#this would be chronologically near the very end of modern au

[bananaphone---t]

I can't-

toxic husbands (they’re waiting for ahsoka to come pick them up for bingo)

[abyssal-author-and-artist]

My drawing stylus died yesterday but I got it to work again! Divine Falls Mabel and Dipper will be out tomorrow in all of their glory with creator notes! I'm actually enjoying Mabel's design way more than I thought I would.

Anyways, I feel like I should post Divine Falls lore/plot because... I want to.

In chronological order, not in order of how the show goes.

Ford and Stan, the twin gods of Life and Death respectively, are born to Caryn and Filbrick, married gods of Propecy and whatever I decide Filbrick gets because I literally can't think of something good for him. Ford, as Life, is put on a pedestal. For the first few years of their lives, Stan and Ford (and Shermie, god of conception or some shit, I'm still working on it) have their own wings of the main temples that their parents have. Caryn and Filbrick have one shared temple with a bunch of wings for various things.

College in this AU is replaced by temples, or rather, the status of temples. West Coast Tech is replaced by Ford being offered a large temple so large that a large city will be built around it. Think Athens. And yes, this era is very ancient Greece era because god au. Don't worry, we'll hit modern era.

So Stan wants to travel to spread his blessings. As the God of Death, he doesn't have many, but what he does have are the blessings that go unappreciated. Like granting a peaceful death to people or letting people say final goodbyes. Extending someone's life just long enough that that they can say goodbye to those that matter to them. And he wants to adventure. He wants to spread his blessings silently and see as many things as possible. He wants to do all this with Ford, whose blessings are way more obvious - long and prosperous life, fertility, that sort of thing.

When they're about to set off into the world, a human architect approaches the temple that's run by Caryn and Filbrick offering a huge temple to Ford. Filbrick wants those sweet offerings that mortals make to gods, but Stan doesn't want Ford to take it. Ford is conflicted but promises that if something goes wrong, he'll go with Stan travel the mortal world.

As an accident, Stan accidentally kills the forest where they want to build the temple and the town surrounding it. Stan becomes a pariah because he messed up his brother's chance to have his own temple. Stan goes on the run, pretending to be a mortal and spreading blessings more subtly. He still ends up in jail because people think he's suspicious, but he manages to break out every time.

Meanwhile, Ford is struggling to make his own mark. Because his first temple was ruined so dramatically - rotted trees and cracked stone all the way down - architects see him as a bad omen. He manages to share a temple with Fiddleford for a while, then finally gets his own little temple in a small, newly founded lumber town, where he becomes the main religious figure. People have to make pilgrimages to him, but for the most part, he's free to just exist as a god in a remote mountain town in butt-fuck nowhere, oregon.

One day, he's wandering around disguised as a mortal when there's not many people praying to him as he often does. He finds a cave and senses divine energy and decides, fuck it, he's gonna go in. He finds an inscription on a wall in a language long lost, even to him, and recites it in stuttering words. He's almost disappointed until Bill shows up.

To Ford, Bill feels divine, but weakened. So, naturally, instead of assuming Bill is a fallen Old God (which is the correct answer), he assumes Bill is an archangel for a fallen god - "Maybe even Stanley's archangel? Did he ever have one?" - because archangels are much closer to mortal life than gods are and can be seen in their most powerful form without driving a mortal insane. Basically near-mortal vessels of pure divinity. Bill being a triangle, well, it's odd for an archangel, but Ford's willing to handwave it because divinity does strange things to the mundane and a part of him is latched to the idea that Bill is somehow the mortal hand of Stan (where mortal hand is shorthand for archangel or other mortal vessel of divinity) despite the fact that that makes no sense. Bill uses this to convince Ford that his power, his remaining divinity, can be restored by a certain magical artifact that needs to be remade.

Now, Ford is good with creation and life, but not so much with recreating ancient artifacts with inscriptions from gods and divine entities long dead. So he calls up his old pal Fiddleford, god of Science, to help. Instantly Fiddleford is suspicious of Bill because something feels off. Additionally, Ford was always the one who preferred learning new things about mortal life and ancient artifacts, yet he didn't even bother trying to translate the text? But alas, Fiddleford doesn't know a lot about translating the odd and the strange, so he leaves it at just an odd feeling.

As I'm sure you know if you are a Gravity Falls fan, Fiddleford is right to be suspicious of Bill. In this, Bill's trying to restore his powers and status as an Old God. Part of the way through the reconstruction of the artifact, it goes haywire and Fiddleford receives a fraction of Bill's sealed power, which includes a lot of very not good things, like straight up mass mind control with no cooldown or wind up. It makes him realize that, oh, Bill is an Old God in disguise. He leaves the project and Ford gives up a fraction of his divine influence so Bill can use it to finish the project. He's nearly at the end when Ford takes over again to go grant a blessing. And then he realizes Fiddleford was right.

He calls up Stan, first verifying that he's been tricked and that Stan never had an archangel or other mortal hand due to being an outcast despite the fact that, as Life and Death, Stan and Ford could have mortal hands. When Stan affirms this, Ford calls him over.

Despite being a god, Stan has to manually travel to Gravity Falls, Oregon - his divine influence is weak and many people don't even know that there's a god of Death anymore, let alone worship him. He's stealing offerings from other god's altars just to survive at times - and often gets thrown in jail because he's seen as thieving from the gods when he, himself, is one of them. When he gets to Ford, Ford has descended into paranoia and the town is nervous and anxious due to their town's patron deity not interacting with them anymore. Ford is in his human form, which seals most of his divine influence, when Stan gets to the temple. He's paranoid and isn't even letting people in his temple. Luckily, he has enough offerings to sustain himself, but he's basically starving himself so he and Stan have about the same amount of influence - basically none.

The journals are literally the same except they cover different topics. Basically, Ford gives Stan a book (Journal 1) that covers how best to perform the duties of Life. Journal 2, as held by Gideon, describes how best to use offerings and influence granted by worshippers. Journal 3, once discovered by Dipper, is a record of divine phenomena such as how festivals affect divinity and how the flow of time can sometimes warp strangely (see: The Time Traveler's Pig in canon for why I need to write time travel into the journals). All three have mentions of Bill, and the diagrams and notes for how to recreate the divine artifact.

Ford, instead of getting thrown into the multiverse, has his influence sealed and his power is scattered across the universe as a rogue natural force. He's sentient but he can't interact with anyone, not even as a wisp of influence. His power has been sealed in the same place most of Bill's is, which makes it so he can interact with Bill's well of influence. He spends his time attempting to annihilate Bill's power while sealed, resigned to never being brought back because the artifact is partially crushed, mostly used, and two of his journals have been relocated around the town.

Stan takes over the temple. It starts small, where he just uses some of the stockpiled offerings, one after the other, but eventually, he runs out of influence and needs to reopen the temple. Luckily, if he steals some of Ford's accessories that are the things most vividly depicted in murals of him, he can pass as Ford, the God of Life, pretty easily. He uses the journal to bullshit as many of Ford's powers as possible, but that's rather difficult so he ends up just using any of his powers that he can. Because he has a lot of blessings he can give, it works, and he's able to pass as a somewhat-subpar Life for a few centuries.

Fast forward to probably about the same time Gravity Falls takes place (if not a little earlier). Mabel and Dipper, twin Gods of Earth and Space, live with their parents, the Sun and the Moon, until they're sent away to live with "Stanford, god of Life" in his temple. The idea is that they're learning how to harness their powers best with an experience god on their power level while also using the small town that's very used to the divine and supernatural due to the sheer amount of gods walking among them to learn how to interact with mortals. Dipper finds Journal 3 and uses it to learn a lot of things about divinity and the anomalies.

Something that might be seen as a plot hole: the Earth and Space have existed probably longer than Life of Death. As have a lot of the concepts embodied by children - Pacifica is the god of Change which is one of the oldest concepts ever and Gideon, as the god of Magic, has existed as long as magic has existed. To cover for this, every once in a while a God's essence needs to be returned to the fabric of the universe to merge with other concepts and create new world and religious orders. For example, when Pacifica and Fiddleford (Change and Science, respectively) die, their essences will meld together into Progress. Therefore, Mabel and Dipper were likely part of an entity known as Reality before they died and split into twin gods.

Dipper, as Space, is naturally inclined to keep learning everything about everything - things symbolized by space include mystery, magic, and knowledge, after all, so he's likely to seek out the strange, paranormal and divine.

Mabel, as Earth, is a free spirit who adores creation and finding new, fun mortal pursuits. In general, she's a lot more focused on the mortal side of things than Dipper is - where he wants to learn everything about godhood and their divinity, she wants to enjoy walking among mortals for as long as possible.

When Ford gets brought back, he yells at Stan, revealing he was about to destroy the seat of Bill's power and now they have to go about it the hard way.

Most of the series plays out mostly the same except Weirdmageddon is replaced by Bill regaining his godhood and is defeated by erasing his divine presence with something similar to the memory gun, which has been invented by Fiddleford to prevent his influence from fracturing. There's new logistics behind it which I will. get to. eventually.

So that's basically a broad overview of the plot and I might end up making this into a fic because I have gone feral over this AU. In case you. Couldn't tell.

I might make a separate blog for Divine Falls stuff one of these days because this is a lot, but I'm not sure I will.

[fondofeveryprickle]

MDZS and The Untamed comparision

let's preface this by saying this is my opinion. and I know my opinion is not universal. but I wanted to put my thoughts someplace. you can agree or disagree, and I would love to hear your takes on both. also, I may get information mixed up, I read the novel really fast and then went straight to watching the show. please, correct me if I'm wrong.

so I need to start saying I loved both so much. they both have things the other lacked and I had such a joy while watching/reading.

On the main plot:

the novel wins this one easy!!!

I particularly don't like the idea of Yin Iron. it takes from Wei WuXian's story. if the yin iron already existed and was used to control corpses/resentful energy, what Wei WuXian did with the stygian tiger Amulet was not as impressive as him doing it without any precedent.

but I also understand why they did it, so Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi had reasons to work together at the beginning

still on the yin iron and the whole wen clan thing. I really prefer the novel, where it shows that the wen sect just wants power. it's not anything supernatural or whatever.

the whole "corpses" being censured from cql made the show lose so many opportunities. I really wanted to see the horror of it. those black clouds of resentful energy were just okay for me, not scary enough. and it didn't feel powerful enough (specially on the nightless city battle)

and I really wanted them looking for body parts and discovering that people had been buried with wrong body parts and all. and having them taking a really long time to discover it was Nie MingJue, because they had just some body parts that could have been anybody.

and not having the corpses took a lot of power from Wei WuXian. and made wen ning not make any sense (the explanation from the dancing statue makes no sense, really)

all in all, novel wins this round

On the characters:

on this one I have mixed feelings. I feel like a lot of characters had a better development on the show (specially on the scenes from before 16 years), because the novel was from Wei WuXian's pov, so there were lots of things he was not really paying attention to.

I still prefer wwx from the novel. his character arc is more interesting for me. specially because he is actually guilty of the things people accuse him of (even if he had reasons, and I agree to those reasons), and the show took it away from him, and laid the blame on jgy. I feel like the show took the easy way out, not letting wwx deal with the lack of control on those situations. but I also love him in the novel in all the ways he's always ready for chaos, on the show he seems more calm, I guess. I also love him coming to terms that he likes guys (or at least lwj). it was a long way coming in the novel, and the "oh" moment was so good.

also the whole mo XuanYu/resurrection thing. it doesn't make sense that he went back to having his own body. and made it really hard for him to hide himself. although story-wise I don't like that he has his own body because it doesn't make sense. I am really glad they didn't change, because the actor is simply perfect as Wei WuXian, and I wouldn't want it to change either.

on Lan WangJi I have mixed feelings. since we read the novel through wwx's pov, we mostly know what he knows. and I think the show and the actor did an amazing job of portraying lwj that felt faithful to the novel but also a little more fleshed out, mainly past lwj. but they also made him softer than the book in a way. I like both versions very much. I can't choose. but I really don't think he would ever become chief cultivator, and I don't really like this ending for him. it doesn't make a lot of sense. he doesn't really enjoy talking to people and making compromises, which he would have to do a lot, being the leader of all clans/sects. he's the person who likes to travel to help whoever needs help, he likes teaching the juniors.

we also deserved more drunk!Lan WangJi than what we got

YanLi!!!! the show for sure!!!! ❤ her role is much bigger on the show and I love her very much.

the same with wen qinq. I loved the little we got of her from the novel, but I loved that she had a much bigger role on the show (still bitter she's dead - I want modern!au fics where she and wwx are best friends)

another thing. I think because the show is mostly in chronological order it made me care more about the characters (and not only wwx and lwj) and so I cried more (not sure if it's a positive thing).

on the novel, the flashbacks were all mixed up in the middle of the story, and even then, they were not in chronological order, but the thing we needed to know because it related to things that were about to happen. so I already knew who was dead, and who was friend or foe, so when they appeared in the flashback chapters, I couldn't care a lot about them so I wouldn't suffer.

even reading the novel first, watching the show gave me a chance to care about a lot of people, because they were always there, and so I suffered a little more.

the show also gave me a chance to fall in love with nie MingJue and then take him away from me. I feel like the novel didn't talk about him enough.

On the relationships:

both. both is good. no, actually both is great and they complement each other so well!!!!

this is a point that I really really can't choose one or the other. maybe most people say the novel, because the relationship is canon and they are married by the end of it. and that's a great point in its favour for sure.

I think their relationship has more time to develop in the past on the show than on the novel. there were a lot of moments they had together in the past and we can see lwj, and see him getting soft near wwx. there are a lot of declarations of intent on the show as well

but I also love their relationship on the novel, post resurrection. I love how lwj creates all the reasons they need to stick together, even when wwx wants to run away.

I do love that it is canon. I love so much. I love that wwx gave the rabbits to lwj when they were teenagers, and 13 years after wwx died, he still had rabbits. I love all their stolen kisses, and I love that they are actually married travelling the world, and stopping back at cloud recesses sometimes.

I love how we discover that lwj always loved wwx, even when the world hated him. and wwx didn't know. but he also didn't know that he loved lwj. but we can see it in all the times he talks about him, and how much he really wants to befriend lwj and everything.

but I miss the teasing on the show. I miss drunk! lwj letting wwx do whatever. I miss a little lwj holding wwx by his hands tied with his headband in front of all the juniors and wwx doesn't really know what's the big deal.

but for a show that had the gay censored, I really love the development of their relationship through smiles and soft looks and little touches and protections. and some big gestures (staircase scene? rain scene?)

I liked Wei WuXian & Jiang Cheng relationship better on the show. their sibling love is so strong, and so beautiful, all the more painful after everything that happened. again, I think this one for me feels like that because the show is chronological, so. made me love Jiang Cheng, for later to feel so sad and betrayed for what he did to wwx.

another one, Jiang Cheng/Wen Qinq. I don't know how I feel about them. they don't exist in the novel. Jiang Cheng met her once right after his parents and his whole clan died, and he was really rude to her, and then they meet again, when he goes to burial mounds to talk to wwx. but on the show they have an awkward something going on, which makes it all more sad that he won't help her and her family and then just watches her die.

Other:

the whole importance of Jin GuangYao during the show was a little annoying to me. it was never a surprise that he was not really the good guy. I preferred the surprise of discovering all together from the novel.

the ending. without a doubt the novel wins this one. making them go their separate ways? after everything lwj did to have wwx back? makes zero sense. and I already said what I think about lwj becoming chief cultivator.

I guess that's it. all in all, I prefer the novel, but I also love the show. and I believed they can be complementary to each other (as long as I ignore the ending of the show).

(i guess I'm ready for the fics now. I just wish it were easier to find out if they use novel canon or show canon)

[unidentified-refresher]

toxic husbands (they’re waiting for ahsoka to come pick them up for bingo)

[imsoprettyithindersmyiq]

wait wait this is so funny

toxic husbands (they’re waiting for ahsoka to come pick them up for bingo)