into the wall.

"Huh." He straightened up, gave the stairs a puzzled look; and then, experimentally, did a little hop. He went higher than he'd meant to, and hung in the air longer than he should have. He repeated the experiment a couple of times; and then, took a bigger jump forward, aiming for a couple of steps down. He seemed to float in the air for a moment before his feet gently settled on the wooden board. "Oo-oo-ooh." He looked around the stairwell, baffled; and then he looked up, eye burning as he stared through the roof and into the sky.

A chill ran up his spine. "Uh-oh."

####

Dipper frowned at his syrup bottle as the syrup painstakingly oozed out. When he let up his squeezing even a little bit, the syrup sucked back in.

"Come on." He squeezed again and shook the bottle over his pancakes. Like morning dew on the fruits hanging above the head of Tantalus, a round drop of syrup glistened under the skin-softening kitchen light, but never fell. "What's the problem?" Dipper wiped the drop onto his finger and wiped his finger on his pancakes.

Mabel slammed the door open and pounded into the kitchen. "Dipper! Come outside, I need to show you something!" They ran out.

Mabel stood on the edge of the porch, held up an orange glitter-filled super bounce ball the size of a walnut, and said, "Watch this!" She flung the ball down on the porch step as hard as she could.

It rocketed up into the sky, arcing away from the Mystery Shack toward the forest. Dipper's jaw dropped. "Whoa!"

"I just lost four balls that way!" Mabel planted her hands on her hips, watching with satisfaction as the pinprick point of the latest ball soared upward until it disappointed. "I'm gonna get some more!" She ran inside and bolted up the stairs.

Ford passed from the gift shop into the living room, frowning. He picked up a magazine left on the dinosaur skull, flipped through it, and observed how slowly the pages fluttered. "Hmm."

From the entryway, he could hear Stan down the hall on the office phone: "Hello? Doctor? This is Stan Pines. Yeah, I got a medical question. I stepped on the scale this morning, and it says I lost twenty percent of my weight overnight. Do I have cancer?" There was a pause. "Eighth call this morning?! What is this, some kinda bug going around town?"

Dipper closed the door as he came back inside. "Hey, Grunkle Ford? I think there's something..."

"Something strange going on? Yes, I've noticed," he said. "It seems that gravity is about twenty percent lower than usual." He pulled his sparkly birthday pen out of his coat pocket and dropped it from several feet up into his other hand. It fell just a bit slower than normal—not enough that it looked like it was on the moon, but enough that the motion looked uncanny.

"What's going on?"

"I don't..." Ford trailed off as a flash of bright yellow appeared in his peripheral vision. He turned toward the stairs.

Bill had stepped onto the landing. He looked at the bottom half of the staircase with a critical, calculating gaze; and then jumped off the top step. In a single smooth, slow arc, he leaped over all the stairs and descended, slow as a feather, to land lightly on the floor.

"Whoa." Under his breath, Dipper said, "That's a lot more than twenty percent lower."

It just figured he had something to do with this. "Bill," Ford snapped. "What's going on?"

He wasn't expecting Bill to give him such a solemn look.

"There's an eclipse coming," Bill said. "I'd give it three days."

####

(Be honest how long did it take you to figure out Bill was just seeing if he could get Dipper hyped about building a portal. Anyway, hope you enjoyed!! We're heading into the biggest storyline so far—plotwise, lengthwise, and emotionwise—so I'd love to hear what you're thinking and expecting so far!)

[thecluelessdoctor]

a review of Gravity falls from someone who had never seen it before.

Alright so I've meant to make this post for a while but then I got... sidetracked *glances at my fucking au* ANYWAY

I'm basically unbias to the show, due to the fact I have no nostalgia for it. Ill only be talking about the show it's self for the main review.

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, let's talk about Gravity Falls.

Oh yeah, and spoilers for gravity falls. Im sure most of you have seen it but- yk just in case.

I watched the show 2 times in a row. One time mostly just for me, and the other time with my little sisters. Somehow both times made me cry it's fine.

Let's get my praises out of the way first before I begin to criticize the show (yes, I do have things to say)

Number one, the actual mystery. Genuinely so fucking good. Like going in I already knew Ford existed, and I knew Bill existed, but that was it. And I thought the mystery wouldn't be a mystery to me due to this but I was WRONG. BRO WHEN STAN FUCKING PULLED UP WITH THE PORTAL I WAS F L A B B E R G A S T E D. I WAS BAFFLED. OR OR- FIDDLEFORD NOT JUST BEING A CRAZY OLD GUY BUT INFACT A ONCE GREAT SCIENCIST THAT TRIED TO DESTROY HIS MIND- it was insane.. I only had the parts, but I didn't know how they fell into place, and it was BEAUTIFUL. Hell the mystery even had my little sister theorizing.

Stan, Dipper, and Mabel's arcs. Say what you will but I think they were done perfectly. Especially Stan's. You don't even realize how he has grown as a character until the end and it's AMAZING. Dippers arc of learning how to not grow up so fast (relatable ...) and Mabel's arc of accepting that she will grow up (ALSO RELATABLE?)

The character designs. We all know, I eat up a good design. And these guys are no exception. I love how Mabel has a different sweater at least every episode, very fun. Dippers design screams nerdy kid I would bully or be friends with in 6th grade, and Stan is.. yeah I really like Stan okay. He's perfect. His design reflects his eccentric nature really well. Also Shriner fez. We need more characters with a Shriner fez. (Fun fact: I didn't know what those hats were called until watching this show.) bill is a very simple design but I love it.

Also, I love alot of the foreshadowing the show does, even if at times unintentionally. Such as with Stan and how he sadly goes out. Every representation ends up being destroyed in some way.

I also really like Ford as a character. Idk if it was intentional, but he portrays a lot of narcissists rather accurately. I live in a family of narcissist, and a lot of them act directly like Ford (especially my dad and my ex-step- grandpa) but Ford I feel like is a good representation of how a lot of people, especially narcissists, actually change. Yes, shockingly, they can. Usually being the one to pull the trigger on something they love tends to do something. Not all the time but it happens. Idk.

Also I feel like I need to talk about Mabel and Dipper more. Starting with Mabel. Mabel is fun. She reminds me of my sister, both good and bad. Though I don't understand the amount of Mabel hate there is. Like seriously she's just a 12 year old kid. I was the same way when I was 12. I was a trashy kid. Hell, I'm a trashy teen!!! And Dipper? Yeah he's dipper. Shockingly I don't have much to say about him other than the fact he reminds me way to much of the guy friends I've had since 3rd grade lmfao.

Next is the animation. The animation is pretty consistently good, I like it. Especially in some of the more dramatic scenes. All of not what he seems, a tale of two Stan's, and weirdmeddon (I can't spell) are especially well animated.

There's a lot more i wanna say, but those are the major things.

From now until when I say, it's gonna me my personal criticisms of the show. Course I am no professional, I'm literally [AGE REDACTED] minor. So yeah.

Number one: the timeline. Oh my god the timeline. As a fun thing to do on the side, I tried to sort out the timeline- IT TURNED INTO 2 HOURS OF ME SITTING THERE, PIECING THIS SHIT TOGETHER. it's not as back as some fandoms (looking at your FNaF) but STILL

The lack of Ford. I wish Ford has been introduced earlier in season two, or they had a few more filler episodes involving him as a center (similar to the episode D, D, and more D.)

The ignoring of the fact that Pacifica is borderline abused??? She's AFRAID of her parents??? She flinches at the bell??? Like what the fuck-

The lack of in show development between Bill and ford. I kinda wish it showed a bit more of their relationship in show.

Those are all my major criticisms. I don't have anything other than those that aren't more personal tastes than anything.

But ultimately, I fell in love with this show from the get go. It was the weirdest thing I'd watched in a while, and I loved it, hated it, and cried because of it. Truly on of my favorite shows I've ever watched, and I really wish I knew what it was when it was in its hay day, because truly that would have been great. However in 2012 I was only like- 3-6 so- yeah

Very much a ten outta ten show, and if you somehow haven't watched it, please do.

[odddrawingsandwhatnot]

I just finished rewatching gravity falls and cried my bodyweight in tears. It's just such an amazing show and I'm so happy I was there watching it while it was coming out, being a part of things as everyone was working together to solve the mysteries. The book of bill and thisisnotawebsitedotcom have brought back the theorizing, sharing of cryptograms and clues, and everything else that came with the original run of the show.

I made Mable juice for the finale watch with my friends, and served it in a blender with plastic dinosaurs. I did a face paint Bill over one of my eyes as we all gathered and watched Weirdmageddon unfold. Me and my sister watched Not What He Seems together and were shocked speechless when the Author emerged and the biggest fan theory for Gravity Falls was confirmed true. The first line from the show I ever heard was when my sister was watching it in her room and I heard "Four Dippers. This is a four Dipper plan." Gravity falls will always hold a special place in my heart.

Hell, the first fanart I ever posted to tumblr was Gravity Falls (and some of you have started digging it up, oh god).

Also, seeing as how too many people insist on drawing the Stans with small noses, I felt a strong need to correct this.

I'll finish up this piece tomorrow.

I've had almost 10 more years of drawing experience since the show ended and dammit I'm gonna use it.

Expect more to come.

[viceroywrites]

dropping another gravity falls oc!

my other gf oc can be found here

art credit to mischa-makowka / link to picrew here

name: celeste harvey

age: 25 during the 80s / 55 in present day gravity falls

notable features: has multiple piercings (double lobes, helix & nose ring), has naturally blonde hair but dyed it black - ended up dying it ash gray around age 40, has heterochromia (right eye is green, left eye is brown)

backstory:

works as an embalmer at the valentino funeral home

had brief interactions with ford during his time researching gravity falls - he saw her in passing when he would run errands in town or go to the diner to write in his journal, theorized that she might be a vampire.

met stan in the 80s - she discovered his secret as she was working as a mortician apprentice under robbie's grandparents when he tried to arrange his own funeral & broke down while looking at headstones.

comforted him to the point where he ended spilling his guts to her as she was the first person that had listened and showed him care in years.

didn't question stan's story about the portal, had her own conspiracy theories about what ford was researching anyways.

helped stan occasionally steal chemicals and materials he needed for the portal throughout the years.

relationship with characters:

annoying older brother/younger sister dynamic with stan - they bicker over trivial shit all the time, make stupid bets, have surprisingly a lot of existential conversations about death. she got stan into taxidermy and she'll occasionally contribute a taxidermy piece for him to use for the mystery shack. they try to one up each other during summerween on who can scare the most kids.

uses this video as blackmail against stan all the time (you probably already know what it is before clicking on it)

is like a cool aunt to robbie - helped watch him growing up, dyed his hair black for the first time and taught him how to do his eyeliner. she sewed on the heart patch on his black hoodie and has one of her own on her leather jacket.

mabel initially assumes that celeste and stan have a thing going on and attempts to match make them. celeste appreciates mabel's moxie and free spiritedness, teaches her how to sew patches after mabel compliments the patches on celeste's leather jacket.

dipper kinda avoids her at first bc she's pretty much robbie's family and wonders if she hates him as much as the moody teen does since he has a crush on wendy. they get closer after the events of scaryoke, coming up with the zombie cure (a lot of formaldehyde and cinnamon) together. the two bond over their shared interest in ghost hunting.

acts as a positive female figure in wendy's life even after her and robbie break up, lets wendy come over to her place vent about high school and growing up in a household full of boys.

relationship with ford:

so. like i mentioned, ford had a theory back in the day that she might be a vampire.

there's a entry about her in journal 1 which obviously stan owned. he showed the journal entry to her ("hey, you made a cameo in sixer's journal, he thought you were a vampire.") and she felt... kinda flattered.

she has conflicted feelings about ford, feeling that his dismissal of stanley's rough life after getting kicked out was a bit harsh. she tries to give him the benefit of the doubt though, knowing how badly stan wants to reunite with his brother.

all bets are off when she finds out ford's first reaction to his brother bringing him back was to punch him in the face.

she lays into ford the moment she meets him, stan holding her back from returning the favor with a punch of her own and he's flabbergasted at this complete stranger standing up to him and fuming that stan told another person about the portal... but can't help but be intrigued.

one, her heterochromia is fascinating from a scientific standpoint, mesmerized by her eyes even as she was berating him.

two, it's very rare that someone has called him out on his shit, not sugar-coating it at all. he had to admit while she may have biased points in her argument due to her apparent close relationship with his brother, she had some valid points.

it takes celeste some time to warm up to ford afterwards, she still holds a grudge

celeste visits the shack during roadside attraction, only to find that ford is the only one home - potential story for another day of how they got closer but he realizes she's the vampire girl from journal 1.

[alanshee-keeper-of-realms]

Okay bear with me this theories long and crazy and involves multiple shows but I'm doing this

(What if Over the Garden Wall, Gravity Falls and Owl House are all in one Universe)

Okay so we start out with the show Over the Garden Wall which we know has some tie possibly to Owl House because the light glyphs take the form of Wirt,

The other thing people don't realize that ties Over the Garden Wall To The Owl House universe is the character of Auntie Whispers, who shares a last name with Raine Whispers.

She even carries a bell she used to use to keep Lorna working as when the young girl would stop an evil spirit would overtake her,

As we can't see her ears we can't be certain she was in fact Human, Lorna was confirmed to be adopted by Auntie Whispers.

Auntie Whispers also eats turtles which is weird to begin with but add the context of her being a Witch from the Boiling Isles and it would make sense.

Now comes some loose threading and just my own thoughts when Over the Garden Wall happened the time period appears to be late 80s early 90s, Wirt and Sarah afterwards seem to get close

What if Sarah and Wirt were Mabel and Dippers Parents?

That would explain why mystery has always hung around the Pines family. Wirt and Greg much like their possible Cousins (Stanford and Stanley) just got yanked into it and that's why they sent their kids up to their Grunkle Stan,

We know 95% that Gravity Falls and Owl House are tied together because of the Marilyn(Eda) and Stan situation (hilarious BTW)

If we want to get into real theorizing and just all that, The Beast could very well be a Titan if you think about it. We don't know much about the Titans of the Boiling Isles and if we already have Auntie Whispers over here, it's very plausible that this one ended up hunting for Lost Souls in the Unknown

Much like the owlbeast got turned into a curse, this Titans soul got put into a Lantern, which is carried by a person he's trapped. This Titan also ended up badly warped and corrupted leading to his current appearance

[its-ya-girl-phoeni]

Greg Cobalt headcanons

Twenty-something dude who didn't sign up for this shit™️

Often draws/sketches the various oddities around the town

Pretty much Dipper and Mabel's unpaid babysitter (pos)

Sometimes joins in on Dipper's conspiracies and theorizing

A lot of (if not all) his outfits are blue, fittingly

Brown eyes and hair (it's kinda curly, too)

Originally came to the Mystery Shack out of curiosity

For the most part, He's pretty weirded out by all the supernatural stuff, but he's also sort of fascinated by it

Has drunk Mabel Juice once, and never again

[candyrushsweetest]

Current Fictional Hyper Fixations <3

I do not condone fictional depictions in real life unless otherwise specified!!! Do not make fiction something you hate someone over! 😭 It only causes drama and hurts everyone involved.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s begin! After this line-break, the contents will show! You’ve been warned!

Soooooo, I have tons of fictional hyper-fixations, whether it’s with ships, headcanons, general stories, etc., but here are my main!

1. Blue Exorcist / Ao no Exorcist

I love the series mainly because I relate to Rin and some of the other characters in the show. The anime and manga are a little different, but the anime has gotten a 3rd season! I’ve been a fan of this anime for a few years now and it’s still a huge thing I end up thinking about every single day!

2. Danganronpa (the entire series)

I can’t help but enjoy Danganronpa. It gave me a thrill with the mystery and horrors with a unique anime style that I appreciate and admire!

When I first got introduced to the series, it was due to KubzScouts on YouTube doing a playthrough (he did Danganronpa v1, v2, and v3), so I had a good laugh while watching one of my favorite YouTubers play it.

I remember that I was specifically hyper-focused on Nagito (Danganronpa v2) and Nagisa (Ultra Despair Girls). I like crazy boys — that’s just something people will have to get used to from me lol.

3. Gravity Falls

I LOVE Dipper and all the characters from Gravity Falls! The story is amazing and Bill Cipher was EPIC!!!

Must I say more..?

4. FNaF (Rebornica’s AU & FNaF in general)

I enjoy both, but Rebornica’s AU has been in the fandom before canon William Afton and Michael Afton. I remember when it was Mike Schmidt and Vincent Bishop (those were theorized or made-up names, I believe).

I loved Five Nights of Flirting and the original series (even the movies as of recently!)

It’s a lot of fun knowing that I’m in a huge fandom full of so many different people!

(I’m not gonna get into the drama behind Rebornica or his return. I don’t want to. He’s not a good person, but his AU is something I appreciate and love!)

Idk why I made this post, really — I just wanted to share some of the things I’ve been focusing too much on x3

If you want, you can follow me, I reblog and post content :3

I have tons of “problematic” shippings and stuff with some of the characters in these fandoms, but I won’t name what they are here, seeing as this isn’t about that lol, but — keep in mind — I’ll eventually come back and talk about that as well :3

Thank you for reading <333

[eldragon-x-moved]

o7 Doing my part as not only one of the few Axolotl fans, but a Gravity Falls fan who advocated against Bill earlier and wants to balance it out, especially since Axolotl does indeed have the most divine swag in the GF cast.

They're first mentioned only once in the show during the finale in a backwards dialouge and fans theorized about it for months. Axolomeh occassionally show up in the background of the show.

In Journal 3, they're only acknowledged a few times either vaguely or fleetingly. Once mentioned by Bill in code not even by name, once when Ford encountered aliens who praised them and wondered what was up with that, once when Ford drew a star constellation he saw of them while wondering if there is an opposite good in the multiverse to Bill's evil, and once only depicted in pictures in the background of the page about the Oracle, who herself is a rather mysterious character.

The only time they actually appear at all is in a secret page of an otherwise non-canon "choose your own adventure" type book where they're revealed to live in a void between time and space, offer Dipper and Mabel beanbag chairs to sit on, and during their conversation light-heartedly tease the twins and are endeared by them. Though by the end of it, they reverse time to basically undo the encounter.

It's also revealed here that the Axolotl revived Bill (who, mind you, is the most dangerous and feared being in the multiverse) for reasons unknown but could possibly be pity and a belief that he can change for the better. Despite the fact that the Axolotl is commonly associated with Bill's defeat by the multiverse as a whole.

Overall, The Axolotl is a compassionate deity shrouded in mystery while also just being a silly and chill guy. Also they believe in a Bill Cipher redemption arc and gave us extremely interesting lore about him. Vote for the Axolotl.

Lower Bracket Round 1-A: Match 7

The Axolotl(Gravity Falls) vs Zhongli/Morax/Rex Lapis(Genshin Impact)

[tedturneriscrazy]

Here's Eclipse Lake, an episode that has been highly anticipated! Will it top Knock, Knock, Knockin' On Hooty's Door?

I'll skip the pretense: No. It won't.

You'll see under the cut.

Hmm, that list of ingredients for the Grimwalker...I'll let other people theorize about this (like @sepublic ), but it sure looks like a thing

Guess the mysterious green goo won't cut it, huh?

Belos face reveal already?! Huh, didn't expect it so soon.

Oh, no, he's hot! (And I'm mad about it)

Still an ass, though

Now we know why Hunter was wearing a different outfit (because people fixated on that for some reason)

Amity with the clipboard gives me strong Dipper vibes

GHOST! My beloved!

I need a moment because CAT!

(Also, someone pointed out earlier that Ghost was based on Dana's cat, and that's super obvious in hindsight)

Raine?! Oh, wait, you mean rain. Sigh.

Eda gets training tips from DBZ confirmed

(Also Amity's face when reacting to Eda's explanation is priceless)

Oh God Eda's a weeb I need another moment

Damn, Amity just straight up calling Eda old

Oh, loopy Luz

(The abomination holding the tissue box is adorable for many reasons)

Yeah, don't want Luz to eat the McGuffin

I have several questions about those Tamagotchis that I'll refrain from listing here

Amity your Odalia is showing

Girlfriend counter: 1

(Yes I am introducing a counting gag, deal with it)

Was wondering if they were ever gonna reference the dissection incident. We've come a long way, baby!

Oh, so that's what everyone was looking at

Luz honey your enthusiasm is admirable but no

Luz burrito is quite cute, though

Girlfriend counter: 2

(Damn, still wild to think that that's the case)

Just occurred to me that "Boots" is probably shortened from "Bossyboots" from earlier

Guess the Luz hiss compilation needs to be updated again

Those tunnels ain't the only thing around here that's unstable, amirite?

Oops, guess Kiki was justified, after all

Maybe don't talk so loudly about your plans, dude

That is her son, get it right!

Serves you right for having that stupid strand of hair sticking out like that

Is this just the episode where everyone dunks on White Boy? Because I can totally get behind that.

Already mentioned this, but I am loving the parallels between Katara and Amity with that bottle of abomination goo. Insert obligatory "Two Nickels" meme here about Mae Whitman.

We really are just dunking on the white boy and I am living for it

Hooty had to get it from somewhere, I suppose

Nothing says mother-son bonding like shooting things at each other (see also: Separate Tides)

I'm sure the magic bouncing off the veins won't come into play later at all

Oh well, at least the echolocation looked cool

At this point Amity would kill Hunter for a Klondike bar

Wait why does Hooty need a chair

Willow with the galaxy brain ideas

"A bad but sad boy" Luz is a genius at succinctly summing people up

Kikimora continues to be unhinged. Ironically she's not wrong about Hunter.

Motherfucker stop acting like you know what that says

(Also, projecting much?)

Girlfriend counter: 3

Friendly reminder that Hunter is still an antagonist

Uh oh

UH OH

I know someone mentioned Willow having the brain cell, but honestly it seemed like Luz had it this whole time. And that's not good.

WHY IS FOOL'S BLOOD EVEN A THING

Aaaaand cue the getting screwed over

Further reminder that he's still an antagonist (Apparently there's a vocal segment who's Really Mad at him that seem to forget this fact)

You unhand Ghost right now!! And Amity too, I guess.

(I kid, she's literally my second favorite character)

For what she did to Raine it warms my heart to know Kiki has had zero peace of mind

Wait, the Abomatons are Transformers?! Okay, that's kind of awesome, actually. Alador might be a shit dad but he is a brilliant inventor.

Chucking kids off cliffs is a surpisingly common pastime in the Boiling Isles

Owlbert no!

Eda did spend literal decades fighting the Owl Beast within, so I guess she can't be blamed for not thinking to talk to it

Also hurry up guys I'm very concerned about Owlbert

Fuck yeah Harpy Milf!

Yay Ghost returns!

She's glad they're okay (I didn't need to take this, I just thought it was cute. Also this is surprisingly high quality considering I just took a photo of my TV screen)

Oh, so they do have video games in the Demon Realm. That or Luz introduced them.

Trailer shot!

Oh dear, we about to have a fight over the key

Wow, being so high ranking under Belos is really bad for mental health

Jesus Christ Belos what have you been putting in this poor kid's head?

Leave it to King to give radical recontextualizations

Amity, I'm glad you remembered/realized this about Luz, please don't let the sad white boy play you like that again

Also, I appreciate the gesture you're making, and it's a wonderful summary of your character development, but goddamnit he's gonna go for that key because he's STILL AN ANTAGONIST

"Being nice usually works for Luz!" A) Not always, and B) Amity I love you but Luz you are not. A valiant attempt nonetheless.

Ooh, cool fight scene!

Always lovely to see such superb animation

I was privately griping about not seeing Amity use magic for so long, and now I am fed

Don't think I didn't hear the glass breaking

Appreciate your ass from a hole in the ground, Golden Boy!

(jk I don't actually feel that strongly about him still. That kind of threat still isn't cool, though)

Oh so that's why it's the Common Mold!

It's kinda cute, actually. Or maybe it's just because it's Luz.

TIL Hooty is heat resistant

Apparently Owl Beast just wanted a snack

Girlfriend counter: 4

Also love how calling Amity her awesome girlfriend is literally the first thing Luz says to her upon returning.

Yesssss return the hug! You deserve it!

(I know there are higher quality versions of this screenshot, I just didn't feel like looking around)

King demands huggies, too! (And gets 'em)

Reminder that Amity is smart as hell. I knew that glass breaking indicated something!

So once again I've been had. I let the fandom trick me into thinking this episode would be way more intense. Guess that one screenshot was from the next episode.

Overall this was...fine. Some nice Lumity moments, Harpy Eda strutting her stuff, that gorgeously animated fight sequence; those were all lovely.

I do wish Willow and Gus had a bit more to do. And I'm still rather unenthusiastic about Hunter, to be honest. I've seen his type several times before, and the path they have for him is rather obvious. I may never share the fandom's love for him, and I guess I'll have to deal with that.

Anybody who says this was better than KKKOHD is a damn fool.

Mid season finale next week! I think Yesterday's Lie will finally bring the pain!

[isaacthedruid]

Please allow me to tell you about one of my favourite cartoons through this informal essay I did for school a couple of months back. 

Gravity Falls and How it Did The Unimaginable

**SPOILERS... KINDA**

The 2010s saw the creation of some of the most iconic animated tv shows ever made, the likes of Adventure Time (2010), Steven Universe (2013), Over the Garden Wall (2014) and The Legend of Korra (2012). To explain why this era’s shows are so admirable is honestly rather difficult. Yet, there are many factors that can be taken into consideration when looking for an answer.

The past decade was very successful in perfecting their craft and utilizing the animated format to their favour, creating some of the wackiest and fascinating cartoons ever made. With the advancements made in both 2D and 3D animation for film, this bled into the world of TV as well.

To mention that 2010s cartoons have stunning visuals would be an understatement. Everything about the animation was beautiful; the strong colour palettes, the clean and imaginative character designs, the colourful and immersive backgrounds and especially the mesmerizing worlds that can be found within episodes that are half an hour.

This era’s cartoons also led to a massive shift in storytelling, writing longer-running stories that spread out across seasons while also swapping out episodic adventures for serialization. This heavily aided in the popularization of these shows, due to the rise of internet fandoms and dropping the taboo that cartoons were only for kids. Many shows acknowledged their older viewers by leaving clues and even puzzles to be solved by the theorists who have a large appearance on social media platforms like Reddit, Twitter and Tumblr. As the shows progressed, their fandoms created many theories for what they believed might happen within their favourite series. The top three shows from this era all utilized these changes, being at the forefront of the shift and helping guide the creative vision of 2010s cartoons.

Often regarded as many people’s favourite cartoon, Gravity Falls presented one of the best mysteries of the decade with two seasons and only 40 episodes. Inspired by Twin Peaks and The X-Files, it’s considered as the kids’ version of these two iconic shows as this cartoon acts as many people’s first introduction to horror through bright colours and fun characters.

This series follows the adventures of Dipper and Mabel Pines, twins, who are sent to spend their summer with their great-uncle or Grunkle Stan in Gravity Falls, Oregon. This town is full of oddities like supernatural creatures, insane and eccentric inhabitants, and many puzzles. The Pines twins must adjust to the weirdness while uncovering the mysteries and protecting their new town.

While living in Gravity Falls, the twins are forced to work in the Mystery Shack, a tourist trap created by their Grunkle Stan that overcharges unlucky tourists, teaching about fake monsters despite there being real creatures all over town. On his first day in Oregon, Dipper accidentally came across a mysterious journal written by an unknown author that explains all the oddities to be found in this strange town. This book acts like an encyclopedic of the Weird for Dipper, an inquisitive 12-year-old kid who seeks answers.

Dipper is an extremely intelligent kid, his brain being far more developed than his body. He’s rather awkward and self-conscious as he often stumbles over his words or gets embarrassed trying to talk to girls. Despite this, the boy is an adventurer at heart who just wants to grow up and skip his upcoming teenage years.

While Mabel is quite the opposite in many ways, she is loud and has an in-your-face personality. Mabel is bouncy and fun, she is so excited to start high school. She is easily excitable and for the larger part of the series, she is in her boy-crazy phase. Mabel is a girly-girl as she likes all things; glitter, unicorns, rainbows, partying and crafting. Yet, she doesn’t often compare well with many of the other girls in town, they see her as weird and “too much”.

(In all fairness through, it is not too kind to either of the characters as their personalities are more complex than just awkward nerd and artsy girl-girly.)

Dipper and Mabel’s personalities are very different but somehow, they—along with their Gravity Falls family—manage to solve mysteries and save the town, multiple times.

Gravity Falls is an honestly genius series that completely changed the way cartoons were made. Originally when writing a series, you’d create a base of your story; characters, the universe and a basic plot. Yet, when creator, Alex Hirsch (who was in his early/mid-20)s and his small team first began constructing their show, they planned out everything they could possibly think of for the first season. Additionally, outlining some answers for their biggest mysteries that would be answered at the end of the series.

Despite being rated TV-Y7, this series really pushed the boundaries of kids’ television. From the teeth being ripped out of a deer’s mouth by a demon, rearranging the functions of every hole on a man’s face to an aggressive pop-rock sock puppet show that ended in a dramatic slow-motion scene of the puppets burning. Gravity Falls wasn’t afraid to get a little weird or creepy. Or create some genuine nightmare fuel. 

From the beginning, Gravity Falls had built a mystery into its series, hiding secrets and clues all throughout the show. Most notably were the backwards-recorded message and cryptograms, using roughly nine different kinds, even creating two of their own.

The inclusion of cyphers and mysteries for fans to solve is possibly the reason why this series was so successful. As one of the first shows to do something like this, Gravity Falls used social media and internet fandoms to its advantage.

As mentioned earlier, cartoon fans have quite a presence on social media platforms like Twitter and Tumblr. They create theories and share fun ideas about their favourite shows. Viewers of Adventure Time, Gravity Falls and Steven Universe were all included in their share of theory fun.

Sometimes, fan theories end up being correct but when you’re Gravity Falls creator, Alex Hirsch, you don’t just watch from the sidelines as your viewers figure out the biggest mystery of your show. No, you create a hoax to get your viewers off your trail and that is what he did. Around 2013, only halfway through the first season of the show, viewers had started to follow the clues, theorizing who was the author is Dipper’s mysterious journal.

Unfortunately for the Gravity Falls production crew, the viewers were right— for the sake of readers who have never seen the show, I will not mention who the author was as it would be the biggest spoiler.

In 2013, a supposed leaked image of a tv showing a younger version of the show’s crazy old man character, Old Man McGucket, writing in the infamous journal was uploaded anonymously (by Alex Hirsch) to 4Chan.

Despite the image only being on up for a few hours, it spread like wildfire. Much to the team’s success, theorists stopped searching for the answer to “who is the author” and just accepted the image of McGucket as the truth.

To further push the fake-out, three words were posted to Alex’s Twitter, “fuming right now.”

The tweet was deleted a few minutes later and fans genuinely believed that someone from the Gravity Falls team had leaked the most important part of the story.

While doing research, I came across a Reddit post from April 10th, 2013, the day after ‘leak,’ Alex’s tweet was uploaded. In this post, user, TheoDW uploaded an image of Alex’s tweet with the caption, “It seems that Hirsch got mad at last night’s leak. He already deleted this tweet.”

Seeing the reactions of these Redditors in 2013 is kind of weird and crazy to look at. “He has every right to be upset. Someone internally released a plot revealing screen shot of series breaking spoiler information,” a deleted Reddit account commented.

“This is Alex Hirsch’s biggest success by far, he spent a huge amount of time carefully planning out the series, and then in a moment someone releases a major spoiler. It would make anyone upset,” the user, Time_Loop commented.

“Seriously, this is a nightmare for a storyteller, and shows a breach of trust. I feel so bad for him–honestly, I hope whoever did the leak gets caught and appropriate action is taken. You don’t f–k with someone’s story like this. It’s unprofessional.” the user, lonelybeloved angrily commented.

In 2014, this ‘leak’ was finally disproven when viewers were given an episode on McGucket’s backstory and an amazing tweet from Alex Hirsch. 

Alex had post an image of himself playfully pointing at a monitor with the supposed leaked picture with the caption, “1) Make hoax  2) Upload to 4Chan  3) Post angry tweet about "leak" 4) Delete tweet 5) Let internet do rest”

It is so interesting to look at these comments know that all of this was orchestrated by Alex.

I wish I had been old enough at the time to follow theories and fandom stuff like I do now with current cartoons but really looking at this from an outside perspective, this was insane!

The real author wasn’t revealed until 2015 and when viewers first got the answer to this biggest show on their screens, they must have freaked out!

Following the finale in 2016, a single frame of a stone version of Bill Cipher, the show’s villain, flashed in after the credits had finished.

Alex Hirsch and his team actually created a real-life statue of their villain for their viewers to find and on July 20th, 2016, the Cipher Hunt began.

By following clues, the Hunters found themselves all over the world; Russia, Japan and then travelling throughout the United States for the final 12 clues. When the hunt took them to Los Angeles, actor, Jason Ritter (voice of Dipper Pines, also a massive fan of the series) and Alex Hirsch’s twin sister, Ariel Hirsch (the inspiration for Mabel) joined in the fun helping the search.

Finally, the hunt ended on August 2nd when someone tweeted out an image of the found statue in Oregon, the same state in which the fictional town of Gravity Falls exists. The Cipher Hunt had ended but finding the statue wasn’t Alex’s goal for the scavenger hunt, it was about the journey and bringing together the viewers, more than having them actually find the statue.

Creating its own hoax, an international scavenger hunt and quite a bit of nightmare fuel, Gravity Falls was a show truly unlike any other.

The 2010s saw some of the strongest cartoons ever made, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls and Steven Universe acting as the leaders for multiple different changes in the medium; storytelling, worldbuilding, interaction with viewers, utilizing social media, representation and further pushing music into the cartoon world. From what was created this past decade and what has already been released in 2020, I’m so excited to see what comes next.

I have another one of these which is on Steven Universe’s representation and music if you would like to see that too!! 

[ilikekidsshows]

Hey, I was reading a post you reblogged and you mentioned a "Grunkle for Grandpa" theory from the Gravity Falls fandom and I was wondering if you could elaborate on what that was? I love your meta.

“Grunkle for Grandpa”, or just G4G for short, was a theory that rose into popularity during the hiatus between the airing of "Not What He Seems" and "A Tale of Two Stans". In other words, the fandom had just had it be confirmed that Stan had a twin brother, whose name he had most likely been going by while the other was on the other side of the weird portal, but the fandom didn't know any of the family history concerning these two.

The biggest question that arose during the hiatus was "who's Mabel and Dipper's grandpa?" Some people guessed the eventual reveal of a third Pines brother, not related to the drama between the Stan Twins, which also justified Stan being such a question mark to the rest of the family. Others figured it was one of the twins, in particular, they theorized it was "Grunkle Stan", Stanford-presumed-to-be-really-StanLEY, because surely there was more to the family mystery.

The theory basically went that Stanley had gotten himself a family before whatever happened to Stanford that sent him through the portal, and that he'd abandoned his family in order to impersonate his brother and get him back. The fans who supported this theory claimed that then Stan would really be "not what he seems", in that he'd be Grandpa Stan instead of Grunkle Stan. The biggest defense for the theory was that it would be "needlessly complicated" if there was a third, unrelated-to-the-big-mystery Pines brother, who was the grandpa, and that it would be genetically more feasible for Mabel and Dipper to be twins if one of their parents was descended from twins. These fans also claimed that the fact that Grunkle Stan was named after Hirch's Grandpa Stan was a clue.

Now comes why that would have ruined the theming on the show. The show before Stanford shows up has an important story arc all about Stan learning to open up his heart to Dipper and Mabel, about the estranged grand uncle growing attached to these two kids with a pretty distant family relation and learning to love them as close family. This also plays into the tension during "Not What He Seems", where the kids have genuine cause to fear that their distant family member, who no one knows that well, might actually be a completely unrelated criminal. If Stan was their actual grandfather, this arc would have suddenly retroactively changed into being about Stan accepting a grandparental responsibility that always existed, making it so that Stan "Everything I Worked For, Everything I Care About, It's All For This Family" Pines needed to learn to care for his own grandchildren.

Stanley being Dipper and Mabel's grandpa also would have ruined the Found Family dynamic by having them have a direct blood relation. It would have implied that you can only care about a child you have a direct, biological responsibility for, or that you can only love a caretaker who's your biological parent or grandparent. It would have over-emphasized blood relations, very specific blood relations at that, in a show that up until that point had been about feelings.

The biggest issue with this theory becoming canon, however, would have been Soos. The show plays around with the bond between Stan and Soos, not fully committing to whether or not they actually care about each other mutually and what the exact nature of their relationship is, until the episode 'Blendin's Game', where we find out that Soos' father skipped out on him when he was very young and he latched onto Stan as a father figure. We also find out that Stan cared so much about Soos' bad memory of his father's abandonment ruining his birthday cheer, that he tried to get the date removed from all calendars.

Now imagine if it was revealed to Soos, the man who was traumatized by his deadbeat father abandoning him, that the surrogate father figure he'd latched onto was also a deadbeat who'd abandoned his wife and son? Their relationship would have never recovered. It would have been such a difficult-to-detangle situation for the Mystery Shack Crew that they might have needed to remove Soos from the cast entirely to allow for the lighthearted mysteries that were a big part of the show's draw. The Stan Twins' relationship problems were enough of an angsty cloud hanging over the show during the latter half of season two.

Also, they solved the Grandpa Problem by having a throwaway line about Dipper and Mabel being "Shermie's grandkids" and it wasn't complicated at all.

[asexy-phoenix]

Gravity Falls fandom history

So I’m 21 and I remember when Gravity Falls first came out...I was in middle school and there were a few of us at my school that were really into the show and would gather in the library to discuss our theories like the baby nerds we were. Now, we’re eight years into the fandom or thereabouts and I was musing about where we came from and thought I’d write down a few of my musings here under the cut.

Feel free to add onto this post if there’s something else you guys remember btw! I love learning about fandom history!!

1. Stanley’s Twin. This was one of the major theories and was around since the beginning. The license plate that read “Stanley” was one of the first major indicators, and by the time episode 9 came around (The Time Traveler’s Pig) people were pretty evenly split on whether or not the person we saw was Stanley or Stanford.

1a. That being said, there was a pretty popular idea going around that the Stan who ran the Mystery Shack was Stanford and the missing twin was Stanley. There’s still some old fics out there with the mixed up names.

2. Shipping wasn’t really a thing in the early fandom? There was Wendy/Dipper, obviously, and Mabel/Dipper (ew ew ew) but besides that not a whole lot that I remember? Once season 2 aired, Pacifica/Dipper really took off.

3. Back to theorizing, um, I remember most of it was focused on the author of the journals. McGucket was a major contender. There’s a reason Alex Hirsch came up with that hoax and it’s because the fandom was super ready to believe it. I remember people suggesting that the cast on his arm was left over from an injury where he lost the sixth finger that would mark him as the author.

3a. Speaking of author theories, Vailskibum94 released a hilarious April Fools video that claimed Grenda was the author, it was great.

4. Now, all of this changed when Dreamscaperers came out. As soon as that episode dropped, the Stanley’s Twin theory was seen as basically confirmed. The names were still a little up in the air (that wouldn’t be confirmed until season 2) but everyone invested in the theory knew they were basically right.

4a. Although I do remember at least one analysis that said the flashback in the Columbian prison wasn’t our Stan because of the facial structure? There was some kind of theory that Ford had taken Stan’s spot or that they had swapped at one point? I honestly don’t remember all of the details...it was a long time ago.

5. Bill’s introduction was kind of a gamechanger. The shipping didn’t start right away and he was seeing as a lot more of a comedy character, but people started theorizing about him immediately. Of course, the Cipher Wheel had been spotted right from the beginning so people knew he was important.

6. Oh, god, the Cipher Wheel. So much theorizing. Mabel, Dipper, and Soos were placed from the beginning. Stan was also confirmed because of the symbol on his fez. Wendy was theorized but there was a lot more contention over her...ultimately, those who said she symbolized the ice were right. Robbie was placed but no one took much notice of him. The Author was the six-fingered hand, but people were arguing over whether Fiddleford was the glasses or the hand. Long story short, the Cipher Wheel was a big source of discussion.

7. Besides the Cipher Wheel, Wendy and Robbie were up for a lot of discussion. I remember theories about Robbie being a zombie and Wendy being a mermaid. (the evidence for that one was that her boots looked like they were wet??? idk)

8. On to AUs...Reverse Falls was the first one and I have no idea where it came from. Monster Falls got very popular for a while...that one’s kind of fun. Transcendence AU is still very popular in some circles - i have no idea where it came from, but it really took off in Season 2.

9. The hiatus between seasons was awful. Such a cliffhanger and so many questions...it was full of fan content. The main theory I remember was that there was a secret society in Gravity Falls (correct), Stan was part of it (incorrect), and they had helped him collect the journals and were working to restart the portal (incorrect). The main thing that made people think he was working with this secret society was that they weren’t sure whether he had said “Finally. I’ve got them all,” or “Finally. We’ve got them all,” in the final scene. Turns out it was I’ve and Stan had nothing to do with the secret society.

9a. I think a lot of that theory came from Vailskibum94 - he was a major influencer for theories in the early days of the Gravity Falls fandom.

10. You know who we haven’t talked about yet? Gideon. Man, everyone and their mother had a theory about him! That he was a vampire, or a demon, that him having five fingers instead of four was meant to symbolize something, that the name Carla in his commercial had something to do with the Carla in Stan’s memories...you name it, it was talked about.

10a. The vampire thing happened because of similarities between Gideon and an advertisement for one of Gravity Falls’ terrible movies.

10b. The demon thing really picked up steam around the release of Blendin’s Game when a billboard was graffitied to give Gideon devil horns. Also there was noise about the timeline not matching up because Gideon was only supposed to be 9 instead of the 11 that episode implied.

10c. The “five fingers instead of four” thing got brought up at a Q&A panel at a con when a girl supposedly asked about Gideon’s hands but there was apparently no clear answer? i never saw that interview so I’m really not sure

10d. Carla McCorkle from Stan’s memories is probably a totally different person than the Carla in Gideon’s commercial. Either that or it’s a fun Easter egg.

11. No one ever found out what was up with Gideon’s mom either, as far as I know.

12. As far as season 2, I’ll confess I don’t know as much about these theories. I do know Bill really blew up, especially after Sock Opera, where Bill/Dipper became a huge thing. Alex Hirsch “leaked” the photo to throw people off the trail and then Society of the Blind Eye told us the full story which was really fun to see. The author was finally revealed and both Stan twins backstory was told.

13. After A Tale of Two Stans came out, there were a lot of people theorizing that it wasn’t Stan who had caused the perpetual motion machine to break but that it was Blendin or some kind of other time/supernatural shenanigans that broke it.

14. Shermie! No one knew what to think of Shermie and they still don’t. There are two main camps: either he’s the baby Ma Pines is holding when Stan’s kicked out, or he’s the father of that baby. Honestly, I lean more towards option 2, but it’s very up in the air. There was also one fanfic I read where Shermie is the youngest daughter...that was cool.

15. Mystery Trio was also very big...don’t know when it started but it was early enough that people weren’t sure which Stan twin had which name.

16. Around Season 2 is also when crossovers with Rick and Morty were at their peak. Both Alex Hirsch and Justin Roiland had shown up for cameos in the others shows and there were quite a few Gravity Falls Easter eggs in Rick and Morty.

16a. Crossovers with Steven Universe existed but never at the same level of popularity.

16b. Also, when Journal 3 was released, there were Rick and Morty Easter eggs in it, so the nods went both ways.

17. After the show ended, the Same Coin theory started gaining traction. Basically, from what I understand, it’s the idea that Bill, after being defeated by the Pines, didn’t die completely and instead took up residence in Stan’s head somehow. I personally never looked it up because I like the canon ending with all its warm fuzziness. I do know MatPat of Film Theory made a video about this theory a couple years after the show ended and a lot of fans were like “um...yeah...we’ve already said all of this...”

17a. I also saw a thing where Filbrick was Bill, but I don’t remember many of the details and also don’t like it because it kind of absolves Filbrick of being a terrible person if it’s all the fault of an interdimensional dream demon.

OKAY, that was a lot! Thank you for sitting through all of that and please do add on to this! I know I can’t be the only one who was around for the beginnings of this show, so I’d love to hear what other people remember from the early days of the Gravity Falls fandom

[dippersguidetotheunexplained]

hey, sorry, i only started watching gravity falls since northwest mansion mystery, what are half of these theories what the fuck

HHH. I WILL TRY TO GIVE A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF EACH.

grunkle4grandpa: answered

mystery trio: fiddleford, ford, and stanley all investigated gravity falls together preportal. this lives on as an au

lebam: answered

the author is the Main Bad Guy: self explanatory. most popular right after nwhs when no one knew what was happening. arguably had a few iterations since ppl theorized ford would join bill in weirdmageddon (insert grimace emoji here)

dipper has been possessed by bill This Whole Time: this was. an entire fuckin phenomena. the idea is that bills deal in sock opera was open ended enough that bill could either possess dipper whenever he wanted or never stopped possessing him. people would pick apart every action dipper did and every screenshot with any pupil distortion as proof. it was wild.

carla mccorkle in general: idk some people thought shed show up again as a real character instead of just be in flashbacks occasionally but she never did :^( shed pop up in mystery trio stuff sometimes

robbie is actually a zombie: zombie drawing has a hoodie. robbie also has a hoodie. same guy. thats the whole theory

'stans tattoo' is a demon ward: one theory about stans scar was that it was a tattoo he got to protect against demonic possession. looking back im sure why this caught on so much since. bill has been in his mind before. it was kind of a big thing

tad strange is a dream demon: keeping in mind this is 2015 and nightvale is still very fresh in everyones mind, cecil baldwin updates his website to say he worked on gravity falls voicing a character named ‘tad strange.’ everyone loses their mind over this and decides that this MUST mean there is a new dream demon character coming to the show based on, nothing,. fan art ensues. he is given a fanon design and a backstory. the actually episode with 2 second gag character tad strange drops and everyone promptly tries to forget that happened. like overnight

dark!dipper: i could and have written whole paragraphs describing this theory and how complicated it got but BASICALLY its a theory that dipper would become evil/join bill/etc. id argue the ‘possessed the whole time’ theory came out of this

triangle guy has no plot significance: from really early on when bills only appearance was that flash of a journal page in the intro

mcgucket wrote the journals: and finally, the red herring from mr hirsch himself,