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somer-joure · 7 years

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Expressions during the post-science fair argument in AToTS

I was rewatching a bit of AToTS and was paying a little bit more attention to the way Ford is animated during one part of the argument he and Stan have right after the science fair. Cue rambling analysis.

I apologize in advance for the quality of the screenshots. I can’t take a screen shot in itunes video on iOS and the XD app doesn’t have this episode, so I had to get these off of a fuzzy dub on youtube. Anyhow:

This is about when Ford says, “This was no accident Stanley, you did this!” It’s pretty representative of the way Ford starts out in this scene; he’s defensive, angry, accusatory, and basically what you would expect Ford to be here. He’s upset he’s lost a chance at his dream school and he’s somewhat unfairly taking it out on Stan. He cuts Stan off before Stan can explain or defend himself and, yes, he’s pretty quick to accuse Stan in the first place but, as the animation moves on to the next line—“You did this because you couldn’t handle me going to college on my own!”—

—his demeanor completely changes.

If things had stopped then, there’s a chance that Stan and Ford could have worked things out. I doubt they would have ended up on the Stan o’ War very quickly if ever, and there’s a chance they wouldn’t have been particularly close, but they probably would have at least kept in touch. That expression up there isn’t the way way you look at someone you want out of your life—that’ll come later. Ford looks broken. There’s as much hurt in there as anger, and probably more, “HOW could you do this to me? You’re my brother. I trusted you,” than, “You did this.” This is as openly vulnerable as we’re going to see Ford for a while.

(As an aside: Ford’s assessment of Stan here is unfair because he doesn’t give Stan a chance to defend himself and because Stan never meant to break his science project. It was an accident. Ford’s assessment is also accurate because even though breaking the science project was an accident, covering it up and then failing to tell Ford when he might have had time to fix it wasn’t. That was deliberate. Stan didn’t deserve all the heartache Ford shoved on him afterwards, he certainly didn’t deserve to be disowned and left on the street, and I’d bet cash money that Stan would have never sabotaged Ford on purpose and that hiding something already broken was nothing more than the stupid mistake of someone young and desperate. Stan didn’t want Ford to leave. He was too scared to do anything else, he felt trapped, and the broken project was too convenient. It took care of his problem.)

And Stan picks up on it. He ends up saying the wrong thing, but that’s largely because he doesn’t realize how big of a deal West Coast Tech was to Ford, and I think he’s genuinely trying to cheer Ford up. He says that breaking Ford’s project was a mistake and then tries to point out the bright side of the situation.

The interesting thing about Stan in this part of the scene is that he never looks away from Ford the whole time he’s talking. I remember seeing some very good analyses on here pointing out how one of Stan’s lying tells is glancing off to the side. (And if anyone knows where I can find this, please let me know, so I can link to it and give the person who wrote it credit.) He does that in an earlier part of the scene; he can’t even look Ford in the face when he’s first trying to defend himself. But once he starts explaining that it was a mistake and bringing up treasure hunting, he never looks away. He’s being completely honest here. And then he does this:

I always interpreted it as, “Treasure hunting, bro!” and nothing else, but no:

Stan’s opening his arms for a hug.

He wants to hug it out. (These guys were always hug monsters. They just both went a long time without anyone to hug.)

So when Ford finally breaks down and hugs Stan in the “You’re our hero, Stanley,” scene in TBTF, it’s a call back to this. It’s something Stan’s been waiting on for at least forty and probably closer to fifty years and he doesn’t even know it.

And that makes what happens next even worse. In pointing out what he sees as a silver lining Stan accidentally confirms Ford’s worst fears. What Stan says is more-or-less innocent, genuinely well-meaning, and also the worst possible thing he could say. Stan’s basically saying, “Yeah, okay, I messed up a little but we can fix this. We can still do what we always wanted to do, and we can do it together. Isn’t that great!” What Ford hears, however, is, “Yeah I totally sabotaged you on purpose because I want treasure and need you to get it, who cares about what you want, you nerd.” This, again, is Ford’s expression before Stan brings up treasure hunting:

This is Ford’s expression after:

(Pictured: Trust no one: Genesis)

This wasn’t a hard screenshot to get. There’s a good long beat in the animation where Ford stays frozen like this and processes what he just heard. The closest he comes to looking this shocked again is in TLM flashback as he’s confronting Bill about the portal:

(Pictured: Trust No One 2: Apocalyptic Boogaloo)

In AToTS, Ford’s thunderstruck. He looks like every one of his worst fears have come true and, from his perspective, they probably have. Yet Stan’s non-denial hasn’t told him anything new. He already accused Stan of breaking the project, and Stan never said it wasn’t him. He knew from the discussion on the swings from earlier in the episode that Stan didn’t want him to go to college and wanted to go treasure hunting with him instead. He doesn’t know that Stan accidentally broke the project but that’s because Stan didn’t tell him, and his assessment of why Stan made this particular mistake—because he couldn’t handle Ford going away without him—is actually pretty accurate, but he said that before Stan ever brought up treasure hunting. Ford, from his own biased perspective, shouldn’t even be surprised by what Stan says, but he’s floored. The reason he’s floored, I suspect, is that he didn’t want to be right.

He’s not right, of course, but he doesn’t know that. Stan’s and Ford’s relationship had probably been on the rocks for a while; on Ford’s side, Ford wanted to be more than just part of a matched set and he was probably already a little paranoid. Growing up as a perfectionist with an impossible-to-impress jerk of a father and a pathological liar for a mother probably did nothing to help his trust issues. He let Stan cheat off of him, sure, he might have suspected Stan of seeing him as a free ride and nothing else, even if he doesn’t want to. think it, and this scene didn’t help. He probably wants to trust Stan because, well, because Stan’s his brother and his only friend and he loves him. Losing him would be too big. He knows that even though Stan can cheat and lie to other people sometimes, Stan would never betray him, except that from his perspective Stan just did, and he admitted it, and that’s where Ford snaps.

It was never just about that dream school.

(Just to be clear, I’m not saying Ford makes the right decision here. He doesn’t. The right thing would have been for Ford to get the whole story and then forgive Stan, regardless of what Filbrick decided to do in the next scene. But then we wouldn’t have gotten the incredible story that followed and, frankly, all of the characters’ (many) wrong decisions make sense in context, and I’m constantly impressed by how the character animation underscores where their heads were when they were making them.)

#gravity falls #gravity falls analysis #AToTS #Stanley Pines #Stanford Pines #there's so much these characters can't say in this scene #partly because of time and partly because these of their emotionally constipated personalities #but the character animation is so good #they don't always need to say it

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