primreaperstuff

[primreaperstuff]

^Me right now lol

Really, this was amazing!!! Gonna go update the original post.

Jessie did the portals!

Trying to figure out what's under the Jhesselbraum crossed out text in the Book of Bill

Dunno if anybody's done this before but I figured I'd give it a shot. This is the original image.

I first went and found the font used for this. I think it's DIN Condensed Bold. This font unfortunately costs money to get onto your computer, but it is included with Adobe Suite software so if you have Photoshop or are silly like me and used Illustrator, you can access it (I know Illustrator isn't great for this stuff but I generally use GIMP and didn't feel like installing Photoshop for this one thing).

And this is the image with the letters I can figure out.

If I got this right, there are a couple of things in here that are huge.

Bill thinks (or at least thought) very highly of Jhess. He describes her as the smartest Henchmaniac. Depending on how you interpret that comment about the eyes, he either let her into the group despite not liking how many eyes she has or has sour grapes about her leaving.

Jhess did a ton of the heavy lifting for the portal project. Bill is often presumed to simply have the multiversal know-how for a lot of the physics and stuff behind the portal, but this implies that Jhess was actually the first one to figure much of this stuff out and Bill went off of what she told him.

I also want to draw your attention to a tiny detail I noticed in the name Bill gives her. It's so small that it might just be me just seeing a pattern where none exists, but I thought it worth mentioning anyway.

My first thought was, obviously, that the name given was "JESS." The first two letters are clearly J and E and the character is called Jheselbraum so that would track. But then I noticed this tiny squarish region that does not line up with how the red pen's stroke normally tapers off and is slightly whiter than the pen. It is exactly where another letter would be... and it does not line up with DIN's capital S! The capital letters in DIN that it lines up with are B, D, E, F, H, I, L, M, N, P, R, and T. The name looks like it cannot exceed 5 characters given the position of the pen stroke.

In terms of plausible names in there, these are the options:

Jeb

Jed/Jedi

Jet/Jett/Jete

Jeff

Jerry

Jerk (lol)

Jelly

Jem

Jen/Jenn

The majority of the plausible names, as you can tell, are either masculine or ungendered. Which makes me wonder-- is Jheselbraum the Unswerving trans??

Because that implies a lot. For one, I have to question why Bill is deadnaming her in that case. Is it to be hurtful or did he just legitimately never figure it out? She went on the run from him so it's likely she never updated him on her live-name. (And I mean, let's face it, "Jheselbraum" is not that far off from some of the live-names trans people choose for themselves. You guys are reviving antiquated names one transition at a time. \pos)

He also speaks rather admiringly of her, which would be odd if he was trying to insult her with her deadname, so I think it's really highlighting how little Bill actually knows-- and might underlie the real reason he crossed it out. He literally just found out she transitioned and he doesn't even know her live-name. Really undermines the whole "unlimited being with knowledge and answers" thing he claims about himself.

It would also explain what drew her to Bill in the first place. Bill already believes in 14 million genders, and he was offering to smash all the norms and rules. What have norms and rules ever done for the trans community? Seldom anything good is my impression.

Hell, maybe she wound up doing her own sex change surgery, because nobody else would do it for her, and that's why she has the skills to install a metal plate in Ford's head. (Pure speculation of course)

Or maybe I'm just overthinking a print error or false pattern or something! Who knows?

Anyway, I thought this was interesting enough to share. Not important my tailbone lol.

[primreaperstuff]

Day 127

What if Stan never had a mullet?

Submitted by @charkyzombicorn

[primreaperstuff]

Hey. I am absolutly loving that you are still reading and commenting on my story btw. Ive been rereading it along with you (though a couple of chapters infront) and your comments have been making me find enthusiasm in what Icm writing again (these last few weeks have gotten a bit lost)

I wondered if I could ask a huge favour as you're still reading.

Theres a tone change coming up in the next couple of chapters - you'll know it when you get to it, theres the words Part 2 at the top of the chapter. I was wondering if you thought I should leave it like that or split the next section out in a seperate part like the prologue was. (Obviously I'm not expecting or hoping for an answer until you actually read that part)

Icm partly asking as I'm approaching a part three break and I would do the same to that if I split it for two.

Its not important, and I hope nothing about this message spoilt anything upcoming. Just thought it was worth an ask

Thanks again for reading and commenting ♥️

I'm really happy to hear that my comments are helping you so much. That's basically what I'm fighting my social anxiety for. <3 <3 <3

When I get to that part, I'll let you know my thoughts, although I would want to know your intentions with the story.

Generally speaking, when it comes to organizing stories, you tend to get what I call the "Metroid problem." Forgive me for the ramble that's about to happen but I promise it has a relevant point. Basically Metroid is a franchise from the 80s which had its origins in combining the two most popular genres of video games at the time-- puzzle games and platformers. This is something that the 2D games have generally stuck to. Although the genres were wildly popular, proportionally speaking there wasn't a whole lot of overlap between the two. Metroid was supposed to marry both genres in order to capture both markets. And in terms of game quality, it does that really well for the most part. Yet it's always been sort of relegated to the sidelines compared to other Nintendo franchises. 2D Metroids, while fantastic and profitable in their own right, haven't really ever been "killer apps" that top sales charts and there's regular lulls in interest between titles. The thing Metroid is most known for-- having a female player character at a time when player characters simply weren't female-- has utterly nothing to do with its genre.

The reason? Well, let's go back to the audiences of the two genres the games are marrying. There was an assumption that, since the elements of platformers and puzzle games are presented together, Metroid would appeal to all fans of platformers and all fans of puzzle games, since they would both see something they liked in it. In reality, though, it only appealed to people who were fans of both platformers and puzzle games. People who only liked one of the genres would generally lose interest once they realized it also belonged to a genre they didn't like or have any interest in. The thing that was supposed to guarantee that Metroid was a smash hit-- integration of two of the most popular genres in the 80s-- is in fact the thing that ultimately prevents it from leaving the B leagues of Nintendo franchises.

And how does this relate to what you're doing? Again, there's the tonal shift you mentioned. With fanfiction, the biggest genre is smut (which isn't what you're trying to do here lol), but the genres with the second-biggest audiences are angst/whump and fluff. You can of course have fans of both, but the overlap between the two is proportionally small. In fact, the thing that makes a work appealing to fans of angst/whump often makes a work unappealing to fluff fans, and vice versa-- they are complete opposites from a tonal standpoint. A work that marries both genres, even if it does so exceptionally well and even if it is popular in its own right, will simply never get the same kind of engagement or popularity as a work which only belongs to one of them.

So if I were you, I'd ask what I really want to see from this story. Do you want more engagement (This isn't a bad thing, btw! It's not wrong to want more people to see your work!)? Then I strongly recommend splitting the story by major tonal shifts. More people will view smaller component stories than one big story with everything combined, and they will see the component stories as more accessible and interesting. Or do you want to emphasize the cohesion of the story and really blend the genres? In that case, you probably are better off keeping the story intact as one big story rather than splitting it up.

It's all about what you want to do and where you want the story to go, in the end.

(The story in question, for people who want to know what we're talking about [it's really good!]: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51582475)

[primreaperstuff]

Wrote a fanfic based loosely on the idea of Sev'ral Timez being some non-failed variant of Techrot.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/65902882/chapters/169771777

Being in the Gravity Falls and Warframe fandom is so funny rn because they're so tonally different and yet... they now both have clone boy bands run by greedy bastards and the latter just strongly hinted at some kind of failed situationship between the Man in the Wall and either the Infestation or Albrecht Entrati or both (in the form of a "breakup song" from a boy band no less).

Like, if I had a nickel for every time in 2024 that an egotistical, overly ambitious scientist with non-existent social skills, a deeply dysfunctional but ultimately loving family, and a queer relationship with his traumatized assistant got into a disastrous situationship with a deific eldritch abomination who makes deals and warps reality but needs human tech to get his goals accomplished... I'd have two nickels but it sure is weird it happened twice!

(I have utterly no basis for this but I also like the idea of Ballas and Erra getting Theraprism'd. And Margulis works at the Theraprism in her afterlife-- she's the most competent therapist there, actually. But she refuses to work with Ballas and it kills him inside because, like, she fucking works with ERRA THE FUCKING TRAITOR SENTIENT and not HIM! Erra's spine is fucking jello how can she prefer him to a real dedicated manly man leader like Ballas.

She still misses Ballas, of course, but her aim is getting better.)

[primreaperstuff]

My Gravity Falls Warframe Headcanons

Thinking more about my other post where I drew comparisons between Wally and Bill, I decided to come up with how the cast of Gravity Falls would play the game Warframe! (It's a free-to-play-but-not-fee-to-pay looter shooter for PC and consoles. You kill everything and understand the concept of love lol). Spoilers for the Second Dream, the Sacrifice-- pretty much everything lol.

In this world, "H16h V0l7463" (actually a team of people headed by Amir Beckett) is the developer of Warframe, which is absolutely not based off of an alternate timeline where the cloning project that resulted in several boy bands, including Sev'ral Timez, accidentally produced eldritch horrors. That would be Totally Weird™️!

Soos's screen name is ShackFan2000 (mastery rank 30, legendary rank 5). He's been playing the game since it was in closed beta, and currently maintains a cross-save on the PC and Switch (his screen name on Switch used to be ShackFan2000butigotaswitchdude). He remembers when the game had raids and a dash meter, when pets could die, and can recount the Great Octavia Grind like it was yesterday. He mains Oberon Prime, who he is convinced will rise again someday, but also loves playing as Loki Prime and Volt Prime. His fashion-frame skills aren't great-- he tends to overdo it with colors and attachments. He likes going into relays and randomly gifting newbies boosters and Orokin Reactors/Catalysts. He will also sometimes find players grinding for a specific frame and buy it for them. He runs the clan "RAD DAWG CENTRAL" which also includes Melody, Wendy, Ford, Dipper, and Mabel.

In recent years, Soos got his wife Melody into the game too, so they regularly play it together on audio chat. Her screen name is MeatCuteBentoPanda, she has a mastery rank of 3, and she mains Mag. She's asked him not to buy her frames, since she wants to earn them herself, but did reluctantly accept a gift of Equinox from him. She doesn't usually change her frames' appearance.

Soos tried to get Stan into the game when it went public, but Stan (screen name "KingNJ1967") doesn't really get it. He can loot and even shoot things in real life, and it's not really that fun, so why put it in a game? He never got past the tutorial mission on his own account and has a mastery rank of 1. But Stan does watch Soos play and sometimes designs Soos's Warframes-- you can tell a Stanframe apart from a Soosframe by its extensive use of golds and reds, insistence on using the Kiteer ephemera, as well as a better grasp of color theory overall. He also adores the Drifter, shouting some variant of "He's basically me! In a way!" whenever the Drifter shows up. Absolutely did not ever get into a Gravity Falls weirdness situation where he met the Drifter in Duviri and played Komi with them while chatting about family and sacrifices with them, no siree. ;)

Soos had better luck with Ford (screen name: "6Shooter"), although it took several years and an overhauled gameplay system for Ford to really get into it. His mastery rank is 16. He mains Revenant Prime and enjoys min-maxing everything, keeping up to date with all the latest meta builds and weapons and blathering about his stats to anybody who will listen. His secret shames are that his actual favorite frame is Limbo and he loves to use the Stug. He recalls a couple of dimensions that reminded him of the game's universe, and even one where everybody had a Narmer veil on (he didn't even realize it was sinister since all the anti-Bill stuff he was packing at the time made him basically immune to the veils' effects-- he nicknamed it the Tacky Headpiece Dimension and was promptly driven out by that dimension's Ballas for that). He colors all his frames either black or white. He vehemently hates the Perrin Sequence, as its logo is a triangle and he interpreted that as Bill worship. If you enter with a yellow sigil from the Perrin Sequence, he will find you and make you endure Host Navigation. He also thinks Loid is cute.

Wendy (screen name: "maglet00816") is a casual player. Her mastery rank is 10. Although she called herself a Maglet, she can usually be found fishing or mining as Ivara. She's not in a rush to finish the story, and likes chilling in blue/purple Fortuna too much to start the New War questline.

Mabel (screen name: "GLITTERPIG618!!!") got into the game independently of Soos several years after the events of the show, and she got Dipper into it too. Her mastery rank is 18. She mains Garuda, but also loves to rotate between Valkyr, Khora, and Voruna. She was despondent for a few days when she accidentally killed her Kubrow Waddles and now only runs with Sentinels (even though the whole affection/health mechanic thing has since been patched out). She gives Soos a run for his money in terms of garish Warframes with way too many attachments, and poses them frequently. She loved that dating sim thing with the Hex and has seduced all of them. She has a crush on Aoi Morohoshi and Albrecht Entrati, and writes fluff shipping Ordis with Cy as well as unhinged toxic yaoi between Nef Anyo and Parvos Granum.

Dipper (screen name: "number1mysterysolver") started playing some time after Mabel got into the game. He primarily plays on Xbox, but maintains a cross-save on PC too. His mastery rank is 15. He mains Excalibur, but has grown to appreciate Citrine, Volt, and Xaku. Sometimes goes on Solo missions on Pluto as Gauss just to bonk into All of the Walls. Vehemently denies finding Citrine, Yareli, and Wisp cute. He currently maintains a conspiracy board on Warframe lore and writes about his theories and speculations for the game. He claims not to care about appearances but his Warframes are always decked out in nice-looking, professional gear. He is online friends with Pacifica and plays with her and Mabel a lot, but neither Pacifica nor Dipper realizes that the other plays the game nor will they confess it to each other. Mabel has figured it out and wants to see how long it'll take for the shoe to drop for these two. He has a Kuva Lich working on his Railjack named Bopp Bipp.

Pacifica (screen name: "sodwlqxpsdc-caeser") has been playing since the game was made available to the public. Her mastery rank is 29. She hid her enjoyment of the game from her parents and the public for years. Now if her parents ask, she's only in it for the fashion frames and opportunity to flex her expensive gear on broke Tenno. In reality, though her Warframes are always well-designed, she loves the story for its themes of redemption and love conquering the odds. She used to main Loki, but nowadays prefers Gara and Cyte-09. Her knowledge of the meta rivals Ford's. She is one of the few players to regularly go into the Conclave.

Old Man McGucket found out about the game and had to be stopped before he made a functional replica of Chroma Prime out of scrap metal for a State of the Union speech. Once randomly mentioned that Dominus Thrax still owes him money and walked away, never elaborating and having forgotten that he said it shortly after.

Robbie (screen name: "bloodSKULLviolence") used to play Warframe occasionally. Then he got the Hex missions started and his father Greg Valentino laughed, cheerfully revealing that he offered to produce music for On-lyne a long time ago but was turned down, and saying that the game is proof that they missed out on so much fun by not picking him for a music producer (He wonders if he'd have been more successful if he'd called himself "Gregory V" rather than "Greggy V"). Robbie put down the controller, turned off his Playstation, and never played Warframe again. He got to mastery rank 13 before he quit and used to main Ash.

[primreaperstuff]

Trying to figure out what's under the Jhesselbraum crossed out text in the Book of Bill

Dunno if anybody's done this before but I figured I'd give it a shot. This is the original image.

I first went and found the font used for this. I think it's DIN Condensed Bold. This font unfortunately costs money to get onto your computer, but it is included with Adobe Suite software so if you have Photoshop or are silly like me and used Illustrator, you can access it (I know Illustrator isn't great for this stuff but I generally use GIMP and didn't feel like installing Photoshop for this one thing).

And this is the image with the letters I can figure out.

If I got this right, there are a couple of things in here that are huge.

Bill thinks (or at least thought) very highly of Jhess. He describes her as the smartest Henchmaniac. Depending on how you interpret that comment about the eyes, he either let her into the group despite not liking how many eyes she has or has sour grapes about her leaving.

Jhess did a ton of the heavy lifting for the portal project. Bill is often presumed to simply have the multiversal know-how for a lot of the physics and stuff behind the portal, but this implies that Jhess was actually the first one to figure much of this stuff out and Bill went off of what she told him.

I also want to draw your attention to a tiny detail I noticed in the name Bill gives her. It's so small that it might just be me just seeing a pattern where none exists, but I thought it worth mentioning anyway.

My first thought was, obviously, that the name given was "JESS." The first two letters are clearly J and E and the character is called Jheselbraum so that would track. But then I noticed this tiny squarish region that does not line up with how the red pen's stroke normally tapers off and is slightly whiter than the pen. It is exactly where another letter would be... and it does not line up with DIN's capital S! The capital letters in DIN that it lines up with are B, D, E, F, H, I, L, M, N, P, R, and T. The name looks like it cannot exceed 5 characters given the position of the pen stroke.

In terms of plausible names in there, these are the options:

Jeb

Jed/Jedi

Jet/Jett/Jete

Jeff

Jerry

Jerk (lol)

Jelly

Jem

Jen/Jenn

The majority of the plausible names, as you can tell, are either masculine or ungendered. Which makes me wonder-- is Jheselbraum the Unswerving trans??

Because that implies a lot. For one, I have to question why Bill is deadnaming her in that case. Is it to be hurtful or did he just legitimately never figure it out? She went on the run from him so it's likely she never updated him on her live-name. (And I mean, let's face it, "Jheselbraum" is not that far off from some of the live-names trans people choose for themselves. You guys are reviving antiquated names one transition at a time. \pos)

He also speaks rather admiringly of her, which would be odd if he was trying to insult her with her deadname, so I think it's really highlighting how little Bill actually knows-- and might underlie the real reason he crossed it out. He literally just found out she transitioned and he doesn't even know her live-name. Really undermines the whole "unlimited being with knowledge and answers" thing he claims about himself.

It would also explain what drew her to Bill in the first place. Bill already believes in 14 million genders, and he was offering to smash all the norms and rules. What have norms and rules ever done for the trans community? Seldom anything good is my impression.

Hell, maybe she wound up doing her own sex change surgery, because nobody else would do it for her, and that's why she has the skills to install a metal plate in Ford's head. (Pure speculation of course)

Or maybe I'm just overthinking a print error or false pattern or something! Who knows?

Anyway, I thought this was interesting enough to share. Not important my tailbone lol.

[primreaperstuff]

Being in the Gravity Falls and Warframe fandom is so funny rn because they're so tonally different and yet... they now both have clone boy bands run by greedy bastards and the latter just strongly hinted at some kind of failed situationship between the Man in the Wall and either the Infestation or Albrecht Entrati or both (in the form of a "breakup song" from a boy band no less).

Like, if I had a nickel for every time in 2024 that an egotistical, overly ambitious scientist with non-existent social skills, a deeply dysfunctional but ultimately loving family, and a queer relationship with his traumatized assistant got into a disastrous situationship with a deific eldritch abomination who makes deals and warps reality but needs human tech to get his goals accomplished... I'd have two nickels but it sure is weird it happened twice!

(I have utterly no basis for this but I also like the idea of Ballas and Erra getting Theraprism'd. And Margulis works at the Theraprism in her afterlife-- she's the most competent therapist there, actually. But she refuses to work with Ballas and it kills him inside because, like, she fucking works with ERRA THE FUCKING TRAITOR SENTIENT and not HIM! Erra's spine is fucking jello how can she prefer him to a real dedicated manly man leader like Ballas.

She still misses Ballas, of course, but her aim is getting better.)

[primreaperstuff]

no, we can't just buy a coffee roaster, do you have any idea how much those things cost

[primreaperstuff]

The drifting questions au has still been drifting around in my head, so

What if when Soos and Ford eventually get back to their home dimension, Ford just grips Stan's shoulder and is like, "Stan, if you don't sign the adoption papers, I WILL."

Oh my gosh I love that!!

Soos is gonna get that Pines surname one way or another :D His eyes would be sparkling with joy and Stan couldn't say no to that.

[primreaperstuff]

I had a dream once where the end of the world happened thanks to some kind of magic volcano BS that resulted in people with the right tech and skills being able to create an infinite amount of dimensions. So the civilization that cropped up afterwards had subscription services but for governments. If you could afford a bunch of millions or something currency per month government (they called it "platinum silver gold" or something like a fucking credit card), you got to live in a dimension with a sweet mansions, lots of parties, a huge garden, and the government would ensure you were provided with the most loyal servants (more like slaves, more on that later), the best healthcare, the best quality food, etc. (Apparently rich people particularly liked "rose cocktails" which were bright pink, bubbly, and smelled like roses). If you couldn't afford more than a 10000 currency per month government, you got to live in a dimension with lots of studio apartments and a mediocre standard of living. Alternatively, there were dimensions where you were only offered "minimal necessities" (defined as healthcare, "nutritional substitutes," and protection from the stuff described in the paragraph below) and had to build everything else yourself.

If you couldn't pay at all and were older than 2 years old (which now made you legally an adult or something? IDK, they had a chart for all the age limits for stuff), or stopped paying (the more expensive dimensions often offered leniency programs for people who couldn't pay, whereas the cheaper ones tended to just drop you like a rock), you were regarded as an outlaw in any dimension you occupied and thus basically open season for anybody to capture you and "induct" you for service. Technically it was supposed to be a choice, but in practice the "hunters" have literal brainwashing magic and can fuck you up several ways to Sunday. So really the only choices you have are "agree to be a servant," "be tortured until you agree to be a servant," or "be magically transformed into somebody who would agree to be a servant." Some governments had systems where prisoners and corpses would be legally inducted into service (don't know how they got corpses to work though!).

According to the dream, I'd slept through all this shit Kirby style, and woke up covered in flowers in one of the expensive dimensions. Some creepy lady and her weirdass bishonen boyfriend/brother/??? (the relationship was never really clear to me. Despite looking like a teen and initially claiming to be that to me, the guy was at minimum in his 50s) from the upper tiers found me and used their money to buy my way out of being an outlaw so I wouldn't be classed as a servant. Turns out that rich people just hire people every now and then as a status thing-- you don't pay any subscription money on servants, so being able to pay somebody to work for you meant that you were uber rich. But they did have a legitimate problem with monsters that had started growing in the gaps between dimensions then invading, and they said if I didn't help them hunt monsters in the gaps they wouldn't pay my subscription fees. In practice that meant I did all the hard stuff while they laughed at the monsters' pain and gallivanted about. Fortunately the monsters were kind of pathetic. They often didn't really aim at me and even when they did, they relied on magic and magic would literally go through me (a unique trait, apparently). So I just threw stuff at them until they melted into goo.

Anyway, it turned out that the creepy lady had a sister who was a super powerful wizard lady. The sister found out that paying members of society were being inducted as servants and it kicked off a whole journey where she came to realize everything that was wrong with her society. She resolved to cause a grand dimensional merger to end the magic volcano system. But the creepy lady responded by trying to induct the sister into service, which caused said sister to have a psychotic breakdown because she was partially immune to brainwashing magic. The sister was p i s s e d about all this and the moment she got her sanity back, she started making monsters to get revenge on creepy lady and weirdass boyfriend/brother/???. A lot of servants saw this and started turning themselves into monsters as an act of rebellion. But the sister was actually super sweet despite being filled with righteous fury. She was very dedicated to making sure only the people responsible for her failed induction felt her wrath. She refused to attack me at all, saying that she'd actually brought me here because she couldn't trust anybody from her own world and that she was sorry she didn't do more to protect me. Also she was depressed because she realized that her original plan was more catastrophic than helpful, and that some of her monsters were sentient while others weren't her monsters at all and didn't share her dedication to justice. She didn't know what to do.

I told her that was really rough, but I have absolute zero idea what to do here and don't want to give uninformed advice that would possibly kill people or make things worse. She laughed sadly and said that's what she got for not being picky about which human she chose. But I added that she's not a bad person and her willingness to admit where she was wrong even when it was tough proved she was capable of doing good for her world. If she could trust me despite me killing monsters, she could trust herself too. I guess that's what she needed to hear because she smiled and looked a lot happier, but then I saw creepy lady and weirdass boyfriend/brother/??? tsking at me and abruptly woke up.

I still think about that dream a lot. Like logically I know it's just something my head cooked up but damn... it cooked hard.

[primreaperstuff]

"He brought a senile hillbilly in for one class and I think it was the only time we ever actually learned anything about physics. 5/5"

"He's very easily distracted. One time a kid happened to have some Dungeons Dungeons and More Dungeons stuff on hand and he stopped the class to play it. 5/5"

"I keep trying to get him to say 'I want pictures of Spiderman' and he won't do it 2/5"

"His understanding of quantum mechanics is impressive, but I told him I can't read cursive and he insisted that that was impossible because everybody learns it in elementary school. 5/5"

"Once spent a whole class giving dating advice when dealing with the occult. I was worried that he was being a creep but quickly realized that he was genuinely concerned for our safety. Weird thing to talk about in a physics class though. 5/5"

"I'd recently broken up with my ex but he was stalking me. Dr. Pines caught him waiting outside the classroom and dropped everything to escort my ex outside and have a chat about boundaries and respect. Don't know what he said, but I haven't seen my ex since! Thanks Dr. Pines! 5/5"

Hc that Ford gets a job at a local community college as a physics prof after he and Stan are done sailing around the world and fulfills his destiny as the eccentric professor he was always meant to be

And he quickly gains a reputation amongst the stem students as That Professor

I bet his ratemyprof reviews would be insane:

“He didn’t grade any of our homework until the end of the semester, but he brought something called a ‘plaidypus’ to class and let us pet it. Her name was Dorothy. 5/5”

“He constantly ranted about how ‘triangles are the most untrustworthy shape’ whatever that means. Also he doesn’t know how to use the internet. I hated his class. 5/5”

And many more iterations of “this guy is terrible. 5 stars”

[primreaperstuff]

Trying to figure out what's under the Jhesselbraum crossed out text in the Book of Bill

EDIT: Somebody figured it out! Thank you @kitcatia (and @angst-estefany for helping them out)!!! This makes a lot of what's in the post outdated or wrong here but I'll keep it for archival purposes. :D

Dunno if anybody's done this before but I figured I'd give it a shot. This is the original image.

I first went and found the font used for this. I think it's DIN Condensed Bold. This font unfortunately costs money to get onto your computer, but it is included with Adobe Suite software so if you have Photoshop or are silly like me and used Illustrator, you can access it (I know Illustrator isn't great for this stuff but I generally use GIMP and didn't feel like installing Photoshop for this one thing).

And this is the image with the letters I can figure out.

If I got this right, there are a couple of things in here that are huge.

Bill thinks (or at least thought) very highly of Jhess. He describes her as the smartest Henchmaniac. Depending on how you interpret that comment about the eyes, he either let her into the group despite not liking how many eyes she has or has sour grapes about her leaving.

Jhess did a ton of the heavy lifting for the portal project. Bill is often presumed to simply have the multiversal know-how for a lot of the physics and stuff behind the portal, but this implies that Jhess was actually the first one to figure much of this stuff out and Bill went off of what she told him.

I also want to draw your attention to a tiny detail I noticed in the name Bill gives her. It's so small that it might just be me just seeing a pattern where none exists, but I thought it worth mentioning anyway.

My first thought was, obviously, that the name given was "JESS." The first two letters are clearly J and E and the character is called Jheselbraum so that would track. But then I noticed this tiny squarish region that does not line up with how the red pen's stroke normally tapers off and is slightly whiter than the pen. It is exactly where another letter would be... and it does not line up with DIN's capital S! The capital letters in DIN that it lines up with are B, D, E, F, H, I, L, M, N, P, R, and T. The name looks like it cannot exceed 5 characters given the position of the pen stroke.

In terms of plausible names in there, these are the options:

Jeb

Jed/Jedi

Jet/Jett/Jete

Jeff

Jerry

Jerk (lol)

Jelly

Jem

Jen/Jenn

The majority of the plausible names, as you can tell, are either masculine or ungendered. Which makes me wonder-- is Jheselbraum the Unswerving trans??

Because that implies a lot. For one, I have to question why Bill is deadnaming her in that case. Is it to be hurtful or did he just legitimately never figure it out? She went on the run from him so it's likely she never updated him on her live-name. (And I mean, let's face it, "Jheselbraum" is not that far off from some of the live-names trans people choose for themselves. You guys are reviving antiquated names one transition at a time. \pos)

He also speaks rather admiringly of her, which would be odd if he was trying to insult her with her deadname, so I think it's really highlighting how little Bill actually knows-- and might underlie the real reason he crossed it out. He literally just found out she transitioned and he doesn't even know her live-name. Really undermines the whole "unlimited being with knowledge and answers" thing he claims about himself.

It would also explain what drew her to Bill in the first place. Bill already believes in 14 million genders, and he was offering to smash all the norms and rules. What have norms and rules ever done for the trans community? Seldom anything good is my impression.

Hell, maybe she wound up doing her own sex change surgery, because nobody else would do it for her, and that's why she has the skills to install a metal plate in Ford's head. (Pure speculation of course)

Or maybe I'm just overthinking a print error or false pattern or something! Who knows?

Anyway, I thought this was interesting enough to share. Not important my tailbone lol.

[primreaperstuff]

They do indeed become better people here and help each other feel better! An idea I just thought of would be Manly Dan being a fairy too. He goes up to Dipper to ask "for a friend" how he got himself to normal size. It's eye-opening for Dipper because Manly Dan is like if Gigachad memes were a person, so what does it say when even Manly Dan doesn't see himself as sufficiently masculine?

And yeah, the poor guys. They learn to accommodate but it is very tough. Soos struggles the most at first because of how he sees past all people's selfishness and mean remarks anyway, meaning that he doesn't notice straight away that anything's changed except that people are rejecting him, like, a lot. Once he realizes its a demon effect and not something he's actively doing wrong, he's able to get a better handle on it. He just has to think a bit before he dives into things.

And yeah, there are plenty of silver linings. Flying is fun for Dipper, as is magic (once he gets past his dark warlock phase-- Journal 2 is not a great influence on him at first!). Mabel does love and name her snakes, even if they frustrate her often (Rubber boas are already very good-natured noodles, but here they take after Mabel's cuddliness and kindness too). Wendy can pretty much make herself into the ultimate party destination/relaxation spot/therapy clinic for herself and her friends, and she later figures out how to encourage trees to grow which helps her family's lumberjacking business a lot. Soos's powers have the potential to help people find healthy ways to assess and not act on their temptations (since sin-fluence is just a hard nudge in the wrong direction. It doesn't create new thoughts or impulses, just amplifies ones that already exist, and can be resisted actively and passively). Stan finds that people don't immediately try to hurt him when he acts like he cares about them and it's nice. Gideon finds he's a lot happier without his dad around all the time (I hc that Bud Gleeful is abusive, and Gideon patterned his treatment of Mabel and her family on Bud's treatment of his wife and her family.), and from that realization starts to dismantle the toxicity driving his bratty behavior. And so on.

And yeah, Ford is in for a shock! He does manage to kill his Bill at least (the portal opening was delayed by the facts that Gideon isn't arrested and that Stan tried to keep working on it himself many times despite being confined to mirrors before calling in Soos for help). Ford panics for 5 seconds because he thinks Bill started Weirdmageddon already before getting his bearings and remembering that he already killed Bill. Then he tries to cure everybody and winds up turning himself into a gnome, a monster which is not taken seriously by the world at large and wholly reliant on others to accomplish anything of note. He's not impressed and it forces him to confront his emotional dependence on being respected/praised as well as his notions of being the lone hero.

Idea: Monster Falls but evil (by which I mean the nature of the curse, not the characters) (longpost)

So I was looking at Monster Falls stuff and thinking, "Hey, these characters keep ending up being cool." Like, it's not as if Dipper would be especially happy to be half deer but a cervitaur is cool, aligns with who Dipper wants to be well enough, and he totally gets abilities he likes out of the deal. Mabel's usually happy to be a mermaid or a unicorn and again, it fits. And no hate. I like Monster Falls because it's fun like that.

But what if instead of fitting the character, it fit their insecurities, traumas, etc., in the worst possible way?

It starts at Dreamscaperers. Gideon is trying to summon Bill, but there's been some sort of edit war in Journal 2 on the incantation (Ford trying to cross it out and Bill putting it back in) that makes it very hard to read. As a result, Gideon says the wrong incantation and, instead of summoning Bill, turns everybody inside the weirdness barrier into monsters. He himself ends up becoming a siren, and nearly chokes to death-- he is extremely lucky that Soos is there and not willing to let a child die on his watch even if that child is a total creep, although he hates that Soos did the rescue and not Mabel (Mabel was honestly debating if she should leave Gideon there, since he tried to kill her brother once and she's fairly certain Gideon would do it again if he had the chance). You would think that being a siren would be fun for Gideon, but it turns out he actually HATES singing and acting. It started as something his dad forced him to do because his dad couldn't cut it as a singer, then became a means of manipulating people post-amulet. He doesn't like being confined to Gravity Falls Lake because it limits how much control he can exert over people, and he hates how meaningless it is when humans agree to things now because he has no way of knowing if they truly want to or not. Forcing compliance from people who don't want to do things seems like something that should annoy Gideon, but it's actually the only part of ordering people around that he enjoys and now he's lost it. His abilities don't work on monsters, and everybody blames him for the monster transformations, so they want nothing to do with him either.

Dipper winds up becoming a tooth fairy. This kid, who struggles so much with his masculinity and not being taken seriously because of his youth, has to learn to live as a sparkly (I'm thinking he literally emits glitter instead of sweat) eater of bones. He's initially really tiny too and has to get a blast from the size-changing gem to get to the size he's used to. Even so, he's never going to grow facial or more chest hair. He has to subsist on bones-- while he can get by on animal bones, he needs to get the trace-mineral-plot-stuff that's only in human bones every now and then. He's in zombie country, not a murderer/butcher, and the teeth need to be in decently good shape to be nutritious enough for him, so that pretty much leaves children's lost teeth as his best bet for food. While he can eat non-bones, he doesn't get any nutrition from them and it's sort of like a lactose intolerance where if he overdoes it he's in for a very bad time in the bathroom. He isn't compelled to leave money or trinkets behind-- it's more of a bribe for kids not to call the cops on him, since he kind of breaks and enters to get those teeth ("Hi, may I feed upon your child's discarded tooth?" isn't exactly something you ask people and get a yes often for, even in monster town). Also, Dipper can't hide being a fairy because his toes are gone. Fairy legs and feet are vestigial. He has to fly to get around with his sparkly pink wings that feel like getting kissed by a butterfly when they hit people. Upside: he gets magic access! Downside: Whenever he uses it his Big Dipper birthmark glows and he sparkles more intensely!

And Mabel, who values her cuteness so much and loves bringing smiles to people's faces, ends up being a gorgon-- the last thing anybody wants to be face-to-face with. She looks a lot like what Bill made her look like in Dreamscaperers when he took her cuteness, but with more grayish skin and rubber boas (the snake species is native to Oregon. Rubber boas are friendly, peaceful noodles but they are dirt-colored and most enjoy chilling in dark places away from non-boas) instead of hair. She has a mental link with the boas and can use them like short-range grappling hooks, but they get extremely stressed out when she hasn't got a hoodie or something like it that they can hide in, and that makes her stressed out. Also rubber boas hibernate, so that makes her extremely tired for a good chunk of the year, and she has to accommodate their dietary needs too as they rely on her for food (Fun fact: Mabel juice is very bad for rubber boas). She has to wear very dark sunglasses to protect other people-- only humans are turned to stone when they look her in the eye (and it is possible to reverse, but a really big PITA), but monsters feel a very sharp and sudden bolt of cold that briefly stuns them (it often scares fellow monsters away). Mabel struggles because she's, like, not a superficial person at all! That's something she really values. But at the same time she hates her gray-green skin and having these weird poop noodles for hair that give her the Torments when she drinks Mabel juice or uncovers her head too much. And people outside of her family who aren't Grenda or Candy (both would most enjoy being monsters, and so of course were out of town when all this stuff went down) definitely treat her differently now that she's not as conventionally adorable as she used to be. It's hurtful.

Stanley, who has always struggled with feeling like a shittier clone of his brother and who is determined to stay out of everybody's business, ends up as the Reflexorcist. The Reflexorcist was a monster introduced in the Book of Bill. It is confined to the mirror realm (good luck getting that portal running now, Stan! Actually, he winds up asking Soos to do it in a moment of desperation. It does delay things by a lot so Ford is able to slay Bill before it's activated.) and compulsively lists off everybody's insecurities when they see themselves in the mirror. I do think it would be interesting to expand the Reflexorcist's powers so it also reads intrusive and embarrassing thoughts as opposed to just talking about your appearance. Stan does not want to hear and definitely does not want to blurt out to Dipper what Dipper thinks about Wendy, his puberty voice, and his lack of chest hair when he brushes his teeth. Stan has to fight every instinct in his body not to do that, but it's a lot easier to resist the urge when it's somebody who has accepted their insecurities and embarrassments. Meaning that Stan feels pressured to get involved and help people, even though he'd truly rather not know and projects an image of not caring about other people at all.

Soos, who is so good hearted and kind to everybody but clumsy to a fault, ends up becoming a demon. If he's not careful, he can induce nightmares in people and monsters, and his powers relate to lowering people and monsters' inhibitions so they're more willing to commit his assigned sin. Fortunately his sin is gluttony, so nothing violent, but unfortunately gluttony is very ill-defined and can include acts of greed like hoarding money-- and he can't share his snacks, as any food he comes into contact with or helps prepare is automatically tainted with sin and will not satiate people or monsters. It makes life hard at the Mystery Shack because his sin-fluence tempts customers to steal, and the only thief allowed in the shack is Stan. He's sort of structured his identity around being Stan's son-ployee, so not being able to work at the Mystery Shack really, really hurts him and he has to find meaning outside of that. It also sucks because Stan (being stuck in the mirror realm) is one of the few folks who can actually interact with him without getting influenced by sin. Plus it's hard for him to help people when his sin-fluence makes them more inclined to be uncooperative and ungrateful. Poor guy is constantly hungry too-- it's not like he's starving or anything, but he never feels quite full and it sucks. At least he doesn't put on weight as a demon, but he doesn't lose weight either.

Wendy, who was so embarrassed by being freakishly tall as a kid and comes from a family of lumberjacks, ends up becoming the same species as Steve. For the sake of the story we'll call him a wood giant. The wood giant is a huge creature that latches its soul onto gigantic trees and more recently machines to give itself the ability to interact with the physical world. It is a solitary thing that generally hides out from lumberjacks, since lumberjacks cutting down their trees hurts them. Unsurprisingly, being a giant makes it very hard for her to interact with her friends, and she hates how she is constantly conspicuous. If she's feeling anxious, she can't exactly play it off like it's nothing because people will see her shaking. And Steve is not a very nice giant-- think of the worst things about Robbie combined with the worst things about Thompson, and you have Steve's personality.

Pacifica, who is haunted by the sins of her family that she is conditioned to participate in and values her beauty and public relations so much, ends up being a krasue. A krasue is a spirit in Southeastern Asian folklore who looks normal during the day but by night detaches the rest of her body from her head, neck, heart, stomach, and intestines and floats around looking for rotten and disgusting things to eat (Lucky for Pacifica but damning for the American food system, ultra-processed food counts as trash so she can live off that-- although she's very ashamed of it). They are largely harmless, but basically nobody likes them because they get bile and slime all over the place, and they are particularly attracted to placentas and clothes. In Thai myths, they are women who lived sinful, fraudulent lives and thus were cursed. Sometimes the spirit and the woman are one and the same, sometimes the spirit and woman are separate but the woman can't survive after being cut off from the spirit, whereas the spirit will just find a new host if cut off from the woman-- I am thinking this might be interesting to toy with as a metaphor for social status and the upper class. She finds it and things her family has done for it grotesque, yet she can't live without it and she knows she'll just be replaced if she leaves. She's been pretending to be a superficial, snobby aristocrat just like her mom and dad for so long that it became part of her true self. Her mom and dad are not doing much better here-- Priscilla has become a Killbilly and Preston has become a werewolf. Her mom's personality and interests are largely intact, but now it causes her severe pain to wear shoes, jewelry, or uncomfortable clothing, she has claws instead of nails, and she is more comfortable communicating in hambone code and "banjo songs" (like whale songs, but for Killbillies) than English. However, Preston rejects her for being a filthy hillbilly and files for divorce immediately. He on the other hand is in deep denial that he has become anything at all. It's not clear if he blacks out in wolf form because of something the form does or because he thinks he is about to black out and that makes it real. He refuses to see the significance in the additional hair he has been growing even during the day and does everything he can to hide it. Although his wolf form looks fearsome, his behavior is more in line with a really intelligent, rowdy dog. While he will put his dirty paws on the couch, shred pillows, counter surf, and hunt deer, he is actually a lot easier and more fun to be around as a wolf than as a human. If he wasn't in denial of being a werewolf, he'd be utterly furious and baffled about people preferring his wolf form.

Old Man McGucket, who worked so hard to forget his traumas, ends up being a shapeshifter. His true form is now the same as the Shifty who traumatized him so long ago, and he doesn't have a good grip on his powers thanks to his scrambled mind so he regularly transforms into whatever comes to mind without realizing or even thinking about it. He is in for a lot of sleepless nights, and so are the people neighboring the Gravity Falls city dump. He does get a better handle on things after confronting his past and the Society of the Blind Eye, at least, but it's still incredibly tough for him to resemble the thing that hurt him so much so long ago and remembering the past has its own toll.

I like the idea of a twist where the Valentinos actually weren't changed at all. Greg was the product of Victor's experimentation with the bodies at his funeral home to produce the perfect son-- basically Frankenstein's monster if Frankenstein actually loved him. Janice is a lich puppetting another deceased woman's body, and she feels so blessed to have found her kind of "people" in the Valentinos. Robbie was somehow born human despite the circumstances, but has been a zombie since he was 14 when an accident at summer camp resulted in him drowning. His mother performed a profane forbidden ritual to defy god and save him, and that was the consequence.

Those are my ideas so far. I have no idea where to take them but figured it was worth sharing. I hope you like them.

[primreaperstuff]

[primreaperstuff]

Idea: Monster Falls but evil (by which I mean the nature of the curse, not the characters) (longpost)

So I was looking at Monster Falls stuff and thinking, "Hey, these characters keep ending up being cool." Like, it's not as if Dipper would be especially happy to be half deer but a cervitaur is cool, aligns with who Dipper wants to be well enough, and he totally gets abilities he likes out of the deal. Mabel's usually happy to be a mermaid or a unicorn and again, it fits. And no hate. I like Monster Falls because it's fun like that.

But what if instead of fitting the character, it fit their insecurities, traumas, etc., in the worst possible way?

It starts at Dreamscaperers. Gideon is trying to summon Bill, but there's been some sort of edit war in Journal 2 on the incantation (Ford trying to cross it out and Bill putting it back in) that makes it very hard to read. As a result, Gideon says the wrong incantation and, instead of summoning Bill, turns everybody inside the weirdness barrier into monsters. He himself ends up becoming a siren, and nearly chokes to death-- he is extremely lucky that Soos is there and not willing to let a child die on his watch even if that child is a total creep, although he hates that Soos did the rescue and not Mabel (Mabel was honestly debating if she should leave Gideon there, since he tried to kill her brother once and she's fairly certain Gideon would do it again if he had the chance). You would think that being a siren would be fun for Gideon, but it turns out he actually HATES singing and acting. It started as something his dad forced him to do because his dad couldn't cut it as a singer, then became a means of manipulating people post-amulet. He doesn't like being confined to Gravity Falls Lake because it limits how much control he can exert over people, and he hates how meaningless it is when humans agree to things now because he has no way of knowing if they truly want to or not. Forcing compliance from people who don't want to do things seems like something that should annoy Gideon, but it's actually the only part of ordering people around that he enjoys and now he's lost it. His abilities don't work on monsters, and everybody blames him for the monster transformations, so they want nothing to do with him either.

Dipper winds up becoming a tooth fairy. This kid, who struggles so much with his masculinity and not being taken seriously because of his youth, has to learn to live as a sparkly (I'm thinking he literally emits glitter instead of sweat) eater of bones. He's initially really tiny too and has to get a blast from the size-changing gem to get to the size he's used to. Even so, he's never going to grow facial or more chest hair. He has to subsist on bones-- while he can get by on animal bones, he needs to get the trace-mineral-plot-stuff that's only in human bones every now and then. He's in zombie country, not a murderer/butcher, and the teeth need to be in decently good shape to be nutritious enough for him, so that pretty much leaves children's lost teeth as his best bet for food. While he can eat non-bones, he doesn't get any nutrition from them and it's sort of like a lactose intolerance where if he overdoes it he's in for a very bad time in the bathroom. He isn't compelled to leave money or trinkets behind-- it's more of a bribe for kids not to call the cops on him, since he kind of breaks and enters to get those teeth ("Hi, may I feed upon your child's discarded tooth?" isn't exactly something you ask people and get a yes often for, even in monster town). Also, Dipper can't hide being a fairy because his toes are gone. Fairy legs and feet are vestigial. He has to fly to get around with his sparkly pink wings that feel like getting kissed by a butterfly when they hit people. Upside: he gets magic access! Downside: Whenever he uses it his Big Dipper birthmark glows and he sparkles more intensely!

And Mabel, who values her cuteness so much and loves bringing smiles to people's faces, ends up being a gorgon-- the last thing anybody wants to be face-to-face with. She looks a lot like what Bill made her look like in Dreamscaperers when he took her cuteness, but with more grayish skin and rubber boas (the snake species is native to Oregon. Rubber boas are friendly, peaceful noodles but they are dirt-colored and most enjoy chilling in dark places away from non-boas) instead of hair. She has a mental link with the boas and can use them like short-range grappling hooks, but they get extremely stressed out when she hasn't got a hoodie or something like it that they can hide in, and that makes her stressed out. Also rubber boas hibernate, so that makes her extremely tired for a good chunk of the year, and she has to accommodate their dietary needs too as they rely on her for food (Fun fact: Mabel juice is very bad for rubber boas). She has to wear very dark sunglasses to protect other people-- only humans are turned to stone when they look her in the eye (and it is possible to reverse, but a really big PITA), but monsters feel a very sharp and sudden bolt of cold that briefly stuns them (it often scares fellow monsters away). Mabel struggles because she's, like, not a superficial person at all! That's something she really values. But at the same time she hates her gray-green skin and having these weird poop noodles for hair that give her the Torments when she drinks Mabel juice or uncovers her head too much. And people outside of her family who aren't Grenda or Candy (both would most enjoy being monsters, and so of course were out of town when all this stuff went down) definitely treat her differently now that she's not as conventionally adorable as she used to be. It's hurtful.

Stanley, who has always struggled with feeling like a shittier clone of his brother and who is determined to stay out of everybody's business, ends up as the Reflexorcist. The Reflexorcist was a monster introduced in the Book of Bill. It is confined to the mirror realm (good luck getting that portal running now, Stan! Actually, he winds up asking Soos to do it in a moment of desperation. It does delay things by a lot so Ford is able to slay Bill before it's activated.) and compulsively lists off everybody's insecurities when they see themselves in the mirror. I do think it would be interesting to expand the Reflexorcist's powers so it also reads intrusive and embarrassing thoughts as opposed to just talking about your appearance. Stan does not want to hear and definitely does not want to blurt out to Dipper what Dipper thinks about Wendy, his puberty voice, and his lack of chest hair when he brushes his teeth. Stan has to fight every instinct in his body not to do that, but it's a lot easier to resist the urge when it's somebody who has accepted their insecurities and embarrassments. Meaning that Stan feels pressured to get involved and help people, even though he'd truly rather not know and projects an image of not caring about other people at all.

Soos, who is so good hearted and kind to everybody but clumsy to a fault, ends up becoming a demon. If he's not careful, he can induce nightmares in people and monsters, and his powers relate to lowering people and monsters' inhibitions so they're more willing to commit his assigned sin. Fortunately his sin is gluttony, so nothing violent, but unfortunately gluttony is very ill-defined and can include acts of greed like hoarding money-- and he can't share his snacks, as any food he comes into contact with or helps prepare is automatically tainted with sin and will not satiate people or monsters. It makes life hard at the Mystery Shack because his sin-fluence tempts customers to steal, and the only thief allowed in the shack is Stan. He's sort of structured his identity around being Stan's son-ployee, so not being able to work at the Mystery Shack really, really hurts him and he has to find meaning outside of that. It also sucks because Stan (being stuck in the mirror realm) is one of the few folks who can actually interact with him without getting influenced by sin. Plus it's hard for him to help people when his sin-fluence makes them more inclined to be uncooperative and ungrateful. Poor guy is constantly hungry too-- it's not like he's starving or anything, but he never feels quite full and it sucks. At least he doesn't put on weight as a demon, but he doesn't lose weight either.

Wendy, who was so embarrassed by being freakishly tall as a kid and comes from a family of lumberjacks, ends up becoming the same species as Steve. For the sake of the story we'll call him a wood giant. The wood giant is a huge creature that latches its soul onto gigantic trees and more recently machines to give itself the ability to interact with the physical world. It is a solitary thing that generally hides out from lumberjacks, since lumberjacks cutting down their trees hurts them. Unsurprisingly, being a giant makes it very hard for her to interact with her friends, and she hates how she is constantly conspicuous. If she's feeling anxious, she can't exactly play it off like it's nothing because people will see her shaking. And Steve is not a very nice giant-- think of the worst things about Robbie combined with the worst things about Thompson, and you have Steve's personality.

Pacifica, who is haunted by the sins of her family that she is conditioned to participate in and values her beauty and public relations so much, ends up being a krasue. A krasue is a spirit in Southeastern Asian folklore who looks normal during the day but by night detaches the rest of her body from her head, neck, heart, stomach, and intestines and floats around looking for rotten and disgusting things to eat (Lucky for Pacifica but damning for the American food system, ultra-processed food counts as trash so she can live off that-- although she's very ashamed of it). They are largely harmless, but basically nobody likes them because they get bile and slime all over the place, and they are particularly attracted to placentas and clothes. In Thai myths, they are women who lived sinful, fraudulent lives and thus were cursed. Sometimes the spirit and the woman are one and the same, sometimes the spirit and woman are separate but the woman can't survive after being cut off from the spirit, whereas the spirit will just find a new host if cut off from the woman-- I am thinking this might be interesting to toy with as a metaphor for social status and the upper class. She finds it and things her family has done for it grotesque, yet she can't live without it and she knows she'll just be replaced if she leaves. She's been pretending to be a superficial, snobby aristocrat just like her mom and dad for so long that it became part of her true self. Her mom and dad are not doing much better here-- Priscilla has become a Killbilly and Preston has become a werewolf. Her mom's personality and interests are largely intact, but now it causes her severe pain to wear shoes, jewelry, or uncomfortable clothing, she has claws instead of nails, and she is more comfortable communicating in hambone code and "banjo songs" (like whale songs, but for Killbillies) than English. However, Preston rejects her for being a filthy hillbilly and files for divorce immediately. He on the other hand is in deep denial that he has become anything at all. It's not clear if he blacks out in wolf form because of something the form does or because he thinks he is about to black out and that makes it real. He refuses to see the significance in the additional hair he has been growing even during the day and does everything he can to hide it. Although his wolf form looks fearsome, his behavior is more in line with a really intelligent, rowdy dog. While he will put his dirty paws on the couch, shred pillows, counter surf, and hunt deer, he is actually a lot easier and more fun to be around as a wolf than as a human. If he wasn't in denial of being a werewolf, he'd be utterly furious and baffled about people preferring his wolf form.

Old Man McGucket, who worked so hard to forget his traumas, ends up being a shapeshifter. His true form is now the same as the Shifty who traumatized him so long ago, and he doesn't have a good grip on his powers thanks to his scrambled mind so he regularly transforms into whatever comes to mind without realizing or even thinking about it. He is in for a lot of sleepless nights, and so are the people neighboring the Gravity Falls city dump. He does get a better handle on things after confronting his past and the Society of the Blind Eye, at least, but it's still incredibly tough for him to resemble the thing that hurt him so much so long ago and remembering the past has its own toll.

I like the idea of a twist where the Valentinos actually weren't changed at all. Greg was the product of Victor's experimentation with the bodies at his funeral home to produce the perfect son-- basically Frankenstein's monster if Frankenstein actually loved him. Janice is a lich puppetting another deceased woman's body, and she feels so blessed to have found her kind of "people" in the Valentinos. Robbie was somehow born human despite the circumstances, but has been a zombie since he was 14 when an accident at summer camp resulted in him drowning. His mother performed a profane forbidden ritual to defy god and save him, and that was the consequence.

Those are my ideas so far. I have no idea where to take them but figured it was worth sharing. I hope you like them.

[primreaperstuff]

Idea: Monster Falls but evil (by which I mean the nature of the curse, not the characters) (longpost)

So I was looking at Monster Falls stuff and thinking, "Hey, these characters keep ending up being cool." Like, it's not as if Dipper would be especially happy to be half deer but a cervitaur is cool, aligns with who Dipper wants to be well enough, and he totally gets abilities he likes out of the deal. Mabel's usually happy to be a mermaid or a unicorn and again, it fits. And no hate. I like Monster Falls because it's fun like that.

But what if instead of fitting the character, it fit their insecurities, traumas, etc., in the worst possible way?

It starts at Dreamscaperers. Gideon is trying to summon Bill, but there's been some sort of edit war in Journal 2 on the incantation (Ford trying to cross it out and Bill putting it back in) that makes it very hard to read. As a result, Gideon says the wrong incantation and, instead of summoning Bill, turns everybody inside the weirdness barrier into monsters. He himself ends up becoming a siren, and nearly chokes to death-- he is extremely lucky that Soos is there and not willing to let a child die on his watch even if that child is a total creep, although he hates that Soos did the rescue and not Mabel (Mabel was honestly debating if she should leave Gideon there, since he tried to kill her brother once and she's fairly certain Gideon would do it again if he had the chance). You would think that being a siren would be fun for Gideon, but it turns out he actually HATES singing and acting. It started as something his dad forced him to do because his dad couldn't cut it as a singer, then became a means of manipulating people post-amulet. He doesn't like being confined to Gravity Falls Lake because it limits how much control he can exert over people, and he hates how meaningless it is when humans agree to things now because he has no way of knowing if they truly want to or not. Forcing compliance from people who don't want to do things seems like something that should annoy Gideon, but it's actually the only part of ordering people around that he enjoys and now he's lost it. His abilities don't work on monsters, and everybody blames him for the monster transformations, so they want nothing to do with him either.

Dipper winds up becoming a tooth fairy. This kid, who struggles so much with his masculinity and not being taken seriously because of his youth, has to learn to live as a sparkly (I'm thinking he literally emits glitter instead of sweat) eater of bones. He's initially really tiny too and has to get a blast from the size-changing gem to get to the size he's used to. Even so, he's never going to grow facial or more chest hair. He has to subsist on bones-- while he can get by on animal bones, he needs to get the trace-mineral-plot-stuff that's only in human bones every now and then. He's in zombie country, not a murderer/butcher, and the teeth need to be in decently good shape to be nutritious enough for him, so that pretty much leaves children's lost teeth as his best bet for food. While he can eat non-bones, he doesn't get any nutrition from them and it's sort of like a lactose intolerance where if he overdoes it he's in for a very bad time in the bathroom. He isn't compelled to leave money or trinkets behind-- it's more of a bribe for kids not to call the cops on him, since he kind of breaks and enters to get those teeth ("Hi, may I feed upon your child's discarded tooth?" isn't exactly something you ask people and get a yes often for, even in monster town). Also, Dipper can't hide being a fairy because his toes are gone. Fairy legs and feet are vestigial. He has to fly to get around with his sparkly pink wings that feel like getting kissed by a butterfly when they hit people. Upside: he gets magic access! Downside: Whenever he uses it his Big Dipper birthmark glows and he sparkles more intensely!

And Mabel, who values her cuteness so much and loves bringing smiles to people's faces, ends up being a gorgon-- the last thing anybody wants to be face-to-face with. She looks a lot like what Bill made her look like in Dreamscaperers when he took her cuteness, but with more grayish skin and rubber boas (the snake species is native to Oregon. Rubber boas are friendly, peaceful noodles but they are dirt-colored and most enjoy chilling in dark places away from non-boas) instead of hair. She has a mental link with the boas and can use them like short-range grappling hooks, but they get extremely stressed out when she hasn't got a hoodie or something like it that they can hide in, and that makes her stressed out. Also rubber boas hibernate, so that makes her extremely tired for a good chunk of the year, and she has to accommodate their dietary needs too as they rely on her for food (Fun fact: Mabel juice is very bad for rubber boas). She has to wear very dark sunglasses to protect other people-- only humans are turned to stone when they look her in the eye (and it is possible to reverse, but a really big PITA), but monsters feel a very sharp and sudden bolt of cold that briefly stuns them (it often scares fellow monsters away). Mabel struggles because she's, like, not a superficial person at all! That's something she really values. But at the same time she hates her gray-green skin and having these weird poop noodles for hair that give her the Torments when she drinks Mabel juice or uncovers her head too much. And people outside of her family who aren't Grenda or Candy (both would most enjoy being monsters, and so of course were out of town when all this stuff went down) definitely treat her differently now that she's not as conventionally adorable as she used to be. It's hurtful.

Stanley, who has always struggled with feeling like a shittier clone of his brother and who is determined to stay out of everybody's business, ends up as the Reflexorcist. The Reflexorcist was a monster introduced in the Book of Bill. It is confined to the mirror realm (good luck getting that portal running now, Stan! Actually, he winds up asking Soos to do it in a moment of desperation. It does delay things by a lot so Ford is able to slay Bill before it's activated.) and compulsively lists off everybody's insecurities when they see themselves in the mirror. I do think it would be interesting to expand the Reflexorcist's powers so it also reads intrusive and embarrassing thoughts as opposed to just talking about your appearance. Stan does not want to hear and definitely does not want to blurt out to Dipper what Dipper thinks about Wendy, his puberty voice, and his lack of chest hair when he brushes his teeth. Stan has to fight every instinct in his body not to do that, but it's a lot easier to resist the urge when it's somebody who has accepted their insecurities and embarrassments. Meaning that Stan feels pressured to get involved and help people, even though he'd truly rather not know and projects an image of not caring about other people at all.

Soos, who is so good hearted and kind to everybody but clumsy to a fault, ends up becoming a demon. If he's not careful, he can induce nightmares in people and monsters, and his powers relate to lowering people and monsters' inhibitions so they're more willing to commit his assigned sin. Fortunately his sin is gluttony, so nothing violent, but unfortunately gluttony is very ill-defined and can include acts of greed like hoarding money-- and he can't share his snacks, as any food he comes into contact with or helps prepare is automatically tainted with sin and will not satiate people or monsters. It makes life hard at the Mystery Shack because his sin-fluence tempts customers to steal, and the only thief allowed in the shack is Stan. He's sort of structured his identity around being Stan's son-ployee, so not being able to work at the Mystery Shack really, really hurts him and he has to find meaning outside of that. It also sucks because Stan (being stuck in the mirror realm) is one of the few folks who can actually interact with him without getting influenced by sin. Plus it's hard for him to help people when his sin-fluence makes them more inclined to be uncooperative and ungrateful. Poor guy is constantly hungry too-- it's not like he's starving or anything, but he never feels quite full and it sucks. At least he doesn't put on weight as a demon, but he doesn't lose weight either.

Wendy, who was so embarrassed by being freakishly tall as a kid and comes from a family of lumberjacks, ends up becoming the same species as Steve. For the sake of the story we'll call him a wood giant. The wood giant is a huge creature that latches its soul onto gigantic trees and more recently machines to give itself the ability to interact with the physical world. It is a solitary thing that generally hides out from lumberjacks, since lumberjacks cutting down their trees hurts them. Unsurprisingly, being a giant makes it very hard for her to interact with her friends, and she hates how she is constantly conspicuous. If she's feeling anxious, she can't exactly play it off like it's nothing because people will see her shaking. And Steve is not a very nice giant-- think of the worst things about Robbie combined with the worst things about Thompson, and you have Steve's personality.

Pacifica, who is haunted by the sins of her family that she is conditioned to participate in and values her beauty and public relations so much, ends up being a krasue. A krasue is a spirit in Southeastern Asian folklore who looks normal during the day but by night detaches the rest of her body from her head, neck, heart, stomach, and intestines and floats around looking for rotten and disgusting things to eat (Lucky for Pacifica but damning for the American food system, ultra-processed food counts as trash so she can live off that-- although she's very ashamed of it). They are largely harmless, but basically nobody likes them because they get bile and slime all over the place, and they are particularly attracted to placentas and clothes. In Thai myths, they are women who lived sinful, fraudulent lives and thus were cursed. Sometimes the spirit and the woman are one and the same, sometimes the spirit and woman are separate but the woman can't survive after being cut off from the spirit, whereas the spirit will just find a new host if cut off from the woman-- I am thinking this might be interesting to toy with as a metaphor for social status and the upper class. She finds it and things her family has done for it grotesque, yet she can't live without it and she knows she'll just be replaced if she leaves. She's been pretending to be a superficial, snobby aristocrat just like her mom and dad for so long that it became part of her true self. Her mom and dad are not doing much better here-- Priscilla has become a Killbilly and Preston has become a werewolf. Her mom's personality and interests are largely intact, but now it causes her severe pain to wear shoes, jewelry, or uncomfortable clothing, she has claws instead of nails, and she is more comfortable communicating in hambone code and "banjo songs" (like whale songs, but for Killbillies) than English. However, Preston rejects her for being a filthy hillbilly and files for divorce immediately. He on the other hand is in deep denial that he has become anything at all. It's not clear if he blacks out in wolf form because of something the form does or because he thinks he is about to black out and that makes it real. He refuses to see the significance in the additional hair he has been growing even during the day and does everything he can to hide it. Although his wolf form looks fearsome, his behavior is more in line with a really intelligent, rowdy dog. While he will put his dirty paws on the couch, shred pillows, counter surf, and hunt deer, he is actually a lot easier and more fun to be around as a wolf than as a human. If he wasn't in denial of being a werewolf, he'd be utterly furious and baffled about people preferring his wolf form.

Old Man McGucket, who worked so hard to forget his traumas, ends up being a shapeshifter. His true form is now the same as the Shifty who traumatized him so long ago, and he doesn't have a good grip on his powers thanks to his scrambled mind so he regularly transforms into whatever comes to mind without realizing or even thinking about it. He is in for a lot of sleepless nights, and so are the people neighboring the Gravity Falls city dump. He does get a better handle on things after confronting his past and the Society of the Blind Eye, at least, but it's still incredibly tough for him to resemble the thing that hurt him so much so long ago and remembering the past has its own toll.

I like the idea of a twist where the Valentinos actually weren't changed at all. Greg was the product of Victor's experimentation with the bodies at his funeral home to produce the perfect son-- basically Frankenstein's monster if Frankenstein actually loved him. Janice is a lich puppetting another deceased woman's body, and she feels so blessed to have found her kind of "people" in the Valentinos. Robbie was somehow born human despite the circumstances, but has been a zombie since he was 14 when an accident at summer camp resulted in him drowning. His mother performed a profane forbidden ritual to defy god and save him, and that was the consequence.

Those are my ideas so far. I have no idea where to take them but figured it was worth sharing. I hope you like them.

[primreaperstuff]

Aaaa I'm so glad you liked my ideas! You can add your own too! I'm gonna go and respond to all your yapping because it makes me happy!

--Dipper is actually the guy who inspired this! I remember looking at some deer Dipper things and thinking "If Alex Hirsch were to do his take on Monster Falls, he would go for something way more embarrassing. We would have cute sparkly fairy Dipper." (Again, zero hate to deer Dipper! I do like him!) And from there I just kept thinking of what the worst possible monster would be for each character. And yeah, poor Mabes! (somebody else mentioned anti-semitism and I certainly didn't mean to imply anything racist but I think this might've been what twigged it? So I do want to clarify that by "gray-green skin," I mean like the Incredible Hulk was, not olive or any other real-world skintone.)

--Stan is all about facing things he doesn't want to face! At least Soos's intrusive thoughts are flattering enough to give Stan confidence-- Soos is thinking of how Ford might reject Stan, but then rejecting Ford rejecting Stan because Stan is so cool and Ford's supposed to be a smart guy! What if Soos made a gunblade and stabbed everybody who ever was mean to Stan (regular reminder that this is an intrusive thought NOT a serious consideration, though Stan appreciates the sentiment behind it)?

--I'm glad I picked a good one for her. I didn't want something she could just easily play off as cool or no big deal, and the trembling thing is based off of personal experience. I do that pretty much whenever I make a speech in public and nobody ever notices... because I'm human sized, not a giantess! Her friends have a lot of their own problems (Robbie has the whole family situation I mentioned, Tambry is a video game character like Giffany, Nate is a walking hot dog because I'm a jerk, and I haven't decided what's going on with Thompson and Lee yet) but they do still like Wendy and try to hang out with her.

--I just hope you're not too mad that it wasn't flattering. I was just thinking-- yeah, there's somebody she can hang with that she's not taller than, but he's like if the worst qualities of her friends manifested as a wood giant. Also if she says lumberjack or axe to him, he will throw deer at her. Steve is definitely not cool or fun.

--Yeah, he's in a situation where he so badly wants to help but he can literally make it so things must get worse if he's not super careful. And he's not great at caution. And the Shack means so much to him. It's hard for him not to take it personally when Stan gives him an extended vacation from work and tells him not to come back to the Shack until he's got the demon thing figured out (even though that is shockingly magnanimous for Stan). Soos is actually sort of relieved when Stan explains the portal thing because it means Stan still trusts him with stuff after all.

--As for the Valentinos!

--Will they rot? No, they have plenty of peanut brittle in their diet and also dust their clothes with the stuff, and that preserves their forms (Quentin Trembley is proud. People with peanut allergies on the other hand are terrified.). If there was ever a peanut brittle famine, they'd harvest organic materials from the bodies at the funeral homes for repairs.

--What's going on with Robbie? Masterful necromancy. Victor was a prodigy in this type of magic and Janice is perhaps his only peer. They worked together on Robbie's resurrection, and Victor basically gave up his own life (reasoning that he was getting old anyway and had enough contacts in several afterlives to live well wherever he ended up) so Robbie could live without many of the usual problems facing zombies (for example having moving blood, not craving brains all the time, and being able to tolerate 3 part harmonies). Robbie is still 14 physically, but he has the life experiences of a 16 year old and generally copies their behaviors and attitudes enough to pass. It definitely ruins his shot with Wendy now that she thinks he's going to be too young for her forever. Even though Robbie is capable not to mention insistent on eating normally, he actually still needs brains in his diet. His parents keep meaning to tell him that they slip brains from the funeral home in his food to keep him alive but they don't want to scare him. And Robbie can reproduce but it'd be kind of gross because he's still technically 14 and stuff.

--The family can theoretically live forever. Again, patriarch Victor was a master necromancer, and Janice is for all intents and purposes his equal. They don't really age conventionally because their bodies are dead but they do experience some wear and tear over time. Eventually Greg and Janice would like to settle down into a nice afterlife, and they hope Robbie will someday too. Greg and Janice think of the afterlife as like a senior living home. Robbie does not know what to think here.

--And yeah, Robbie birth is one of Greg and Janice's many crimes against God and nature. :D

--I don't know how or why Shifty would end up living with the Valentinos in this specific AU, but that is a funny idea. Could be a fanfic or some non-canon silliness.

--The krasue is a really interesting spirit that I don't see covered a lot in Western media, and I think it fits Pacifica because she herself doesn't want to hurt people, but her lifestyle is built off of fraud and she likes being rich enough to indulge in it. But she still feels guilty about it. But she doesn't want to give it up. She also values her appearance so much that she'd be genuinely distraught at getting her good looks taken away, even if it's only at night.

--Preston is a jerk for sure. He actually intends on locking Pacifica in the panic room every night so she can't wander around, but since he changes at night too and won't admit it to himself he never gets far. Since Priscilla can't change her form at all, Preston has no use for her anymore. Priscilla goes off to meet the other Killbillies but has trouble relating to them as they do not appreciate her former way of life. Eventually she winds up finding some kinship with (and advice for dealing with divorce from) Old Man McGucket while he's still living in the dump. He's not interested in her romantically but he appreciates the company enough to let her stay with him. Eventually Pacifica stays with them too. Tate McGucket (don't know what he becomes yet) is none too impressed with the Northwests but he slowly warms up to Priscilla and Pacifica.

--The dog whistle would work, but he would need to be trained on it. Again, he's like a really rowdy dog, so just because the whistle is supposed to mean he does something doesn't mean he'd gonna do it.

--The siren can be one of those ones that looks pretty from afar but is hideous up close. And yeah, the kid loses his audience. I figured he might not even particularly want to be cute or sing songs (going off of how he immediately adopted the Mad Max/cowboy aesthetic when he was working for Bill and could pick his uniform, and how pissed he was when Bill made him dance around in a sailor suit)-- he just sees cuteness as a means to an end, and it's not even getting him anywhere anymore. Plus he started this, so people don't like him anymore and blame him for anything bad they experience.

Idea: Monster Falls but evil (by which I mean the nature of the curse, not the characters) (longpost)

So I was looking at Monster Falls stuff and thinking, "Hey, these characters keep ending up being cool." Like, it's not as if Dipper would be especially happy to be half deer but a cervitaur is cool, aligns with who Dipper wants to be well enough, and he totally gets abilities he likes out of the deal. Mabel's usually happy to be a mermaid or a unicorn and again, it fits. And no hate. I like Monster Falls because it's fun like that.

But what if instead of fitting the character, it fit their insecurities, traumas, etc., in the worst possible way?

It starts at Dreamscaperers. Gideon is trying to summon Bill, but there's been some sort of edit war in Journal 2 on the incantation (Ford trying to cross it out and Bill putting it back in) that makes it very hard to read. As a result, Gideon says the wrong incantation and, instead of summoning Bill, turns everybody inside the weirdness barrier into monsters. He himself ends up becoming a siren, and nearly chokes to death-- he is extremely lucky that Soos is there and not willing to let a child die on his watch even if that child is a total creep, although he hates that Soos did the rescue and not Mabel (Mabel was honestly debating if she should leave Gideon there, since he tried to kill her brother once and she's fairly certain Gideon would do it again if he had the chance). You would think that being a siren would be fun for Gideon, but it turns out he actually HATES singing and acting. It started as something his dad forced him to do because his dad couldn't cut it as a singer, then became a means of manipulating people post-amulet. He doesn't like being confined to Gravity Falls Lake because it limits how much control he can exert over people, and he hates how meaningless it is when humans agree to things now because he has no way of knowing if they truly want to or not. Forcing compliance from people who don't want to do things seems like something that should annoy Gideon, but it's actually the only part of ordering people around that he enjoys and now he's lost it. His abilities don't work on monsters, and everybody blames him for the monster transformations, so they want nothing to do with him either.

Dipper winds up becoming a tooth fairy. This kid, who struggles so much with his masculinity and not being taken seriously because of his youth, has to learn to live as a sparkly (I'm thinking he literally emits glitter instead of sweat) eater of bones. He's initially really tiny too and has to get a blast from the size-changing gem to get to the size he's used to. Even so, he's never going to grow facial or more chest hair. He has to subsist on bones-- while he can get by on animal bones, he needs to get the trace-mineral-plot-stuff that's only in human bones every now and then. He's in zombie country, not a murderer/butcher, and the teeth need to be in decently good shape to be nutritious enough for him, so that pretty much leaves children's lost teeth as his best bet for food. While he can eat non-bones, he doesn't get any nutrition from them and it's sort of like a lactose intolerance where if he overdoes it he's in for a very bad time in the bathroom. He isn't compelled to leave money or trinkets behind-- it's more of a bribe for kids not to call the cops on him, since he kind of breaks and enters to get those teeth ("Hi, may I feed upon your child's discarded tooth?" isn't exactly something you ask people and get a yes often for, even in monster town). Also, Dipper can't hide being a fairy because his toes are gone. Fairy legs and feet are vestigial. He has to fly to get around with his sparkly pink wings that feel like getting kissed by a butterfly when they hit people. Upside: he gets magic access! Downside: Whenever he uses it his Big Dipper birthmark glows and he sparkles more intensely!

And Mabel, who values her cuteness so much and loves bringing smiles to people's faces, ends up being a gorgon-- the last thing anybody wants to be face-to-face with. She looks a lot like what Bill made her look like in Dreamscaperers when he took her cuteness, but with more grayish skin and rubber boas (the snake species is native to Oregon. Rubber boas are friendly, peaceful noodles but they are dirt-colored and most enjoy chilling in dark places away from non-boas) instead of hair. She has a mental link with the boas and can use them like short-range grappling hooks, but they get extremely stressed out when she hasn't got a hoodie or something like it that they can hide in, and that makes her stressed out. Also rubber boas hibernate, so that makes her extremely tired for a good chunk of the year, and she has to accommodate their dietary needs too as they rely on her for food (Fun fact: Mabel juice is very bad for rubber boas). She has to wear very dark sunglasses to protect other people-- only humans are turned to stone when they look her in the eye (and it is possible to reverse, but a really big PITA), but monsters feel a very sharp and sudden bolt of cold that briefly stuns them (it often scares fellow monsters away). Mabel struggles because she's, like, not a superficial person at all! That's something she really values. But at the same time she hates her gray-green skin and having these weird poop noodles for hair that give her the Torments when she drinks Mabel juice or uncovers her head too much. And people outside of her family who aren't Grenda or Candy (both would most enjoy being monsters, and so of course were out of town when all this stuff went down) definitely treat her differently now that she's not as conventionally adorable as she used to be. It's hurtful.

Stanley, who has always struggled with feeling like a shittier clone of his brother and who is determined to stay out of everybody's business, ends up as the Reflexorcist. The Reflexorcist was a monster introduced in the Book of Bill. It is confined to the mirror realm (good luck getting that portal running now, Stan! Actually, he winds up asking Soos to do it in a moment of desperation. It does delay things by a lot so Ford is able to slay Bill before it's activated.) and compulsively lists off everybody's insecurities when they see themselves in the mirror. I do think it would be interesting to expand the Reflexorcist's powers so it also reads intrusive and embarrassing thoughts as opposed to just talking about your appearance. Stan does not want to hear and definitely does not want to blurt out to Dipper what Dipper thinks about Wendy, his puberty voice, and his lack of chest hair when he brushes his teeth. Stan has to fight every instinct in his body not to do that, but it's a lot easier to resist the urge when it's somebody who has accepted their insecurities and embarrassments. Meaning that Stan feels pressured to get involved and help people, even though he'd truly rather not know and projects an image of not caring about other people at all.

Soos, who is so good hearted and kind to everybody but clumsy to a fault, ends up becoming a demon. If he's not careful, he can induce nightmares in people and monsters, and his powers relate to lowering people and monsters' inhibitions so they're more willing to commit his assigned sin. Fortunately his sin is gluttony, so nothing violent, but unfortunately gluttony is very ill-defined and can include acts of greed like hoarding money-- and he can't share his snacks, as any food he comes into contact with or helps prepare is automatically tainted with sin and will not satiate people or monsters. It makes life hard at the Mystery Shack because his sin-fluence tempts customers to steal, and the only thief allowed in the shack is Stan. He's sort of structured his identity around being Stan's son-ployee, so not being able to work at the Mystery Shack really, really hurts him and he has to find meaning outside of that. It also sucks because Stan (being stuck in the mirror realm) is one of the few folks who can actually interact with him without getting influenced by sin. Plus it's hard for him to help people when his sin-fluence makes them more inclined to be uncooperative and ungrateful. Poor guy is constantly hungry too-- it's not like he's starving or anything, but he never feels quite full and it sucks. At least he doesn't put on weight as a demon, but he doesn't lose weight either.

Wendy, who was so embarrassed by being freakishly tall as a kid and comes from a family of lumberjacks, ends up becoming the same species as Steve. For the sake of the story we'll call him a wood giant. The wood giant is a huge creature that latches its soul onto gigantic trees and more recently machines to give itself the ability to interact with the physical world. It is a solitary thing that generally hides out from lumberjacks, since lumberjacks cutting down their trees hurts them. Unsurprisingly, being a giant makes it very hard for her to interact with her friends, and she hates how she is constantly conspicuous. If she's feeling anxious, she can't exactly play it off like it's nothing because people will see her shaking. And Steve is not a very nice giant-- think of the worst things about Robbie combined with the worst things about Thompson, and you have Steve's personality.

Pacifica, who is haunted by the sins of her family that she is conditioned to participate in and values her beauty and public relations so much, ends up being a krasue. A krasue is a spirit in Southeastern Asian folklore who looks normal during the day but by night detaches the rest of her body from her head, neck, heart, stomach, and intestines and floats around looking for rotten and disgusting things to eat (Lucky for Pacifica but damning for the American food system, ultra-processed food counts as trash so she can live off that-- although she's very ashamed of it). They are largely harmless, but basically nobody likes them because they get bile and slime all over the place, and they are particularly attracted to placentas and clothes. In Thai myths, they are women who lived sinful, fraudulent lives and thus were cursed. Sometimes the spirit and the woman are one and the same, sometimes the spirit and woman are separate but the woman can't survive after being cut off from the spirit, whereas the spirit will just find a new host if cut off from the woman-- I am thinking this might be interesting to toy with as a metaphor for social status and the upper class. She finds it and things her family has done for it grotesque, yet she can't live without it and she knows she'll just be replaced if she leaves. She's been pretending to be a superficial, snobby aristocrat just like her mom and dad for so long that it became part of her true self. Her mom and dad are not doing much better here-- Priscilla has become a Killbilly and Preston has become a werewolf. Her mom's personality and interests are largely intact, but now it causes her severe pain to wear shoes, jewelry, or uncomfortable clothing, she has claws instead of nails, and she is more comfortable communicating in hambone code and "banjo songs" (like whale songs, but for Killbillies) than English. However, Preston rejects her for being a filthy hillbilly and files for divorce immediately. He on the other hand is in deep denial that he has become anything at all. It's not clear if he blacks out in wolf form because of something the form does or because he thinks he is about to black out and that makes it real. He refuses to see the significance in the additional hair he has been growing even during the day and does everything he can to hide it. Although his wolf form looks fearsome, his behavior is more in line with a really intelligent, rowdy dog. While he will put his dirty paws on the couch, shred pillows, counter surf, and hunt deer, he is actually a lot easier and more fun to be around as a wolf than as a human. If he wasn't in denial of being a werewolf, he'd be utterly furious and baffled about people preferring his wolf form.

Old Man McGucket, who worked so hard to forget his traumas, ends up being a shapeshifter. His true form is now the same as the Shifty who traumatized him so long ago, and he doesn't have a good grip on his powers thanks to his scrambled mind so he regularly transforms into whatever comes to mind without realizing or even thinking about it. He is in for a lot of sleepless nights, and so are the people neighboring the Gravity Falls city dump. He does get a better handle on things after confronting his past and the Society of the Blind Eye, at least, but it's still incredibly tough for him to resemble the thing that hurt him so much so long ago and remembering the past has its own toll.

I like the idea of a twist where the Valentinos actually weren't changed at all. Greg was the product of Victor's experimentation with the bodies at his funeral home to produce the perfect son-- basically Frankenstein's monster if Frankenstein actually loved him. Janice is a lich puppetting another deceased woman's body, and she feels so blessed to have found her kind of "people" in the Valentinos. Robbie was somehow born human despite the circumstances, but has been a zombie since he was 14 when an accident at summer camp resulted in him drowning. His mother performed a profane forbidden ritual to defy god and save him, and that was the consequence.

Those are my ideas so far. I have no idea where to take them but figured it was worth sharing. I hope you like them.