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stan is the only member of the pines twins^2 to never make a deal with bill and i think he needs more credit for that.

ford makes, just, so many deals with his demon boyfriend

dipper literally trades his body to bill in sock opera

and while i will die on the hill that it was never her fault, mabel is tricked into making a deal with him for weirdmagenon.

but stan never gets tricked. the only time he comes close was when he was pretending to be ford but that was with the sole purpose of getting bill erased. never does bill get to him or twist his thoughts. for being the "dumb one" he's surprisingly rational in this was.

nobody matches bill intellectually, ford's fatal flaw is that he thought he did, and the pines family wins because they have an emotional core that bill never had (the power of sibling bonding saves the day and i love it) but ill go out on a limb and say that out of everyone, stan is the only one to match bill's street smarts.

bill's a master manipulator but stan is a professional con-artist with no respect for the law, you tell me who's coming out on top.

stan successfully faked his own death, ran a business for 30 years, taught himself some sort of advanced engineering to repair the portal, evaded local, federal and international authorities from the age of 18, and did it all without any support.

and going back to when he pretends to be ford to get bill to enter his mind, that scene makes stan the only character to ever outwit bill.

anyways this has been a stan pines appreciation post, thank you and goodnight

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i guess it's just really interesting to see how many people don't see the torture as an important part of ford's backstory and relationship with bill. like they see ford's backstory as just "he trusted the wrong guy and regrets it" and the fact that the guy in question also tortured him is like, incidental at best.

"ford wants dipper to be his apprentice and this would be socially isolating so basically ford is trying to isolate dipper the same way bill tried to isolate him!!" i mean personally i think the fact that bill hammered nails into ford's hands when ford tried to disobey him is kind of an important aspect of their relationship and there's really no equivalent between ford and dipper, like not even close, but you do you i guess.

also i think the fact that bill was very intentionally trying to manipulate ford into ending the world while ford was literally just trying to offer dipper an opportunity he (wrongly but genuinely) believed would be beneficial and fun for dipper (and didn't get mad when dipper ultimately turned him down) is pretty significant too.

like personally i can't imagine thinking "guy A tries to trick guy B into causing THE APOCALYPSE and tortures him when he refuses" is in any way morally equivalent to "guy A offers guy B what he thinks is a great opportunity but realistically it wouldn't be a healthy option so guy B turns it down and there's no hard feelings or bad blood between them" but like, idk i might be wrong

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I've seen a lot of posts comparing Bill and Ford (and for good reason, they are very much parallels and foils to each other) but I haven't seen as much exploring how Bill and Stan mirror each other. Where Bill saw Ford as a tool and maybe even sympathized with him because of their shared experiences (outcast by their peers for traits beyond their control, hungry for knowledge and prestige, isolated from friends and family), Bill sees Stan as the embodiment of everything Bill hates about himself. on the website, entering "Stanley" and clicking enter a bunch of times opens up pages from Bill's perspective about how stan defeated him. Bill maintains that Stan didn't actually beat him, that it was Ford's plan, that Stan just got lucky, but we know from the show that that simply isn't true-- it was Stan's plan and it was Stan that defeated him. It's interesting to note that bill is okay with giving Ford the credit for his demise, but Stan? unacceptable. we'll come back to that though.

To Bill, Stan is simultaneously everything he hates about himself and everything he wants to be. When listing all of Stan's faults, Bill calls him a "side character, a resume-inflating, cheap trick loving, past denying overgrown child protected by failure only by a forcefield of denial and shamelessness". who else do we know who ticks all of those boxes? Bill himself is a side character for much of gravity falls in the real world, but in the context of the show this statement shows his fear of not actually being anything special. sure he was powerful in his home dimension, but we see time and time again that there are other beings in other dimensions that are just as, if not more powerful (the axolotl, for instance). Bill takes credit for liberating his dimension when he really didn't, he "honors" his deals through loopholes and turns if phrase, and he shouldn't be throwing stones in a glass house, seeing as he's the one having a temper tantrum. Bill is also deeply disconnected from his past, if him telling us the story of the demise of his home dimension is anything to go by, and only digs himself in a deeper hole through putting on this cheerful, confident, powerful persona. Stan does the same thing, especially as Mr. Mystery. but the thing about Stan is that he grows and changes as the show goes on, while Bill's mindset is perpetual. They both were cut off from their family because of something they did (Stan messing with Ford's project, Bill by destroying his entire dimension), but Stan allows a new family to get close to him and chooses to make sacrifices to make his niece and nephew (and even his employees to some extent) happy. Bill on the other hand, surrounds himself with henchmaniacs, yes-men who just want to party and will follow him as long as he shows them a good time. Every depiction of Bill is a window for him to look through, and with so many in the mystery shack, it's certain that he sees Stanley, the embodiment of everything Bill hates about himself, getting what Bill thinks he could never have. and Bill hates it because it means that if Stan can grow and change and make peace with his past mistakes, it also means that Bill can too. But that would require Bill to actually be vulnerable and endure the pain that confronting your past (many, many) mistakes brings. He would have to acknowledge and accept that his home is gone because of him, that countless lives have been ruined because of him, and that the reason he has never been able to maintain close relationships is solely his fault. But he won't. And as a result, he will always end up alone, a king of ashes.

I think Bill thought of Ford as a way to fill his emptiness because of their similarities, and possibly also because he saw Ford as a form of redemption. Ford was brilliant and good and just like Bill and Bill saw that and may have thought, if he likes me there's no way I'm a monster. in a way, Bill saw Ford as the only one worthy of killing him because if it was Ford it was just a forgone conclusion: Ford hasn't made Bill's mistakes so he is automatically "better" than Bill and Stan, so obviously he could kill Bill. but to have it be Stan means that someone who has messed up in a manner similar to Bill has the capacity to be better. and that shakes Bill to the core.

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(Regardless of thoughts on the whole season, I’d just like to know what people make of the whole season)

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WE TOOK IT BAD STEVE

genuinely wtf I just wanted aroace Five.

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Hello friends!

🍉I am Mahmoud Ayyad, a Palestinian from the besieged and destroyed Gaza 😭😭, coming from a family of young children, women and elderly ❤❤ who have been suffering😭😭 for 300 difficult days of an aggressive war. Our lives are harsh because we lack all the basic necessities of life. Everything has become scarce and difficult to obtain. There is no food, no water, no medicine.

So, I ask you to help me keep my family safe and alive, especially after we lost all our sources of livelihood.

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Every donation makes a difference in our very difficult lives. But this is a legitimate campaign and has been checked by 90-ghost

My blog isn't very big, but hopefully this reaches some people!

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None of these people know how to make and maintain healthy relationships

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What was up with Ben this season?? The S3 end scene showed him on a train reading a book? Only to become a crypto bro??

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I am so glad we're all (mostly) on the same page about the tua ending (and all of the season tbh?)

SPOILERS AHEAD TUA SEASON 4

Like what happened to their arcs? None of them really grew from the people they were this season, and I feel like they haven't grown since season two?? How are Luther and Reginald the ones with the most character development

Also five??? What are you doing this isn't you pookie 🥺🥺 but seriously what happened to the only man who loved his family more than anything pls bring him back! Also, they spent all that time building up lila and diego only to have lila and five get together after a montage??? Almost threw my phone. And yeah I get the subway was broken, they only had each other for the better part of a decade, but still? To me, five and lila read as grumpy begrudging big brother and sunshine chaos little sister, why couldn't they have become friends?? What was the point if they were all gonna die anyway? Oh my bad not die but be erased from ever existing. I thought the point of this show was that they're a dysfunction family that is learning to be healthy and functional?

Also also, is it just me or was the music quality just not there? Like recurring baby shark, Christmas jingles, and I'm supposed to vibe to this? What happened to my group musical dance/fight scenes?? I cannot thrive in these conditions

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Y'all the Barbie movie rewired my brain chemistry

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I have never read a comic in my life and I don't ever intend to. Everything I know is from fan fic, Wikipedia, and what I personally have decided is funny

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Superman should have big brown cow eyes. Just absolutely massive eyes with long long lashes. U ever looked into the eyes of a cow and not immediately felt safe and loved? Checkmate