#Mabel was obviously an exception

[pigeontheoneandonly]

I absolutely, 100% cannot keep this amazing perfect little girl, but I have no idea how I'm going to give her up either :(

[shadowofthelamp]

So, I'm introducing little Beatrice (my Billford kid) with a Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained! She came through the portal with Ford, and this was my first sketch but what she's wearing probably looks a bit more like Ford's goggles with the 'reveal' in NWHS.

She was co-created by Emmie/Fanart Anon!

Dipper holding up a sign: Welcome back to Dipper’s Guide to the Unexplained! Anomaly number 64: Aunt Beatrice. She arrived with Great-Uncle Ford, and she says that she’s twelve, but she keeps talking about things that Great-Uncle Ford said happened years before that as if she was there, and she refuses to take her goggles off that cover the upper half of her face, even when she sleeps. She also doesn��t seem to like leaving his side for long. A quirk from being raised dimension-hopping, or something stranger?

Mabel: Maybe she’s just heard lots of stories! I know I forgot that I didn’t go through Dream Boy High one day after a week’s worth of crazy dreams about it!

Dipper: But what about the goggles? Besides, I heard her talking about science-y equations at the table with Great-Uncle Ford after dinner last night, so she's smart- I don’t think she’d just forget she didn’t do something.

Mabel: Or maybe she’s just lying! She said she’s never really been around other kids before, right? Maybe she just wants us to like her. And it’s working! On me at least, you’re just-

Dipper: Mabel, I’m trying to be scientific about this, that’s all!

Mabel: Come on, Dipper, I think she’s just a little awkward. It has to be a little weird to have somebody Grandpa Shermie’s age as your dad.

Dipper, rubbing his arm: I wouldn’t mind having Great-Uncle Ford as a dad.

Mabel: That’s because you’re both nerds.

Dipper: Not the point! Anyway, right now, my theory is that she was part of some sort of hivemind, and the goggles hide bug eyes, the last piece left from her original form. She also really seems to like honey. Maybe Great-Uncle Ford helped to rescue her, and that’s why she still looks like him, because she modeled her form after him and now she sees him as her new queen! I’m going to show her the beekeepers near the petting zoo on the side of town and see how she reacts.

___

Dipper: And here we are!

*Camera cuts to Beatrice, wearing a yellow sweater with black stripes that Mabel made her*

Bea: Oh, insects! They’re so much smaller than the ones I’ve seen before. And they make Earth-honey?

Dipper: Don’t you want to take your goggles off to see the better?

Bea: Nah, I can see them just fine.

Dipper, glancing over at the camera: Anyway, what do you mean, you’ve seen them before?

Bea, stepping closer to the hives: Oh, Papa and I ran into a hive like these in a different dimension, but they were ten times the size and the hair on them was purple, since that helped them to blend in the with local flora. They were friendly if you brought gifts, though, and even let you trade for some of their honey if the gifts were sweet enough. One of them taught me to speak their language.

*Beatrice clears her throat before a buzzing sound emanates from it. Several bees land on her outstretched hand, curious.*

Bea: Look, they like me! Hey, Dipper, do you have any enemies? I bet I could set them loose as a favor for helping me yesterday!

Dipper, considering: Well, there is this one girl-

Bea: Just say the word! C’mon, little guys, you’d strip somebody down to the bone for me, wouldn’t you?

Dipper: I don’t think bees can do that.

Bea: Oh. Right. Maybe just a lot of stings? *She makes more buzzing noises, but as she finishes the last one, the bees begin to swarm* What did I say? What did I say?

Dipper, dropping the camera’s view to the ground as bees fill the screen: Whatever it was, run!

___

Dipper, as Mabel rubs lotion on his swollen cheek: This concludes today’s episode of Dipper’s Guide to the Unexplained. We still haven’t figured out exactly what’s up with our new aunt, but I think we can say with some certainty that she’s just as awkward with the local bees as she can be with the rest of us.

Mabel: But she looked really cool smacking them with that glowing whip thingie she pulled out of her pocket!

Dipper: ...Yeah, she did. This does require more investigating, but I'll get the board out once we're done with the-

Bea, popping her head into the bedroom door: Hey, what are you guys doing in here? Do you need more lotion?

Dipper: Nothing!

*Video ends*

[fingertipsmp3]

I really do think I need to work on the fact that whenever I don’t get enough sleep and/or am prematurely awoken by something I act like a fucking banshee

[ckret2]

Chapter 89 of human Bill Cipher and his uneasy ceasefire with the Mystery Shack: Bill and Ford go to the museum to plant false clues that will fool Agent Powers into thinking Never mind all that, we're getting gay y'all

A turning point has been reached and none of them know it yet.

Also: Ford learns more about the Blind Eye than he's comfortable with, and Bill and Mabel have as much of a heart-to-heart as they can manage at like four in the morning.

####

The plan was simple. Break into the museum; watch a couple of videos, so that Ford could get a sense for how they sounded; record one of their own; strategically place it amongst the rest, along with the map that Mabel had made.

There was only one complication: the videos they'd be watching were the memories stolen by the Society of the Blind Eye.

Ford had been dying to know about them for thirty years. Back in the 80s, for a few days, the mysterious red-robed stalkers had probably done more to terrify Ford out of his sleep-deprived, paranoid mind than even Bill had. He'd realized they were the work of Fiddleford and his memory gun, but all the way up until last summer he'd never been sure whether they were Fiddleford's way of trying to forget Bill, or if Bill had infiltrated his mind and influenced him to ravage the town's minds.

Now? Ford still didn't know much more about them—just their founder, and the fact that they'd wielded Fiddleford's memory gun. He doubted even Fiddleford recalled what had inspired him to escalate from erasing his own trauma to forming a cult that literally brainwashed people; but, Ford had never asked.

There were things Ford and Fiddleford had tacitly agreed never to bring up. They didn't talk about the things they'd said to each other after the portal test. They didn't talk about the "demon" Ford had let haunt the halls the entire time Fiddleford had stayed in his house—at least, they didn't talk about the demon until he came back a few weeks ago. They didn't talk about their respective rapid mental breakdowns. They certainly didn't talk about Fiddleford's cult.

Under any other circumstances, Ford would have suspected Bill of deliberately choosing a plan that forced Ford to see Fiddleford's worst side again—except that Bill was so obviously miffed that Ford had been the only one qualified for this role. All the same, it felt like a betrayal to sneak behind Fiddleford's back and dig through his thirty-year-old dirty laundry. To go through all the things Fiddleford didn't want Ford to know and might not even remember himself.

He weighed up his desire to find out more about the cult against his loyalty to Fiddleford. As usual, Ford's curiosity won out over everything else. "Why are we using the Blind Eye?" Ford asked. "Were they one of your cults?"

Bill laughed shortly. It wasn't loud, but in the dark, silent car, it sounded like hammers on fine china. "You think the All-Seeing Eye ran the Blind Eye? Puh-leez. Your paranoia's slipped off its ball gag, Stanford." He pantomimed a pair of scissors with his hand. "If I wanted to erase anyone's memories, I'd snip 'em myself."

Ford didn't know whether or not that was a relief. Was it better to know Fiddleford had never been one of Bill's puppets, or would it have been better if Fiddleford hadn't been responsible for the Blind Eye? "Technically, you haven't said they weren't one of your—"

"No," Bill snapped. "They weren't."

Ford waited for Bill to elaborate—maybe explain why the Blind Eye had to be part of the plan? Boast about the cults he did have in the area? Insult Fiddleford's choice of mind-meddling techniques? But Bill just resumed the post he'd maintained since getting in the car: leaning against the passenger door as if trying to get as far away from Ford as possible, staring out the window at the passing night, and saying nothing. Bill had been a foul mood since leaving the house, and he was expressing it by ignoring Ford. It irked him, and he didn't know why he cared.

"All right," Ford said tiredly, "What in the world did I do to offend you today."

Bill didn't deign to reply.

"Tell me it's not because I used dollar coins."

"It's nothing you need to worry about," Bill said coldly. "Mabel just said I'm not allowed to be nice to you, that's all."

"Whatever she said, I'm sure it wasn't that," Ford said. "So you're giving me the silent treatment because you're mad at Mabel?"

"I'm not mad at Mabel and I'm not giving you the silent treatment. I don't have anything worth saying to you."

"You don't expect me to believe that. You could talk for a million years straight without pause."

"None of which you'd appreciate. Talking to you isn't worth the water vapor I'd exhale in the process."

"That's never stopped you before—"

"There's no winning," Bill snapped. "When I talk to you, you complain. When I don't, you complain. Either make up your mind or stop griping at me for existing!"

Ford shut his mouth. Yeah. All right. Fair enough.

He could only tolerate the silence for a few more seconds. "Here I thought you were the one who wanted to be friends again."

That was what made Bill explode. "Oh, that's what everyone thinks, isn't it! That I'm crawling on my hands and kneesbegging you to give me the time of day! Newsflash, Stanford: I'm over you. Ya blew it."

"Really." He would have assumed it was just another of Bill's attempts at manipulation—if Bill hadn't spent the last few days shooting down all of Ford's attempts to ask him basic questions. Now... it felt uncomfortably true.

 So, that was it? At last, Bill had given up on Ford? He should have been relieved. Instead, a part of him was disappointed.

He hadn't realized just how satisfying it was to repeatedly shoot Bill down. Satisfying to know that Bill still thought he was worth the pursuit. Ford had been so proud of himself for keeping Bill at arm's length—but did he actually want Bill any farther away than that? (After all this time, was he still just chasing Bill's approval?)

"What finally convinced you I'll never be one of your loyal little followers again?" Ford asked. "Was it the mac and cheese?"

"It didn't help," Bill said. "But no. It has a little bit more to do with the fact that you still want me dead."

Ford hit the breaks a little too soon at a stop sign so he could stare at Bill. "What in the world are you talking about? As Irecall, the last time we discussed the topic, I'd just spared your life!"

"Exactly!" Bill laughed bitterly. "Spared me because something I did gave you—" In the faint indirect glow of the streetlights, Ford could see Bill make sarcastic finger quotes, "'hope."

"Wh—That's it?! You're mad at me because I had the gall to have a little hope for you?!"

"Hope for me to what, Stanford Pines?" Bill had put on a sickeningly sweet sing-song voice, thick with venomous sarcasm. "Come on! We both know what you're hoping for, but I wanna hear you say it out loud!"

What? Ford's eyebrows scrunched up in confusion. "Hope for you to change for the better?" Had Bill assumed he meant something else?

"Exactly," Bill hissed. "What you have is hope against me. You didn't spare me—you spared an imaginary person you invented! You think I'm worth letting live because I might turn into someone else you like more—well what does that say about me?"

The quiet click of a seat belt buckle was the only warning Ford got before Bill was in his face, a finger jabbing in his chest, a sharp knee digging into his thigh. "That I'm not worth it! You're just keeping me around as a human sacrifice to the Bill Cipher you wish existed! You still wanna watch me die, you just want it without the violence! You're trying to kill me in your mind right now!"

"Bill, get off—" Ford's foot slipped off the brake pedal.

The car only jerked forward a few inches before Bill shoved the gear stick into park, all without breaking eye contact. He went on, relentless: "I'm supposed to be so grateful that I'll let you just—erase everything that makes me me and magically reincarnate as some good person—"

"You're already a good person!" Ford snarled.

It took him a moment to register that Bill was no longer trying to out-shout him. He took the opportunity to shove Bill back to his own side of the car; and then silence fell over them.

Ford stared at the seat between them. He felt like, if he looked up, Bill's eyes would be glowing in the dark. "That—didn't come out the way I meant it."

"Oh, phew, here I was trying to remember when I'd switched your definitions for 'good' and 'depraved.'"

"You are depraved. But—there's—" it was so much harder to say a second time, "—a good person in you somewhere."

"Well sure, with all the souls I've swallowed, one or two of them were bound to be—"

"Can it, I'm being serious!" Ford sucked in a sharp shaky breath. "I've seen that side of you! You've saved little girls from certain death! You saved Dipper and me! You've driven more than one hostile supernatural entity out of the house. You've said the household's under your protection. You taught Mabel and her friends to summon demons—"

"—hold on, that's a point for me?"

"It was a very informative lesson with a large emphasis on proper warding techniques," Ford said angrily. "And it wasn't the only time! You've also taught Mabel about—about alien genetics and non-Euclidean geometry and who knows what else! And maybe this is all just another one of your schemes, maybe you've made a fool of me yet again for convincing me you'd ever do anything without an ulterior motive, but—" His voice caught in his throat. He cleared it roughly. "You were—so patient with her. You were kind." The way he'd seemed kind when he'd taught Ford. "I... want to believe it's more than just a trick."

And that was the problem, wasn't it. He wanted to. Maybe Bill wasn't even suckering Ford this time; maybe Ford had suckered himself.

Bill finally muttered, "Of course I had an ulterior motive."

Ford's heart and shoulders sank. "Of course you did," he said, hollow. "What was it."

"The kid thought I thought she's stupid. When you compare her against every brat in her school that shares her last name and her birthday and her mitochondria, her GPA's at the rock bottom of the list, and that's what she's used to snotty know-it-alls judging her by—and I just so happen to know it all." Bill shrugged expansively. (That shrug he did with his hands instead of his shoulders.) "And she doesn't trust anything I say that she doesn't already believe—so if I want to convince her I know she's got plenty of neurons sloshing around under her cranium, hey, what about tricking her into cramming a college semester's worth of interdimensional science and extraterrestrial history into one afternoon!"

Ford stared at him, waiting for the rest of it. "That was your—? What kind of ulterior motive is that, that's not selfish."

"What are you talking about? Of course it is," Bill said. "Do you think I did all that for her sake? No! I did it for mine! I only hang out with her for that thousand-watt personality she's got, I'm not about to put up with her moping around like a thirty-watt busted bulb. Plus it tricked her into listening to everything I said for the rest of the day!"

"You felt bad because she felt bad," Ford said, "so you spent the rest of your day making her feel better."

"Yes," Bill sighed, "now you're getting i—" He stopped. He squinted at Ford. "You think this is some kind of empathy thing?" He sounded mildly disgusted by the suggestion.

Ford laughed, and he wasn't quite sure if it was in amazement, hysteria, or fury. "Listen to yourself! There's a good person in you—a wonderful person—and it's buried underneath the worst person I will ever have the displeasure of meeting—but it's in you." The words came out like a damning accusation. He shoved his hand deep in a coat pocket, felt around for a piece of folded paper—he didn't even need to look at it to know what it was; he'd carried it in his pockets for a week, felt it so many times that he could recognize its creases by touch alone—and he flung it into Bill's lap.

He could hear Bill unfolding the paper. Ford wasn't able to see it in the dark, but he was sure Bill could: 

A drawing of Bill, in his natural triangular form, floating in the sky with blue flames in his upraised hands, over Mabel's handwriting: "I BELIEVE IN YOU. YOU CAN CHANGE!"

"I don't believe you've changed one bit since the start of summer," Ford said. "And that means, this has always been a part of you! Just as much as the lying and the backstabbing! Any time you want, you could choose to be the muse you've always pretended to be! You already are that muse! So why don't you do it? When you could be like that every single day of your life—why are you like this?"

He heard a quick, quiet inhale from Bill. But he didn't reply.

Ford didn't even know whether he'd meant the question to be rhetorical. Part of him desperately wanted an answer.

"That's why I let you live," he said. "You're a piece of scum, Cipher. But, the chance that you might... might change, yes, but not into somebody new, just another version of who you already are... I think that—makes it worth it."

The dark almost swallowed Bill's voice: "Worth risking the universe for?"

Ford suddenly felt very vulnerable.

Bill's voice was oddly flat. Too self-controlled. "You know, coming from a guy that hates my guts, that means more to me than I can say."

"Just—shut up." Why had he ever imagined anything he said might get through to Bill.

They'd been parked at the stop sign for several minutes. Ford put the car in drive and pulled out. He heard Bill click his seat belt in place and shift to lean against the door again; and then an awkward silence fell over the car once more.

Why wasn't Bill saying anything? Privately gloating? Thinking about how he could turn this to his advantage? Congratulating himself on successfully using Mabel as a pawn to fool Ford into thinking he had a secret charitable side?

The silence was too much for Ford to bear.

Just as he was about to turn on the radio, Bill's hand shot out and snapped it on first.

A 90's R&B singer cooed, "Ohh baby, I'll give you one last try-iy-iy. Just promise, you won't break my hear-ar-art—"

Bill snapped off the radio.

They rode the rest of the way to the museum in silence.

####

Ford quietly sighed as they pulled up to the museum. Under any other circumstances, going to the museum, investigating a mind-wiping secret society, and roleplaying as a spy movie villain sounded like a great way to spend a night. He wantedto be able to enjoy it.

"Look, Bill. Neither of us wants to be here with each other, but we don't have to make each other miserable. Can we at least act..." He groped for a word.

"Friendly?"

Ford was sure he detected a hint of sarcasm. "I was thinking of something more like 'civil.'"

"Oh, of course! Let's not get unreasonable."

"Can you manage civility."

"Can you?"

"I can if you can."

"Ha! I could out-civil you in my sleep."

"Then fine."

"Fine."

"Fine." Off to a terrific start.

Ford got out and circled the car to open Bill's side.

As Bill got out, carrying the camcorder, he said, "You know, it was nice running around with that agent today! He held doors for me like he respected me. Instead of like a guard escorting a convict out of the prison bus."

Ford shut the door behind Bill. "You are a prisoner."

"Obviously!" He held up a wrist, showing off the bracelet chaining them together. "But do you think I like feeling like one?"

I don't care what you like, Ford nearly said—by reflex more than anything—then stopped himself. He wasn't about to be the first one not to be civil.

"You know, it would be really nice if I could open doors on my own—then I wouldn't have anything at all to complain about..."

"I won't compromise on the doors, but I'm willing to drop the bracelets."

That got Bill to look at him. "What?"

"You've had an opportunity to drown me, you escaped us for the weekend, and you spent an entire day seducing a government agent who would probably be thrilled to arrest everyone in the Mystery Shack if you told them you'd been kidnapped," Ford said. "If you were planning to run off, it wouldn't be here and now."

Bill's face was unreadable. But he slid off his bracelet and held it out dangling from one finger. Something in the atmosphere imperceptibly lightened as Ford took it.

Bill said, "Or maybe my grand plan is to go pound on his door at three in the morning, claim I just escaped a kidnapping, and have him catch the lot of you in the middle of drugging his agents and breaking into the police department."

"That would be just like you." Ford eyed the museum's double glass doors critically, then fished around in his pocket for his wallet. "Clever of you to admit your dastardly plan after I uncuff you."

"See, this is what makes me a real mastermind," Bill said. "I don't gloat about my brilliant plans until after it's too late for my enemies to stop 'em."

"Right, right." Ford pulled his miniature lockpicking kit from his wallet, selected a long stick with a hook on the end, and slid it into the gap between the two doors "Like when you only gloated about using me after I'd built your portal."

"Ye—"

"But before I let you through it."

Bill shot Ford an exasperated look. Ford smirked.  Bill rolled his eye. "And it was too late for you to stop me, because in the end, I got through! Checkmate."

Ford muttered, "You couldn't checkmate me if you tried."

Bill jabbed his arm with a finger. "Hey! Hey! Play me when I'm running on more than thirty minutes of nightmares and forty calories of mystery meat puree, we'll see who can checkmate who."

Ford nearly said he'd take him up that, before remembering who he was talking to. "That didn't feel like a very civil poke."

"You must be unfamiliar with poking etiquette!"

Bill was back up to his usual gregariousness. More than usual; Ford hadn't heard him this chatty in weeks. Not with him, anyway.

Just because of the bracelets? He couldn't imagine what else it might be.

He caught the hook around a hidden bar inside the door's lock, tugged it free, and unlocked the door. "Ha!" He swung the door open, beaming proudly—at Bill, who didn't look as though he'd registered that Ford had done anything interesting at all. "Oh. Right."

"'Oh right' what?" Bill walked past Ford into the museum.

"Nothing. It was just—an impressive bit of lock picking, that's all."

"Oh, I bet it was," Bill said sarcastically.

"It was!"

"And I'm supposed to just take your word for it because I can't prove you wrong? Sure."

"Why would I lie about that?!"

"To impress me!"

"I do not want to impress you!"

"That little smirk you did when you opened the door said otherwise!"

"That wasn't...!" Wait.

"So old even your body hair is gray, and you're still just a schoolboy so eager to impress your teacher that you're willing to lie!"

"I am not trying to impress you, I don't lie to teachers, and I am not lying now!"

Bill examined his nails casually. "Well if you want to convince me there's only one way! You have to give me the ability to understand what you just did!"

"Fine!" Ford reached for Bill—caught himself, and pulled his hand back. "Ah hah! Ahaha." He wagged a finger at Bill. "Nice try."

Bill grinned. He looked far too pleased with himself. "You almost fell for it."

"Not even close," Ford lied.

It was a relief to have Bill trying to get under his skin again.

While Ford dug in his pockets for a flashlight ("Didn't bring that useless Civil War lantern this time?" "I'm not lighting a kerosene lantern in a museum!"), Bill took the lead, wandering ahead into the dark. He informed Ford that they'd have to wait to visit the museum's subterranean ritual chamber until after they'd swung by the Hall of the Forgotten. This was the first Ford had ever heard of any subterranean ritual chamber beneath the museum. He would have been dying to see it first, if whatever "the Hall of the Forgotten" was didn't sound so cool.

And so, he followed Bill through the dark.

####

The Hall of the Forgotten had changed quite a bit since Bill had last seen it—mainly in terms of the quantity of memories cluttering it up.

Granted, he'd last seen it nearly twenty years ago—which was when they'd chiseled an X over the eye on the chest of the statue that watched over the room. Bill may have had billions of eyes upon Earth, but the Blind Eye had been rigorous about keeping them out of this room.

Not on purpose, he was sure—in spite of the fact that they'd taken over what had once been an Anti-Cipherite clubhouse, he was sure those idiots hadn't known a thing about him or how to counter him personally. It was simply a lingering relic of Specs's paranoia. But X-ing out any image of an eye they saw also meant X-ing out any eyes that just so happened to be intended to serve as one of his faces, and nobody was exactly flashing dollar bills around the room. He'd been frustratingly unable to keep up with the Blind Eye's movements for nigh on two decades now.

With, as it turned out, significant personal consequences.

The rebirthmark stretched across his chest itched.

As they entered the Hall and Bill didn't immediately see what he needed, he tried to peer above the third dimension to get a view past all those memory canisters piling up—and pain lanced his eye socket. He hissed, flipping up his eyepatch to press a hand over his eye. He'd more than overused his eyes today; he couldn't bend his eyes anymore until he'd gotten some rest. He'd have to look around like a normal person.

"Somewhere there should be a filing cabinet," Bill said. "Three drawers and painted a color so boring that looking at it makes you yawn. And a stock of unused canisters. Tell me if you find either of them." He started circling the room, peering around the piles, looking in the crates in hopes that he'd find one not full of old memories but fresh canisters. 

"What are all these?" Ford picked up a random canister. Bill glanced over at it; there was a label stuck to it with "ARNY WINN (TOURIST)" written on it in marker. Nobody important.

"Memories," Bill said.

Ford froze. He scanned the room, slowly making sense of what he saw—the mountains of canisters, some almost as tall as him. Bill fought back a smile, wishing that he could see the room through Ford's point of view: all these memories, people's memories, thrown in careless piles like they were nothing. There were more canisters than there were residents in Gravity Falls. It was a treasure trove of occult knowledge that Ford's precious college pal has robbed the town of—oh, that had to sting, didn't it. 

Horrified, Ford asked, "Every one of these is a memory?"

"Unfortunately, it looks like it," Bill grumbled. "Where the heck do they store the spare canisters!" He'd circled most of the room and dug at least a little into each of the crates, and hadn't found any blanks. He kicked the leg of one of a couple of heavy worktables in the room in frustration, then grunted in pain. He kicked the leg again a little harder. Oh, that was a nice. He'd do it again if he weren't worried about being able to walk without a limp the next few days. Had to be careful about doing permanent damage to this thing. He made a mental note about the work table for the next time he had the pleasure of driving a loaner body.

Ford asked, "Can we even use the canisters without the memory gun? I'd expected there to be a spare gun here."

"There'd better not be," Bill muttered, rubbing his chest. "But we don't need one! The packaging on these things is unusual to make 'em compatible with the gun—buuut at their core, they use the same tape you find in a standard video camera! If Specs was a little smarter maybe he would've designed his gun to work with the cassettes you already had in the house—but with a little jury-rigging," he lifted the camera they'd brought, "we can hook up one of the canisters to run through this baby, no prob."

Ah, there was the filing cabinet he'd been looking for: chest-high and beige, exactly where it had sat for twenty-five years, but now it was completely buried in canisters. Must not have been used for a while. Bill shoved an armful of memories off the filing cabinet, tapped twice on the top, and lifted it straight into the air as lightly as a balloon to free it from the memories burying it on every side. The pile slid in on itself and collapsed in the cabinet's wake.

Ford winced. "Careful with those! Don't break them."

"These tubes are made of plastic as thick as your incisor, they won't break." He settled it to the ground near the statue, tapped it once more to return its proper gravity, and started rummaging through its files. The Blind Eye used to keep meticulous records of all the victims they'd "helped"—name, time, date, circumstances under which they'd been brought in to have their memories erased, what they'd witnessed, who else might have witnessed it, the number of their unique memory canister—but it looked like they'd fallen behind some fifteen years ago. Probably as their memories of even their own secret society and its procedures became muddled and patchy. Bill might not have been able to watch their little club rooms from afar, but he'd certainly been able to check in on their dreams, and ohoho, were their minds a mess.

He found a well-worn folder with the memory gun's blueprints and their notes on its upkeep, and another folder with the society's membership list. He flipped through the memory gun file until he found Fiddleford's initial blueprints, and inserted Mabel's map with it, its corner peeking out of the folder like a tempting bookmark; then he emptied the top drawer's contents, plopped in the blueprint folder and the membership folder, and slammed the drawer shut.

"Is this what you're looking for?" Ford was examining the memory playback station. He had opened a drawer on one side of the console, revealing a couple dozen canisters neatly lined up.

"There they are! Finally!" Bill pulled out an empty canister. "All right, you get to researching—" He grabbed another canister off the shelf behind the robed statue, where the most important memories were stored, and plopped it down in front of Ford, "—while I set up the rest of the scene."

Ford glanced warily at the canister Bill had left for him—the one with Preston Northwest's name. "What exactly am I supposed to be researching?"

"Your character! You want to get his voice right, don't you?" Bill dug into another pile of memories, scanning the names. "Ah, this oughta be a good one." He set another in front of Ford.

"You expect me to watch these?"

Bill had already dug back into the memories, but he paused to glance at Ford. "You were planning not to?"

"I—of course I wasn't going to watch! These are records of—of people's psychic violations!"

Bill gave Ford what he hoped was an incredibly disbelieving stare.

"I mean..." Ford gestured helplessly at the memory canisters, "Sure, this is a treasure trove of Gravity Falls' lost and forgotten paranormal secrets. Of course I want to know what they contain. But finding out like this would be incrediblyunethical, since these are people's memories—and stolen memories at that—and none of them agreed for their memories to be taken, much less for me to watch them. No matter how much I'd like to—"

"Stanford Pines," Bill said. "If you'd stumbled on this room all by yourself, and if I weren't in the room inspiring you to second-guess the morality of everything you do—would you have stopped for a second before devouring these recordings as fast as you could?"

Ford thought that over. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched sheepishly. "Well."

He really was just like Bill in all the ways that mattered. He had the same appetites. If he weren't so stubbornly determined to reject everything Bill had ever taught him, by now he'd be regularly swimming in other humans' dreams just to comb through their memories—never mind watching stored memories at the museum. It was a pity for him he'd rejected all those gifts. Pity for them both.

"There's no one here for you to impress!" Bill gestured around the room, bereft of any human presence but Ford's. "But if you want to skip this part and risk getting the guy's accent a little wrong and tipping off the agents, fine! You're only risking your entire family's arrest—"

"I hate you." Ford reached for the canister with Preston's memory, then stopped and forced himself to take the other instead.

Bill turned away before the screen lit up. A woman's voice filled the room: "Where am I?! What do you think you're doing?! If you don't let me go, I swear I'll strangle you with your own stupid red bathrobes—"

Blind Ivan replied, "Be calm. Cooperate and this will all be over soon."

"Like hell am I cooperating! Let me go! HEEELP—"

"All we want is for you to tell us one thing: what is it that you have seen?"

Bill set another canister on the console. "You don't have to watch this one, Toot-Toot's not in it."

Ford had stood five feet back from the console to pretend he could literally distance himself from the violation he was participating in; but his eyes were already glued to the screen in fascination. He reluctantly dragged his gaze from the stolen memory. "If I don't need to watch it, then why are you adding it?"

"These aren't for you! I figure Agent Bermuda could use a little primer on the Blind Eye. These will show him everythinghe needs to know."

"None of them—implicate Fiddleford, do they?"

Oh, who cared if they did. Bill bit back several snide retorts. They were being civil. "No. They're all from the last five years."

Ford eyed the newest canister distrustfully.

Bill sighed heavily. "Fine! Don't take my word for it." He gestured at the playback station. "Watch it yourself, if you think we can afford to waste time!" He sat on the worktable, crossed his legs to cradle the camera in his lap, and pried it apart to get at the wires.

After the first memory ended, Ford grabbed the one Bill said he didn't need to watch. Bill had found another memory he wanted Powers to watch; but this one, he absolutely could not let Ford see. He took off his hoodie—he needed to be in his dress shirt for his part in their recording—and slipped the canister beneath it.

In between memory playbacks, Ford asked, "Does anything else in here implicate Fiddleford?"

Bill fought back another sigh. "Not directly. He took his own memory canister home when the kids brought him here." Bill would kill to find out what had happened in the museum that night. He'd been forced to stare in frustration at the hallways while agitated cultists and an entire half of Bill's zodiac ran back and forth between the Blind Eye's eye-free chambers. Spectacles recovering his full memories just days before Stanley was scheduled to reactivate the portal could have spelled disaster. "There might be a few memories in here that he recorded personally before Toot-Toot took over—but he was involved in the Blind Eye for under two years before he scrambled his own brains, anything he recorded is probably buried somewhere at the bottom of these mountains. Even I wouldn't know where they are."

Ford hesitated, then reluctantly nodded. "Fine."

Why in the world did he want to protect that hick so much anyway? When Ford found out one friend was up to secret shady things, he swore a thirty-year revenge mission against him; when he found out the other one was, his biggest worry was making sure he didn't get arrested for it! Bill had done far more for Ford than that walking waste of potential ever had or ever could—and of the two of them, Bill might have invaded Ford's brain, but he never erased part of it. Not without putting almost all of it back later, anyway! Oh, no no no—when Ford confronted Bill about what he'd been doing behind Ford's back, he didn't destroy the mnemonic evidence and deny everything, he owned up to it! It was admirable, really! But who did Ford consider "trustworthy"? Why didn't Bill warrant that kind of loyalty?

It was unfair. It made Bill feel... sick. That was probably the emotion he was feeling. Sick, that Ford wanted so badly to patch things up with that cowardly, backstabbing, underachieving loser, while he'd written Bill off completely.

(Not completely, Bill reminded himself. And then he buried that thought as deep into his subconscious as he could.)

Ford watched a few more random memories while Bill attached the empty canister to the camera with electrical tape; Bill heard him mutter, "'What is it that you have seen?'" under his breath, trying to match Ivan's inflection. Eh, Ford wouldn't win anything at the Academy, but it was good enough for community theater.

When Bill glanced over, one of Ford's hands was twitching toward his coat pocket the way it did when he wanted to grab his pen and start taking notes. He gradually moved closer to the console with each playback; by the time he turned the screen off, he was leaning on the console with both hands. "I think I've got the hang of my role."

"Great. Stick that first memory you watched back in, I want Powers to see it first." Bill hopped off the table, holding up the camera. "Ready for your acting debut?"

####

Half an hour later, as they walked back from the Blind Eye's ritual chamber to the Hall of the Forgotten, Bill said, "That wasn't so bad, was it!" He was spinning the canister with their false memory on one finger. (He'd almost dropped it three times.)

"No," Ford admitted grudgingly. "It was... a bit like Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons."

"Ugh."

"Except more immersive than pen-and-paper roleplay," Ford mused. "Maybe I was overly hasty when I dismissed Soos's invitation to FCLORP."

"Ugh. You're already nerdy enough, stay away from that slippery slope," Bill said. "Marker-and-cardboard isn't the step up from pen-and-paper you think it is. You wanna know why this is more immersive? Because you believe in the game you're playing now. Sure, you're only pretending to be the Blind Eye's boss—but you're actually part of a conspiracy to bamboozle a federal investigation."

Bill politely (smugly) pretended not to notice the gleam in Ford's eye—mainly because, if he dared point it out, Ford would immediately try to convince them both he wasn't enjoying this. "I suppose that's true," Ford said. "Fantasy can't measure up to reality. Pretending to battle undead sorcerers to plunder their dungeons has never been as thrilling as actually battling undead sorcerers to plunder their dungeons."

"Exac—hey, when did you ever battle undead sorcerers?"

"I needed a thousand-carat blessed antiprism to focus the beam of the Quantum Destabilizer, so I went to Dimension 777.7—"

Bill laughed in delighted surprise. "Hold on, you found the lost treasure of the Undying Sentinels of the Sacred Mines? Aww, you shouldn't have," he cooed. "I prefer gold, but I'm flattered you went so far just to get such an expensive diamond for me!"

Ford pretended not to hear him. "DD&MD still has its advantages, though," Ford said. "In real life, I don't get to do as much math in the middle of combat."

"And there he goes, tripping down the slope into the Gorge of Geekery."

Back in the Hall of the Forgotten, Bill wrote "GOLDIE LOCKE (VISITOR)" on their false memory's label and planted it prominently on the memory playback station with the other memory canisters he'd chosen for Powers. "Ta-da! Trap set." He added a date in 2009 to one of the canisters, and loaded it into the station so Powers would watch it first; then scooped up his hoodie. "Wanna watch another couple before we go?"

Ford looked longingly around at the room full of free information; then shook his head. "No! No. I watched what I had to for this plan of yours work, and that's it. You won't make a voyeur out of me."

"I don't have to! You're already a voyeur—and you've got the gnome mating ball photos to prove it!"

"That was for scientific research and the answer is still no."

Bill tucked his hoodie under one arm so he could pick up a memory canister, casually switch it out with the one currently loaded in the memory playback station, and click it down into place. "Oops!"

"Nope! Nope!" Ford marched determinedly toward the door, hands covering his ears. "I am not watching any more! I'm an ethical scientific researcher!"

"No you aren't!"

"Let me pretend!" Ford veered around a pile of memory canisters.

And he locked his eyes onto one canister, immediately did a U-turn back to the pile, picked it up, marched right back to the memory playback station, removed the one Bill had started, plugged the new one in, and crossed his arms.

The recording opened up on a shot of Mayor Befufftlefumpter, sitting in his wheelchair looking around placidly.

"What is it that you have seen?" "Speak!"

"Well, uh..." The major tapped his chin. "My vision isn't quite what it used to be..."

"Just describe it as best you can," Ivan said.

"Alrighty. Welp! I was visiting my office in Town Hall for the first time in ten years, looking for some coupons I think I left at my desk, when this bear walked through the wall—"

Ford smacked the console. "I knew he knew something about the ghost bears!"

He didn't look at Bill. "Stop smiling like that."

When the former mayor had finished recounting his tale of ursine phantoms, Ford stomped toward the door, red in the face, without looking at Bill.

Before Bill followed, he switched out the canisters again for the one he wanted Powers to see first—and took out the canister hidden in his hoodie to balance it carefully on the right corner of the console.

####

Bill diverged from their path into the museum to pluck an out-of-date calendar for the museum's May events from a corkboard, and around the corner a new addition to the museum caught Bill's eye: a heavy black curtain had been hung over one wing, and it was surrounded by signs reading "NO PHOTOGRAPHY" "NO CAMERAS" "🚫📷" That was intriguing. He'd just love to find out what was behind that curtain.

But Ford wouldn't slow down just to go sightseeing; and as badly as Bill's eyes were throbbing, he shouldn't try to peer through the curtain that way.

That was fine. He could wait to see what was in that wing. If everything worked out, he'd be back here tomorrow.

####

As they approached the exit, Ford mumbled in nobody's particular direction, "I'm sorry."

Bill gave him a suspicious look. "What?"

"For the mac and cheese," he told the floor. He stuffed his hands self-consciously in his pockets and felt like an idiot. "And giving you burnt eggs instead. It was... petty."

Bill didn't answer. When he stopped walking, it took Ford a moment to remember that he had to get the door. He pushed it open. 

Bill walked past Ford without looking at him. He said lightly, "Were they burned? I didn't notice. I didn't eat them."

Apology not accepted, apparently. "Well. I'm sorry anyway."

Bill scoffed. "I'd kill to be able to take a peek under your skull." (Ford suspected that wasn't a hyperbole.) "One day you're laughing in my face for thinking you worshiped me, a week later you're saving my life. All your multiverse-hopping must've scrambled your brain. Tragic, since that's the only thing you had going for you."

Ford re-locked the museum's doors behind them. "You don't think there are any options in between worshiping you or wanting you dead?"

"I'm not the kind of person who inspires indifference."

"That's true."

Bill stretched as they walked to the car—fingers laced together, palms turned out, arms lifted over his head. It was a muggy night, and Ford could feel the layers of his sweater and trench coat cling damply to his back; but when Bill's baggie hoodie sleeves fell down to his shoulders, he lowered his hands, shook out the sleeves, and hooked his thumbs in the cuffs so the sleeves wouldn't fall again when he repeated the stretch. "Just get me back to the tomb. This body needs a little sleep before Romeo comes looking for me tomorrow."

"'Romeo'? Are you planning to trick him into drinking poison?"

Bill flashed him a wicked grin. Sometimes Ford was still hit by how incorrect Bill's human face looked—a mouth too low, teeth shaped like tombstones instead of arrowheads—and it was usually at moments like this, when the gleeful curve of his eyes was so familiar. "Hmm, now that's a thought! Not yet; but you should know better than to give me fun ideas."

####

"How was it?" Mabel asked anxiously, the moment the back door unlatched.

She was answered with a piece of paper shoved over her face. "The good news is I got something for your last project," Bill said. "The bad news is Ford's considering taking up FCLORP. Talk him out of it."

"I'll make all his cardboard armor."

"When I get access to my gang's group chat again, I'm inviting you just so I can ban you."

"It was fine," Ford told Mabel. "We had no trouble getting in and out and I think our recording was convincing."

"Did you... get along?"

Ford paused. "We were—civil."

"Ha!" Bill crowed. "And you thought I couldn't do it!"

"I did not. I thought you wouldn't do it."

Mabel inspected the calendar page Bill had given her. Aww, the last weekend in May they'd decorated straw hats with live bird nests and she'd missed it.

Bill trudged into the living room, flopped into Abuelita's chair, and said, "Wake me up if anyone needs orders." He pulled his hood down over his face and retracted his arms from his sleeves. 

"Is there anything else I have to do?" Ford asked.

"Uhhh..." It took Bill a long moment to summon up an answer. "No. Go sleep. Up here, in case I change my mind."

"Fine," Ford said, sighing in relief.

Mabel waited until he'd headed upstairs to get ready for bed; then crept into the living room. "Hey, Bill?"

"Hmm?" He tilted his head just enough for one tired eye to peer out from the shadows beneath his hood. "Aren't you supposed to be writing a threatening anonymous letter?"

"It's fine, Grunkle Stan isn't back yet." She sat in Stan's chair by Bill. "So..." She sheepishly tried to dodge around having to apologize. "Are... we cool?"

"I dunno. Are you cool?" Bill asked. "You're not going to turn lame on me, are you?"

"What! Why would I turn lame? I'm literally the coolest."

"Well, I thought you were cool," Bill said. "But if you were only being cool until you thought we were close enough you could start nagging me about everything—"

"No! No. It was just a one-time thing, promise. Because you and Grunkle Ford have a history, and I had to make sure he's safe—"

"Safe from all that flirting I've never done with him?"

"I got worried, okay!"

Bill crossed his arms under his hoodie. "Find another way to worry. Maybe one that doesn't involve scolding me for something I never did," he said. "If I had been trying to sweep your uncle off his unexpectedly five-toed feet, that'd be one thing—"

"(I didn't need to know how many toes he has.)"

"—but when I wasn't and you keep treating me like I'm already guilty—" He stopped, and said suddenly, as if he were changing topics, with a slight sharp tilt to his head like an old-fashioned TV dial being turned to another station, "Didja know it's way less annoying to be called a liar when you are lying? If you weren't lying but no one believes you, it kinda makes you wonder—why are you wasting your breath telling the truth in the first place!" How much Bill had just offered her about himself?

She sank back in her chair, trying to figure out how to reply. I'm sorry didn't seem to cut it. She suspected Bill really had offered her something; she wanted Bill to know she got it. "One of my teachers thought I copied Dipper on a book report. Because she thought mine was too good."

Bill considered that. "Fifth grade?"

"You already knew about it."

"Not this time," Bill said. "Buuut I know that's the year you started skipping the assigned reading. And I don't blame ya! If you're gonna get a worse grade for working harder, you can save a lot of precious time by phoning it in."

"Yeah." Unexpected relief flooded over Mabel. "Yeah, that's—that's it." She'd never been able to put it into words. Her parents had been worried, Dipper had been exasperated with her. Bill had hit the nail on the head in one sentence.

"Been there. I had a teacher who thought I was using my eye to cheat," Bill said. "So you know what? I did!" He laughed, absolutely no shame.

Being called a cheater had been the most humiliating thing to ever happen in Mabel's seemingly never-ending academic career; Bill's apathy was almost enviable. "Okay. So. There's no emotional stuff going on with you and Grunkle Ford." Just to clear the air. They could agree on it and move on.

But even though Bill had denied it immediately the first time, now, his eyes flickered uncertainly before he said, "Right. None."

That had been less definitive than she'd hoped. "None?"

"No romantic emotional stuff," Bill said. "I think we've cycled through just about every other emotional cocktail that human neurotransmitters can mix up, but desire isn't one of them."

Mabel decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. "Then what are you thinking about?"

"Nothing," Bill said. "My brain's empty. Four pounds of inert meat with no neurons firing."

"Oh, come on." She jabbed a finger into his cheek. "I can see it on your face! What's bothering you?"

He scrunched a shoulder to guard his cheek. "Nothing bothers me."

Mabel hissed, "Yes it doesssss." She leaned across the gap between their seats to jab Bill's shoulder with both hands. "I can sssmell it."

"Retune your sniffer, Miss Nose-y!" He flipped one of his empty sleeves to wave away her hands like a couple of mosquitos; but something in his eyes had shifted, something in the tilt of his pupils. He was caving. "I was just thinking about what you'd said about the—the goofy little 'be yourself' moral the critters are so fond of."

She had to think back to their conversation yesterday: where she'd tried (and failed) to explain that be yourself didn't mean be a jerk, even if you were really good at being a jerk. "You were?" Even now, Mabel was surprised whenever she found out that Bill had been actually thinking about Color Critters when they weren't watching it. It was good that he was thinking about it—she was trying to use the cartoon to teach him morals, after all—but she kept assuming that Bill treated Color Critters the way she treated pre-algebra. "You'd better not try to use it as an excuse to be a jerk again..."

"No, not that. I—figured out what you meant," he said. "It's 'be yourself,' but—not sink down to your worst self. Rise up to meet your best potential. Be the..." he made a vague gesture ceilingward. "The best version of yourself."

"I... Yeah. I guess so. Yeah." Where the heck had that come from?

"This is supposed to be a cartoon for kindergarteners," Bill said wryly. "Their target audience can't even read yet, and they're expecting these kids to read between the lines?"

"Aww, was the kindergarten show's moral too complicated for you?"

"Shut your face. I figured out what it meant, didn't I?" Bill's eyes turned toward the doorway a moment before Mabel heard Ford's bootsteps coming downstairs. He pushed his arms back into his hoodie sleeves properly and timed his exit of the room so he was swooping onto the stairs the moment Ford stepped off. "I can't catch a nap down here," he griped. "Somebody thinks she's more important than this tyrannical body's need for R&REM."

"Sorryyy!"

"You are more important," Bill called down the stairs. "But that's the thing about tyrants! You can't reason with them."

Mabel should be getting to work on her next art assignment, anyway. But before she did, she followed Ford to his room and grabbed his sleeve. "Grunkle Ford, what'd you say to Bill while you guys were gone?"

"What?" He gave her a puzzled look. "Say to him about what?"

"I dunno! But you must've said something to him. He's been thinking thoughts."

Bewildered, Ford shrugged. "Whatever I said, it was the wrong thing. He gave me the silent treatment most of the way to the museum. I suspect he's even more irritated with me now."

Somehow, Mabel didn't think he was. She hugged Ford. "Well, whatever you said? Thank you."

####

Bill dug out his burner phone and plugged it into the extension cord Soos had strung into the room. He considered sneaking out his stolen journal to slide Mabel's crayon portrait in it, then elected to just hide it beneath the couch cushions. So that it would be within arm's reach, in case he ever needed it. For some reason.

And then Bill slept.

Or—tried to.

This stupid body needed it; he'd been up almost 22 hours, burning the psychological oil as he tried to pull together this scheme—and he'd had an hour or two of very vigorous exercise in the midst of all the scheming. By all rights, he should be out like a rock that vividly hallucinated 3-5 times a night.

But instead, he kept thrashing in his thin sheet, twisting and trying to get comfortable. He couldn't quiet his mind. Too restless. The thoughts he'd tried to drown in his subconscious had bobbed back to the surface. Hearing over and over in his head, there's a good person in you. A wonderful person. A wonderful person. A person worth risking a universe for.

Him.

Any time you want, you could choose to be the muse you've always pretended to be.

You already are that muse.

Dr. Stanford "Six-Fingers" Filbrick Pines had said that about him. The one and only Bill Mischief Cipher. Ford knew exactly who and what Bill was—and he'd said that about him.

He couldn't sleep. He could feel his heart fluttering in its cage. He could feel his lungs struggling to grasp at the thin air. He felt dizzy. His brain burned.

By the time Bill's mind finally quieted, he'd squirmed and clawed his way halfway across the orange couch. As his consciousness blinked out, he dully registered the scent in the cushion: the comforting scent of the Nightmare Realm. The smell of burning hair.

######

(Post-TBOB changes! Inserted one or two sentences saying the Anti-Cipherites originally used the Blind Eye's meeting places—I'd already decided the Blind Eye got the place due to a connection with the Northwests (and had already written a scene expanding on that), and Abigale Northwest née Blackwing is the only person with both the motivation and resources to build weird culty ritual chambers beneath the museum, so thanks TBOB.

Added some subtle Theraprism allusions to the wording of Bill's "you don't wanna save me, you wanna save some person you've imagined me to be" speech; he's always been indignant & defensive in this fic at the idea of people trying to "benevolently" "fix" him, TBOB just backs that up. Added a couple mentions of Bill's death scar. Since we were already talking about Bill & Mabel's slipshod school careers, I slipped in a light allusion to Bill's disdain for assigned reading.

Everything else is the same. One of the most common post-TBOB questions I've been asked is "are you gonna make it gay[er] in the wake of TBOB?" and my answer is always: no, I'm going to make it exactly as gay as I'd planned to since 2023, on the same schedule I've always had planned. This chapter very much included.)

[tinfoil-jones]

Jerk Ford AU: The Worst Timeline

Out of all the scenarios and alternate timelines / other AU's this one could cross over into or adopt elements from (You can see a Reverse Portal Scenario Here and Here), the worst and most destructive alternate timeline for Jerk Ford would be Drifting Stars.

If you don't know, Drifting Stars is a popular AU where during the events of Not What He Seems, Mabel goes through the portal instead of Ford coming out. And now Mabel and Ford are together in the multiverse.

Stanley never stopped being involved with family because he was never kicked out, so Mabel and Dipper have actually known their Grunkle Stan their whole lives, they've even visited him a fair few times and stayed over, the summer that the events of the show takes place in is just the first time they stayed for an entire summer.

Imagine if, about five years before the show starts, little 7-8 year old Mabel falls into the bottomless pit and somehow gets ejected to the only other thing out in the multiverse with the same dimensional signature as her; Jerk Ford, her great uncle who has been missing for twenty five years.

Jerk Ford sees this crying little kid and he takes pause because, for one thing what is a kid doing in Mystery Flesh Pit National Park in the Body Horror Dimension, and another thing why does she have an eerie resemblance to his nephew, who was only ten years old the last time that he saw him?

Jerk Ford at first was considering leaving her to the lost and found at the tourist outpost of the national park, but then she called him "Grunkle Stan." (Because she is mistaking him for Stanley, and Grunkle why did you cut your hair?) And it's all over.

Jerk Ford, a multidimensional space hobo vagabond who has been trying to get home for the past twenty five years at this point and has had absolutely no contact with his family for obvious reasons, he just goes YOINK THIS IS MINE NOW.

And why is this the worst timeline for the Jerk Ford AU?

You know that scene in the Lion King when Rafiki is holding up Simba to the valley? Well, imagine Jerk Ford doing the same thing with Mabel. Except she's like this:

Because Jerk Ford already has poor impulse control when it comes to pettiness without his brother to reign him in, and now he has Mabel who is a very similar brand of unhinged as he is, they're just subjecting the entire multiverse to a path of glittery destruction the likes have which have never been seen before and will hopefully never be repeated.

Jerk Ford was already wilding all on his own now he has Mabel who has so many ideas. And she has this pathetic, lonely man wrapped around her little finger.

Also, Jerk Ford is a known runner. He does not fight if he doesn't see himself winning, and he'll usually go out of his way to not kill people. He just lacks the trigger-happy 'shoot now journal about it later'-gene that most Fords have. (He has very specific exceptions)*

But in a scenario where he has Mabel? Where he isn't facing consequences all by himself? He isn't letting anything in the multiverse so much as breathe rudely in her direction. So now, he isn't just some jerk or mostly harmless nuisance, he is stacking bodies (not in Mabel's line of sight, obviously).

The (Jerk) Ford Hate Club is besides themselves. Now, stopping or killing Jerk Ford isn't their only prerogative, they also need to 'rescue' this small, innocent child from The Worst Ford and his influence. Unaware that the terrible-flavoured beanboozled jellybeans that keep making their way into their catering were all her idea.

When Jerk Ford and Mabel return in 2012, Dipper is besides himself because, sweet Moses his sister is alive! She's really alive!

But she's been with with The Author who he hates, and being raised by him for the past five years has had obvious effects on her development.

She's still happy go lucky and nice, she's not a jerk at all like her Grunkle Ford.

But she's basically a supervillain who is on the FBI's Most Wanted List in every dimension she's been to that has one, and some organizations both official and criminal consider her a bigger threat than Jerk Ford (relative to body size).

Her sunny disposition did not change at all; she's blowing up whole buildings with a damn smile on her face

It's terrifying. This is the worst Jerk Ford timeline.

*While he was in the multiverse, instead of celebrating Jewish holidays the traditional way there was no point without his family, he would travel to different parallel Earth dimensions to kill Nazi’s. He would try to be a little more traditional, and halt the killing spree while he had Mabel with him, she was too young for murder.

[stupidvillainousposts]

Idea: Dipper and Mabel visit Gravity Falls for the summer following Weirdmageddon and start arguing about something or other, then knock over a weird device by accident that makes Stan, Ford, and McGucket return to their early/mid thirties

Long story short, the Chaos Trio need to make a device to turn themselves back to normal but keep getting distracted by the greatest weapon of all: Love. Basically everybody starts noticing that Stan and Fidds are crushing on each other... Everyone except Stan and Fidds

Ford, accusingly: You're romantically interested in my brother.

Fidds: What?! I- No- What could possibly make you think that?!

Ford, whilst glaring at Fidds: Stanley, how long did you say it takes the earth to revolve around the sun?

Stan: Oh, come on! This, again, Pointdexter??? The answer is obviously 12 hours! Why else would we only get sunlight for half a day every day?

Ford, sarcastically: Yes, obviously.

Fidds: *Smitten but Denying It* Y'know, his logic is fairly sound-

Ford, absolutely pissed: HIS LOGIC ISN'T SOUND AT ALL!

[tsukiusagi180]

bill cipher x reader

You had been living in gravity falls for a few years, at first you had just decided to take a road trip to enjoy your vacation, you lived in a big city and work was stressful. Then finally you took a liking to this small town, you decided to settle there and you ended up finding a job.

One thing led to another and you met the Pines family, because well, who didn’t? You made friends with them especially the smaller pines twins, Dipper and Mabel. They were 17 and you were 21, it wasn't a very big difference which made the friendship between you easier. Then you started having these strange dreams where a certain Bill was visiting you, obviously you knew who he was and obviously he brought you nothing but disgust.

But the fact is you don't know how it happened, he was supposed to be dead right?You didn't want to talk about it so you closed yourself off becoming more and more stressed, just what he wanted. You were so weak and easy to manipulate that he found it almost endearing, Almost. Every night was the same, and this night was no exception. You were in a very familiar gray setting, in a meadow with the statue of Bill.

“Well well well, Hello (Y/n) how are you today?”

“My answer doesn’t matter to you, Cipher.”

“Uh oh don’t take it personally, only you know what I expect from you and I don’t care about your state of mind.”

“I already have it for you I won’t free you”

you almost growled at this part.

“My darling, it’s only a matter of time before you break down.”

You only rolled your eyes, if he really thinks he can have you like that, he's wrong.

"It would be unfortunate if something happened to Pinetree, don't you think?"

You had a crush on Dipper before you met Bill

“What are you going to do?”

Bill turned around you, his once yellow triangular shape showed different timelines of what could happen to Dipper, each one more horrible than the last. But damn you still thought Bill was attractive. Shit.

Let's make a deal Cipher, you leave them alone and I'll give you what you want"

"Mhh a deal? Deal done darling"

You shook his hand and everything turned blue you woke up with a start, your hand burned you looked around you breathing heavily hoping that it was all just a bad dream, then you saw Bill he was there, you freed him. He looked at you mischievously

“It’s you I want, my darling.”

[plaidos]

I have no particular dog in this fight as I'm not a GF superfan or anything, but I would like to question a bit of your analysis.

I think you're right that the version of GF where Dipper is transmasc makes Mabel's canonical actions transphobic.

I would like to question the insinuation that those same actions would've been "normal sibling rivalry" (?!) were Dipper closeted transfem or even cismasc, as opposed to "worst sister ever" (!?) behavior. Especially if we're going with transfem Dipper, those incidents of bullying remind me much more of patterns of bullying against transfeminine people, and intersex people CAMAB (such as myself) that I've personally witnessed/experienced.

Also, to the idea that Mabel being transphobic fundamentally changes her character in some way. Like, sometimes characters we're supposed to like hold a bigoted attitude which they will unlearn over the course of the story. Sokka from Avatar and Weiss from RWBY come to mind. Mabel being one of those characters doesn't fundamentally change her storyline or arc.

you’re right, Mabel’s actions and teasings are still mean with a transphobic undercurrent — even if Dipper is a dyadic cis boy, to be honest. but she’s also a twelve year old born in 1999. i too have received the kind of bullying associated with the way Mabel acts towards Dipper about his gender, but i’ve also had similarly “jokes” from loved ones who didn’t realise how shitty they were being because they didn’t have the political framework to analyse what is fucked up about it.

but if we’re reading Dipper as transmasc, it’s like… everybody he knows is accepting enough of his identity to gender him correctly, but they’re still totally willing to say things to him that you would categorically know are bigoted even at that age. like a twelve year old cisgender girl who knows about trans people and respects their existence might not realise how needlessly callous she is being when she teases her (seemingly) cisgender brother for having “girly” interests, but that same cisgender girl would probably be able to identify that her openly transgender brother wouldn’t want to wear makeup and that it would be incredibly fucked up to make him. i’m not saying it’s “right” but Mabel needs to actively Be A Transphobe (rather than just having some twelve year old cis girl ideas about gender & masculinity) to treat Dipper the way she treats him if he is openly transmasculine, but I feel like there’s more of a plausible deniability. i feel like the Mabel we see in the show is a couple years away from being like “wow, that was spectacularly mean of me, i hope that didn’t have an effect on Dipper’s self worth”

i feel like if (in the crazy alternate universe where this is possible) there were an episode where Dipper came out as transfem after feeling hurt by Mabel’s jokes she would be really torn up about it. she’d say something like “i’m really sorry, i didn’t know you felt so strongly about gender… i thought we were just joking around but i should be paying more attention to how you feel, Dipper…. wait, maybe you don’t want to be called Dipper any more. Oh no I AM a bigot!!!” and then Soos would come in and be like “heheh. total hatecrime dude” and then we’d cut to Bill being like “i don’t care what gender you are pine tree… i’m gonna get that GIRL if it’s the last thing I do” except girl would be obviously ADR’d over in Alex Hirsch’s normal voice with his live action mouth over Bill’s animated mouth

also transfeminine Dipper has just always made more sense. the big argument was that he uses a nickname instead of his birth name which he keeps a secret. and that would make sense if Dipper had a girl’s name, but Dipper’s birth name is “Mason”. so he actually is choosing to not use a male name and instead use something gender neutral, even though he really loves matching with his twin sister & having matching names is a family tradition — so he probably has a pretty big reason to not use it, considering he still doesn’t even with all the reasons he has to.

[leguink]

What's so interesting to me about Dipper is that he has no friends!

Okay, that's not necessarily true. dipper gets along very well with Soos, for example, and he's the twins' primary big brother figure for most of the show (we love u, soos!) dipper also grows very close to wendy, and in the end chooses to treasure their friendship more than he does any romantic feelings for her. he isn't lacking in terms of having important people in his life

but there's no one his age !

the closest we see to dipper having any sort of friend group is when he hangs out with wendy and his friends, which is obviously very telling of the fact that he wants to grow up, and he wants to grow up fast. consequently, he doesn't really want to be friends with them, per se, as much as he wants to impress them and prove that he's more than just a kid

(this is also contigent with his feelings for wendy, thematically speaking, but that's a conversation for another day)

along this train of thought is the fact that wendy's friends don't see him as a friend, either, simply because they are unequals out of age difference alone. this doesn't mean that they dislike him, in fact they're glad to have him around, but dipper's an accesory and not an actual member of the group, which is not necessarily a bad thing, simply that it's different

in general, the only person dipper interacts with in more or less an equal level is mabel, except her case is very different!

from her countless love interests, we see she has a very easy time interacting with people as early as tourist trapped, she is not shy ! she is not insecure ! she flirts, she giggles, she parties, you go mabel !

the most important element to this, i think, would be how in contrast to dipper, mabel manages to make a little friend group who share common interests and have similar personalities (candy and grenda)

this is not because dipper is somehow weirder and mabel the socially charming one. in fact, mabel doesn't enjoy a particularly popular reputation, and is thought of by pacifica as silly and childish during irrational treasure

from the very beginning, we see mabel and pacifica clash in a classic "weird vs mean" dynamic, with pacifica being someone who enjoys a favourable status in gravity falls (a little bit like a celebrity) and continuously antagonizes mabel, who hangs out with candy and grenda, consistently portrayed as weird and unpopular since their introduction during double dipper

regardless, mabel has no trouble making friends. she isn't a popular girl, but she is a social girl

you'd think that mabel, who has the wider support network, would be less dependant on dipper than dipper is on her

that's definitely the case in the valentine's day flashback shown in weirdmaggedon part 2, where mabel has a considerable amount of valentines, while dipper gets none and is mocked to the point of physically having to run out of class. he even hides his birthmark all the time because the kids made fun of him for it !

so it's very interesting that when we see the twins face the idea of permanent separation, it's mabel who doesn't want to leave dipper, not the other way around !

ps; pleeeeease send me asks about gravity falls i want to talk about this show so badly

[phone-kisser]

Going through tumblr is hurting me rn because like. Why do gravity falls fans choose to hate on everyone BUT the villains.

Stan didn't do SHIT. Ford didn't do SHIT. Dipper and Mabel didn't do SHIT‼️ I mean they OBVIOUSLY made pretty big mistakes but they each had REASONS?? They do NOT deserve this slander. They all made mistakes but they're not the BAD GUYS. You'll blame Ford or Mabel and yet you decide to SYMPATHIZE with BILL. Sure he's got a backstory but he is in NO way a good person(?). Like are we looking at the same geometric shape here. That motherfucker does not deserve sympathy

Stop blaming the Pines (except Filbrick) before I lose my shit!!!!!!

[crows-in-the-house]

Valentines Day with Ford hc

Summary: Hcs for spending valentines with Ford, no established relationship in this one

Pairing: Stanford Pines x reader

Tw: none

He's not really a valentines guy, it's an unnecesary tradition that produces lots of trash that will be forgotten in a week. He has seen more romantic holidays in his travels and doesn't really care of those most of the time.

But then he falls for you.

And suddenly it's all worth it.

He's rather unsure what to start with - should he give you flowers and ask you to be his Valentine? Should he ask you out first and do it after some time? Should he take you to a restaurant? Ask you as to speak, or as to write it on a note, or a tree? Maybe as fireworks? But that's kinda grand and attention inducing, would you prefer it to be quiet, in a more intimate way?? What if you say no??

There's lot's of overthinking, he cares about you, so he wants to make it right. Fortunately he has his grand niece to help!

Him and Mabel plan out everything (with his calculating brain you can bet it is actually everything) - an alien invasion in the middle of the date? Got it. Your heel breaking? Obviously he has superglue. Rain? He has an umbrella, matching warm sweaters and 100 facts about nature at your disposal. Nothing will go wrong.

Except that he will see you - looking pretty, at him, all being, like, just lovely you.

All his plans turn to mush immiediatelly.

He forgets if shaking hands is considered friendly in this dimension, if he should come closer, and that he's been staring at you, standing on your doorstep, waiting for him to say something

For 15 minutes

But that's fine, say hi and hug him

He will give you a bouquet of flowers - not obvious roses, but some that have a similar meaning. You will have to figure it out on your own tho - his face may be blushy but the mouth will be shut.

So, red tulips are a declaration of love, daisies - the joy he hopes to give you and carnations - fascination and love he feels towards you.

Then he will take you out on a picnic, to a museum, for a hike or to a restaurant - wherever you would like

He will treat you like a gentelman should (not that he doesn't every day) and try his best to stay collected while he's complementing you

He will even try to cook you something if you decide for a stay in home for the date! (better help him tho, he doesn't cook very well)

Will hold hands on the table as you two eat

Over all, it would be a very sweet day for you two

[ceaselesswatchersspecialboy]

Love the not who he seems au!

I've got some(a lot of?) questions if that's alright?

After Ford finally wakes up, you mentioned that Bill watches over the littler twins' dreams, does he do something similar with Stan? do they chat in the Mindscape or anything? does he avoid Stan?

what are(of there are?) the immediate consequences to the relationship between them now that Ford is awake?

Has 'Stanfraud' ever had any interactions with any Unicorn hair?

What would happen if Stanfraud/Bill ever got any on him? Would he have an allergic reaction? Or other ill reactions?

Have the time police ever given Stanfraud/Bill any trouble?

In the 30 years that Stan and Bill have known each other, have they ever saved each other's life? Or gotten protective/defensive for each other?

Alright that's all for now! Bye!

Lots of questions are always alright!

Let’s go through all these:

— He definitely does it with Stan too. He doesn’t really have any reason to avoid Stan, except Ford obviously being against it. But… he won’t tell if Stan won’t. He makes excuses as to why he’s visiting Stan’s dreams so much, which Stan doesn’t comment on, he’s just oddly grateful he’s still around. And bleeding into the next question: this all being said, a few old angers have risen to the surface, seeing how broken down his brother is again, knowing Bill’s behind it, so sometimes their conversations get a little tense and Bill does avoid him for a few days after. Or he doesn’t, and gets a little to pushy, lashing out at Stan.

It doesn’t help that Stan feels some guilt still speaking with Bill because of Ford, and because of how adamant his brother has been about Bill being a threat to them. But, it isn’t as easy as just telling him to go away. He knows for a fact Bill wouldn’t listen. The kids would be upset too. They don’t now the depths of all this stuff.

And, not an immediate consequence, but the new tension will eventually bubble into a very intense argument between Stan and Bill that’ll probably have consequences for everyone.

— You know, I hadn’t quite considered that, but I think so yes! He has negative reactions to anything that works as an ingredient in repellent against him. Unicorn hair, definitely more of an allergic reaction, akin to something like hay fever. But something like Mercury probably burns him.

— I have thought about their being an ‘episode’ where Bill’s rivalry with Time Baby comes up, thanks to Dipper and Mabel messing with time, but I’d need to think more about that to give a proper answer. I don’t think he and Stan have ever been given any trouble prior, being as they haven’t messed with time themselves. Bill might try and get a rise out of any time agents if he spots them though, like Blendin. Just for fun.

— They have absolutely saved each other’s lives and that’s a catalyst in their relationship becoming what it is. This is another thing I need to think more on, but being as Stan didn’t fake his death, unfortunately some of his past comes back to haunt him, with old friends putting two and two together with his fake identities. I’m not sure where that would go yet, but I know Bill would step in and rescue him. Naturally, he claims it’s because he needs Stan to get out of this body, but he isn’t really convincing when he says that. There’s also likely a situation where Bill has gotten himself in danger, and Stan rescues him, but I haven’t settled on that. There’s probably a few more minor instances of them saving each other too.

And yes! They do get protective/defensive over each other. On Stan’s end it’s strange. Initially, he was having to protect Ford’s body from Bill. Bill was the threat. But now, he sometimes finds himself actually protecting Bill… because he’s his friend. He’ll jump to his defence about his behaviours if someone comments on them harshly for example. He’s the only one allowed to give him shit for being weird. And with Bill, he’s gone from trying to rile Stan up, calling him useless, a failure of a brother, to getting riled up himself when someone tries to have a go at Stan instead.

If either got physically hurt, they’d also be protective. They genuinely have each other’s backs. Stan at least has the excuse he’s looking out for his brother’s body, making sure Bill doesn’t damage it any further, and can poke fun at Bill later for not having an excuse.

“Sure you don’t just give a shit about this old ‘bag of flesh’?”

“Oh, please. Don’t flatter yourself, Fez. Your heart could stop right now and I’d dance over your corpse.”

I realise they’re basically just in a constant game of chicken on who’s going to admit they care out loud first — while sober.

I hope these have been satisfactory! Sorry if there’s a lot of questions I’m still unsure on or figuring out the answers too. I’m developing this AU as I answer all these.

[praisetheaxolotl]

The Arsonist Theory, Part 3: Journey to the Vicious Spiral Nebula

Part 1: Mandibles!

Part 2: We Get It, The Billboard Was A Metaphor

I want to take a step back for a moment. Look at the bigger picture of Gravity Falls as a whole, and at the relationship between narrative foils that are the protagonists and antagonists of a story.

But first, just a recap: For anyone new, the Arsonist Theory proposes that Bill was not the sole person responsible for the destruction of his home dimension-- there was a third party, an accomplice that used him like he uses others now.

Once again:

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK OF BILL, INCLUDING SOLUTIONS TO CIPHERS

On we go!

Gravity Falls is, at its core, a story about cycles.

More specifically, it's a story about the vicious cycles that enable bad behavior- both personal spirals, and cyclical patterns of behavior in families.

We see this most obviously with the Stan twins, with both personal and familial cycles. In the personal side of things, Stan broke Ford's perpetual motion machine, resulting in his parents disowning him and Stan vowing that they were wrong and they'd see that one day, only for every attempt to prove them wrong about him to backfire and get him into even worse trouble, each failure further cementing his reputation more and more as a lying, dishonest criminal-- hey, where have I heard this one before?

On Ford's side, he erroneously trusted Bill and was consumed by both the portal and, once he realized he'd made it, his mistake itself. Even after Bill's death, he's terrified of him-- the mistake consumes him, eats him up inside. However, every time he attempts to subdue Bill on his own without confiding in his family the full story for fear of their judgement, it all ends up making everything worse. The incident with the portal and Stan? It was because he refused to tell Stan what exactly was going on, deciding to keep it all to himself out of guilt and lash out instead of admitting that he'd trusted the wrong person and that he was in grave danger-- hey, I might have heard this one before, too!

On the familial side of things, the Pines twins' parents don't exactly have the best relationship, as revealed in the Book Of Bill.

That fight must have been pretty bad to give Dipper, a kid who's survived the APOCALYPSE, nightmares. The Pines family has been shaped by familial dysfunction, and now it's been passed on-- the Stan twins' parents weren't exactly the healthiest parents, especially Filbrick. It's plain to see that that dysfunction was passed down from generation to generation, until it hit the Pines twins' parents as well.

And hell, Dipper and Mabel almost being broken apart as well-- not only because of Ford offering Dipper an apprenticeship without considering Mabel, mirroring how he sees Stan as dead weight, but also because of their parents fighting. Mabel didn't want to go home to that environment alone, and Dipper wanted to be far, far away from it. The Stan twins were broken apart by their father, and now the Pines twins will be broken apart by the Stans.

Except... that's not what happened, was it?

The Pines twins didn't let this break them apart. Dipper ended up prioritizing his sister and caring about her and her feelings, without just writing her off as deadweight the way Ford did to Stan. And eventually, the Stan twins also reconciled. They broke the cycle, as protagonists in a story with a happy ending tend to do.

Bill, as their antagonistic foil, would therefore be perpetuating cycles like this, instead of breaking them.

Then it stands to reason that, from a Doylist perspective, wouldn't it make sense for Bill to have been a victim of the same kind of manipulation and deceit that he now inflicts onto others?

In fact, we already have an example of Bill being hurt by someone, then going on to pass that same pain onto someone else:

Even though this is a silly example, we've been given canonical evidence that the way Bill deals with trauma is to take it out on someone else. And let's be real, Gravity Falls is rife with examples of something seemingly silly at first but ending up to hold emotional weight for the characters involved. Take in point Stan's attachment to Wax Stan.

So, we've established the cycles present in Gravity Falls and Bill's thematic role as the antagonist leading to him perpetuating instead of breaking cycles. So, what does that mean for this theory?

Bill and Ford are already presented as foils to each other- they're both outcast individuals with both a strange personality and a mutation that make them unpalatable to others, with a sordid home life, who eventually make a huge supernatural mistake with apocalyptic consequences. So, it's natural to wonder: what if their parallels extend even beyond this?

Ford initially blamed himself for being foolish enough to fall for Bill's tricks, placing the blame largely on himself. However, his family was there for him to pull him out of that way of thinking and help him move past it. Bill, in contrast, didn't have a family, ergo he had no one to pull him out of a similar rut. And we see multiple times throughout the Book of Bill and the Axolotl's poem that he does regret what happened to Euclidia, and his role in causing the massacre, so it's not out of the question to think that maybe, his thinking followed a line similar to Ford's. That there was someone that took advantage of Bill's desire to make everyone understand, and Bill blamed himself both for falling for it and for being ineffectual in stopping it.

Ford was at a standstill and approached by Bill, who was a genuine friend in a lifetime of loneliness and who presented himself as a friend, only to be used by him to create a portal that Bill was going to use for destruction-- perhaps Bill went through the same sequence, as victim instead of perpetrator?

Did you know that most perpetrators of abuse are themselves victims of abuse? They grow up without healing from their past traumas, and end up inflicting it onto others, thus continuing the cycle.

(Here's a fun fact- that's actually what my first theory ever was about, before this blog!)

Anyway, to me it's becoming clearer and clearer-- there's a glaringly obvious thematic parallel here that very neatly supports the idea of someone having used Bill in this manner in the past.

Oh, and by the way- on Time Baby's report on Bill, a translated cipher refers to him as the "Lone survivor of the Euclidian Massacre"

Lone survivor? If he'd acted alone, wouldn't it say "perpetrator?" If Time Baby knew enough to know what dimension he was a survivor of despite Bill himself never even speaking its name, then he should know enough to know the story of what happened. There's always the possibility that he didn't, but I saw fit to mention it.

In part four, everything is gonna be tied together as neatly as I can, with some present-day clues from Bill's actions that point to certain parts of his trauma being linked together that, on their own, seem a bit... reach-y, but with three posts of evidence backing them, they hold more water than that.

Part 4: Blame The Arson, Not The Fire

[bomber-grl]

If you're still doing the event, could you possibly write Prompt 4 for Dipper Pines?

Prompt #4: kiss to the side of the head

“WOAH, watch out!” Dipper helped hoist you up.

Despite Mabel being a bit of a snitch and admittedly nosey at times, you and Dipper luckily managed to have her promise not to rat the both of you out.

It was late, like one in the morning type of late and with Dipper being restless and wanting to see you, you headed over.

It was difficult having to be quiet in the middle of the night, especially with someone like grunkle stan.

Not to mention the danger, now where were we? Right you almost slipped and fell off the roof.

Luckily Dipper caught you in time and you both sat down next to one another under the night sky.

“Hey can you pass that over?” Dipper signaled to the bag of snacks you bought before heading over and you took a few snacks and passed them.

He wasn’t doing much of anything, neither were you. You guys were just a pair of friends hanging out.

Well, more like lovers, you’d recently got together but it was still awkward. Maybe you were getting up and over your head but you really wanted to do something…

With Dipper distracted with the book he had gotten to explain things to you and slowly began inching closer and closer to his head.

Suddenly his head snapped up “what are you doing? Need a better view?” Guess your plans failed for now…

-

“You sure they’re by here?” You asked while trying to keep up with Dipper.

“I’m sure of it, the mushrooms should be around here somewhere…” and off he went. He suddenly wanted to explore this weird mushroom thing that he deemed harmless and so here you were in the forest.

You suddenly made it into a small clearing where the light was seeping through the cracks of the trees, all this walking got you tired so you sat down on a log.

“We should be careful” a voice spoke up suddenly from behind you, then Dipper made himself visible “the gnomes aren’t exactly happy with me.” He said obviously referring to the Mabel incident and some other unfortunate run ins.

“Yup, keep an eye out for the gnomes, got it.” You sighed.

Dipper sat down beside you on the log. “Am I boring you?” His eyebrow quirked up. Despite the assumption a normal person would make, he obviously was amused rather than upset.

“Nope, just here” you motioned to your surroundings “- I guess” and shrugged. Dippers eyes crinkled and he turned away while letting out a laugh.

Maybe it was time? I mean if you didn’t Dipper definitely would never make the first move. You loved him but he’s no Romeo.

Slowly but surely wasn’t gonna cut it this time so you abruptly placed your hands on Dippers head and kissed him there.

After you stopped you just stared at him, and he did the same. Except for the fact that while you were flustered, he was that and bewildered.

What’s more? He let out a shout that was too loud for comfort. You got up from the log and went running.

The silence and prolonged eye contact was too much and so you ran for a bit and hid behind a tree.

Which didn’t seem like the best move since you soon heard what you could assume were the Gnomes Dipper mentioned and some bickering between Dipper and their leader before sounds of fighting became apparent .

You gripped a nearby broken off branch, so that when you’re done hyperventilating you’ll go help Dipper out.

[ckret2]

Hey, I've been off for a while so I don't know if anyone's asked you this before or not, but I need some help with writing and you're the only smart person I could think of right now... 😭

How can you come up with such great plot ideas?? Like, how can you just come up with a plan and go like "yeah that's gonna happen because he did this to do that." How tf do I even word that? Like, for example, when Bill escaped the mystery shack so Ford wouldn't oof him for good. Like you came up with such a complex yet amazing plan for how they could escape. WHY ARE YOU SO SMART GIVE ME YOUR BRAIN POWER. I had the thought that it took you a while, like maybe years to plan something like this. Idk for how long you were planning on starting this fic, but as someone who wants to start their own manga, and is also heavily inspired by bungo stray dogs, I need help cause I suck at writing. I'm only good for midly funny jokes and somewhat good art (but I have time to improve on that.) Also I'm sorry if this does not make sense 😭 idk how else to word it...

Honestly... the answer is "I come up with plots by spending a lot of time thinking about them" LMAO.

specifically for that plot arc? I sorta came up with it in three phases, a few months apart. Simplifying pages & pages worth of discord chats:

Phase 1 was "well OBVIOUSLY the humans initially want Bill dead right? And OBVIOUSLY Bill wants to escape right? So it would only make sense to have a plotline where they're ready to kill him and he has to escape. Either he can succeed by himself... or, maybe some of the humans change their minds and don't want him dead. That'd show some major character development. That might be cool for the end of the fic."

Phase 2 was "I have two ideas that would make for a REALLY cool dramatic ending of the fic, either Bill's escape or [BIG SECRET], which is cooler? Definitely [BIG SECRET], that's DRAMATIC, that's HUGE, that's GOING PLACES. But the character development from him escaping would be really big. How do I have both?

"Maybe have him escape early in the fic... And I can use Bill trying to escape as the inciting event to give him more freedom to hang out in town, which is a huge goal of mine that needs to happen as early in the fic as possible. But then I'd need to justify why he'd come back.

"Maybe Mabel helps him escape; and then finds out no one wants to hurt him anymore and pleas with him to come back; because them sparing him would be huge character development on their part, but BILL coming back because MABEL ASKED would be even BIGGER character development on his part. But I also want Ford to have a turning point here too. Maybe he also helps with the escape somehow? Maybe it's a SURPRISE that he helps, and that's why the situation has changed enough that Mabel asks Bill to come back. So he's coming back for both of them. Now I just need a reason for Ford to change his mind."

Phase 3 was "while plotting other plots I came up with the reason why Ford no longer immediately fears Bill might kill them all AND a reason why Ford might think Bill has a chance of changing for the better. Now I just need to make up the details of how Bill escapes, what he does while he's out, etc etc. shrinking flashlight, excuse for mabel to leave town, excuse for her to stop BEFORE she leaves town to set Bill free, where's Bill go that keeps him in the area, if his choice is between miserably camping or going back to the shack then there's no emotional impact if he chooses to go back when he knows it's safe, so what can I do to make leaving seem as appealing as possible to Bill so it hits harder when he stays solely for friendship..." this phase was the easiest part.

I didn't start plotting this fic at all until after I made this post. These three phases all happened from like late spring 2023 to I think fall/winter 2023. I don't remember when I plotted phase 3, except that it was AT LEAST before I started posting the locked bathroom plot—because I had Mabel win concert tickets and mentioned her using the size-changing flashlight specifically to set them up for the escape plot.

So, looking at the above? Here's my advice, with more examples from how I do my own ploting:

— Know your character goals, before everything else. "I want the characters to want Bill to stay alive." "(which means I want them to stop hating him AND stop fearing him AT LEAST enough that execution seems like a worse choice than captivity)." "I want Bill to decide he wants to stay near his new friends more than he wants to run off and do evil." "(If this is early in his character development, the power of friendship won't be enough to convince him to stay; so I also need to come up with some evil he can get up to without leaving town.)" "I want Bill to get more freedom to move around the town because half my ideas depend on it." "I want Bill to befriend Mabel." "I want Bill to hook up with Ford." "I want Bill to keep trying to get back into his body no matter what." Etc.

— Usually, you don't come up with plots by going "what would be cool?" and trying to pull ideas out of thin air. You come up with plots by going "what do I want my characters to go through emotionally?" (becoming friends, learning to feel remorse, trying to change forms, etc)

... and then going "well, what kind of thing would need to happen to make that happen?" (To become friends, the two characters need to do things together that make them like each other—which means I need to come up with events that would show each of them why the other's likable, and if need be I need to come up with an excuse to FORCE them to participate in that event together)

... and THEN going "so what physical circumstances do I need to engineer to make that happen?" (Mabel befriends Bill by trying to help him feel better. Why's he need to feel better? He hates his body. How is this hatred expressed (and it needs to be a way Mabel can do something about)? Maybe he'll give himself a shitty haircut. How can she help fix it, it could take years for him to regrow that hair? Well... let's make up a magical way to instantly regrow hair. What's silly enough?)

You take your character goal and then specifically craft something cool around it.

— if you DO happen to come up with a random cool event first... remember what your character goals are. And go, "how would this event serve those goals? What can I put in this event to push one of my other objectives forward?

— when you're working on one part of the story, you always remember what you wanna do in other parts of the story.

When I was plotting early events in the fic, I knew that before the escape plot Ford needed to stop fearing Bill would kill him—and I decided the only way that could happen would be if Bill saved Ford's life, with NO benefit to himself, at great personal risk, knowing it would make his own situation worse, for no reason except that Ford would continue to live—and that seed grew into the entirety of the eclipse arc.

When I had Ford make indirect contact with Bill's cult at the crystal shop and I asked myself what the payoff could be from that event, I also knew I'd need something to tempt Bill to leave town in the escape plot—so that became the cult's role in the fic.

When I needed something silly for Mabel to do in town to prevent her from coming home and finding Bill locked in the bathroom, I already knew I'd need a reason for her to leave town for a couple days to disguise Bill's escape—so I had her win concert tickets in Portland.

When I was writing Bill having his mini emotional breakdown in chapter 39, I already knew I'd be writing a series of flashbacks where Soos thinks over all the terrible things Bill's been through—so when I wrote Bill trying to avoid going outside during the eclipse, I wrote in Bill giving Soos info that would help protecting the townsfolk.

When I wrote the beach episode, I already knew that in future chapters I want Robbie to try to recruit Bill into his emo band, and I want Bill to develop a complex vicarious worship relationship with the local teens' ironic Bill cult—so I had the goth half of Wendy's friend group swing by to have a positive reaction to his pyramid bricks sunburn and let him try to present himself as a fellow goth kid.

When I wrote the summerween plot, I already knew Mr. What's-His-Face gets a plotline way later in the fic—so I used summerween as an excuse for the Trickster's and Mr. WHF's mutual friends to swing by and foreshadow Mr. WHF's eventual arrival.

Any time you have a gap in the story, you fill it by asking yourself, "Well, what's something I want to do later in the story that I haven't set up yet?" and stuff in something that pushes forward one of those goals.

Or, tl;dr: I come up with plots by spending a lot of time thinking about them.

[millenianthemums]

(about this AU)

thanks for asking! glad you like it! i definitely want to post about this idea more but for now here’s some answers

This version of Mabel is wayyy more chaotic, violent and mean than her canon self once she grows up. She’s like Bill if he bit people more often and loved ultra-bright neon cartoons. she’s also pretty spoiled. Bill and the Henchmaniacs all love her to bits and give her everything she ever wants all the time, except maybe responsible parenting and a safe, stable home environment, but she doesn’t consciously KNOW she wants that so she doesn’t mind.

She does have most of Bill’s powers! She kind of accrued them over time. At first Bill wanted to keep her fully human so the Pines would be sure to recognize her once he crosses paths with them, but it turns out raising a baby is a LOT OF WORK and very stressful, and of course Bill gets sick of it almost right away. so he was like “wouldn’t it be easier if she didn’t need to eat so often? and her sleeping all the time is just boring, i’ll get rid of that need too. oh geez she scraped her knee and she’s crying, that sucks, don’t worry sweetie now you can’t feel pain anymore. and no fucking way am i taking her to a DOCTOR, i’ll just make it so she can’t ever get sick or die. and while i’m at it why don’t i let her float around like me? and laser eyes is a given obviously. oh you want cat ears and a tail? haha sure thing pumpkin anything for you.” and so on and so forth.

and eventually he and the others don’t even really need to do anything for her except play and have fun. with the consequence that her growth is SUPER stunted because she grew up with really poor nutrition and her immune system is crap because she’s only ever been sick like twice. if Bill ever lost his powers in this AU, it wouldn’t end well for her :(

as for her relationships with everybody, Bill is obviously Ultimate Fun Dad, because he makes the others do all the tough parts of parenting so he can come in and do the fun stuff when that’s all done with. Hectorgon specifically gets the role of The Bad Guy foisted on him when somebody has to make Mabel do something she doesn’t like, because “You’re the lawyer, pal! Negotiate!” so she’s sometimes a little resentful of him. Pyronica is her super cool and fun big sis who helps her do arson, and she really looks up to her and thinks she’s the most fashionable person ever. 8 Ball is the Safety Dad who actually knows how to properly care for kids, surprisingly, and she turns to him for comfort a lot. Kryptos reads her bedtime stories and she likes that. Amorphous Shape is the one who bothers to try and teach her math and stuff, which Mabel finds annoying but puts up with because she thinks she’s really cool. Teeth chews up her stuff, so he’s not allowed in her room, but she still has a soft spot for him. she has one Eye Bat that she keeps as a personal pet and gives cute accessories. Pacifire plays toys with her and traps anyone who threatens her in an eternal hell dimension. Xanthar lets her bedazzle its nails. etc.

i definitely want to draw more of this AU soon, because it’s very fun. thanks for the interest!