#(I think tumblr deleted my second illustration?? Somehow??? So i edited it back in)

[ckret2]

How are ford and dipper interacting with Bill. (especially after their ptsd due to how he hurt them)

So "how are they interacting with Bill OVERALL" is a big question—and one i've already touched on in a couple previous asks—so to shrink the question to manageable size, I'm gonna interpret this one more as "talk about any Bill-related trauma Ford and Dipper might have and how seeing him again impacts it."

I actually don't think either of them necessarily developed PTSD (although Ford has worse odds). Not because they didn't go through traumatic experiences thanks to Bill, but rather just because not everyone who goes through a traumatic experience develops PTSD. Some excerpts from the National Institute of Mental Health:

It is important to remember that not everyone who lives through a dangerous event develops PTSD. In fact, most people will not develop the disorder.

Many factors play a part in whether a person will develop PTSD. Risk factors make a person more likely to develop PTSD. Other factors, called resilience factors, can help reduce the risk of the disorder.

Some factors that may promote recovery after trauma include:

Seeking out support from other people, such as friends and family

Finding a support group after a traumatic event

Learning to feel good about one’s own actions in the face of danger

Having a positive coping strategy, or a way of getting through the bad event and learning from it

Being able to act and respond effectively despite feeling fear

The Pines are part of a close knit family that shared in Weirdmageddon, and 3/4 of them were puppeted, hurt, and/or manipulated by Bill and can commiserate. They also have friends in Gravity Falls they can talk to about their Bill experiences. Although Ford and Dipper are ashamed of being fooled by Bill in the past, even during the course of the show they started helping each other process that; and all four of them have reason to be proud of how they faced Weirdmageddon. They all ultimately responded to their fears by taking action. The family's in a good position to get through the aftermath with minimal lingering trauma!

The biggest potential issues are their physical isolation from their support network, and Gravity Falls' Never Mind All That Act hampering people from talking with each other; but if you assume they're still regularly talking with each other on phone or online and that people are still willing to talk in private amongst friends about Weirdmageddon, I think they can get around the majority of those issues. (Plus, realistically, the Never Mind All That Act would hamper recovery from trauma; but since it was clearly intended to be a funny cartoon joke about life going back to normal, I don't want to narratively treat it like a serious thing with serious consequences.)

(I'm also on the fence about headcanoning whether Dipper & Mabel tell their parents; Dipper spends most of summer trying to tell the nearest adult relative all about the weird stuff in Gravity Falls and Mabel immediately writes to mom & dad about the new gruncle that came out of a magic portal, I don't see why they'd stop that when they get home. Odds the parents get the kids therapy is like 90% but odds they'd let the kids go back next summer is 5% so... *makes a weighing scales gesture*)

So I think they'll get through with minimal trauma-trauma. But the scars of the incident can show on them in ways other than full-blown PTSD.

The worst of it Dipper experiences is nightmares. Sometimes about Bill, sometimes about being stuck outside his body while it sleeps below. Admittedly, nothing to sneeze at; few things are more terrifying than waking up, disoriented and in the dark, from a nightmare about a guy who can actually invade nightmares—you can spend the next half hour asking yourself "what if it was real?" But if you've got a sister in the next room to reassure you it wasn't real and a grunkle in a weird time zone you can call at 3 am to hear he's had similar dreams for thirty years and they never meant anything... eventually a half hour of fear becomes five minutes of fear and the dreams become annoying instead of terrifying.

If anything, being in the Shack with Bill helps Dipper deal with the nightmares—it's reassuring to be able to wake up from a Bill nightmare, bellow "GET OUT OF MY DREAMS YOU FREAK," and hear back from the floor below, "I'M NOT IN YOUR DREAMS, I'M WATCHING TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES WITH ABUELITA."

Even his dreams about out-of-body experiences have decreased since coming back to the shack—that's probably a sign of healing, right?

(One of the things Bill plans never to admit to the humans: he still has a sizable amount of dream-related magic, and he's started shoving Dipper's soul back in his body whenever Bill sees him astral projecting because he's sick of getting blamed for Dipper's "nightmare" when he wakes up.)

Between Dipper and Ford, Ford's the most likely to actually get PTSD—specifically because at the outset, he got the least emotional support. After he found out Bill's motives, he was trapped alone in his house for weeks, afraid that the world could end if he fell asleep, until the point that he was hallucinating Bill in other people's eyes—if it was a hallucination.

That extreme sleep deprivation, that paranoia, that terror, and most of all that isolation from any support—THAT sure could trigger PTSD.

But Ford's had thirty years to process that, all while traveling through a multiverse full of people like "oh, THAT Bill Cipher? Oh yeah we totally sympathize, that's the exact kind of thing that guy would do." Getting dumped into the multiverse probably gave him a better shot of healthily processing the experience than he could have had on Earth. (Note that he's not checking people's eyeballs when he gets home from the multiverse.)

On the other hand, I do believe he's got some noteworthy trauma from thirty years in the multiverse, but never mind that! (You could arguably call that "caused" by Bill—but I don't think interacting with Bill conjures up memories of traumatic multiversal travels for Ford. He didn't see Bill during those 30 years. His mind sorts them in different boxes.)

The biggest negative psychological impact Bill left on Ford is trust issues. When he first returned to Gravity Falls, that was more global—TRUST NO ONE. Those trust issues have shrunk a lot—now it's just "don't trust Bill." Bill could tell Ford the sky is blue, and he'd have to go look to make sure Bill isn't trying to keep Ford from finding out that the sky's turned pink.

Upside: this makes it almost impossible for Bill to mess with Ford's head. Ford is all but mess-proof. Everything Bill says carries zero weight with him. Downside: this makes it almost impossible for them to carry on a conversation.

(Bill's the only one who considers this a downside. He's looking for a way to twist Ford into regretting not listening to Bill. Maybe the next time the kids are in trouble, he'll go tell Ford first, and then he can feel all self-righteous when Ford feels all guilty about brushing Bill off and not helping the kids.)

#grunkle ford #dipper pines #bill cipher #human bill cipher #gravity falls #fanart #my art #about my writing #bill goldilocks cipher #(I think tumblr deleted my second illustration?? Somehow??? So i edited it back in) #(If there's somehow TWO of it now: blame tumblr)

[yume-fanfare]

hi i am that anon from like 29th Dec (last dang year) who said i read ur tsuki no hime and loved it and that u understand Aizou. i have read more of ur stuff since then and now i NEED to ask you for writing advice, on both characterization and general writing tips since I didnt mention it before. Sorry about that! i just forgot i sent an ask and i do not get notifs at all (or does anon asks not get notifs?) Also, ART STUDENT! That's why the nice art and art leaning!! I feel smart for sensing it

oh yup, tumblr doesn't send notifs for anon asks! but i'm glad you did see the answer anyway

this post is hideously long, so answer under the cut!

so, on characterization: it is mostly a matter of what would they say, rather than what you want them to say. the joke about "the characters do what they want to" instead of what the writer wants is pretty much true if you want them to be in character lol (that's why sometimes a little bit of OoC isn't too bad)

checking the source material is the most important thing: look at prior similar interactions the characters have had and how they reacted

this is kind of hard with LIPxLIP, as there aren't that many translated texts about them but with honeyworks the most canon and reliable thing to use as reference are the mvs. the mvs are drawn in a way that can pretty much be understood even if you don't have the lyrics, and sometimes it's even better if you can't read them, to properly focus on the images better

look at their expressions closely: while aizou is always explosive in his anger, yuujirou often has a more indifferent expression. so, when they fight, aizou is probably the one to blow up first while yuujirou maintains his composure better. it's kind of the classic "this was only a brief passing panel but i am going to expand on it" www

but the thing about fanfiction is that it's always a bit of a character analysis in itself. you don't start writing having already a color-coded folder of possible situations and reactions a character would have for each setting. you just throw the characters in a scenario and then think from there onwards, and eventually you'll be able to have the folder of situations and what you think their reactions would be like. (though, this links back to the prior point, if the characters have gone through a similar situation in canon, use that as guide! plus, finding little references to canon when reading is always fun)

for general writing, i'm going to mostly talk about my own experiences and process! i'm in no way a professional though

the basic is reading a lot. not just books but also fanfic. in fact, since you're writing fanfic, i Encourage you to read fanfic. even if your story ends up novel length, the way of treating the story is different from that of an actual novel. for example, because you're working under the premise that everyone knows the characters already. the general style of fics is different as well.

in fact, the style is the main reason i'm saying this slfkslfkslkf

read a lot of stuff and find a style you like. think of it as sewing together pieces from here and there to make a frankenstein amalgamation: this person's metaphors, the comparisons from here, the descriptions from there

personally, i adore the "long one-shot with a long title formatted (like this)" fics that are mostly feelings and descriptions and as little dialogue as possible, and some that occasionally play with the "show don't tell" rule, and some months ago i read a book whose descriptions amazed me because you could feel what the character was focusing on the most, rather than being general descriptions of the situation (i actually have a lot of thoughts about descriptions but that's a post for another day). but also i really like dialogue and plot-driven stories, descriptions can get boring and before trying to break rules, you have to be really good at following them

but, let's go step by step: developing an idea

for this i'm going to mostly reference the multichap i finished a while ago as an example

i started with just a few vague concepts in mind: non-idol au with aizou who does some sport and likes music but is insecure about his singing and yuujirou who does some music related thing and encourages him to sing in a way that's somehow related to the hozier song to noisemaking (sing), because it's what inspired me to write in the first place

then, from then onwards i wrote down what would happen in the first chapter of the story bullet-point-list-style, including things like the roommates part or the clubs the boys were in (at first yuujirou was in the choir club lol the change was a last second decision that idk why i took) and then bits of dialogue here and there that would be The Turning Points. those first dialogues were for the fight at the end of ch 1, the apology-date in ch 3 and then some vaguely unused ones for the "yuujirou encourages aizou" part, as those were the first key moments i thought of

because, since it's enemies to friends to lovers, an important aspect was character development

not all fics have character development bc not all of them are long enough (if you're aiming for short and sweet then there's no need). but if they do, i recommend you write down how the character was at the beginning of the story and then how they were at the end and then fill in the middle later, think of what those key turning points that made the character change were (the more little things you add, the more gradual it'll be)

samishigariya illustrates this very nicely: the song starts and finishes with the same lines, but the ending ones feel more light-hearted. the beginning has pre-arisa ken and pre-getting-along-with-yuujirou aizou, when they were the lonely people the title mentioned, and the ending, when they're not lonely anymore. the in between can be seen in depth during the other songs: ken before arisa was a playboy who didn't take love seriously, but after meeting her he realized that games were not all there was to love; and aizou used to be quite cranky and high-key a loner, but then he "meets precious things and knows of love". i will not elaborate on that because this isn't an aiyuu post but Oh You Know

for the fic, aizou would go through that same process, more or less: someone who doesn't really form meaningful connections with people but who, in the end, would end up having quite a bunch of people who care about him as his relationship with yuujirou advances too

since the relationship was the main focus, i wrote a very simple outline for how it would develop throughout 5 hypothetical chapters that was just: 1. civil w each other but mostly bad > 2. bad > 3. half friends > 4. pining > 5. date

and then with that in mind and the bullet point list, the final basic outline ended up like this:

there were scraped ideas and ideas that made it in later, but i believe having a simple outline, a bare skeleton to add things to, is important. stories need continuity, development requires a prior buildup

it's especially important in multichapter fics where you post as you write, you need to have a more or less clear idea of what's going to happen because you can't ignore scenes you've already posted

shorter stories don't need it as much, you can think as you go, but it's still helpful to know where you're going with things to avoid getting stuck

and, on getting stuck: don't be afraid of deleting things. if you can't figure out how to continue things, then delete the situation and start again. it might feel like you'd be wasting time but in the end, it is so much better than being stuck on the same scene for weeks

in fact, you don't have to write in order. jump to the next scene and you'll figure it out later. you Can write the scene you want to write and then build everything else around it

it's normal to write a scene and then realize it would make more sense later in the story, or that it would be better if you added another scene earlier, or sometimes you just find it easier to jump from one part of the story to another. rely on your outline to keep track of what you've written, what you have left to write and what's the best way to arrange your story. make your story understandable

which bring us to editing

there's a lot of much better posts on editing stories, but yeah ctrl+f is your best friend: don't repeat yourself too much. and be sure to vary sentence and paragraph length, as well as sentence structure, to give dynamism to the writing

now, i've mentioned before the show, don't tell rule, but i'm going to talk a bit more about it because it's quite important

once again there's a lot of posts that explain more in depth what it is, so i'm not going to expand too much on that, but, very basically, try to avoid things like "then some time passed and they became friends". explain it: what happened exactly? how did they become friends? if it's important, show it to us, instead of summarizing

since things like these make the story longer, it also gives room for more development and proper explanation for things that happen

for example, the fic was originally going to start with them already in the room, and the whole situation would have been explained in a single paragraph somewhere, but by actually adding the scene where they first arrive to the dorms and argue with the lady at the main desk, the story flows better and it let me actually describe their first meeting

and uuuhhh i think that's all? this took super long to write i hope i didn't forget any super basic stuff lol

i want to add that for enemies to lovers i greatly recommend this post bc it's super good but yeah i think that's basically it, if you have any more specific questions just shoot me an ask

#god this is so long #how should i tag this #tutorials #i guess #anonymous #preguntas