I’ve had Epic the Musical on repeat while drawing the Thirty Years AU comic, so here’s a very unserious Gravity Falls Odyssey AU where Ford thinks he’s Odysseus, the clever hero under divine guidance, but the real Odysseus is Nobody, aka Stan, the misfortunate man trying to get home. To Ford, Bill is Athena. To Stan, Bill is Polyphemus.
I think part of the reason I’m so obsessed with MXTX’s works is the way that each story seems to hold you gently as say “Your kindness mattered. It didn’t alleviate the suffering, it did not undo the pain. But your kindness mattered.”
Kindness could not erase Luo Binghe’s abuse, but it changed the story into a kinder one.
Kindness did not stop Wei Wuxian’s death, but it did save a-Yuan.
Kindness did not undo Xie Lian’s suffering, but it renewed his sincerity to help others.
Kindness did not change the entire world, but it helped create a softer future.
Its such a nice message, that maybe kindness will not protect you, maybe you don’t see the outcome of it, but you should still try to be kind, and I love that honestly.
to this day i think one of the funniest moments in all of Gravity Falls is the episode where Soos is going on a date with that woman at the mall and she gets roped into battling the monster of the week with him and in the climax he’s making combat plans with Mabel and Dipper and the woman says, “Soos. These are children.”
It absolutely takes me out every time because this is a rare outside perspective in the show from another adult who rightfully points out how absurd it is to expect the children to fight
But as an older cousin and someone who’s been a camp counselor, like Soos I too have spent entire summers as an adult surrounded primarily by 12 year olds and I know for a fact how quickly I could find myself relying on them as equals in a supernatural battle against gnomes or whatever the fuck