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gfpt-comic · 3 years

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So. Here goes nothing... (1/?)

(Major spoilers for the comic, but since it won’t update anymore (besides PERHAPS some random comic strips/excerpts without context every now and then, but don’t count on it), I guess it doesn’t matter.)

If you read my answer to the ask posted earlier, you probably know what this post is about. I’ll make a list of every important point I wanted to tackle in the comic, in multiple sections. Be prepared for the long post that awaits you below the cut.

Summary of what was left of Chapter 2

Following their first appearance at the beginning of the chapter, Lolph and Dundgren try to question Blendin, who is staying at a hospital and is still under intense care. They discuss what exactly happened to Blendin in the first place: he was assigned what was supposed to be a routine mission to solve a minor time anomaly in the 21st century, but his time machine exploded when he tried to operate it and he was gravely injured. Dundgren mentions that any normal time device should hardly cause this much damage when malfunctioning, suggesting that Blendin’s level of incompetence is so incredibly high, it somehow managed to make something that shouldn’t be able to explode blow up in his face. On the other hand, Lolph starts to wonder if, exactly because it should be impossible, the accident may have had a reason other than just Blendin’s incompetence. Unfortunately, the accident had consequences so grave on Blendin’s physical health, it seemingly also took a toll on his sanity and questioning him only leaves them with esoteric sentences of dubious credibility.

Blendin: “This is very nice of you… to visit me. There isn’t much time left. I was starting to feel alone, before everything disappears.” Blendin: “Time Baby will succeed… He will free us from this time.”

July 13, 2012 again: back in the gift shop of the Mystery Shack, Wendy and Soos have captured Bill and tied him up to a chair. Wendy starts interrogating him, asking him who or what he is-- throwing in her multiple guesses: the Shapeshifter she defeated with Dipper in the bunker, a paper clone... She doesn’t suspect demon possession or a switch-because-of-the-carpet scenario, however. Bill just keeps trying to break free with little success, without answering; and soon, Stan interrupts them when he enters the gift shop as well, followed by the dozen of tourists he took during his latest tour. Wendy and Soos manage to evade Stan’s obvious questions by pretending they were making a new attraction.

Back in Mabel’s Dreamscape, Mabel encourages Dipper to have some fun with Bill’s powers, but he is scared of messing up because of just how powerful he is; having seen Bill’s powers both in the Mindscape/Dreamscape and in Weirdmageddon when he witnessed the alternate timelines, Dipper knows just how far those powers can go and he isn’t sure he can control them. Still, after some teasing Mabel starts a snowball fight with the surrounding ice cream, and gradually the twins have more and more fun starting with the ice cream, then with the tricks Dipper starts to use. When they take a break, Mabel points out that nothing bad happened, and Dipper grows a bit more confident that he can use Bill’s powers in a way that isn’t dangerous.

Dipper: “I guess it’s easy to do exactly what you want when it literally happens in your mind... Huh.”

Dipper notices it’s almost noon, and Mabel remembers that she was supposed to meet William at Greasy’s Diner for lunch. Mabel is unseasy upon thinking of talking to him again after what happened the day before, and Dipper confirms by showing William’s current whereabouts through a peephole that William seems about as worried as she is. Mabel takes a deep breath, makes sure that she will be able to see Dipper whenever she needs (during the night for sure, perhaps earlier if she asks for it). Still, just before Dipper wakes her up... She has a favor to ask him.

Mabel: “Now that you can do lots of magic stuff and all... Could you do something for me?”

Back in the gift shop, the tourists have left and Bill was untied due to Stan’s confusion over the situation. However, he is forced to stay inside and is stuck sitting by Wendy’s side behind the cashier desk. When Mabel goes through the gift shop to go to the Diner, everyone notices that she made a new sweater -- one with a pine tree symbol on it, no less. Bill is enraged but can’t stop her from leaving.

William has his first face reveal. He is a blonde 13-year-old, and is already waiting worriedly at Greasy’s Diner when Mabel arrives. He immediately apologizes for what happened on the day before.

William: “About yesterday, I... I’m sorry I said your brother was a bad influence. That was uncalled for.”

Mabel: “Yes. Yes it was.”

William is genuinely apologetic, but soon it is revealed that the reason why he thought Dipper and the Mystery Shack were a bad influence was because he doesn’t believe at all in the supernatural. Even if Mabel told him about her adventures, he assumed they were just stories she made up while playing in the Mystery Shack’s museum and never believed them to be true. Mabel tries to convince him by showing him some episodes of Dipper’s “Guide to the Unexplained” -- a series of videos he used to make and post online at the beginning of their summer break upon arriving in Gravity Falls, but stopped making altogether after Summerween. Sadly, the episodes made up until then did not revolve around exceptionally weird anomalies, and aren’t enough to convince William. The only thing William admits to being strange is the fact that every inhabitant of Gravity Falls is “out of their minds.”

Exasperated by William’s absurdly high levels of skepticism, Mabel eventually dares him to go on a forest expedition with her, Candy and Grenda on the next day, just so they can show him pretty much anything in the forest that is out of the ordinary. William strongly refuses and tries to dissuade her to go into the forest at all; he has been personally forbidden by his mother from going anywhere near the forest, and he has also read on the local news that there is currently a predator of unknown origin or species on the loose, which has been notably attacking sheep from the nearby farm. Mabel teases him about the fact that he believes that this creature is real, and suggests that it might be a werewolf for example; but William doesn’t take her seriously, especially because the creature is supposed to fly.

And... This is the part where my script starts getting wonky. I’ve been trying to fill the holes, but sadly it’s proven to be quite difficult, especially now that I know I won’t be drawing it in comic form anyway. Still, the main plot should be precise enough! The holes are mainly just “there should be some filler and/or foreshadowing to what’s coming here”, with little more than just prompts for what could be happening.

Back in the Mystery Shack’s gift shop, Wendy tries to sneakily question Bill, but when Stan asks them where Mabel went and Bill tells him she skipped her restocking duty so she could spend time with William at the Diner, Stan asks him to get her back. Bill happily takes this opportunity to slip out of the Mystery Shack, and have an excuse to bother Mabel at the same time.

Eventually, William is obligated to accept Mabel’s terms and intends on coming so he can at least make sure that the girls won’t put themselves in danger upon visiting the forest on their own.

Bill arrives at the Diner. William, thinking he is meeting Dipper again, tries to make amends for the things he said the previous day and says that he earnestly thinks they can start again on the right foot; Bill sadistically mocks him instead, all the while pretending to be Dipper, just so he can ruin Mabel’s hopes of reconciling William and Dipper. Bill finishes Mabel by forcing her to leave, saying that Stan expects her to work at the gift shop like she was supposed to since the beginning.

Mabel gone, William and Bill start to have a tense conversation; well, tense on William’s part, while Bill is mostly just having a blast driving William mad. The old fanfic that was the first “draft” version of the story has this chapter, which gathers most of the jokes I intended to keep, and at least some of the plot points. I’ll put a warning for awkward English, though. Oh and also, apparently in the old version it was July 3rd and not July 13th, so in the comic the “tomorrow is July 4th so the forest trip can’t happen anyway” excuse wouldn’t work.

About the Quetzalcoatlus thing: here, have some fun dinosaur size comparisons & history following my latest research on what the pterodactyl from S1E18: Land Before Swine.

William: “And how would you even know all that?”

Bill: “Because I ate Leonardo da Vinci.”

William: “. . .”

William: “… It must have been some VERY cryptic way for you to say that it was one of those conspiracy things mentioned in the old book supposedly written by a genius that you keep reading passionately every day. Right?”

Bill: “Oh, so your brain CAN work sometimes!”

Bill gets bit by a soothquito. His bite marks spell “FHOASE CORECULLY“

Upon leaving the Diner, they both see someone being kidnapped by a member of the Blindeye Society. William insists they immediately go warn the police, but Blubs and Durland prove to be ineffective as ever. Bill slips in one or two facts about the secret society, but William dismisses them completely as other random insane things Bill just happens to say all the time for trolling purposes.

Mabel is back in the Mystery Shack and starts her restocking duty, but her mind is clearly elsewhere. She starts mumbling to herself, but is interrupted by the decapitated head of Larry King who just happened to be in the vents nearby. Mabel isn’t surprised at all to see he survived, and when Larry King starts "interviewing” her about the issues she was mumbling about, she complies. Some time later, while Soos is cleaning up the floor, he overhears Mabel complaining about Bill being a jerk on purpose and making Dipper seem like a terrible person, and ends up hearing pretty much the whole story that way, without Mabel knowing. Soos proceeds to tell Wendy what he heard, helping them putting two and two together-- all the while understanding why Mabel didn’t warn them, and why they should stay silent as well. They decide not to tell Mabel they know her secret; but when Bill comes back later, just as Wendy’s shift was about to end, she has just one thing to tell him:

Wendy: “Tomorrow 6PM. My place.”

Night time; Bill is annoyed, but not very surprised by the fact that Soos is sleeping with him for the night, in the room on the ground floor where Dipper had relocated. Bill is at least glad he no longer has to pretend to be Dipper around Wendy and him.

Soos proceeds to ask Bill what his intentions were; not just in the present times now that the switch occurred, but also before it.

Soos: “So you really are that triangle guy from two weeks ago?”

Soos: “Now that I'm thinking about it… A lot of things happened two weeks ago. That's when it began to get all wrong. Well, it was already wrong before that, but… That's really when you came that everything started to get all weird and… bad.“

Soos: “It all started because of that Summerween night. What did you want with us?”

Soos: “Why did you tell Dipper that Gideon summoned you?”

Bill: “It was just a job. Jobs are boring. There’s no fun in it if nobody’s trying to stop you.”

Bill: “Oh, and you wanna know the best part? If you’d taken Shooting Star along with you instead of going just the two of you, perhaps you would’ve had an opportunity to beat me.”

Soos: What did you do with Gideon two weeks ago? Dipper and I knew it wasn’t a coincidence that those government guys showed up just the next day.

Bill: “Something that neither Pine Tree nor I want anybody to find out, I bet. Also if I were to tell you, you'd either faint or spend the next fourteen hours trying to explain it all to Red. Funny, but not worth it.”

Soos is disturbed by Bill’s attitude, because of course he tries to both troll and traumatize at once, and given how Soos was already terrified of Bill because of the Summerween night (”I’ve had nightmares for weeks!” from an earlier comic page), it doesn’t help. Soos tries to ask Bill about the deal he made with Gideon -- more specifically, he asks what Bill wanted in return for stealing the code from Stan’s mind. However, Bill doesn’t answer and instead opens the bedroom door to reveal that Mabel was trying to eavesdrop.

Mabel was mostly there to make sure that everything was alright, and deduces that Bill hadn't slept at all during the first night and that he intends to never sleep at all, even after she tells him that humans need sleep to survive. Thankfully she came prepared with a “surprise gift from Candy and Grenda”, and sprays Bill with Fairy Dust.

Mabel: “There’s probably enough in that bag to knock out a gremloblin in an instant, so I think he’s good for the night. :p”

Once Bill is asleep, Dipper takes this chance to come to his Dreamscape and talk to him one-on-one; and, he is not happy at how Bill treated Mabel so far. Still, after a certain point the conversation gets to a more pressing topic.

Bill: “You saw it happen, didn’t you?”

Bill: “Weirdmageddon. You saw it, right?”

Dipper: “. . .”

Bill: “Oh-ho, even better! There’s a timeline in which YOU make it happen, isn’t there?”

Dipper: “That’s not gonna happen.”

Bill: “Look kid, take it from me. The more you try to actively prevent a specific outcome, the more likely you usually make it happen.”

Dipper: “You can’t make something happen if you specifically stop everything that can lead to it from happening first.”

Dipper: “Even if it includes lying to Mabel… I saw it. If she learns there’s a way to get me a physical form, she’ll try anything to make it happen and disregard the consequences. I bet she trusts me to keep things under control, but everything else? There’s just... There’s too many variables. We can’t let her know anything about the portal. Or Weirdmageddon.”

Bill: “Well, that doesn’t change anything from my original plan anyway.”

Bill: “So you’re just gonna stay in the Nightmare Realm forever, is that it?”

Dipper: “That’s not much of a plan so far, but that’s still an effective way to save the world.”

Bill: “Don’t mess with me. You DO know that if you don’t make your way to another dimension eventually, you’re just going to die, right?”

Dipper: “... W-what are you talking about?”

Bill: “Wait. You REALLY didn’t figure that out yet?”

Bill: “The Nightmare Realm is unstable. It’s just gonna collapse one of these days, destroy everything in it. Could be in a billion years. Could be tomorrow.”

After leaving Bill’s Dreamscape, Dipper decides to visit Wendy’s and tell her everything. He confirms her doubts, tells her the whole story with the carpet... And he tells her about Weirdmageddon and what Bill just told him about the Nightmare Realm.

Dipper: “I mean, it’s better this way for everyone, and of course I’m not gonna go with Bill’s original plan to destroy the laws of physics or whatever, but… I-I just don’t wanna die, you know?”

Wendy: “Don’t worry. We’ll find a way.”

> Summary of chapters 3 and 4

#pt comic #pt compilation #pythagorean thoughts

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mookoo-writes · 4 years

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~Dice and Secrets~ (Ford x Reader)

Authors Note: I just played Swooning Over Stan’s and-

Fandom: Gravity Falls

Pairing(s): Stanford Pines x Reader

Warning(s): Gender Neutral Reader, Cursing probably, nerds crushing on each other, post Weirdmageddon

Anyway, please enjoy~

“Roll for initiative!”

The sound of groans along with multiple rolling dice echoed through the hall. It was 1 in the morning and the shake was silent besides the occasional dice hitting the table.

Why were you up this late? That’s simple. You were continuing a Dungeons, Dungeons, and more Dungeons campaign along with avoiding being caught playing such a game. Why you kept it a secret from everyone, you couldn’t say. This was just one of your guilty pleasures along with going to Renaissance Faires and dressing up.

You had picked this time to avoid the risk of someone busting down the door and seeing the pile of multicolored dice scattered across your desk. Your friends didn’t have a problem with it since they live in a different time zone where your a couple hours ahead of them, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t question you with your suggested meet up time. They had eventually got the reason out of you, which resulted in the topic of Ford. You hadn’t talked about your feelings for him to anyone until that moment, so you may or may not have gushed for a few minutes like a lovesick high schooler.

“Damn it Manny, why did you kick that rock.” Your friend scolded while multiple pieces of paper were being shuffled around. “I didn’t know there was an orc camp behind the bushes!” Your other friend groaned with a sigh. “At least we just healed. Oh, and I rolled a 16.” You added to the conversation, juggling the 20 sided die between your fingers.

The DM looked up at his papers and rolled his dice a couple times. “Okay first in the order is one of the orcs. He is going to attack your player Y/n since they are standing the closest. I’m going to need you to make a saving throw.” You groan and mentally cursed your friend.

At that moment a certain someone wandered out of his lad and up the stairs to the hallway your room was located. The familiar sound of a die hitting a hard surface made his attention go towards your slightly cracked door. A mental battle ran through his head as to whether to take a peak or not. Ford was just going to ignore it until he heard your voice along with some unfamiliar ones. His curiosity got the best of him and stepped closer to your door.

“That’s a 9 but with the modifiers that will be… 15.” Your mental math abilities were a bit slow considering it was so late at night. “Okay… you only suffer a mere scratch to the arm from the orcs double headed battleaxe.” You silently cheered to yourself while pumping your fists. Your friends laughed at your actions until one of them had spotted someone in your doorway. They were about to say something to you until they closely examined the man; Glasses, trench coat and a red turtleneck sweater underneath. So that was the man you were gushing about a few calls ago. They could have fun with this. That same friend made a group chat with everyone in the call except you to tell them what plan had unfolded in their head. Everyone read the message and looked at you with a large grin.

“Y/n, you don’t have headphones or earbuds in do you?” One of them asked. “No, no I don’t. I couldn’t find them. Why do you ask?” You rose a brow at your friend before going back to juggling your dice. She merely gave you a sly smile before replying, “No reason.” You glanced at her before dismissing her question.

“Y/n your rolls have been on point this session!” Another friend pitched in with an enthusiastic tone. “Thanks, I have to make sure I’m not on the brink of death unlike last time.” You chuckled to yourself at the memory of an intense battle that went on last session. You were about to ask about the battle that was currently going on until someone else cut you off.

“Oh! That reminds me, have you finished your Ren Faire costume yet Y/n?” Okay this is weird. Usually all of you are focused on defeating the opposite opponents, but even your DM is getting off track. “Um, No? I still need to add small touches to the staff but I don’t see how this is relevance to the ga-” You were cut off once again, them completely ignoring your question.

“You still have that extra ticket or have you asked him yet?”

It was at that moment Ford could feel the grins of your friends being directed to him with one of them giving a wink.

The question made you freeze in your seat, face becoming slightly red. Where is all of this coming from? “N-no and I don’t think I will. I don’t have the confidence in that, hah.” You gave a sad chuckle and rubbed the back of your neck in embarrassment.

Fords face became flush when he connected the dots; the sudden stop in your campaign with a question completely irrelevant to what was happening along with the stairs and grins thrown his way. Were you really going to ask him or do your friends think he’s someone else?

“I don’t think he would have time, anyway. He’s always in the basement working on various projects and I would hate to take up so much of his time.” Your tone sounded sad and a bit disappointed. You saw one of your friend’s frown at your words before speaking up. “Going by the things you have already told us, I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to go,” That friend glanced over at Ford. “but if he makes you upset in any way, you bet I’ll book a ticket to fly over and kick his ass.”

Ford nervously swallowed at your friend’s stern words. One of his fingers were hooked at the edge of his collar as his face deepened in red at the thought of you asked him out. Not only that, but going to a Ren Faire in costume and everything! Believe it or not, but he had always wanted to take a special someone to an event like this. It had always been one of his dreams to share the world of fantasy and magic with a romantic partner, but lost hope the older he got.

Your friend looked back at you and said with a closed eye smile, “Oh yea, they also have cosplay stuff stored in the back of their closet along with a 6 foot foam sword they made! You can’t hide your nerd self forever Y/n!”

“Who are you talking too…” You turn around in your chair and make direct eye contact with the one person you didn’t want to see. The die you were holding dripped to the flour with a thud as you stare at Ford with wide eyes.

You quickly turn back around and muted your friends before they could say anything embarrassing (as if they didn’t already). “How… much did you hear?” You hid your face in your hands, trying to hide your beat red face. Ford fiddled with the collar of his sweater yet again, trying to find the right words. “I’ve heard enough.” He steps into the door, closing the door behind him.

You take a deep breath, wondering if you just destroyed your friendship. “Please, just… forget that every happen.” Ford rose a brow. “Why would I do that? You haven’t even asked me yet.”

You paused at his words. What? “What do you mean?” You uncovered your face with a confused look plastered on it. Ford walked over to where you had dropped your 20 sided die and picked it up. “Well, you haven’t asked me if I wanted to go or not.” He looked at you, a small smile along with a shade of red dusted his face. “You would want to go with me?” Your voice still sounding confused but with a hint of hope in your words. “Of course! That sounds like a lovely time!” Ford held out the dice for you to take while his other hand rubbed the back of his neck. “That is, if you’ll have me.” You took the die out of his hand, figures brushed together briefly before pulling away. A small smile rose to your lips as you held the 20 sided die in your palm.

“Yea, I’d like that.”

Bonus:

After Ford left your room, you unmuted your chat. “That was one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen!” Your one friend yeld. Your face turned beat red at her words. You had to turn down the volume until she was done gushing about how romantic that was. “H-how did you hear that? I thought I was on mute?” You questioned while hiding your face with your hands. The DM chuckled to himself. “You muted us, not yourself. We all heard and saw everything.”

You’re not going to hear the end of this.

#gravity falls x reader #ford x reader #stanford x reader #gravity falls #my works #ford pines x reader #stanford pines x reader

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fairyhaven13 · 4 years

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I know what you’re thinking. “Ugh, gross, a humanoid Bill Cipher! Why would you do such a thing?? Cringe!”

Yes, this is completely, entirely self-indulgent. I recently left the Hazbin Hotel fandom for a bunch of obvious reasons, and I spent days trying to find another story to plug my OC into. I’m very proud of this OC; she’s got a 50s swing, Betty Boop sort of aesthetic and I love her. But, I made her to reform a villain, and so I wanted a similar story to that. I went over dozens and dozens and dozens of fandoms, trying to find the perfect villain that would fit her story. She’s supposed to be an innocent human that got caught up in the chaos by signing on as an assistant. The closest I could find was my Black Hat story that I already have an OC for, and Cocci is a bit different from Serendipity anyway.

Then I went over some of my old stories, from back when Gravity Falls was in its heyday. Yes, human Bill Cipher was overdone. Bill the Twink was everywhere, on everything, in every story. But, he’s a little different here. You’ll notice that, A) he is not a White Boy, and B) his main form isn’t even human, it’s a shadow monster with blue glowing hair. He does have a human disguise, as shown in the second picture, but his preferred form is the shadow monster. I like how his design came out, and I know it’s thought of as cringey, but I stick by this decision. I’m making this for me.

I’ll put thoughts on Cocci’s new story under the cut.

Dedicated loremasters of Gravity Falls might know that, at the very end, when Bill is burning to death in Stan’s mind, he yells a bunch of stuff backwards that basically amount to: “I’m enacting the power to come back now!” I decided that he does this by making an alternate universe where he doesn’t go to Ford.

He instead goes to Cocci. Now, in the main universe, this doesn’t happen. The Great Axolotl knows that Cocci was a potential target of Bill, and so his way of keeping this from happening was to both erase her whole neighborhood and anyone’s memory of the neighborhood existing. She therefore doesn’t exist in the main universe. In this new one, though, Bill’s power tweaked the Axolotl’s actions, and Cocci ended up reversed: the only one left in her neighborhood, and instead of people not remembering her, she has a big, magic highlighter in her aura going Look At Me!!!

Bill finds her and makes a deal: he helps her find her neighborhood and bring them back, and she gets him a new body. The agreement causes a bunch of chaos, because some of Bill’s energy gets stuck to Cocci’s new Highlighter Aura and it mutates her into the ladybug sprite form above. She doesn’t know how to disguise it yet, and ends up on the run from the feds. She runs into Stan during this, who is also on the run because he always was during this time. When she confides to him what’s happening, he thinks Ford can help, and agrees to try and bridge the gap between them.

Ford finds this fascinating and gets to work immediately. This means he and Stan have lots of bonding and forgiveness early on, though they initially fight quite a bit. Ford creates a homunculus body for Bill, and when Bill’s aura enters the body, the Great Axolotl feels it and yanks. A rip in reality opens, pulling Bill and Cocci. Queue the next thirty years with Ford and Stan working together to bring Cocci back.

During this time, she and Bill are on the run from the Axolotl, drifting around the universe, exploring and making shenanigans. Cocci eventually finds out what Bill is really like, since many, many enemies of his are attempting to capture him while he’s in this less-powerful state. She is very upset at first, but comes to terms with the fact that if she leaves him, he will likely experience a very messy death at the hands of either aliens or the Axolotl. She makes a case for him, and it takes a couple tries, but the Axolotl agrees to make her Bill’s warden, and transfer a good deal of his power over to her.

Once they are on better terms, Bill fulfills his end of the agreement from years ago by convincing the Axolotl to bring Cocci’s neighbors back. By this point, though, with how no one remembered them, they have no place in their old homes. They all go to live in Gravity Falls once Stan and Ford build the portal and bring them back. Then Bill’s old friends use the portal to cause Weirdmageddon, and Bill has to help everyone fight it and bring things back to normal. After this, he and Cocci kind of have a place as Dipper and Mabel’s crazy aunt and uncle.

#cocci #oc #gravity falls #bill cipher #humanoid #humanization #self-indulgent #au #alternate universe #i don't care how many people hate it #it makes me happy

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detectivejigsawpines · 4 years

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ORN-Part 15 (Taking a STANd)

I’m not gonna lie to you people: you’re probably really not gonna like the ending of this next chapter. Just trust me on this.

Stan barely had time to let out an anguished scream that seemed to come from the very depths of his soul, and jump back to his feet from where he’d fallen, before this thing that was clearly not Dan Corduroy grabbed Ford by his hair, jerking his head back; he yanked the knife out of Ford’s shoulder (not good not good not good Stan had been stabbed there before, and while it was better than a gut wound he knew there were still some important veins and arteries and things in shoulders Ford needed a doctor right now) and placed it against Ford’s throat.

“How’s about you come on in with us, Stanley?” he asked, still grinning. And now Stan recognized Bill’s voice, even though he had no idea how it was possible, but it was so hard to think about it one way or another when every thought in his head was busy shrieking FORD FORD FORD FORD’S HURT HELP FORD-

Slowly he followed Bill and Ford into the cabin, relieved that the wound wasn’t spraying or leaking extensively, so at least no arteries had been punctured. Once they were all the way inside Bill kicked the door shut with his boot, and then dragged Ford, who was getting paler by the second and starting to loll his head backwards, towards a large wooden chair set up next to the table. He didn’t take the knife from his throat until he’d sat Ford down, and even then it was just to grab a few coils of rope off the table and tie him to the chair (which Stan thought was more than a little ridiculous-there was no way his brother was going anywhere on his own right now).

Stan stepped towards them; instantly the knife was on his brother’s throat again.

“He needs to have that looked at!” Stan protested. “Please! I can’t-”

He swallowed a little, despite his determination not to show weakness in front of this freak.

It should have been me. It’s my fault. I need to fix it.

Bill sighed, rolling his eyes. “Stupid fragile flesh sticks, can’t handle losing a little blood,” he muttered, twirling the knife in irritation. But eventually he conceded, “There’s a med kit over there,” pointing to a corner where indeed, Stan saw a very large kit. He snatched it, and occupied himself when he returned with cleaning and bandaging Ford’s shoulder.

He ignored Bill breathing down his neck, lightly slapping his brother’s cheek a few times after he’d finally pasted together the mess as best he could.

“Ford? Stanford? Hey, don’t go away now, you gotta stay with me. We’ve got a bit of a problem, and you’re the brains here, Poindexter, so you gotta stay awake and figure out how ta fix it, ya hear me?”

Ford’s eyes, glazed with pain behind their glasses, tried their best to focus. They settled on him for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder, and widened with fear.

Stan peered in the same direction; Bill instantly lowered his borrowed hands and stuck his tongue back in his mouth, grinning innocently at him.

“Done now?”

Stan gave a tiny shrug. “I’ve done all I know how ta do.”

“Good.” Bill yanked up another chair and flung himself into it. “Then let’s talk business, shall we?”

****

“I mighta known you were the one I’d need ta deal with,” Bill said, crossing one leg over the other knee and using the knife blade to start cleaning his nails. “Cuz Fordsy, he’s got his head stuck in his mysteries, so he’d believe anything I said as long as I told him how smart he was; he doesn’t remember the outside world even exists mosta the time. But you-you’re a man of the world, Stanley, and I respect you for that-”

“What did you do ta Corduroy?” Stan wasn’t in the mood for this freak’s flattery BS.

“Oh, you mean my meat puppet?” Bill smoothed his fingers over the flannel shirt in a way that made Stan distinctly uncomfortable. “Turns out you give a guy a nice enough dream about his girlfriend, she can ask him to do a-ny-thing you want. Am I right?” He cackled, and winked like he was inviting Stan to get in on the joke.

Stan gave him a glare of disgust.

“Oh, get your mind out of the gutter, they were just on a picnic in the woods! And she asked him ta help her out with a favor, and he said he’d do anything for her, so she said-” he made his voice even more high and twittering- “‘Thank you, Dan, I know I can count on you, you big strong man!’ And then she held out her hand for him to help her up, and-”

“Get ta the point.”

“The point? The point is, I wanna hire you!”

Stan blinked, more than a little nonplussed.

Bill groaned. “Didn’t you ever watch It’s a Wonderful Life? You’d relate to it, the main guy’s kinda like you. Thinks the world would be better off if he’d never been born. But you’re right, I digress.” He leaned forward. “I need Ford to do a job for me, and you’re gonna be the incentive for him to do it.”

“What kind of job?” Stan put a protective hand on Ford’s non-stabbed shoulder.

“I want him to build something! Just a neat little project that’ll let me into your world with a physical body of my very own, so I don’t have to keep borrowing other people’s!” Bill spread his hands with yet another wide grin. Then, just as abruptly, he glared. “I was going to pull him into this gradually, get him invested in the idea through a process, but then you butted in with all your questions and just spoiled everything like always, and that means we gotta do it like this. So here’s the deal-” he reached out and flicked Ford’s kneecap. “Is everyone paying attention?”

Ford groaned, and shifted away. To Stan’s relief, though he still looked dazed, he appeared to be a little more awake now.

“Good. As I was saying, here’s the deal: he does what I say, and I’ll let you live, since in this dimension he still cares about you.”

Dimension? What’s he talking about?

“You do what I say, and I’ll let him keep all his limbs. I’ll even spare you both after Weirdmageddon happens, and you can go sail around the world like you’ve always dreamed of! How’s that sound?”

Stan had a few choice words to describe how that sounded, even if he had no idea what ‘Weirdma-what-now’ was. He refrained, however, instead reaching into his coat pocket for the other thing he’d taken out of his duffel earlier: his gun. Which he pointed right at Bill.

Bill blinked-and then cackled scornfully.

“Oh, good try, Stanley, really cute-but no dice. You try using that, you’re just gonna kill the meat puppet, you won’t get rid of me. And I wonder how the locals are gonna feel about you murdering one of their own-you really that eager to go back to prison?” He stood up and actually pressed his chest right up against the barrel of the gun, waggling his eyebrows in challenge.

Stan’s hand trembled with rage...before he lowered the gun.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Put it away like a good boy so I can get you settled in.” And he picked up another coil of rope, obviously intending to tie him up too.

But Stan stood still, mind racing.

“Stan-ley, I’m not playing games here!” Bill’s voice became sharp with impatience. “Well, okay, I am playing games, but they’re gonna get a whole lot less fun for you if you keep trying to defy me!”

“I just wanna get something straight.” Stan’s voice, by contrast, was quite soft (by his standards anyway). “You wanna use me as a hostage so Ford’ll do what you want?”

“You need me to draw a diagram?” Bill demanded. “Chop chop, h-wait, what?!”

Because Stan raised his arm again-and pointed the gun at his own temple.

****

...I warned you.

#Gravity Falls #flipside AU #stan pines #ford pines #bill cipher #bill cipher is a jerk #stan vs bill

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thelastspeecher · 5 years

Text

Angiewolf AU - Scents

I’ve mentioned before that Tate is Fiddleford and Ford’s son in the Angiewolf AU (as per usual for my nonsense), and that Ford is unaware that Tate is his son, since Tate was born after Ford went through the portal. The werewolves catch on, because they can smell Tate’s parentage in his scent, which leads to Ford eventually finding this out when he gets turned during Weirdmageddon. But there’s a certain brand-new werewolf that would have no clue how to interpret Ford’s scent being in Tate’s scent. That werewolf is young Dipper Pines, and it’s about damn time I wrote the scene where he finds out Tate is his cousin, so here it is.

Dipper and Mabel lounged lazily on the couch in Stan and Angie’s living room, watching TV. Dipper’s ears picked up on the sound of footsteps approaching the house. His head whipped around to stare at the front door.

“Who is it?” Mabel asked, not even bothering to look up from her knitting. Dipper sniffed the air. He could make out a scent like lake water, but it wasn’t familiar.

“Dunno,” he said with a shrug. He turned his attention back to the newest episode of Ducktective. The front door opened.

“Auntie Angie, I brought the things you asked for,” a voice said.

“You can just drop ‘em off on the livin’ room table,” Angie’s voice called from the backyard, where she was weeding the vegetable garden.

“Okay,” came the reply. Dipper and Mabel looked up at the person who walked into the living room. Mabel cocked her head.

“You’re Grunkle Fidds’ son, right?” she asked.

“Yep. Tate McGucket.” Tate grinned sheepishly. “You must be Dipper and Mabel. I kept meanin’ to stop by ‘n meet you, what with us being cousins and all, but I was a bit busy.”

“We’re not really your cousins though, are we? I mean, Grunkle Fidds isn’t really our grunkle,” Dipper said. Tate shrugged. He set the pile of books he was holding down on the coffee table.

“Sure, not by blood. But McGuckets don’t really care ‘bout blood relation.”

“I like that,” Mabel said after a moment. Tate smiled at her.

“I like it, too.” Tate shoved his hands into his pockets. “So, I heard there was a commotion of sorts about a month ago. Apparently you two are in on the big ole secret?”

“Yeah. Dipper got bit by Molly, so…” Mabel said. Tate’s eyes were hidden behind thick bangs and a cap, but he managed to give off the impression of surprise.

“Wait, really? Auntie Angie didn’t tell me that. Is- how did that happen?”

“It was an accident,” Dipper mumbled. “I don’t really wanna talk about it.”

“My cousins eat a lotta meat. Do you have to do that too?”

“Yeah. But like I said, I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Sure. That’s fine. I should get goin’, anyways. But before I do, Dipper, would ya like to get a good whiff of me?” Tate asked. Dipper frowned at him. Tate shrugged again. “Auntie Angie says it’s common courtesy for werewolves.”

“Uh…sure,” Dipper said after a moment. Tate held out his hand. Dipper sniffed it cautiously.

Yep. Smells like a lake, like I thought. But also sort of like pine trees. Haven’t I met someone with that scent? It’s familiar. Dipper leaned back against the couch again.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” Tate returned his hand to his pocket. “I better get back to work. Maybe I’ll see you two later.”

“We’re havin’ a fam’ly dinner tomorrow night, and ya best come!” Angie shouted from outside.

“Okay, Auntie, okay!” Tate called back. “Later, kiddos.” Tate left the living room. The front door opened and closed.

“That was kinda weird,” Mabel said.

“Yeah, his smell was almost…familiar,” Dipper said.

“That’s not what I was talking about.” Dipper looked over at Mabel. “You didn’t notice?” she asked.

“Notice what?”

“Dipper, he had twelve fingers. Just like Grunkle Ford and Molly.” Mabel frowned. “You really didn’t see that?”

“I was a bit distracted by his smell.”

“What did he smell like?”

“A lake.”

“Doesn’t he run that ranger station by the lake? Makes sense to me.”

“Yeah.” Dipper thought back to the second scent he’d detected. Cedar. “I guess.” He looked over at the door leading to the backyard. He could hear Angie humming to herself as she tended the garden. “I’m gonna go ask Grauntie Angie a question real quick.”

“Okay. I’ll let you know what happens while you’re gone,” Mabel said, picking up her knitting again. She resumed splitting her interest between her latest sweater and the TV. Dipper hopped off the couch and went into the backyard, closing the sliding glass door behind him. Angie looked up. She beamed.

“Want to help me out?”

“Uh, no, thanks,” Dipper said. Angie frowned. She wiped her hands on her jeans, leaving streaks of soil.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think my nose might be a bit messed up.”

“Hon, yer nose is lovely. Both in appearance and function.”

“No, that’s not what I-” Dipper huffed impatiently. He walked over to where Angie was still standing in the vegetable garden. “Tate came over and he smelled like a lake.”

“Yep, that’s his scent. Always has been. I s’ppose with his job, he finally smells like a lake to humans, too.”

“Yeah, but that wasn’t the only thing I smelled,” Dipper said. A strange expression crossed Angie’s face.

“Oh?”

“He smelled- he sorta smelled like Great-Uncle Ford.” Angie nodded slowly.

“He’s got cedar in his scent, yes.”

“But it wasn’t just, like, cedar in general. It was the exact same smell of cedar that Great-Uncle Ford has,” Dipper insisted. Angie chewed on her lip. “Am I just imagining it?”

“…No. Yer not.” Angie jerked her head towards the bench set up on the porch a few feet away. “Take a seat, hon. I’ll explain.” Dipper followed her to the bench. Once they had sat down, Angie put her hands on her knees, clearly working up the courage to speak. “Scents of folks include their parentage. You may have noticed that Molly sometimes smells a bit like motor oil, or Emily smells a bit smoky. That’s Stan’s scent in ‘em.”

“Sometimes they smell a bit like you, too,” Dipper said. Angie blinked.

“You can tell when they smell like me?”

“Sometimes.”

“Huh. Usually, my scent gets overridden by Stan’s, since his is more noticeable. I wouldn’t expect an inexperienced pup to pick up on that. Then again, yer quite precocious.” Angie took a breath. “When ya smell that, it’s lettin’ ya know who their parents are. Scents fer werewolves also include what pack they belong to, who they got turned by…it takes a lot of practice to be able to interpret scents properly, but once ya do, ya can learn an awful lot about a person just by smellin’ ‘em.”

“Can you teach me all of that?”

“Sure! I’d love to.” Angie rubbed the back of her neck. “But back to the subject at hand. I want you to promise me something.” Her voice was the most serious he had ever heard it.

“What?”

“Promise me that what I’m about to tell ya won’t leave the two of us,” Angie said somberly. Dipper swallowed.

“I- I promise.”

“The scent ya smelled in addition to Tate’s base scent was his parentage scent.”

“Parentage? But-” Dipper paused to think. “Tate has twelve fingers.” Angie nodded. “Like Great-Uncle Ford. And he got some of his scent from Great-Uncle Ford.” Angie nodded again. “Is- is Tate Great-Uncle Ford’s son?”

“Yes,” Angie said softly. Dipper stared at her.

“Wh- but how?”

“That’s information I can’t give out. Technically speakin’, I shouldn’t have even given ya the information I just did.” Angie smiled weakly at him. “But yer just a lil pup, learnin’ how to use yer senses properly. It wouldn’t be right to let ya think yer nose is actin’ wonky, when it’s really doin’ exactly what it should be.”

“Tate is Great-Uncle Ford’s son,” Dipper repeated quietly. Angie nodded. “Who all knows?”

“All us wolves know since we can smell it, and so does yer Grunkle Fidds, of course. But Soos, Wendy, Mabel, and Ford don’t know. And it’ll stay that way until Fidds makes the information public.” Angie grimaced. “Or until Ford realizes and decides to just blurt it out. He’s got a talent fer sayin’ things without thinkin’ of the consequences.”

“He’s done that before?”

“He’s done that a million times before, sugar-cube.” Angie stood. “But right now, I need to get back to the garden. Once I’m done, we can set up some sniffin’ lessons. Teach ya how to read scents better.” Dipper nodded eagerly. Angie ruffled his hair. “Yer doin’ an excellent job, lil pup. One day, ya might even lead yer own pack.”

“…I don’t know if I want to do that.”

“Ah, well…” Angie smiled crookedly. “Life don’t really care what ya want or don’t want. Especially in Gravity Falls. Head on back inside ‘fore ya miss any more of that duck show you kids and my husband are so gaga over.” Dipper got off the bench and dutifully went back inside. As he closed the door behind him, Mabel looked up.

“What’d you guys talk about?” she asked. Dipper shrugged. He took a seat on the couch.

“Just werewolf stuff. What happened while I was gone?”

#*slams hands on table* WEREWOOF DIPPER DEVELOPS SOME PUPPER TRAITS #I decided that while writing this he picks up the ''stares at door when guests arrive'' trait #might be some other pupper traits but that's the most important one #Angiewolf AU #Angie McGucket #Dipper Pines #Tate McGucket #Mabel Pines #my writing #ficlet #speecher speaks

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cleverthylacine · 2 years

Note

P or Q or R for the author ask meme ? [it's guesso but on laptop so I can't use my acct - this is a shared side acct ahah] I hope you've been doing okay ! have a good night <3

Sure! I've been doing pretty well!

I think you missed the poem I posted for Soundwave Week which was probably written and sent via comm sometime between the end of Diamonds and Rust & the beginning of A Few Small Repairs, btw--it's here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33900481 P: I'm something of both. I have a general plan for Voice of Stanix. I know there will be 5 arcs and approximately what canonical events I turned upside down to anchor them. But I also figure out a lot of things along the way. And the how goals are accomplished is also something that is revealed to me along the way.

I just found out what's going to happen to Getaway, and it's freaking hilarious.

A good example is Howlback and Grimlock. I knew they were at Garrus-9 at the same time and had probably met as prisoners during that shitshow. Then Howlback was standing in Glit's overcrowded waiting room with her broken tail and Grimlock and Misfire came in and it all kind of fell out of her. I still don't know what threads they will eventually tie together, although it's probably a safe bet that it'll have something to do with Overlord, given how many bullets Howlback has carved his name on and all. (That's a tricky storyline anyway, with Howlback being aro-but-not-ace rep and loving him without "falling in love".) Sometimes when it's a couple weeks between posts it's because I know how I'm getting from Point J to Point Q, but I have no fucking idea how I'm getting from Point M to Point N, and that's where I am right now, and it just has to come to me.

Q. Tons. There is a lot of stuff I wrote that was heavily inspired by Darkover, and by Harry Potter (meaning "it used to be fanfic") and I haven't got the heart to go back to any of it right now, even with the serial numbers filed off. Though I will go back to the ex-HP thing eventually, because the heroine is a trans woman and it'll be gorgeous to spit in JKR's eye that way. I also want to go back to Weirdmageddon Tango but the end of the associated RP broke my heart for a really long time.

There are also deleted scenes. In the first draft of Soundwave and Ravage's reunion they reunited much quicker than they did when I wrote the whole trip out. And so he wasn't sure she was going to take him back, and she even slapped him, and she had a good reason to, but by the time I got to the actual end of A Few Small Repairs, they had worked it all out. Obviously he still had concerns about that as per his discussion with Buzzsaw, but they'd fixed a lot of their problems long-distance. I'm glad I didn't have to write it that way. Their relationship would totally have recovered and on a level he knew he had earned that. But the long voyage home gave them plenty of time to hash that all out in a civilised manner. R. Tons. <3 Fanfic-wise, Astolat is the big one, because she made me fall in love with Megatron and gave me my first sense of who he really was inside, what he was about and what his poetry was like, and then that dovetailed right into IDW Ravage's history in the Dead End with Soundwave, and Drift and Ratchet, which gave me their long history of poetic arguments and conversations that nobody else ever saw until Things Changed.

I also have been influenced by Enfilade and Owlix, though my Ravage and Soundwave aren't just friends and are a couple, and my Deathsaurus doesn't have to eat people.

In terms of influences on my worldbuilding and storytelling: Cordwainer Smith, MZB (we didn't know she was a molester in the 1970s, and I really have thrown her version of paganism out the window and down the drain, but I lived in Darkover during my teens, ironically to escape from my own abusive family, and she had a solid grasp of how to write about telepathy and energy exchange, which informs my understanding of EMF dynamics), Frank Herbert, Lev Grossman, CJ Cherryh, Akiko Yosano, and Sei Shounagon and a zillion Japanese court ladies' diaries. Which is probably why I write a lot about the Warworlds. That and because it amused me to make Tarn the worst Pinkerton ever. (re Cordwainer Smith: consider the parallels between Ravage in VOS and C’mell in The Instrumentality series.)

#writer ask meme #my fic #voice of stanix #weirdmageddon tango #dracaena leffoy #lightningwar #world well lost

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inktheblot · 7 years

Text

As awful as it was, Fiddleford getting Portal straight to the head was what snapped Stanford out of his Bill-worship and stubborn adherence to the success of the transuniversal metavortex. What if that didn't happen, and Weirdmageddon came to fly 30 years ahead of schedule?

Or, a summary of an AU I will probably never get around to writing but I put too much thought into anyway.

Setting the scene of 1982-Weirdmageddon in full swing. Turning Gravity Falls inside out is fun, but eventually, of course, Bill figures out that he can’t go any further than this stupid hick town. He turns to who else but Stanford Pines, the man who changed the world, for potential solutions. “Hey, pal, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about this barrier thing, would you?”

Ford is basically Bill’s brainwashed little lap pet of the apocalypse by this point. The demon decided to keep him around because messing with him is entertaining and he might happen to have some decent knowledge left in the ol’ noggin that could come in handy later. “You belong here. I am your Muse and you are my Genius,” Bill constantly reminds him, an endlessly repeating mantra in his head. Bit by bit, Bill has twisted Ford’s thoughts and convinced him this is where he was meant to be all along: living among freaks and monsters.

Now Ford is half-asleep and half-drunk from time punch. He starts babbling about the Law of Weirdness Magnetism and how yes, you can drop the barrier. But after layers of intoxication and mind alteration, he’s barely talking coherently at all, so Bill takes things into his own hands. “Hey, don’t wear yourself out, kid! You wouldn’t mind if I just poked around in that brilliant mind of yours for that equation, right? See, it’s no biggie…You rest, Sixer. I’ll handle the hard work here.”

But Ford’s mind is a mess now; it’s not even close to organized anymore. It’s scattered with lots of weirdness, lots of upside-down-ness…and triangles. Lots of triangles. It’s pretty funny, Bill thinks: a couple of years ago, Stanford Pines was the most driven and determined young scientist this side of Dimension 52, and now he’s complete chaos-ified slush.

Bill amuses himself sifting through the disarray of Ford’s Mindscape, until he comes across something very interesting tucked inside a battered textbook. It’s an old photograph of two near-identical boys posing on a beach, all sunburns and smiles.

Bill gets a Wonderful Awful Idea.

“OH BOY. OH BOY OH BOY. CONGRATULATIONS, MISSUS PINES, IT’S TWINS!”

How HILARIOUS would it be to hold a little family reunion??? While Bill’s physical form can’t leave Gravity Falls - yet - the Dreamscape is still his to conquer, and it won’t take long for him to pick up this second Stan. He puts Ford’s mind to sleep and returns to the material world, only to project his dream form back outward moments later. He leaves the town - and his pet - in the hands of his Henchmaniacs.

Stanley is, frankly, in deep shit, as we might expect. By the time he dreams of this floating nacho, he’s just about had it with the world. Since he never got that postcard from his brother, he’s pretty convinced that no one gives a damn about him and nothing in his life is gonna turn around anytime soon. He’s pretty dead set on ending it all, but he figured he’d at least sleep on it before being too rash.

Then along comes this triangle guy who seems to know Lots of Things, throwing haughty proclamations and bizarre nicknames left and right. “Hey, Fish Head, you’re a bargaining man, yeah? How’s about striking a deal with me,” he proposes. “Before you go blowing your brains out, I thought maybe you might want to see your brother one more time…”

Stan is not on his conman A-game. He's too exhausted and miserable to try sorting through riddles and deals and God knows what else. He does protest the offer at first: “Nah, why bother? I haven’t seen him in like, what, twelve years? He hates me.” But eventually he figures this is all a dream, and anyway, he has nothing to lose. So he shakes the demon’s hand.

The blue fire thing is a little creepy, but he doesn’t have much time to process it, since the next thing he knows, his body is being yanked out from under him.

He regains consciousness somewhere that must be very far away from the deadends of New Mexico. This doesn’t look remotely like his trashy motel room. It doesn’t look like Earth at all, really. “What the hell is this? Is this hell?? Is that what that flyin’ corn chip was getting at? I’m dead, I’m in hell, and - and - and Ford’s here too! That’s it, isn’t it? This is it? This is - this is the end?”

Right on cue, Stanley catches sight of his brother, now somewhat awake and alert again, floating in midair, glowing yellow and looking utterly…well…demonic. Something deep within Stan breaks. He balls up in manic panicked laughter on the floor of the Fearamid.

Things don’t go too well between a Stanley barely alive and a Stanford spellbound by otherdimensional evil. An ugly conversation fueled by old grudges and new magic commences.

Eventually Stan finds a means of temporary escape from Bill’s lair, dropping onto the streets of chaos-torn Gravity Falls, muttering curses to himself all the while. The next human being he happens to run into is none other than Fiddleford McGucket, decently crazy but still technically sane. That’s when solutions start happening…if tackling a grumbly guy in the street because "DID YOU SAY STANFORD?! YOU’VE SEEN STANFORD?!” is any way for things to start shaping up.

Fidds is safe, relatively speaking. When things started getting messed up, he immediately figured Ford’s research had something to do with it. He rushed over to Ford’s house, where everything was pretty much wrecked, but he managed to snatch up Journal 1 and the components for the unicorn-hair protection spell. Then he found a shed to put up the shield around, to keep himself alive at the very least. He avoided use of the memory gun as best he could, figuring a situation like this would require all his wits, and anyway, trying to forget about this living nightmare wouldn’t make it disappear.

Stan and Fiddleford explain to each other as much as they know about Stanford and the situation at hand, and begin to formulate a plan. They return to the Fearamid with the memory gun. One of them distracts Bill while the other blasts his influence out of Ford’s head.

The three reconvene. Stan and Fidds attempt to jog Ford’s memory: just enough to get him to understand what’s going on, but not so much that he falls back under Bill’s power.

Seeing the people he loves most so distraught ignites something in Ford. He is reminded of all the things he wished he’d said to them, all that he owes them, and he knows what he has to do to make it up to them. As if again possessed but now by a benign force, he sets the memory gun in his own name and summons Bill into his mind one last time, offering up his genius and the equation needed to escape Gravity Falls.

Bill answers the call immediately, meandering through Ford’s mind in search of his prize, only to realize soon enough that everything is going down in blue flames. He whips around to find the image of Ford staring him down, his eyes clearer than they have been in over a year.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” Bill shrieks. "YOU’RE DESTROYING EVERYTHING! WHAT ABOUT ALL WE WORKED FOR?! YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME! YOU ARE MY GENIUS! I AM YOUR MUSE!”

“It’s true that there is great Genius involved in this, but you won't find it in here,” Ford murmurs, thinking of his brother and his best friend holding down the trigger on the other side of his consciousness. “No one else will suffer from your trickery…or my foolishness."

Bill screams. Ford exhales. The Mindscape fades to white. The invasive weirdness evaporates from Earth Dimension 46’;.

Ford awakens to Stan and Fiddleford leaning over him, tears in their eyes and worry on their faces. They manage to convince their amnesiac companion to return to his old house, but any hope of restoring his memory seems for naught…

That is, until Fidds happens upon a stray thirty-eight-sided die stuck in the floorboards. “This was our favorite game in college,” he explains to Stan wistfully. “Kinda nerdy, maybe, but we sure had fun with it. How did that chant thingummy go? Something like…‘with pen and paper, shield and sword…’”

A weak and tired, but nevertheless passionate voice sounds from the other side of the room.

“‘Our quest shall be our sweet reward.'"

#gravity falls #stanford pines #bill cipher #fiddleford mcgucket #stanley pines #my fic #kinda sorta #idk man just take it #i've been calling it #genius au #now that i think about it #this is kinda some weird fusion of mystery trio and one of us honestly

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haberdashing · 7 years

Text

After The Portal (2/2)

After Ford realizes that the world he’s in is not what it initially seemed, he and Stan talk things over... eventually.

Inspired by the epilogue of @thelastspeecher‘s In Another World, and in turn by some old fan theories from shortly after AToTS.

Part 1 / Part 2

on AO3

also on ff.net (no link because filter)

Ford tried his best to ignore the newfound realization that this dimension- the one on the other end of the portal that had disrupted his fateful fight with Bill; the one in which he was now stuck, seemingly for good- was not his own. Ford threw himself into his work with vigor, focusing on saving this world rather than dwelling upon another. And there was much for him to do, much that had to be done if Bill was to be kept at bay, and so his mind was kept busy with the details of that plan all too easily. There were times that he forgot that this dimension wasn’t actually his home, that, much as the rest of the family embraced his presence, he did not truly belong there.

But when he overheard Stan telling the kids that the big party he’d thrown back on June 15th had been for his birthday all along, Ford couldn’t help himself.

He waited until Dipper and Mabel were gone, off on some errand that he was half-convinced Stan had invented on the spot, before speaking up.

“Stanley, you do know our birthday’s on the eighteenth of June, don’t you?”

Stan spun around to face Ford, who stood awkwardly in the doorway, unsure whether to step forward.

“No, it’s the fifteenth- Ford, don’t tell me you forgot your own birthday!”

Ford folded his arms against his chest. “I most certainly did not. Our birthday’s on the eighteenth, and I know that for a fact.”

“Well, I know I didn’t forget our birthday, and clearly one of us must have, so-”

“Not necessarily.”

Ford hadn’t meant for the comment to come out as more than a murmur, hadn’t meant for Stan to overhear- and yet his speech came out loud enough that Stan paused mid-sentence, staring at him skeptically.

“Not necessarily? What the hell does that mean?”

Ford paused, hesitated, let his arms fall to his sides and felt his hands tremble. “N-nothing.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Ford. Just spit it out.”

Ford took a deep breath, weighed his thoughts before continuing- but the stony gaze Stanley was shooting him made it all too clear that he had to continue, one way or another. “Your-” He pointed one arm in Stan’s direction, made vague circles in the air. “-birthday might be the fifteenth, but mine-” He pointed at himself, feeling a bit foolish. “-is definitely on the eighteenth.”

“Wha- we were born fifteen minutes apart, Ford, not three days- and you’re older than me, anyway.”

Another difference there, fifteen minutes apart instead of thirteen, and Ford thought about arguing the point but instead sighed as he prepared to explain himself further. “In this world-” More circles in the air, wide circles only broadly pointed in Stanley’s direction. “-in your world, we might have been born on the fifteenth. But in my world, in my home dimension, we both were born on the eighteenth.”

Stan opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again after a long moment of silence.

“You’re saying you’re not from here.”

Ford rubbed one hand against his temple. “Yes.”

“But the portal- I-”

“You searched for a Stanford Pines, and you got one. Just not the one you were after.”

“But- this is crazy- should I- should I send you... home, then?”

Ford broke into a laugh at that one, loud harsh laughter echoing through the room. “Oh yes, let’s rip a second hole in the fabric of the universe, splendid idea there Stanley, surprised I didn’t think of that myself.”

“Wait, what-”

Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of two sets of rapidly approaching footsteps, Dipper and Mabel evidently having finished the chores that Stan had so haphazardly assigned.

“We’ll talk about this more tomorrow, got it?”

Ford nodded tersely in agreement. He wouldn’t be looking forward to it, but he had to admit that, now that the secret was out, there was more that he would have to discuss with Stan.

And Ford intended to have that conversation the next day, he really did. And maybe he would have if that day wasn’t the day-

or days, really, because what happened then went on for several days, perhaps for weeks even, not that he could keep track when he spent most of it either unconscious or going through seemingly-endless torture sessions in the Fearamid-

or not a day at all, really, because once it was all over it was as if no time had passed in the outside world, as if nothing had happened and it had all been just a bad dream, though the residents of Gravity Falls knew better-

If that day wasn’t the time, then, when the rift had broken open.

If that day wasn’t when Bill had tried to take the universe by force, stopped only by a fluke of nature and a missing equation.

If that day wasn’t when Ford had had to type his brother’s name into a memory gun, his shaking hands holding the gun to Stanley’s head and pulling the trigger.

If that day wasn’t when Stanley Pines, as the world knew him, briefly ceased to exist.

His memory came back. Somehow, miraculously, Stan’s memory came back, even when it should have been totally erased, even when Stan Pines should have been gone from the world for good. But he remembered things piecemeal as they combed through Mabel’s scrapbook and whatever other artifacts they could find to jog his memory- Ford remembered owning some old home videos of them as kids, found them exactly where he remembered putting them.

And as Stanley’s memory returned over time, Ford tried to forget that the man next to him wasn’t really his brother, that there should have been a different Stanford by his side helping him through this. He really, really tried.

But every time he started to feel lulled back into complacency, something would turn up to remind Ford that this world was not his own. The home videos that he retrieved, like the journals that he had perused before Bill had turned them into dust and ashes, felt right in some places, but entirely wrong in others. Sometimes it was minor things, a quote gone awry or a gesture that didn’t fit what Ford remembered from the same scene. Often it was the total absence of their brother, Shermie- Ford knew him as their older brother, a grounding presence in many childhood scenes, but in this dimension Shermie was not only younger than them, but so much younger that Stanley had left home before Shermie had learned to walk. Ford studied these videos, these artifacts from another Stanford’s childhood, looking not for what would bring back a memory like Stanley did, but for what didn’t bring back memories, what didn’t fit into what Ford remembered from way back when.

Sometimes the way Stan’s memories came back seemed logical enough, a picture or video triggering reminders of the time they depicted, but sometimes it was more haphazard, Stan remembering something new in the middle of dinner or when drifting off to sleep. Stan remembered Dipper and Mabel and even Soos well before he remembered Ford, and part of Ford felt as though he should have been insulted by this, but all things considered it was only natural, given that the man Stanley had pushed into the portal thirty years ago was a different man from Ford in more ways than one.

Four days after the world nearly ended, Ford, who had managed to fall asleep on the couch in the room that had once been his (or, not his his, but- but the couch frame still sagged in that old familiar way, from many long nights spent reading until his eyes glazed over, many long nights where he fell asleep without meaning to and cursed the sunlight when it trickled in through the window), was roughly awoken by someone pounding on the door.

Even before he opened the door, even before he heard the voice coming from the other side, Ford knew it was Stan standing there, could guess at least generally what he was so urgently needed for.

“Ford, we need to talk, goddammit!”

Ford opened the door. Stan was in his boxers, and there were bags under his eyes. A quick glance at the window showed that what sunlight was coming through was still dim and muted, a sunrise only just beginning.

“I imagine whatever you remembered didn’t include that there are children in this house, and that you therefore should avoid yelling swear words at the top of your lungs around dawn?”

Stan snorted. “That’s not yelling at the top of my lungs. You should hear me yelling at the top of my lungs.”

“No, I really shouldn’t. Especially not this early in the morning.”

“Fair ‘nuff.”

“So, what did you remember this time?” Ford gestured so as to invite Stan inside, then gently shut the door behind them as Stan promptly plopped down in the nearest chair.

“I remembered that we were having a- a fucking conversation that we were going to finish before this whole-” Stan rested one hand against his temple, fingernails digging into his scalp. “-this whole Weirdmageddon bullshit got in the way. So let’s get back to that.”

It took a moment for Ford to realize what Stan was referring to.

“Stanley, I really don’t think now is the time to discuss that, you’re still recovering-”

“Don’t.” Stan held up one hand. “Just... just don’t.”

Ford sighed, his body visibly deflating as he let out his breath.

“So... you’re from another world, huh?”

“...yes.”

Stan’s gaze lingered on Ford, and Ford couldn’t quite make out Stan’s expression. “But you still saved this one.”

Ford spoke up immediately. “I saved the world? Stanley, you-”

“Can it, poindexter. You pulled the trigger. You erased him from my mind. Everybody’s acting like I’m the only hero here, but we both know that’s a damn lie.”

“I...” Ford’s legs felt shaky, and he retrieved a chair for himself and rested one arm against it before continuing. “I didn’t save anyone. I’m the reason he was here in the first place, I can’t-”

“Were you the reason he was here? Or was that the other Ford?”

Ford took a deep breath, then let it out as he collapsed onto the chair. “...the other Ford, I suppose, but I still endangered my own world, and I- I can’t make up for that, now, can I?”

“Does it matter?”

The question lingered in the air for a long moment, Ford struggling in vain to put his racing thoughts into words, before Stan added, “Could he have sent you back?”

“Sent me back?”

“To your- home world, or whatever. Fixed what I fucked up for you.”

Ford opened his mouth, closed it again, then repeated the process before finally saying in a voice that came out more softly than he had intended, “The thought had not even crossed my mind.”

“Huh. How ‘bout that.”

Stan and Ford looked at one another, silence lingering in the air once more.

Once again, Stan was the first to speak up as Ford grappled with what to say. “You know, maybe this whole mix-up was really a good thing. The Ford I remember could be a real jerk sometimes.”

Ford gave a quick, dark laugh before responding. “I can’t promise to be any better.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

Ford hesitated for a moment before replying, “Well, I don’t think the Stanley I knew would have spent three decades working to get me back, either. So it goes both ways, I suppose.”

Stan laughed. “That’s the spirit. And hey, about the whole birthday mix-up- maybe we can have two separate birthday parties, one on the fifteenth and one on the eighteenth. You always wanted to try that, didn’t you?”

Ford nodded silently as Stan pressed on.

“Or, hell, take it one step further and just celebrate for four days in a row, make it a real birthday extravaganza- I bet Mabel would love that.”

Mabel.

How had he not thought about Mabel?

Would she and her brother accept him if they knew-

Even before his mind could finish formulating the question, Ford knew the answer, though some dark part of him wanted to believe otherwise.

They wouldn’t care. Stan was right- to them, it would likely be a good excuse to throw bigger parties, nothing more. Besides, this world’s Ford had been gone well before they had been born, so they had no one to compare him to, no reason to reject him in favor of someone they had never met.

Ford wondered if, back in the universe where he had begun life, events had played out just as they had here so as to unite the twins’ parents, to ensure that Mabel and Dipper Pines came into being.

Ford decided that if they didn’t, that that other universe was far worse off for their absence.

“I- I never told them. You’re the only one who knows.”

“Well, do you want them to know? ‘Cause I’ve kept secrets for decades on end now, I can keep this one under wraps too.”

A flicker of doubt flared up in Ford’s mind, but he extinguished it before responding. “They should know, yes. They deserve to know.”

“Well...” Stan coughed and looked away from Ford. Ford’s gaze wandered as well, a quick glance at the window revealing that what had been a dim trickle of light from the start of dawn was now something resembling full-blown daylight. “They’ll probably be up soon, so if you want to, er...”

Ford picked up where his brother had trailed off, a tight smile on his face. “I’ll tell them while you make breakfast.”

“Makes sense. Better to do it and be done with it already.” After a slight pause, Stan added, “Guess you won’t have trouble making conversation at breakfast today, huh?”

Stan barked out a laugh as he finished speaking, and Ford joined in, his own laughter soft and shaky but still there.

“No, I suppose we won’t.”

#gravity falls #stanford pines #gf fic #gf au #gravity falls fic #personal #my writing

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sometipsygnostalgic · 7 years

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JUST FINISHED GRAVITY FALLS

weirdmageddon was amazing! FAR better than most finales tend to be.

i wanted to know what the zodiac thing was all about though... i’d never seen it before but it was obviously important to the fans who had theorised about it.... couldnt we at least see what it would have done???? it didn’t have to be the final conflict!

ANYWAY i dont have as much to say about gravity falls as adventure time for obvious reasons so im going to rank it... Without further ado, it’s time to heavily overthink about cartoons!!!

Animation: 5 out of 5 hats - this is one of the most BRILLIANTLY ANIMATED childrens cartoon shows ive seen. there’s no weird inbetweens, the lighting for each scene is absolutely spot-on, it looks and feels amazing! honestly gravity falls looks like one of the strongest arguments for using script-driven shows instead of storyboard-driven shows, because cartoon network has never in its life produced something that looks this good. When it used 3D CGI it was implemented smoothly. The characters had no absence of body language and cues either, it was never boring to look at. Disney does it again!!!

Humor: 4 out of 5 hats - While I dont think this show is the literal funniest thing I’ve ever watched, it is consistently entertaining throughout the entire series which is more than I can say for the two cartoons (AT and SU) that i’m unfairly comparing it to. Humor is one of GF’s strongpoints, because the jokes it throws at you out of complete nowhere will always have you on ground. I laughed SO hard during this marathon, and the jokes are obscure enough that I’ll probably do the same thing on a rewatch. The animation helps significantly too. The character designs alone, especially Mabel and her sweaters, allow for plenty of visual humor. Soos is the sort of character that you dont know what hes going to do next. Grunkle Stan conning people got some of the hardest laughs out of me. Wendy is just.... Wendy reminds me so hard of early Marceline, except she will occasionally do something really cool cos shes from a family of lumberjacks. Let’s not forget Waddles, the MVP in the humor department.

Story: 3 out of 5 hats - If I made this post yesterday, I’d have ranked it 2 out of 5 hats. I never felt that there was any “story” to gravity falls, only some kind of ARG that added nothing to the experience because none of the questions were solvable until the answers had been revealed. But the second half of season 2 ups the ante on story by focusing on the Pines family and their relationships to each other, and you can feel tension rise especially when Dipper starts to hang aound Ford a little too much and you sense that poor Mabel is gonna be left in the dust just like Stan before her. Weirdmageddon also was way more entertaining than I expected! And how it ENDED? Oh jesus! The show’s final scenes were heartbreaking, if I’d been following for longer I might have started crying.

Characterisation: 4 out of 5 hats- holy crap, it’s just so much fun seeing the Pines family play off of each other. Each group has an entertaining dynamic, whether it’s playful like Mabel, Soos, and Wendy’s shenanigans, or more serious like Stan and Ford’s conflict. There was barely any time throughout the entire series that I was annoyed by how someone was acting, or thought that it was out of place and agitating. I think I might be giving this point a rather generous score because of how feelgood it was, rather than complex or deep, which in many areas it wasnt. For example earlier in the show the conflicts felt dumb, like the Jurassic Park episode where everyone was acting vaguely out of character to cause a sense of drama? idk. But later on it got more heartfelt, if predictable. Where else do I think it can do better?

Worldbuilding: 2 out of 5 hats - Yep, the area where I think Gravity Falls does the worst is worldbuilding. For 2 big reasons: The wasted potential of Gravity Falls itself, and the way its inhabitants were used. Maybe I’m just spoilt by the AMAZING job Adventure Time and Steven Universe do with this, but the land of Gravity Falls fails to be as interesting as Ooo or as realistic as Beach City. Idk, i think it’s more ENTERTAINING than Beach City but more because I get more laughs out of the show than recent SU. The issue with Gravity Falls’ civilians is that unless you’re a Pines, youre a straight up Cartoon Character. That rules your characterisation and your purpose for existence. This is fine and yes there are some memorable characters but they never have those hilarious moments of humanity, like the episode Root Beer Guy where the title character gets into conflict with his wife cos she thinks hes too involved with his actual realistic mystery novels, or the Graybles ep where Starchy ran away from the candy kingdom to get rid of a tracker in his tooth cos he knows PB was spying on him, and he runs a little club conspiring against her like some kind of real life political group. His club and Kim Kil Whan having King of Ooo memorabilia lmao. I’m getting too into this but its moments like that which make Adventure Time feel great.

As for GRAVITY FALLS ITSELF, yeah because the world doesn’t feel as real as it could be I never wanted to see what it had to offer next, and there’s never explanation for all of this. The journals play a much smaller role in the series than Dipper’s reactions over them would have you think. The closest thing to an explanation is the pondering over whether a spaceship caused the weirdness in GF or was drawn to the area because of this weirdness. But is it magic? Is it science? Is it different dimensions? Fuck knows! Is there any hint about the truth? I’m not sure! Yeah, not all things need to have answers, but it helps fire off the thinkpan. In Adventure Time the Land of Ooo’s weirdness is linked to an apocalypse that helped bring magic back to the land. The hint is that the magic potential was always there, because there were magical societies around millenia before humanity. Did magic disappear because of a comet hitting the planet? Is magic actually based on scientific principles? Like GF, not all these questions have direct answers, but unlike GF, you have enough incentive and evidence to construct your own theories. It lets you get absorbed in the lore of Ooo, of the characters inhibiting it. This is my own perspective anyway.

I think the most amazing mysteries I ever saw unwravel were Simon and Marcy’s adventures, and more relevant to my own experiences, PB’s age. Like there was puzzle pieces and hints around indicating Peebles had been around way longer than 18 years or whatever but we finally got confirmation in Season 5.2 where we saw consecutive episodes showing her in the past. The theory was that she was younger than 1000, but could be any age older than about 50. The Vault was a shock origin story for not just Finn having had a past life as a girl without an arm (THE ARM BEING ANOTHER ADVENTURE TIME THING THAT EVENTUALLY GOT some really back and forth PAYOFF), it was an origin story for peebles and the candy kingdom! but why would she make it?? ? yeah this was all stuff we were able to construct theories for, and accurate theories, because the evidence was there and more significantly the Writers were putting it together at the same time. It almost felt like we were having an INPUT in the story because of this natural way it evolved over time. That’s why AT’s mysteries are far more engaging than those of Gravity Falls, at least for me.... but maybe the same thing happened to GF fans????? Because I wasn’t there to put the pieces together, to study the Pines family or the Bill Zodiac which.... was almost as much a copout as Finn’s arm but its ok cos the stan deleting his memories shit was a decent end anyway. I just dont know why theyd put a mystery like that IN there if it was always going to be a red herring???

To conclude this description which..... ended up being another reason to talk about Adventure Time again, I want you to know that I REALLY enjoyed Gravity Falls. It reminded me of Over the Garden Wall in how it’s told, the characters it has, but much larger and grander than OtgW ever was.

My favourite characters were Stan and Mabel. Yeah, Dipper and Ford were very interesting characters too, but while they’re among the top of their trope, they still feel like an overdone trope to me.... especially dipper and his Issues,,, Stan meanwhile I liked that he was a runaway fuckup nobody as a child who became a professional conman after his parents kicked him out. That was an interesting backstory.

Gravity Falls, all in All, gets 3.5 out of 5 hats. To keep it real. Spend them wisely.

#gravity falls

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minijenn · 7 years

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Stonemason Saga Stuff

Because ya’ll are going fucking nuts for this whole Stonemason thing (and honestly, so am I) I decided to list out most of the headcanons/ideas I have for it as well as a lot of what you guys have suggested so far. Mostly so we can collect all of this stuff together in one place and so I can point people who have no idea what it is towards one centralized post. And so, buckle yourself in for some angst because here we go!

This is an idea that will very likely be incorporated into UF’s sequel, regardless of what happens in future SU episodes; it’ll likely be one of the main focuses of the arc immediately following Wanted (which will be an arc ender in UF) (in other words, this isn’t an AU)

Said idea is that, following the events of The Trial, Steven, Mabel, and Lars get away in Blue Diamond’s palanquin, but Dipper doesn’t (for reasons I’m still on the fence on, either he gets noticed and doesn’t make it to the palanquin in time or he volunteers to provide a cover while the others get away (probably will be more along the lines of that second one though)

So the others get away from the Diamonds and continue along the rest of the plot of Wanted (what with Off Colors and Lars’ Head), but Dipper doesn’t and considering both Yellow Diamond’s vendetta against “Rose Quartz” as well as a spoilery thing I can’t talk about yet that happens in UF’s version of Weirdmageddon that’ll have her wanting vengeance on not just Steven but also both of the twins and basically the Gems and the Mystery Shack crew in general, she sees this as very advantageous

Still, to calm the frazzled Blue Diamond down, Yellow assures her that she’s just going to send Dipper off to the human zoo, something she has no intentions of doing as she instead has him taken away (despite his attempts to escape/fight back) and locked up for a while

Still, it’s not too long until Yellow Diamond has Dipper brought back in and so there’s a good bit of tension/confrontation filled with talk about stuff that I can’t bring up because most of it relates to that spoilery thing from Weirdmageddon but anyway…

It ends with Yellow basically giving Dipper an ultimatum: either he willingly agrees to essentially become her assassin and take out “Rose Quartz” (Steven) (who her Sapphires informed her would eventually make it back to Earth somehow) or he’ll be forced into doing it all the same (so yeah, not much of an ultimatum and more of just YD being a vengeful bitch)

So of course, Dipper boldly refuses and long story short, YD’s just like “yeah ok whatever, kid” and she has him hauled off to be “modified”; And by that I mean, basically she has one of his arms literally cut off (and he’s mostly conscious for this too, until he ends up passing out from the pain) and replaced with a cybernetic prosthetic arm (one that’s linked to his nervous system and also can do quite a bit, which I’ll get into later)

Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, YD then attempts to “reprogram” Dipper into being her loyal assassin, mostly through torture (turns out, YD picked up a few tips about how to get humans to cave from her lengthy deal with Bill); as for the said specifics of this torture… I dunno I’ll come up with something by the time we get closer to that point

But of course, as well all know, Dipper is immensely stubborn and strong-willed, so he resists everything YD throws at him and even tries to escape, even though that attempt is quickly thwarted

But for as stubborn as Dipper is, YD is honestly just as stubborn, so she keeps throwing both physical and psychological torment upon him, until, after weeks of nonstop torture, he finally breaks (like, full on Heroic BSOD here)

So that kinda leaves him an empty slate, which is perfect for YD to being “reconditioning” him; what that basically entails suppressing all of his memories about who he used to be and instead instilling him with the vendetta of a merciless, effective, precise assassin, one who is completely and utterly loyal to her and her alone

So in a move of further cruelty that comes about after her doing a little digging on her new assassin’s now forgotten past, she dubs him her “Stonemason” and sends him to Earth alone with a sole mission: to destroy Rose Quartz, the Crystal Gems, and any and all of their human allies

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Steven and Mabel return after having followed most of the events of the last two episodes of Wanted (what with Lars dying and the whole pinkifying thing) (they did try to go back and save Dipper, but they weren’t able to get back to the courtroom because of the shattering robinoids)

So they made it back but of course, they’re both completely and utterly distraught (Mabel especially so) because they essentially lost Dipper (they aren’t sure if he’s still alive or not) and weren’t able to rescue him

Of course, they tell the Gems (Lapis and Peridot included), Stan, and Ford about what happened and they’re all instantly distressed at the thought of Dipper still being on Homeworld, alone, completely at the Diamonds’ mercy (or lack thereof); needless to say they begin planning out a rescue mission immediately, undeterred by how incredibly dangerous it might be

Still, that takes time, which means there’s plenty of interval time left for everyone to be immensely worried and sad and fearful over what might be happening to Dipper; Mabel’s pretty much inconsolable, Steven’s absolutely guilt ridden, Stan is outraged, Ford’s working himself into a frenzy on the rescue plans, Connie’s resolved to do whatever she can to help save him, Lapis is ready to fly to Homeworld herself to save him, Pacifica refuses to believe he’s really gone, and the other Gems are in a state of distressed panic almost constantly

All the same, weeks go by all too slowly and miserably for everyone, until one day, Steven, Mabel, and Connie are out and about and all the sudden they’re ambushed by a mysterious, hooded, masked figure, who’s clad with the symbol of Yellow Diamond, and armed with a deadly electric blade and a multi-faceted cybernetic arm

So they fight this unknown assassin, even though they have no idea who he is (they actually think he might be a cyborg or robot based on his noticeable lack of Gem and how his voice sounds through is mask) but before they drive him off, they find out that 1. He’s actually a human 2. He refers to himself as the Stonemason and 3. His mission is to shatter Rose Quartz in the name of Yellow Diamond

But like I just said, they do manage to drive him off, leaving them with many, many questions about who this new foe might be; they encounter the Stonemason a few more times over the next few days, as do the Gems and maybe Stan or Ford once or twice, and while each time is a close call, neither side really ends up winning in the end

Until… Steven, Mabel, and Connie come up with a plan to catch their clever new foe by fusing into Mabonnven the next time they fight him; so they do so, only to end up unmasking him to find that the Stonemason is none other than… Dipper

Needless to say the other three kids are completely shocked by this, and while they’re initially overjoyed to see that Dipper’s still alive and (mostly) still in one piece, their relief quickly fades as they realize he doesn’t remember any of them as friends or family and only knows them as targets and enemies (he doesn’t even remember himself tbh, and only knows himself as Yellow Diamond’s loyal assassin, the Stonemason)

While they try to break through to him (Mabel in particular because well dammit, she’s been missing him for weeks and now they finally have him back but he doesn’t even know who they are or who he is), their attempts are in vain as he refutes their claims completely

So Steven, Mabel, and Connie are quick to tell everyone else about what apparently happened to Dipper, and while none of them want to believe it, they eventually encounter him for themselves and see that its true

However, the more they try to reach out to him and get him to remember them and himself, the more the Stonemason starts to break down, questioning his identity and purpose even to Yellow Diamond herself, who’s quick to “recondition” him (using the Diamonds’ letimoff from the beginning of What’s the Use of Feeling Blue) back into his assassin mindset

Still, the gang doesn’t stop trying to help Dipper, but they know that it’s nearly impossible to do that from afar, so eventually the Gems end up apprehending him

So this is the point where things are kind of ambiguous in my mind right now, but long story short, things stay in a constant flux between the Stonemason and the other kids for a while, with Steven, Mabel, Connie, the Gems, Stan, Ford, among others, trying to get him to remember his past and true identity fully; it kinda works, with Dipper’s true personality and memories occasionally shining through, but it’s clear that the Stonemason, or more exactly, Yellow Diamond, is still mostly in control

So without spoiling too much or going into too much detail, they eventually do manage to free Dipper from all that brainwashing and conditioning (in a way that will likely involve the mindscape, because angst and also because this idea needs a bit more GF in it) with his memories fortunately completely intact

The aftermath of all this is… angsty of course, with Dipper needing a lengthy recovery period (he was actually tortured to his breaking point, remember) and him feeling immensely guilty over hurting his friends and family (I do imagine that Stonemason would have at least landed a few hits on Steven, Connie, Mabel, the Gems, and whoever else)

For a moment of awesome, when YD tries to recondition Dipper back into her control (she does so via a communicator in his cybernetic arm), but this time he’s able to fight back and resist her this time (with some struggling of course) before ripping the communicator out of his arm and destroying it

Still, the effects of all this are quite lasting for everyone, what with the guilt and PTSD that everyone would be having after its all said and done, not just Dipper

From there, idk it basically depends on what unfolds in SU in future episodes, as well as my GF based ideas for the sequel that I can’t really reveal that much about right now (due to spoilers)

Still, that’s kind of how things unfold in a timeline perspective, as for other information about this plot point, let’s start with Stonemason’s design, which you can find a rough concept of here. In short, the uniform is kind of self explanatory with YD’s insignia all over it, the mask has a filter that makes his voice come across as somewhat (but not too) metallic and deeper, the yellow veins across his face are basically a visible sign of the links between his cybernetic arm and his nervous system, the scar across his birthmark came from YD’s reconditioning, his pupils are Diamond-shaped due to the reconditioning (they return to normal when Dipper regains control though), the sword is electronic and retractable, and his hair’s just a tiny bit longer.

The cybernetic arm not only has a direct Diamond line communicator to YD, but it also has a tracker (that gets taken out once Dipper is freed so YD can’t find him as easily), and it has the ability to transform into a wide array of weapons, including another sword, a laser gun, a Gem destabilizer, a mace, and more (pretty much anything you can think of tbh); however, seeing as how its connected to his nervous system, it can’t really be removed once he’s freed without possibility paralyzing him for life, so he begrudgingly has to keep it.

Following being freed from the brainwashing, Dipper definitely suffers from a good share of nightmares and stress over possibly relapsing back into Stonemason; and because of that fear, he kinda tends to isolate himself a lot from everyone (making him even more introverted than he already is) because he doesn’t want to accidently hurt anyone anymore

Things about this chain of events are completely subject to change depending on what happens in future episodes of SU

Its really angsty and dark yeah, but rest assured that it will be handled with care in the sequel because I really, really like this idea

And yeah that’s about all I got off the top of my head right now! Like I said, It’s an excellent idea, one that I have to give credit to gffan4799 for suggesting as an AU at first, but I enjoy the possibilities of it so much that I can’t resist the thought of incorporating it into the sequel. All this stuff would probably play out during the arc following Wanted, and wouldn’t extend past that arc (well, its after effects would, and maybe a few… extra events related to it that I may have in mind) but again, this is probably the most concrete original stuff I have in mind for the sequel so far, which is really exciting! Now if you need me, I’ll be working on a chapter with only have the angst of all this, but one that still has plenty of angst all its own… 😉

#a lot of reiteration here but at least its all compiled in one place #now to get back to working on the return #woo boy this idea has consumed my world today #jen writes #universe falls #ideas #sequel stuff #stonemason

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sovonight · 7 years

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alright i’ve gone through the rest of blacklight journal 3 (and took some blurry pics which i’ve uploaded here! somewhat incomplete, but i was mainly going for the invisible ink content anyway. the ink has a hard time glowing when there’s black ink behind it-- it looks clear in person, i promise!)

and now my opinions,

reading through the whole book again: GOD I LOVE FORD SO MUCH

tho ford’s handwriting is as much of a pain to read as i remember. it’s only slightly less painful because i’ve read the journal before and know what to expect. tbh the kids’ entries were a breath of fresh air

some of the journal entries have been extended/embellished in non-invisible content, right? fancier paper can’t be the only thing that made the journal thicker, and there’s definitely stuff i don’t remember reading from the regular journal

yo ford brings up social interaction up a lot but like, at least he had college friends, plural

“This guy should spend less time reaping and more time at the gym!” i still can’t get over ford’s transition from scrawny nerd to buff nerd. who woulda thought.

it was nice to have the caesar/atbash/a1z26 ciphers written out! it holds little practical use, but i just think the tiny letters look cute

ford’s silly and i love him

“The thought that Earth is being used for extraterrestrial advertisement depresses me deeply” -- you and me both, bud. finally an opinion of ford’s pertaining to aliens that i can agree with

canon tarot card assignments! and some of them even line up with these

ford could possibly have been coming up with a catchy nickname for weirdmageddon for 30 whole years, and weirdmageddon is what he decided on. after 30 possible years of deliberation.

“I also tried to choose which theoretical physics books would be most fun to spend 50 years rereading, but they’re all so great I couldn’t decide!“ NERD

i sat there for a good 2 seconds until i decided that rather than the usual cipher, it must be a word scramble. then it made sense

“absolutely, unequivocally not” lollll

i want to see what ford was like when he was compiling journal 2. also, what on earth possessed him to leave his most dangerous journal at an elementary school? come on, man!

that lil frowny face

i trust that retina damage statement bc my eyes hurt from constantly flipping the lights on and off while trying to read ford’s passages

all post-finale fanfiction where ford does NOT eventually get bionic eyes is now non-canon-compliant

thank goodness, ford went straight for the newspapers. at least i got 1 headcanon right

god, ford, why would it be whales? it’d be octopuses! octopuses are where it’s at

“Air is great. Really can’t overemphasize how great air is“ god i love him

"Check out the Eurythmics’ latest chart-topper!” 1) oh thank goodness, now i know i could listen to his music, 2) finally someone else who uses s’ rather than s’s, 3) prepare for a world of disappointment my man because literally none of the things you’ve been listing is happening

i assumed that because i’d already decoded everything in the regular journal, i’d have decoded most of what’s in the blacklight version, so i mostly ignored the cryptograms this time around. if i’m wrong, though, that leaves a treat for future me!

a whole initiation ceremony and everything! ford knows what’s up

but honestly though, i decoded that last sentence at the end and tossed the blacklight onto my bed w a sound, smiling-- it’s official-feeling, you know? what a nice little addition. makes the silliness i feel in doing it feel unfounded

gf just brings this feeling of childhood & adventure & possibility that i haven’t rly had since like, elementary and middle school. and not just that, it makes me feel like there’s more out there and that feeling like there’s more isn’t...silly. it brought the magic back, u guys. i might cry.

again, i wish i’d had gravity falls as a kid, but i guess i’m close enough. and at least with this timing i get to drop $150 on a copy of my favorite character’s research journal! i needed a job to make this purchase

also, i saw the bit of discontentment around the journal numbers that went out (you know, whatever # out of 10000 and all that) and though i kind of did hope for lower digits since i ordered practically on the day it went up, the number i did get is pretty nice! sixes and ones, plus it’s reversible. i would’ve found something to like in any number i got, really. trying to exercise my optimism more

and using post-it notes to stick the photos/inserts back on is working out pretty well! thanks for the suggestion. they come off if i’m not careful enough when turning the page, but i’d rather they come off than stick forever haha. i wonder how they got the photos on so neatly in the first place? what a small margin for error

and there it is, back in its cozy packaging, ready to be buried in the forest somewhere!

ive appreciated the good times but it’s too expensive for me to regularly handle-- i’ll damage my regular copy of journal 3, thanks!

#blacklight journal 3 spoilers

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hardbreadhylia · 7 years

Text

Sleepover- Older! Dipper x Older! Reader

This is my first fic ever, so please give some feedback and bear with me if it's not that great!! . Y/n - your name H/c - hair colour F/c - hair colour Y/n/n - your nickname . . . . You live in the picturesque town of Gravity Falls with your aunt, on a gap year for university. Due to it being such a small town, it's not long before you become great friends with basically the only other two kids that are your age (minus Pacifica, Grenda and Candy), aged 17. You've heard countless stories about weirdmageddon and so forth, and are very good friends of the twins as well as Stan and Ford. After a hard day of work at the mystery shack, conning innocent tourists into emptying their wallets, you say goodbye to Mabel and Dipper, suddenly exhausted from the day, happily taking out the tight ponytail your h/c hair has been stuffed into all day. Just as you leave the door of the shack, Mabel calls, "Hey, y/n! Wanna come over for a sleepover tonight?" You reply, "Yeah, sure. Nothing better to do." And wave her off. You're secretly buzzing for tonight, as over the past few months you've grown feelings for her male twin, Dipper. You're far too shy to ask him if he feels the same way though, and unfortunately Mabel's clocked onto your crush on him, so as usual she tries very hard to play match maker. It's evening and you've finished packing for the sleepover tonight- a baggy plaid pajama set with overnight toiletries etc. Just as you turn to leave, a hyper Mabel crashes into your f/c themed bedroom, out of breath. "y/n. I HAVE JUST HAD THE BEST IDEA!" You inwardly groan. What has she come up with this time? "Find the nicest damn underwear you can find, and you're packing that. With maybe a big t shirt or something?" Her smile widens evilly. You, on the other hand, are shocked. "No way. Why would I wear that?? What if Grunkle Stan and Ford see me?? Worse, what if Dipper sees me?" You anxiously run your hand through your h/c hair. "Chill out, y/n. Grunkle Stan and Ford are out on a fishing trip." And, she adds with an evil smirk, "I'm counting on Dipper seeing you wearing that." Which makes your face turn bright red. But hey, what if it works? What if then, finally, Dipper might see you as more than just his sister's friend? Maybe its worth a try. You give in and agree to the stupid shenanigans that Mabel always thinks of, and you're terrified of what tonight might bring. A few hours later, after Mabel left you once again, you head back to the mystery shack with Mabel's plan in your head. Immediately greeted by Dipper, he looks down and smiles behind is fluffy brown fringe, with a light pink dusting his cheeks, which you misinterpret as just being polite. After watching a few scary movies with Mabel clinging to you for dear life (and Dipper hiding upstairs somewhere, probably reading his journal), you decide to say goodnight to him, still not changed into your suggestive pajamas much to Mabel's dismay. As you guessed, he was still reading, and the dim light from his desk lamp accentuated his sharp jawline and chiseled cheekbones in the darkness. You'd seen photos of him when he'd first arrived at the shack all those years ago, and while he still has that eternally cute smile with the dimples and warm chestnut eyes, he's changed so much. I guess that's what happens when a dream demon tries to destroy you and everything in existence, right? "Goodnight, Dip." You smile warmly. He catches your eye and blushes violently, but recovers and shoots you a smirk. "G-goodnight, y/n/n" After that you get changed into your suggestive sleepwear, lacy f/c underwear and bra, and a faded, oversized band t shirt. You'd only feel comfortable looking like this in front of Mabel, anyway, who were you kidding? You'd forgotten to bring a duvet and Ford and Stan had taken all the spare ones on their trip with them, so you slept on the living room floor with Mabel, sharing the covers. After talking about nonsense for what seemed like hours, Mabel drifted into sleep, and so did you. Until a few hours later, checking your phone to be exactly 3:17 AM. Mabel had stolen all the covers, leaving you open in the draughty, cold shack. Little did you know that this was all part of Mabel's plan and that she was wide awake, fake sleeping. You tried feebly to try snatch some cover back but you didn't want to wake her, she looked so cute when she was asleep. So instead you ventured upstairs to check if there was anything you could use for warmth. You checked every room, the bathroom, Stan's room, the spare room, and eventually you came to Dipper and Mabel's. If Dipper saw you like this he wouldn't be able to take it. As you walk in, Dipper is splayed across his bed, sheets twisted, with a peaceful look on his face. You also can't help but notice his shirt has ridden up a bit so you catch a glimpse of a v line, and a toned stomach. He starts to move a little so you tried as quietly as possible to find some cover before it was too late. There was a high wardrobe at the end of the room, at the foot of Dipper's bed, that looked like it had some sort of blanket on the top. Reaching on your very tiptoes, completely exposing your lower half, you grabbed the material. At this exact same time, Dipper had woken (a very light sleeper) to see you, illuminated by the moonlight from the window, in pretty suggestive clothing, in his room. Just as you grabbed the fabric, which wasn't a blanket at all but just a jumper, Dipper cleared his voice, making you squeak. His voice still groggy with sleep, "y/n. What are you doing in here at this time?" If it wasn't for the partial darkness, Dipper would have been shown to look bright red. He had the biggest crush on you since you arrived, you liked all the same things, went on adventures all the time, had the same mindset, and most of all he thought you were the most beautiful thing in the whole of Gravity Falls, including the sirens, mermaids and even unicorns. You sighed, you'd been caught. "Mabel stole all the covers and this house is freezing. I was just looking for some extra blankets." "Use my bed. I'm used to the cold of this house anyways." He started to lift himself out of bed with a groan, in a tight grey tshirt and black tracksuit bottoms. He brushed a calloused hand through his soft chestnut hair, briefly exposing his big dipper birthmark. "No. I couldn't do that. Just go back to sleep Dip, I'll find another way." You were far too flustered to be in this situation. "Nope." He approaches you slowly, arms outstretched, and you're very wary of his actions. What's going on here?? He suddenly lunges forward, scooping you up bridal style, grinning like a madman. You instinctively wrap your arms around his neck, as he carries you to his bed. He gently lays you down and starts to step back before you realize your arms are still clasped around his neck. This is too much. Until something clicks and he starts leaning towards you again, eyes shining in the moonlight. He carefully puts his hands back onto the bed, leaning almost on top of you. As ever, Dipper was still being a dork. "y/n, can I...?" His eyes on your lips. You nod in return. He carefully brushes his lips against yours, hands cautiously feeling around your bare skin legs and slowly working up to your hips. He gets more confident and tries for a fully blown kiss, and you can feel him smirking. You bite his lip and he gasps, deepening the kiss. You and him lose track of time completely, just one person, his hands wrapped around your body, your legs entangled with his, your hands in his soft hair. How does he keep it so fluffy, anyway? With all that adventuring how does he have time? Your mind returning to the action at hand, you kiss for as long as you can before you both come out for air. It wasn't a fiery, passionate kiss. It was a soft, loving, patient one. A kiss that should've happened months ago. "How about we share the bed? It'll be super warm then." Dipper suggests, his breath against your cheek. You shuffle to give him room as your answer, him automatically wrapping his arms around your waist as the big spoon. He plants butterfly kisses on your neck before falling asleep with a grin on his face, and you also fall asleep, hearts beating in sync. You awaken to a snap of some sort, then blearily eyed, see Mabel grinning behind a camera. "That's one for the scrapbook!" She says before giving me a thumbs up and going back downstairs. Dipper shifts beside me, giving me a lazy grin as I reach up to stroke his birthmark. "I could get used to waking up to this view every morning." You then swat him on the arm, laughing, and then get up to go get breakfast, him ogling every bit of you until you leave the room. You hear Mabel shout from downstairs, "MY PLAN WORKED!" followed by a maniacal laugh.

#gravity falls #dipper #dipper pines #mabel #mabel pines #dipperxreader #dipperpinesxreader #sleepover #stan pines #ford pines

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fifiliphile · 7 years

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Fixing Mistakes

[AO3 Version]

Relationships: Mabel Pines & Grunkle Stan | Stanley "Stanford" Pines, Mabel Pines & The Author | Original Stanford Pines, Stanford Pines & Stanley Pines

Characters: Mabel Pines, Grunkle Stan | Stanley "Stanford" Pines, The Author | Original Stanford Pines

Words: 3059

Summary: Everything was fine now. Bill had been defeated, Gravity Falls saved, and the Pines’ summer holidays were coming to an end. The latter wasn’t something to be happy about, though. Especially after everything that had happened and everyone Dipper and Mabel had met. And for Mabel it was even more difficult as she began to remember more and more details about an encounter she had taken part in just before the Weirdmageddon…

(Or, in other words, some Mabel positivity and a chance for her to redeem herself, at least to some extent.)

I know, I know—similar tags. But somehow this story actually resembles the previous one, so sorry not sorry.

Anyway, I present you this humble continuation of Restoring a Family. I hope you'll like it and—once again—I hope everyone is bearably in character.

Let me know what you think and I'll appreciate if you tell me about any possible mistakes. Because, I must admit, I was in a bit of a hurry to finish it for My Dearest Friend's birthday today, as this story is dedicated to her. I wish you all the best!

Enjoy! c:

There would be a content silence in the kitchen if it wasn’t for quiet scorching of pancake batter on a pan. The last stancakes this summer, Mabel thought fondly, sighing slightly.

She knew it meant the end of summer vacation. She still hadn’t come to terms with leaving Gravity Falls and all of her new friends—family, in fact—behind, even though there were loads of friends waiting for her back in California, as well as her parents, of course. In fact, three months ago she hadn’t been willing to go anywhere else, she loved her home.

She couldn’t have expected that that little town, with its bizarre mysteries and strangely ignorant inhabitants, would ever find a place in her heart, and yet it actually had. The truth was she felt even better, more right here, in these woods, than in so familiar sunny California.

And people she had met during the last few weeks had become so close to her the thought of going back home without them was heart-breaking. Even excitement caused by Dipper’s and her birthday couldn’t overcome heartache of leaving Gravity Falls.

After the family hug that could have lasted few seconds, as well as few hours—she wasn’t sure—they had parted at last. Ford had sit beside the table again, reaching for his book, while Stan had decided to make his beloved niece something to eat. Mabel agreed a bit hesitantly, remnants of sleep still lingering in her body. She wasn't even hungry, occupied with thoughts of everything today brought, as well as going back home the next day that made her heart ache a little. Despite that, she couldn't turn down her grunkle's offer, even if it meant she would only nibble her pancakes.

The strange feeling of longing already lingered in her mind, and yet she couldn’t be happier right now. Despite her sheer hope for it, she hadn’t really expected to see her beloved grunkles making up with each other. Even after the events of the last few days it had still come as a bit of a surprise to her. She was so happy for them both, after all they’d been through they undoubtedly deserved it.

But there was something else. Something that bothered her so much, that even though a smile wasn’t leaving her face, she couldn’t sit still, constantly playing with a strand of her hair, still a bit messy from sleep. Even her current happiness couldn’t help her to push away one thought, which was incessantly racing through her mind, unable to let her go.

It’s all your fault.

“Hope we didn't wake you,” Stan chimed in, interrupting Mabel's thoughts. He glanced in her direction, with tender expression on his face.

He smiled encouragingly, seeing the girl's quizzical look. It took her a moment to gather her thoughts and answer.

“No,” she denied, her voice soft. “No, it's not that. I… I just couldn't sleep,” she explained, shrugging. She wanted to add something more, to explain that her inability to go back to sleep at the moment was caused by her excitement, the sun shining too brightly through the window, or Dipper's snoring. She opened her mouth, but no words came out—her thoughts were constantly coming back to the sense of guilt that had been slowly building inside of her chest for a few days now.

Luckily, Stan refrained from further questioning her, most likely blaming her silence on the grogginess. However, it wasn't the case. Well, maybe to some degree it was, although she would lie had she said that that was all. She had come downstairs, because she couldn’t sleep, that was true. It hadn’t been due to the birthday though, or even because of holidays ending.

The nightmares were just unbearable. Closing her eyes, she was instantly hearing that eerie ironic laughter, that teasing comments of his, and the one eye which saw right through her. She could feel with her all senses the chaos everywhere and anywhere, panic, madness, death…

At least it all had started sometime after the Weirdmageddon. She had no idea what she would have done if she had realized the truth earlier. She would’ve not been able to find strength, knowing that she had started that whole hell. She probably couldn’t even look in Dipper’s eyes; in everyone’s eyes.

For last few days she had tried to hide it from everyone. She couldn’t force herself to talk about it, ashamed and afraid of consequences. After all, how could she be irresponsible and stupid enough to give that strange thing to the guy she barely knew? She gritted her teeth—she couldn't stand it any longer, feeling the sudden urge to just scream it all already.

She shot her eyes closed, trying to collect her thoughts and find the best way to start. “Uhm… There… There’s something I need to tell you,” she finally mumbled, doing her best to avoid the worried gazes both men immediately sent in her direction.

“What is it, my dear?” Ford put his book away, concentrating his whole attention on the girl.

“It’s… I mean the Weirdmageddon…” Mabel swallowed a gulp, forming in her throat. Though she knew they wouldn’t be mad at her, she still had some doubts if they really needed to know about it. Eventually, she inhaled slowly, deciding to spill the beans. “It’s all my fault,” she admitted weakly, bowing her head.

“Don’t be silly, pumpkin,” Stan answered incredously, placing a plate of steaming pancakes and a bottle of maple syrup in front of her.

“But it was me who gave Bill-Blendin that weird glowy thingy from Dipper’s backpack!” She raised her head only to reveal the tears, welling in her eyes.

Both brothers were taken aback by her reaction. Stan instantly rushed in her direction, sitting on a chair next to her, while his brother only stared at her disbelievingly.

“The rift,” Ford gasped in horror after a moment, realizing in a flash what she meant. “It didn’t cracked, it…”

“Wait, what?,” Stan interrupted him abruptly and looked in his direction questioningly, frowning.

Ford shifted uncomfortably. “Presumably I should have told you about it…” He bit his lip, looking away. “The truth is… only Dipper knew. The portal was very dangerous for our world itself, and therefore I was so mad at you, Stanley,” he declared pointedly. “While you used it to save me, the instability of the machine created the interdimensional rift, which was de facto even more serious threat to this dimension. Beyond any control, it could be easily used to create a crack in the structure of our dimension big enough for Bill and his minions to come through,” he explained tranquilly, ignoring the uncertain looks both Stan and Mabel gave him. “I thought I had contained it, and it was better for you not to even know about its existence, but… It appears that my decision only made things worse,” he sighed, boring his eyes into the floor.

“So what you’re tryin’ to say is that this pointy jerk wanted to get his hands on it ‘cause it’d let him get here? And that whole unicorn voodoo you did was because of it?” Stan frowned, looking at his twin expectantly.

Ford nodded a bit sheepishly.

“And you thought we didn’t need to know about it ‘cause we wouldn’t understand it, didn’t ya?” Stan crossed his arms, raising eyebrows in question. The little twitch of his lips clearly indicated that he was a bit annoyed. “Like a hero that saves world totally on their own?” Stan's remark wasn’t sharp, or even ironic, he just calmly stated the fact.

Ford locked his gaze on his six-fingered hands. “It was foolish, I’m aware of that,” he sighed. “I’m so sorry that I underestimated you so much, while I should have sought your help instead. Have I done it, we wouldn’t probably have faced that whole situation.” He rubbed his temples, shielding himself from Stan and Mabel, as if he couldn’t look them in the eyes. It took him awhile before he spoke again, this time to Mabel. “So you gave it to him. But tell me, what did he promise to you?” There was no strain of accusation in his voice, only genuine concern.

“I… I sort of had a fight with Dipper about that… apprenticeship thing,” she admitted uncertainly, clearly ashamed of letting her emotions take control over her to such extent that she made so stupid a mistake. “I didn’t wanna summer to end. I wasn’t ready for that, and honestly… I’m still not.” She let her head drop, hiding behind her messy hear. “And… it was a bad day for me. I learned that high school isn’t as great as I thought and… Back then it seemed it’s better not to grow up at all. I felt… betrayed, forced to go back to California all alone, without the only person I can always count on,” she murmured quietly. The memories of that day were quick to fill her mind; the images of thrilling party preparations quickly ruined, with all excitement-turned-to-anxiety, disappointment, and then anger.

She blinked away the tears that slowly started to gather under her eyelids. “So I ran off into the woods,” she continued, doing her best to keep her voice from trembling. “I thought I could escape from the future, staying in Sweater Town forever. And then he went out of the bushes. He told me about a… time bubble, I guess. Like, it would let me stay in Gravity Falls and summer could last forever. I…” she stopped short, taking a sharp breath. She was afraid that her voice would crack any second now. She fidgeted her fingers, trying to collect herself, hoping her grunkles wouldn’t push her, and luckily they didn’t.

A few minutes of strangely uncomfortable silence passed and she finally found strength to speak again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect him to turn out to be Bill,” she breathed and the Stans could hardly hear her. Ford looked at her sympathetically. “I was so stupid to trust him!” The bitter tone of her voice was enough for Stan; he couldn’t stand his beloved niece saying such things about herself.

He reached for her gently, though his grip was firm when he pulled her on his lap, wrapping his arms around her petite body. “Don’t blame yourself, pumpkin,” he soothed her, stroking her hair affectionately. He started to rock her delicately. “You weren’t the only one to be naïve. And yet look—we’re all here, safe and sound.” He let a warm smile to spread on his lips, trying to find her gaze, but Mabel still stubbornly refused to look at him. He sighed, desperate to find a way to convince her she hadn’t really done anything that much wrong—or rather that she wasn't the only one to do so—and to lighten her mood a bit. “Besides, we all messed up, sweetie,” he added eventually, observing his brother’s concerned expression out of the corner of his eye.

Mabel remained silent for a few minutes, staring at her little hands. Stan was more and more worried, however, before he had a chance to inquire, she opened her mouth and a tearful whisper came out. “But what if it’s not a reality?” She wrapped arms around herself, hunching down. “What if we’re still in that bubble… and the-ere’s hell out there? What if I’ll never get out of that sick trap?,” she sobbed powerlessly, completely numb with her fear.

Stan’s hold tightened a bit, though he said nothing. Well, he had no idea what to say; he hadn’t been expecting such a confession. He hadn’t known entirely what she had been through. He guessed he hadn’t even wanted to know, so he hadn’t asked. Now it turned out that he should have.

Ford, seeing his brother’s hesitancy, decided to respond. “You got out. Your brother and your friends helped you,” he stated reassuringly, smiling faintly at his niece.

She nodded slightly, but her eyes were distant, as if her mind was somewhere else. “It could have been just my imagination,” she suggested stiffly, with her voice startlingly calm. “I was able to create everything I wished for in Mabeland, so why wouldn’t I imagine the rescue team as well?,” she wondered aloud.

Ford grimaced a bit. “That is certainly a logical conclusion, but if we were merely products of your imagination, don’t you think we would behave in a way you’d like us to?” He tilted his head slightly, gazing intensely at her face. She had a feeling that he tried to study her expression to see if his words had any impact on her. “Besides, I believe it would be a very happy reality,” he added with a small reassuring smile.

Mabel frowned, her eyes puffy, but no longer wet. “But you just did what I wished for,” she argued weakly, desperately wanting to believe in what her grunkles were saying, however, a small voice in the back of her mind wouldn’t let her.

Ford sighed, resigned. He pondered what he could add to make her feel better and at that moment Stan suddenly cut in. “Doubt that in your imagination I’d have to lose my mind to save you.” His statement was calm, humorous even, and with a little smile playing on his lips he didn't look like he was reffering to almost losing all that made him him.

She looked up at him, surprised. “I…” Her mouth remained slightly opened, even though no more words came out. She froze for a few seconds before she regained control of her voice. “That-that’s true,” she admitted sheepishly. “I’d rather imagine a giant dinasourobear that would came and eat Bill like a nacho,” she guessed, trying to lighten her own mood, but with little result.

Nevertheless, Stan chuckled softly, squeezing slightly her tiny shoulders. “It’s over, sweetie. It’s over and he ain’t here anymore. And he’ll never come back,” he assured Mabel with enough certainty to make a little shy smile appear on her lips.

She nodded once again, this time with a tad bit more energy. She wanted to add something, but a long yawn cut her short. She felt her eyelids growing heavier and heavier—somehow the conversation with her grunkles managed to calm her down enough that she was able to relax a bit.

Mabel snuggled close against her grunkle, her head resting on his chest. Stan seemed not to mind it at all as he started to stroke her back in a soothing manner. Soon her breath evened and she was fast asleep, a plate of stancakes left on the table forgotten.

Stan smiled fondly, glad that his beloved niece seemed to be more at peace than just a few minutes ago. She still needed her sleep and it was too early for her to start a day. And he had nothing against being a pillow for her. “She’s so small…,” he mumbled, gently rubbing her arm.

It took a few seconds for the next thought to strike him. He furrowed his eyebrows, and his smile slowly faded. “We were runnin' back and forth along the beach, foolin' around at her—their age,” he recalled wistfully, memories of their carefree childhood flooding his mind.

Ford looked at him and a sad smile appeared on his lips. “You wish they hadn't gone through all of this…,” he muttered, apparently more to himself than his brother.

Stan slowly noded, his eyes fixed on Mabel. He couldn't get over the fact that he had to say goodbye to her within the next few hours. His heart ached as soon as a thought of a bus pulling over to pick his niece and nephew up appeared in his mind. He was surprised that those two months had passed so quickly—that the arrival of the kids that, he had to admit, he had dreaded even more than just a bit, afraid that he would've ended up with an annoying and troublesome set of twins, turned out to be completely life-changing for him and helped him get back his happiness. And, truth to be told, it was so much more than he could've ever imagined.

A few long minutes later, with Mabel still cradled on his lap, Stan began to look around the kitchen. It hadn't been altered too much after the Weirdmageddon and he caught himself remembering more and more details that the rest of his family somehow managed to restore in that not-too-big room.

Eventually, his eyes landed on his brother, still sitting silently at the table. Ford's frown caught Stan's attention as he seemed to be wholly lost in his own thoughts. “What’s on your mind, Sixer?,” Stan asked quietly, not wanting to disturb his niece's sleep.

At first, Ford remained silent, as if he ignored his brother question. However, without looking at Stan, he finally inquired: “What is that ‘Sweater Town’?”

“Mabel’s hiding in her sweaters when somethin’ distresses her and it’s the way she calls that place,” Stan responded, gazing at Mabel once again with that fond smile of his. “Guess, though it ain’t much helpin’, it’s her way of copin’ with problems,” he explained.

“By hiding from them,” Ford pointed out matter-of-factly.

Stan shrugged. “She's not the only one to run from her mistakes,” he stated casually, though were one to look closely, they could see a shadow in his eyes.

And then the kitchen was silent again, with only their breaths creating some noise. This time, however, the silence didn't last so long.

“I'd better get her to her bed. She still can get a few hours of sleep and I'd rather have her sleepin' in a bit more comfortable conditions,” Stan stated softly, wrapping his arms around Mabel in a way that could help him to pick her up.

But before he had a chance to stand up, he looked at his brother one more time, tilting his head. “We need to talk more often now, y'know?” he offered, smirking slightly. “To avoid something like that happenin' again. No more secrets from now on. Deal?”

“Deal.” Ford couldn't help but smile at his brother.

It was so good to finally have him back, Stan realised. Guess, it was worth fixing the old mistakes, even if it almost cost him his memory.

#gravity falls #gravity falls fanfiction #mabel pines #stanley pines #stan pines #grunkle stan #stanford pines #ford pines #grunkle ford #mabel positivity #light angst #fluff and angst #my fanfiction

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apathetic-revenant · 7 years

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now you see it all (part 1)

uhh...right.

I guess if fanfic is what it takes to hack depressive brain into writing, who am I to argue

anyway this went on a bit so I’m just going to throw the first part out there and...we’ll see how that goes. takes place in the immediate aftermath of Weirdmageddon, so, spoilers, obviously.

(title is from this R.E.M. song. cause I might as well do that, if I’m writing fanfic anyway.)

After everything she had been through over the past week, Wendy Corduroy wouldn't have thought anything could freak her out any more, much less something as innocent as an old house in the woods at twilight. But the way the fading light and the long shadows of the trees fell on the ruin of the Mystery Shack, the way the crumbled building looked as if it had sat abandoned in the forest for years, the eerie silence and stillness unbroken by any apparent signs of life-it all put a cold twinge in her stomach.

She didn't know what she was going to find here.

And God, the Shack was a wreck. Well, not real surprising, she told herself; they did turn it into a giant mecha and fight a-demon? Demigod? Really pissy walking trigonometry? Whatever. But everything else in town seemed to have...snapped back, like nothing had ever happened. They were all still battered and bruised, but the town didn't show a hint of having been turned into a demonic weirdscape and run roughshod over for the better part of a week. She guessed she'd been figuring-or maybe just hoping-that the Shack would be back to normal as well. It was in the right place, at least, and it was considerably more house-shaped than it had been the last time she saw it, but it looked like it'd been hit by a wrecking ball or three.

She honked the horn of the van a few times before hopping out, leaving the headlights on to stare sadly at the ruined porch. There were no lights on in the Shack, but then again, there probably weren't any lights in the Shack at this point, at least not ones that were connected to anything useful. Didn't mean anything. But it would have been very nice if there was some kind of sign that someone was there.

“Hello?” she called, trying to swallow down the cold feeling that was creeping up from her stomach into her throat. “Anyone home?”

For a moment there was no response, and she started to think that-but then a couple of small figures came to the door and her heart turned over. “Wendy?”

“Guys!”

Then she was running, and they were running, and they all met halfway in some kind of uncoordinated assault-embrace, everyone hugging each other in an arrangement that made up for in enthusiasm what it lacked in dignity. And no, she was not crying, she was just happy to have found them both alive, and Mabel's particularly intense hugging was making her eyes water a bit, dang that girl was strong.

Somewhere around then she noticed the awkward look on Dipper's face and hastily disentangled herself, realizing that this might be a bit of a difficult situation considering, well, things. Poor guy already nearly died of embarrassment about fifty times a week. But then he let out a quiet “owwww” and rubbed at his side, and she realized that for once his discomfort had an entirely different source.

“Oops,” she said, grinning rather sheepishly. “Bit sore, huh?”

“Bit,” he admitted. “I forgot about Bill dropping us on the floor...and, uh, well, there were a lot of things, really-”

“Whoa, hey. You guys are okay, right?” Priorities, Wendy. Scene isn't clear yet.“What did he do to you? Are you-”

“We're okay,” they both said, but there was something a little...flat about it. Which didn't sound right at all, coming from these two.

“Everyone's accounted for back in town,” she told them. “Everyone's-well, not uh, not okay, exactly, but there's no casualties. Somehow. But you guys just up and vanished, man! Soos ran off to find you but he didn't come back and we were all super concerned for you-I mean, we don't really know what happened, but we know you all had something to do with it. You're, like, heroes, man!”

She knew that much. She knew because she remembered-something. She had seen something, witnessed something, but trying to think about that meant she had to think about where, exactly, she was when it was happening, and-and she thought it would be best if she never thought about that again.

It didn't matter because she didn't have to think about that to know that the Pines family had saved the day. She knew that because she knew them.

The twins were looking at each other guiltily. “We've...been here,” Dipper said. “We didn't think about-”

“Hey, it's okay, dude! I'm just glad to know you're all okay. Uh. You...are all okay, right...?”

The way they hesitated made the cold feeling suddenly rise up all over again, like she'd just swallowed a stomach full of ice cubes.

“We're all going to be okay,” Mabel said, with a kind of desperate determined optimism that didn't sit well with Wendy, not compared to the girl's usual effortless, boundless cheer.

“Well,” she said slowly, trying to figure all this out, “that's...good-?”

“Kids?”

They all jumped, spooking like scared rabbits at the little noise. Boy, had it been a long week.

Someone else had come to the doorway of the Shack (that was all it was, she realized just now, a doorway, no door in sight) and for a moment when she looked up at him Wendy thought-but no, it wasn't Stan, of course not, the silhouette was all wrong. Stan was a big guy, big barrel chest, big paunch, big voice, big personality, at least when he thought people were looking. Stan took up space. Stan's brother-not like she knew him real well, or at all, really, but she figured he could take up space too. He was tall like Stan and you could kind of tell he had the same big block chest even if the rest of him was all lean and compact, and he could certainly draw attention like Stan, although his technique was less hey folks look at me I'm the most interesting thing in the room and more I could blow something up at any moment.

But the man leaning against the doorframe, squinting into the light from the car, seemed...small. All slumped and scrunched up, all folded in on himself, like he was trying to collapse himself out of existence. And maybe Wendy didn't know him real well but she knew that that couldn't bode well for anyone.

“Hey,” she said, waving like everything was normal and good and cool and the air wasn't full of horrible uncomfortable silence. “I just came by to check up on you guys-well, I came by to find you guys, actually. Everyone's kind of like, uh. Looking for you.” She felt a bit guilty saying that to his face because, truthfully, people were worried about the kids and about Stan but no one had said much of anything about Stan's brother. Except Old Man McGucket, but no one understood him anyway.

Still, even with that in mind she didn't expect him to stare back at her like she was speaking some language he didn't get and say, “...Why?”

This was not the expected reaction. She gaped back at him. “Uh, cause you're, like, the heroes of the hour, man? And we're all super worried about you cause we couldn't find you in town with everyone else? And-” She caught that last one just in time because nope, nope, nope, she was not going to say, not right here and right now, that she and a whole lot of other people who didn't want to say it out loud either had thought that maybe this whole victory had been, what was the word? Pyrrhic. That whatever had taken him out had taken them out too, that they had all gone down together like the monster and the wizard in that movie.

“Oh.” Something seemed to occur to him and he straightened a little bit, pulling himself up against the doorframe. “Everyone else? Is-is everyone-”

“Everyone's fi- everyone's alive, man. We all just sorta...poofed back into town like nothing happened. We did a headcount and everyone's there. Even that weird little gnome guy.”

Ford sagged back down in relief. “I didn't even think about...I should have. I should have-”

“Whoa, dude.” She wasn't sure if she liked Ford but she didn't like the way that tone of voice was headed. “It's okay. I'm just glad I found you. But, um.” She looked around at the three of them and she didn't want to say it but it had to get said eventually.

“Where's Stan?”

And there it was. The looks on their faces, the hesitation, the way they all traded glances like no one wanted to be the one to say it, whatever it was, and the ice cubes were back.

“He's fine,” Mabel said. “He's...he's going to be...”

“He's inside,” Ford said, very quietly. “Resting.”

He didn't say anything else, so she took a deep breath and started walking, because clearly whatever it was she was going to have to see for herself. Not dead. Alright. She could work with that. Whatever it was, she could work with it. After everything they'd gotten through, they could get through this. Surely.

She imagined all the worst things she could as she walked up onto the porch, trying to swallow them all down, trying to prepare herself: injury, disfigurement, blood, things missing, things twisted. Instead she saw Stan sitting comfortably in his old armchair, holding a book. Soos was sitting on the floor next to him, looking like he'd been crying, but aside from that about the most horrible unsettling thing she could see was that Stan's bowtie was undone.

So what the hell?

She let out her breath all at once. “Hey, Mr. Pines!”

He blinked and turned towards her, and-

Something was wrong, she knew, she felt it in the pit of her stomach, even before he smiled uncertainly and said, “Uh...hello. Do I know you?”

“That's...that's not very funny, Mr. Pines,” she said, trying to be angry, frustrated like you always had to be a little bit when you were dealing with Stan, but her voice cracked on the way out.

What was worse was the look on his face, which was not anything like Stan. Not angry, not grousing, not that little spark of mischief in the eye. He just looked like a little kid who'd been told off and didn't know why.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

She whipped her head around and stared at Ford, who was still in the doorway.

“He's lost his memory,” Ford said heavily. He didn't turn around. “He...it should be...he's remembering some things already. So I have hope...”

She kept staring at him. Behind her, she heard Soos saying, “That's Wendy, Mr. Pines. She works for you.”

“Oh, like you do?”

“Yeah! See, here she is in this picture...”

“How?” Wendy said. Probably she should be more tactful right now but screw it, she didn't have it in her, not now. “Did he hit his head, or...”

“No.” She could tell by the very definite way Ford said it that she'd hit on something there. Abruptly he turned his head and looked at her with an intensity so strong and sudden she almost took a step back. The glare of the headlights made all the lines of his face harsh and stark and he looked somewhat more like she thought he was supposed to, but also somehow not.

“Listen,” he said, like he was giving her the most important information in the world. “When you go back to town, tell them-tell everyone...it was Stan. He saved us. He's the hero. You have to tell them that.”

Wendy looked at him, propped up in the doorway and staring at her like all their lives depended on what he had just told her-looked at Stan in his chair, looking at the scrapbook like a kid, looking small, while beside him Soos sat on the floor with his eyes all rimmed red and exhaustion ground into his face-looked at the kids on the porch standing close to each other all bruised and beaten up and still putting monumental effort into being brave-looked at this whole family scattered around the ruins of their home, all desperate and determined and battered and tired and lost-and right then she made an executive decision.

“Tell them yourself,” she said. “I'm taking you guys back to town with me.”

Everyone looked at her. Ford frowned like he couldn't quite process the words. “Er...”

“Dude, you guys can't stay here!” The looks on all their faces made it clear they hadn't really considered this. Somehow. “This place is like, condemned. And you all look one hundred percent done for. I mean, do you have any food here? Running water? Lights?”

The kids and Soos- so, basically, the kids-all spoke up at once in protest. “We're not leaving the Shack!” “It's our home!” “We can't just give up on it now-”

“Whoa, whoa, time out.” She held her hands up and waited for them to stop. “Calm down, guys, I don't mean, like, forever. Just for tonight. Everyone here looks like they need a square meal and like, two days of sleep. So come back with me-I stole Thompson's van, so we should all fit-and we'll get you put up somewhere and then we can see about fixing up the shack when we're all in better shape, okay?”

There was a round of looks exchanged among the family. Finally Ford-who evidently was the current reigning Responsible Adult, if only by default-said, “That's...probably the best idea, under the circumstances.”

Wendy sighed in relief. “Okay. So-”

“Wait-I-have-to-get-some-stuff!” Mabel ran past, almost bowling Wendy over. Dipper followed her, a little less energetically; it looked like they were making for the attic, or whatever was left of it.

“Be careful up there!” Ford called after them. “This house is not very structurally stable at the moment!”

There was no response. Wendy rolled her eyes.

“Okay, Mr. Pines,” Soos said. His usual Soos-ness seemed a bit forced, but he was trying. “How about we get you into the van?”

“I'm an amnesiac, Soos, not an invalid,” Stan griped. “What, are you gonna get me a walker next?”

Wendy almost cried.

“What?” Stan demanded, glaring back at her. “What are you looking at?”

She had to swallow hard a few times before she was able to grin back at him like this was all normal, another day in the Shack trading barbs with her cranky crusty grouchy wonderful boss who maybe wasn't completely gone after all. “Maybe a walker would be a good idea,” she said, catching Soos's eye. “You are, like, a senior citizen, man.”

Stan narrowed his eyes at her. “How much do I pay you?” he said. “Because however much it is, it's too much.”

Wendy started laughing, and somehow she couldn't seem to stop, not the whole time Soos escorted Stan out to the van, Stan clutching the scrapbook like a life preserver and looking at her like she was crazy, which, she supposed, she was a bit right now. She followed them out on the porch and sat down on the edge, still giggling a little.

From the corner of her eye she saw Ford come away from where he had moved out of the doorway and slowly sit down on the opposite side of the steps. He moved-well, the phrase like an old man came to mind, but not much like this particular old man. One of the only times she'd seen Ford out and about in the Shack, he had come running into the gift shop chasing something or other that had gotten free, and by the time she had watched him chase it out into the yard and up a tree before punching it to the ground, jumping on it, and wrestling it into submission, she had enough evidence to conclude that however old the guy might have been, he was in better shape than some lumberjacks she knew.

Right now, though, he was clearly not doing so hot. It was hard to tell in the bad light, but he seemed drawn and pale, and one hand was clamped to his side. Well, he had spent a lot of time this past week as a gold statue. That probably couldn't be good for anyone's well-being.

She wasn't sure, really, what to think about him. She hadn't been, ever since he'd turned up. Not that she'd ever gotten the whole story about him, exactly, but she knew the gist of it; Soos had gone on about it for like two days, which was enough time for even Soos to make some kind of sense. She knew he was Stan's twin brother, who had gotten...lost, or something, because of some crazy experiment, and Stan had spent thirty years trying to replicate that to get him back. He'd even taken his brother's identity, which honestly didn't really faze her much because she'd pretty much always assumed that Stan was operating under at least one false identity, probably more like three or four.

She knew the two of them were estranged because anyone could see that. Not that she really got all the why behind that, but she knew Stan had been kicked out of his home when he was a kid over it. Soos had cried for about half an hour when he told her that part. She knew from Dipper's rather manic ramblings on the subject that the experiment was dangerous, and that made Ford angry, angry that Stan would risk that danger even to bring him back. And she knew that had to be a sore, sore point between them because it had, after all, very nearly doomed the entire world.

Her instinct was to not like Ford very much for that, mostly because she liked Stan. It was sort of hard to not like Stan in some way, once you actually got to know him and not just the bluster and gruffness and sleazy showmanship. He had given her a job, a place to be, at a time when she had very much needed to not be at home; and as much as he groused and threatened to fire her about five times a day and sometimes threw newspapers at her, he really wasn't that bad of a boss. Alright, and not just because of the amount of slacking off she could get past him.

Because...when she'd first started working at the Shack she'd been-well, not careful, exactly, but snide, keeping her retorts under her breath and her eyerolls behind his back, hiding it all away like she was supposed to, until one day when everything was especially bad he'd turned to her and said, “Look, kid, I don't care if you wanna be insolent. Just put some effort into it, fer cryin' out loud.”

She'd stared at him, hating him, hating herself, hating everything in the whole stupid mean pointless world, and right then she'd let fly with a tirade of the foulest, angriest, most insulting language she knew. It lasted five minutes and at the end of it Stan cackled and gave her a soda and some tips on how to really curse someone out.

He cared about people. She knew that much, for all that he tried to hide it. She knew he cared about her because of the way he had said, once, very quietly, almost shyly, “I know what it's like. To miss someone,” and then suddenly gave her a bone-crunching hug which he would forevermore deny had ever happened. She knew he cared about Soos because every time his birthday came around and he slunk into work all quiet and morose Stan would fire off a constant stream of the absolute worst jokes of all time until the handyman couldn't help but crack a smile. She knew he cared about the kids because-well, anyone could see that.

And she knew he had to care about his brother, to have spent so long working to bring him back. Thirty years-that was her whole life twice over. She could barely get her head around that. Alright, so maybe it was dangerous, but c'mon, this was Gravity Falls; if Stan wasn't threatening to destroy the universe, something else would pick up the slack by next week.

So she'd not been too sure about this brother, about the way he treated Stan, the way any mention of him seemed to make Stan clam up and hunch in on himself and look old and tired and sad. Not that she said anything about it-the kids loved their new grunkle, especially Dipper who was in total awe of the mysterious Author. It wasn't her place to ruin that, and it wasn't like anyone had asked her anyway.

But whatever she thought about him, right now the guy looked so utterly, thoroughly miserable that it was impossible not to feel bad for him.

“Hey,” she said, and then faltered, realizing that she wasn't really sure what to call him. She knew his name, of course-except even that was weird, because it was Stan's name, which was not in fact Stan's name after all-but just calling him Ford felt a little off, a name that wasn't really hers to use because that was the sort of name that always had “my brother” or “my uncle” lingering somewhere in front of it. And she wasn't about to call him Mr. Pines because Mr. Pines was in the van arguing with Soos and she wasn't going to give that name to anyone else.

Mr. Stan's Jerk Brother? Dr. Pines? That was what Soos called him and it was probably her best bet, although imitating Soos was always a risky endeavor. He didn't look like any kind of doctor but he was definitely a Smart Guy so he had probably picked up the right to use the title somewhere or other.

Okay. Dr. Pines.

And maybe, if she had not been exhausted and punchdrunk on stress and adrenaline and caught somewhere between giddy relief and devastation, she would have actually said that like a sensible person, instead of just up and saying, “Hey. Count Rugen.”

dammit dammit dammit NO that was NOT it that was NOT the right thing to say

She waited for him to be angry but he just stared at her in total, blank confusion. “I'm sorry?”

Wendy did some quick math in her head. “Right. I guess you missed that movie.”

Ford sighed and folded up a little bit more. “I missed a lot of things.”

Oh god, oh god, this was just getting worse and worse. “Forget I said that!” she blurted out, a little too loudly. Ford was looking more and more lost by the moment. “What I meant was...I mean...I was just...look, man, are you okay? Ugh, no, no, stupid question, no one's okay right now but...are you...you look like you're going to pass out on me or something, dude, and I don't know if I can handle that right now.”

Ford shifted a little. He still had that hand clamped to one side, like he was trying to hold something in place. “I'm fine.”

She stared at him for a moment. “Okay, so...you're a terrible liar. Got it.”

Ford opened his mouth and then closed it again, looking completely nonplussed. Wendy snorted. “Dude, I've had Stan for a boss for like, three years now. I've seen some good lying, and that? That was not it.”

He glared back at her for a moment like he was seriously going to try to keep up the pretense, but then he shrugged and most of the determination evaporated off his face. “It's...nothing that serious. I've had much worse.”

Oh, god. He was like her dad.

“And that's relevant how, exactly?” she snapped.

Ford was back to giving her the confused-owl look. She sighed. “Look, I don't know if you realize this, but like, if you get hurt once, that doesn't have to, like, set the bar for the entire rest of your life. You know, people can survive all kinds of crazy stuff and then die because they tripped and fell down the stairs or something.”

“Uh,” Ford said. “That...maybe be true, but...”

“So you're gonna see a doctor when we get to town, right,” she prompted.

Ford coughed awkwardly. The brief flash of pain this sent across his face didn't help his case any. “It's nothing anyone needs to worry about. I can take care of it.”

Then, quietly, like someone not really intended to actually say something out loud, he began to say, “I'm not the one-”

He stopped.

Wendy followed his gaze to the van.

She didn't know just what had happened, but she could guess, maybe, a little part of it.

Okay, well, fine. She could play dirty.

“Sure,” she said. “I mean, I'm sure the kids would be totally fine if their grunkle collapses in front of them or whatever. Wouldn't freak them out at all.”

Ford jerked his head around, the look on his face equal parts anger and horrified realization. She met his gaze without flinching. Cool as a bag of ice.

There were footsteps on the stairs behind them. Ford glanced back into the house and sighed. “Fine.”

Wendy grinned.

The kids came tumbling out of the doorway, each wearing an over-stuffed backpack. Dipper was carrying what looked like a camera case and some notebooks, while Mabel was struggling to contain a giant stuffed animal of indeterminate species, an extra sweater, and another scrapbook. Ford blinked at them. “Kids, is all that really necessary-”

“Uh-huh!” Mabel insisted. “Look, I brought my backup scrapbook, and Dipper's got his journals and the camera with all the videos we took! So we can keep showing Grunkle Stan stuff!”

“Oh.” Ford looked taken aback, but after a moment he offered up a wavering smile. “I...retract my statement, then. That...that was good thinking.”

“And Mr. Hufflepotamus is definitely necessary,” Mabel went on, trying to gesture with the stuffed animal and almost dropping it.

“Oh, absolutely,” Ford said, with utmost seriousness.

“And I brought you a replacement sweater.” The younger Pines juggled her burdens for a moment before managing to extricate the sweater and holding it out. “Since yours is all torn up and stuff. I was going to give it to you as a good-bye present, but I thought...” She stopped for a moment, some of the insistent cheer sliding off her face. “I thought...tonight was a good night for new sweaters.”

Ford took the sweater carefully, almost reverently. It was red, like his battered turtleneck, and there seemed to be a design picked out on the front, though Wendy couldn't make it out. “You...you made this for me?”

“Yep!” Mabel beamed at him. “I like making sweaters.”

Dipper groaned loudly. “That's an understatement.”

“I...thank you. It's wonderful.” Ford folded it neatly and held it against his chest. “I'll treasure it.”

Mabel squinted at him. “Aren't you going to put it on?”

Ford coughed again. “Erm-”

Mabel's face crumpled. Ford looked suitably horrified. “I-I mean, of course I'll put it on, just-just not right now this minute, okay? I...I'm all dirty and sweaty right now, and I wouldn't want to mess up my new gift.”

Mabel didn't look like she was entirely convinced-probably, Wendy thought, because she also had spent enough time with Stan to know a terrible lie when she heard it-but she just shrugged and said, “Okay.”

“Can we go already?” Dipper broke in. “My arms are getting super tired.”

“Right. Yes. Of course.” Ford levered himself up slowly, stiffly. He glanced at Wendy a little suspiciously as they all made for the van. “Do you...actually have a driver's license?”

“Nope. But I out-drove a bunch of escaped convicts through a maze of weirdness bubbles, so I figure I can make it back into town.”

“...Maybe I should drive,” Ford said.

Wendy cocked an eyebrow at him. “Oh yeah? Do you have a driver's license?”

“Um...well...technically...”

There was some stifled giggling from behind them, but when Ford and Wendy turned around the twins were looking completely serious. The giggling started up again as soon as they looked away.

“Look, that's not the point,” Ford said. “The point is...”

“The point is you're not driving anywhere,” Wendy said, throwing a significant look at the hand Ford still had around his side. “So-” “Guys,” Dipper said, still sounding as though he were barely holding back laughter. “How about Soos drives?”

On cue, Soos poked his head out of the driver's side window. “Way ahead of you, dawg.”

The twins scrambled into the very back of the dingy old van, while Wendy and Ford took the middle seat. Stan had already been installed in the front. “You guys took long enough,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, yeah,” Wendy said, trying not to grin too hard at Stan sounding like his old self.

#gravity falls #now you see it all #gravity falls fanfic #fanfic #scribulations #excessive ellipses #gravity falls spoilers #????

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