sleep

Sometimes I wonder if Ford had a hard time with Bill gone after Weirdmageddon. Like, on the one hand he can finally sleep peacefully and doesn’t have to worry about the world ending.

But I also wonder if he feels like he lost his purpose. Not all the time; when he’s with the kids he sees how much he means to them, and he loves teaching them things and getting to know them and exploring and learning together (whether the woods of Gravity Falls or just life stuff).

But when he’s alone, does he ever wonder what good he’s really done for the world? What was worth saving from Bill to begin with? Does he ever have brief flashes of almost wishing to go back, then immediately shooting them down because “What’s wrong with you, why would you ever think such a thing?”

I guess I’m not sure if Ford realizes he doesn’t need a mission to be worth something yet. He’s starting to, but I imagine he could fall back into trying to find a logical explanation for why they should love him or a mathematical reckoning of his relationships rather than accepting them as they are–which would lead to a weird almost-nostalgia for Bill because at least then things were black and white. There was something big he could DO to deserve his existence. He created a problem, and he was paying for it, until someone else paid for it and threw off the system.

Ford wouldn’t allow those thoughts to live long, but…

Okay but Fiddauthor is so cool actually. It’s a scrungly old man and a scrimblo bimblo old man who have both enacted unspeakable horrors on the world. But despite everything they heal and forgive and love each other. And they were lab partners and roommates. It’s even aspec.

So. I made a 2 hour video applying queer theory to Gravity Falls.

YALL KNOW WHAT DAY IT IS‼️

It’s fiddleford friday AND the day he first went to gravity falls!!!!

AND THE DAY HE GOT HIS MEMORIES BACK!!!! HAPPY SUPER ULTIMATE FIDDLEFORD FRIDAY WOW!!!!!!

Does anyone happen to have that tweet (I believe) where Alex mentioned a little bit about Ford and Fiddleford's friendship in college, something about how everything would have sucked/been harder to get through without each other or something along those lines, on hand by chance?

I could have sworn I saved something with it, but it's long buried elsewhere now and I haven't been able to find it.

there’s this I found:

Ford + reclaiming the trust that Bill abused

Ford’s story matters so much at times like these, where I’m reminded how heroic it is to relearn trust after betrayal. Sharing your affection, passions, and innermost thoughts and feelings is such a sacred, vulnerable, dangerous thing because violation of them is social death. It’s soul-crushingly exhausting to absorb dehumanization from the world time and again, then a thousandfold from someone you bonded to when they pretended to protect you from it. “I was desperate.” It’s decaying in silence under the unspeakable absurdity of what they did to you. It’s seeing their pattern, voyeuristic gaze, and insipid, insidious words everywhere - in everyone. It’s suffocating in a cold sweat at the shock-collar realization that opening up to them, chaining your identity to them, was opening a rift in you. “From now until the end of time…”

…or until you get out, and find room to breathe and grow - opening up like a pinecone to the ones whose warmth doesn’t burn. Who will want you without possessing you. Ford reminds us the strength to take ourselves back is real, “even when it seems impossible.”

But you have to reach out from that void, belonging will never come to you. It’s out there somewhere in the woods, waiting.

I have this habit that when things are going wrong, I lay on the floor. I just lay down on the floor.

I’ve done it at work and those floors are gross, I can only imagine how gross Stanford’s labs are.

do i want to spend time complaining about journal 3? is it worth kicking the hornet's nest of a dead fandom in the year of our lord 2022

is it worth repeating what people have been saying for years? will it matter, in the end, for one random blog that got taken over by a fandom in 2015-2016 to ask a renowned, respected, hardworking and clever creator what he was thinking? he was thinking about an interesting story with a lesson in it and not thinking about all the ins and outs of how it will affect certain portions of the audience. he was not thinking from the perspective of people who understand the perspective he was writing. it's bizarre and uncanny to watch the third dimension bleed out.

but it is a story for children, ultimately, although i had hoped it could be more. i hope any child reading this book who feels alone and too strange to be loved--who has been wounded over and over by people who say they love you--can take the message to heart that you can be loved as you are, that you can grieve for what was done to you and take responsibility for mistakes you may have made without carving the letters into your skin, without rejecting the version of yourself who made those mistakes, without subjecting yourself to more internal torture and abnegation and believe that this time, it's right because it is convenient for others. That forgiveness is not owed you, but your needs and your healing are important. That you do not need to be punished for having them, or having them fulfilled. That yes, it is a beautiful thing to be present and surrounded by those who love you and feel that love in rerurn--and yes, that you are brave for overcoming the obstacles to reaching that state, obstacles that despite it all are not evidence that you arewere some broken thing.

"I am strange" is a statement born of shame.

"I am alone" is a statement born of shame.

"I can't afford to be anything less than great" is a statement born of shame.

"I can't afford to be known" is a statement born of shame.

You can't heal shame with more shame.

I genuinely, truly hope that the assumption with which the book was written is correct: that the primary audience will not identify with ford, but rather with dipper. that the kids who read it will be too young for it to make sense, and will leave it thinking about love and that being different does not always have to mean being alone, that humans are meant to live in beautiful constellations as varied as the stars in the sky and that those constellations do include you--and that they will not carry the belief that failing to not be alone is on them alone, and god forbid--that the ability to relate with and connect to others (especially through abnegation) is the only trait that makes you worthy of love and support, and the rest of you is worthless.

do i want to spend time complaining about journal 3? is it worth kicking the hornet's nest of a dead fandom in the year of our lord 2022

is it worth repeating what people have been saying for years? will it matter, in the end, for one random blog that got taken over by a fandom in 2015-2016 to ask a renowned, respected, hardworking and clever creator what he was thinking? he was thinking about an interesting story with a lesson in it and not thinking about all the ins and outs of how it will affect certain portions of the audience. he was not thinking from the perspective of people who understand the perspective he was writing. it's bizarre and uncanny to watch the third dimension bleed out.

but it is a story for children, ultimately, although i had hoped it could be more. i hope any child reading this book who feels alone and too strange to be loved--who has been wounded over and over by people who say they love you--can take the message to heart that you can be loved as you are, that you can grieve for what was done to you and take responsibility for mistakes you may have made without carving the letters into your skin, without rejecting the version of yourself who made those mistakes, without subjecting yourself to more internal torture and abnegation and believe that this time, it's right because it is convenient for others. That forgiveness is not owed you, but your needs and your healing are important. That you do not need to be punished for having them, or having them fulfilled. That yes, it is a beautiful thing to be present and surrounded by those who love you and feel that love in rerurn--and yes, that you are brave for overcoming the obstacles to reaching that state, obstacles that despite it all are not evidence that you arewere some broken thing.

"I am strange" is a statement born of shame.

"I am alone" is a statement born of shame.

"I can't afford to be anything less than great" is a statement born of shame.

"I can't afford to be known" is a statement born of shame.

You can't heal shame with more shame.

do i want to spend time complaining about journal 3? is it worth kicking the hornet's nest of a dead fandom in the year of our lord 2022

is it worth repeating what people have been saying for years? will it matter, in the end, for one random blog that got taken over by a fandom in 2015-2016 to ask a renowned, respected, hardworking and clever creator what he was thinking? he was thinking about an interesting story with a lesson in it and not thinking about all the ins and outs of how it will affect certain portions of the audience. he was not thinking from the perspective of people who understand the perspective he was writing. it's bizarre and uncanny to watch the third dimension bleed out.

but it is a story for children, ultimately, although i had hoped it could be more. i hope any child reading this book who feels alone and too strange to be loved--who has been wounded over and over by people who say they love you--can take the message to heart that you can be loved as you are, that you can grieve for what was done to you and take responsibility for mistakes you may have made without carving the letters into your skin, without rejecting the version of yourself who made those mistakes, without subjecting yourself to more internal torture and abnegation and believe that this time, it's right because it is convenient for others. That forgiveness is not owed you, but your needs and your healing are important. That you do not need to be punished for having them, or having them fulfilled. That yes, it is a beautiful thing to be present and surrounded by those who love you and feel that love in return--and yes, that you are brave for overcoming the obstacles to reaching that state, obstacles that despite it all are not evidence that you arewere some broken thing.

do i want to spend time complaining about journal 3? is it worth kicking the hornet's nest of a dead fandom in the year of our lord 2022

is it worth repeating what people have been saying for years? will it matter, in the end, for one random blog that got taken over by a fandom in 2015-2016 to ask a renowned, respected, hardworking and clever creator what he was thinking? he was thinking about an interesting story with a lesson in it and not thinking about all the ins and outs of how it will affect certain portions of the audience. he was not thinking from the perspective of people who understand the perspective he was writing. it's bizarre and uncanny to watch the third dimension bleed out.

Hear me out: they make up early

I guess my biggest problem with a lot of gravity falls meta about Ford and Stan is that the general attitude seems to be that Stan’s misfortune was out of his control, and Ford’s was his own doing, when its definetly more like…an even mix across the board

One request in and I’ve already created some sort of disassociated mess. Bill doesn’t even show up in this, sorry. (Requests are still open!)

hey @flo-nelja

The difference between Stan and Ford is that Stan never openly connected those dots, never said anything close to “my dad hurt me and it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right,” all that was left to the background. Filbrick wasn’t the big looming bad guy the main characters had to defeat to get a happy ending. Filbrick was mentioned in maybe three episodes, tops.

With Stan, you never see the effects of being abused like that beyond what’s palatable to people who haven’t been abused. There’s no tell-all book tie-in where Stan writes down all the little ways Filbrick hurt him.

It’s still a big part of his character, but it’s given to us in bite-sized chunks.

Ford’s is less so.

Ford outright says “this is what happened, Bill hurt me and I still blame myself thirty years later,” we see Ford’s visceral reaction to seeing Bill again, decades after the worst has passed, we see him terrified of Bill’s reappearance and we have a 200-odd page diary filled with every gruesome detail, every “enjoy the mystery bruises” and every isolation tactic and every excuse made for all the red flags and we have those glimpses into Ford’s childhood suicidal ideation.

And we see Ford exhibit the same stand-offishness, the same stubborn attitude the same roundabout family bonding that Stan does, but we have so much more context behind Ford’s actions and for *********some reason********* everyone decided that those same qualities they defended and even praised Stan for were now considered damning evidence that Ford was a Bad Person.

Not because he still blamed himself, no, that part was ignored, but because he was angry. Ford was angry at Bill for what he did, despite not being ready to stop blaming himself. Ford put up those walls and closed himself off and while that never caused any more trouble than the walls Stan had made did, for some reason every time you bring up the double standard, you’ll still get people saying that yeah, it really was Ford’s fault.

The difference between Stan and Ford is that Stan’s trauma was presented in a way that people could ignore at their leisure, and take it out when they needed a good dose of feels.

Ford probably thinks he looks awesome in the sweater Mabel made for him

The journal is honestly a very good reminder of how important it is to keep a balance in trust and independence.

It’s… very easy to fall into that trap of ‘Trust no one’ because it’s safe.

People can’t effectively harm you if you don’t let them have anything. And as long as you’re independent and fully self-sustainable, then you don’t need anybody.

It looks like this safe bubble.

It looks like a guarantee to keep yourself safe, but the journal illustrates very well how that is inherently flawed in what seems to be a rather realistic way.

Ford doesn’t die or suffer some ham handed condescending lesson like the one trope where the distrustful person is on a cliff side, but refuses to take the hero’s hand and thus falls to their death.

It’s the much more subtle consequences that are more emotionally based.

Technically speaking, Ford could have lived his entire life like he did while he was alone. He would have been…. alright.

However, when he’s with loved ones again you see just how much better it is. Getting to connect with other people and have people in his life with him.

You could spend your life always on guard and distrustful… but it’s genuinely better to allow the chance for yourself to sincerely trust someone with appropriate time and everything, even if all you can see is a massive pile up of potential risks for something, you tell yourself, that you don’t strictly need to have.

“Trust no one” is another way of saying that no one cares about you and the fact that Stanford Pines was able to overcome this mentality and reconnect with his family and friends is so fucking Pure

Ford was never a strong one and he didn’t like fighting, but when Stan was hurt, he protected him with all his strength.