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prettyinpwn-blog · 1 year

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Truest Reflection (Short Story for Stanuary 2023 Week One: Mystery)

Stan and Ford start off their Stan-O'-War II adventure by returning to where it all began.

Excerpt:

“Do you remember this place, Stanley?”

Stan nodded. He wasn’t sure he liked it, though. Like Ford wearing both red and blue, it confused him. Or Ford calling him a hero. It looked right at times, and it sure sparkled pretty, but then the fog came and muddied things, tattering the landscape into patchwork pieces, never one whole, coherent picture.

It got worse the closer they got to that place. Dread anchored in Stan’s chest at the sight of that faded brick building on the first paved street after the sand. It still had the yellow and white stripe awning - although sunken now - and the mezuzah by the door. But the neon ‘PHONE PSYCHIC’ sign in the window was black and dead, and the other sign that once read two full words now simply said ‘P____S P____S’, a nudging whisper of what once had been.

(Happy Stanuary 2023! This is my submission for the first week’s theme: Mystery. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. All hail the Grunkle with the world’s biggest heart. <3)

(Also, if you like listening to music while writing/reading, I had this song playing on repeat while I wrote this short story. I felt it fit well for Stan in the first days of his Stan-O’-War II adventures with Ford).

If you prefer to read on AO3, here is a link to that version: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44034489

Full short story under the cut ---

Truest Reflection

Silver fog fingers twined through its bow rails, down the gunwales, then flowed back over the boat’s side. Afar, this ship had no identity; a vague shadow upon the waters. But if one got close enough, they could piece out part of a name: -----O’-War II in bold white lettering over a red line freshly painted across the hull.

The prior day’s storm had made for an imperfect first night, lightning shattering the sky with glitchy white fractures, thunder rumbling so loud it reverberated in their chests. By morning the storm had passed, leaving Stanley and Stanford Pines to wake up to a bloody dawn, the fog the last sinking clutches of a dead monster.

Stanley found himself at their breakfast nook table in the ship’s cabin, right hand wrapped around a mug of steaming coffee, left hand twirling a puzzle piece.

He’d been working on the puzzle laying before him on the table for years now. It was some musty thing from the sixties, so faded - even torn in places - that it was hard to tell what it was depicting. He’d scrounged it up from his bedroom closet back at the Mystery Shack before he and Ford had left on this adventure, having forgotten it was even there until then.

But he’d felt oddly attached to it. It’d been a puzzle from their childhood home, and it was something to do between port launch and their first expedition of “plunging headfirst into the world’s greatest anomalies”, as Ford had described it.

As if the world's greatest anomaly wasn't already on their boat. A man who had forgiven him for all he'd done. Now that was a true mystery.

Two lights carved through the cabin’s morning dark. One buzzed over Stanley’s head, trapping him in a cold, rectangular cage of gray. The other - gold - surrounded Ford as he toiled over a pan on the stove.

Pancakes and eggs, buttery and warm. A smell like that could get Stan grinning.

But Stan’s smile faded when he glanced back down to the puzzle, and a mumble scratched through his throat. There seemed to be a part or two missing. Or was there? He glanced at the piece in his hand, rotating it, then back at the wretched, patchwork thing. Then at the other pieces.

Nothing fit quite right.

“How are your memories holding up this morning, Stan?” Ford asked, deep voice piercing through the radio static tune of sizzling breakfast.

Stan put the puzzle piece down and crossed his arms, then leaned back and closed his eyes. Ever since the Bill Cipher incident and, you know, the near end of the whole damn world, his memories had been slowly returning. At first, in strong surges, going down and as dizzy as easy shots of vodka. But then the recollection had slowed to sips.

The worst part was not even that, but the futile attempts he’d made at trying to fit those fire-bitten scraps back together into one whole story.

“I dunno,” Stan finally replied with a shrug. “They’re there. They don’t always make the most sense, though.”

Ford’s brows furrowed. When he noticed Stan had caught his sour expression, he quickly switched it to a faint smile. Stan remembered that habit of his brother’s, at least. It was the kind Ford pulled when he forgot he had to give perfect responses for a moment, then tried to cover his human slip up quick. It was hard to truly know what Ford was thinking at any given moment for that reason. A leftover from childhood, Stan knew.

“I’m sure they’ll come back in time,” Ford said. “It’s miraculous that any survived. Even more so that so many came back quickly. It’s a good sign.”

A good sign, or just a wishful one? Stan replied in thought, but knew better than to grumble it out loud. He had to admit he was just as recklessly wishful as Ford.

“There’s somethin’ weird about it all, though.”

A plate was set in front of Stan by a six-fingered hand. Ford then settled down himself to eat across the pinewood table from Stan.

For a moment, Stan reflected on how strange it was to see Ford wearing that blue hoodie. Ford was supposed to be in a trench coat, wasn’t he? Or did he wear blue, but on his shoes? And why was his turtleneck red? Wasn’t that Stan’s color? So maybe it was ‘right’ for Ford to be wearing blue? Stan supposed no one really owned colors, but-

He had to look away from Ford. Sometimes just staring at his brother gave him a headache.

“What’s weird?”

Stan tried to gather scraps of understanding to explain it just right as they started to dig into their meal. Frustration bubbled and brewed in his gut until he just bit his lip and spat out a half-assed answer:

“Who am I?”

Ford’s resulting expression was that of a school teacher whose favorite student had failed to answer a question they’d just gone over the answer for together.

“Damn it, I don’t mean that, like, literally. I get that I’m Stanford-”

“Stanley.”

Stan pinched his nose’s bridge. He’d done it again. Why couldn’t he get that simple fact right? “Stanley, sorry.”

“You did use Stanford for years. That’s probably why it’s tripping you up so much.”

“Let me put it this way: I know little parts of who Stanley Pines is, but it’s like a mystery I only have little clues to. I don’t mean stupid shit like where I lived, my favorite song, whatever. I mean… who was Stanley Pines? A good guy? A bad guy? You told me about all the crime, but-”

“Stanley Pines is a hero.”

Ugh. Why did that send a shiver down his spine? “That word makes me wanna puke.”

“That’s probably because…” Ford trailed off, pausing mid-lift of his fork to his mouth to glance down to the side. “Never mind. Here’s a question: who’s the smartest person you know?”

“Well, I don’t call you Poindexter for no reason.”

“Exactly. So if I say you’re a hero, then…?”

“That’s just one person sayin’ it. Doesn’t make it true.”

“Dipper and Mabel say it. Soos says it. Stanley, the whole damn town of Gravity Falls says it.”

“Then why does it feel so wrong? It’s like you wearin’ blue. It’s weird!”

Ford glanced down at his hoodie. “Weird? Stan, that’s always been my favorite color.”

“But you always wear red!”

“I started wearing red because…”

Ford sighed and set his fork down, took his glasses off, and put his face in his hands. Then he looked back up at Stan, brown eyes lined with more bags than usual. For a moment, Stan wondered if it really had been the storm last night that had kept Ford tossing and turning endlessly in the bunk atop his own.

A hand found Stan’s shoulder. Those six fingers squeezed harder than they ever had before. “We’re going to put your memory back together exactly the way it was, no matter what it takes. Then you’ll see I’m right. You’ll see just how much of a hero Stanley Pines really is.”

“Yeesh, quit usin’ that word! It gives me the willies.”

“Never.”

They finished their breakfast in silence. Stan insisted on cleaning up since Ford had done the cooking. Meanwhile, Ford headed to the stern to steer the ship.

When he got back, Stan had finished with the dishes and was already back at the nook, though he’d pushed the puzzle aside for now.

“Where we headed today, anyway?”

Ford adjusted his glasses over a smile. “I’m glad you asked! I know I said we’d head to the Arctic Ocean for our first dive into the unknown, but I wanted to stop somewhere on the way. It’s somewhere I think you’ll recognize. I thought it might help jog your memories even more before we officially set off.”

---

Hot Belgian waffles, Stan never thought he’d be standing on these shores again. Their boat was moored and bobbing behind them at a long dock stretching out into the waters. Ahead was Ford, his hand in Stan’s, dragging him forward like an excited child.

A blue and white lighthouse to the north beamed into the fog wreathing around the pier, its lens spinning, trying to pierce the murk and make sense of the coast’s whole outline. Smaller lights in fairytale colors responded at its feet; amusement rides coming to life as day died to dusk.

Stan stared at the ferris wheel the longest, watching it turn in place again and again and again. An eye with a never ending cycle of ups and downs, moving but never really shifting back or forward.

As always in September, the Glass Shard Beach skies were overcast and sprinkling, and the air a damp, cloying blend of salt, fish, and popcorn.

“Do you remember this place, Stanley?”

Ford wrapped an arm around Stan’s shoulders. That part felt nice. That warm embrace, the smell of Old Spice and aged books as his brother drew close. “Thoughts?”

Stan glanced sideways and found one half of a smile on his twin’s face. The other half - his own mouth - should have been the balancing second upcrest of that smile. Stan knew that. But his lips betrayed what he should have felt here, sinking lower than they had all day.

Stan stared at the building again. “I’m… not sure.”

“You know what this place is, though, right? You at least remember that much?”

Stan’s hands tightened to fists. “Yeah. I do.”

“Great! Let’s go inside.”

“Inside?”

Ford had already started to reach for the red and gold door. He paused and turned around. “Is that okay?”

Stan bit his lip. He couldn’t remember why he hated this place. The memories surrounding that sour taste weren’t even full scraps, just tiny bits like ashes on his eyelashes every time he blinked, dotting his vision with fuzzy holes of gray.

“Come on. Take my hand. We’ll go in together.”

Ford grabbed onto Stan and pulled him forward. Stan followed with hesitant bootsteps. His feet met the threshold.

The crumbling brick had been steady moments before. But doom and guilt and anguish struck Stan’s heart like a duffel bag of lead, and he collapsed to the ground like he had all those years ago, concrete grating into his back, the shadow of a familiar man rising above him in the doorway.

Then came a push that sent him down a hole so deep it took him thirty years to drag himself back out.

The gray holes in his memory reawaken to orange fangs of flame, biting in reverse. How could a burning photograph put a picture back together?

“All you ever do is lie and cheat, and ride on your brother's coattails!”

Those words chisel sharp into his tombstone heart. Ford’s above him again, a ghost of a disappointed echo staring down.

“Stanford! Tell ‘im he’s bein’ crazy!”

The curtains draw closed, blocking out the light. Dust gathers on them. Thirty years of it.

“Stanford, don’t leave me hangin’...”

“Stanley, I’m right here!”

A lie. The curtains were still closed, because they were never reopened even after all these years. Why would he expect them to be? He didn’t deserve for them to open and to see the light again.

There were ashes beyond them. Or was it snow? He slept on that couch in the shadows for days after as the dust fell around him and buried him, his eyes unblinking, his arms crossed stiff over his chest. A perfect grave for Stanley Pines. He'd just burned himself alive to bring Stanford back from the dead, after all.

“I don’t need you! I don’t need anyone!”

“Don’t push me away! Stanley! Stanley!”

The thunder of that familiar voice clapped him back to awareness.

He was no longer on the ground. There was warmth and hair and scratchy stubble beside his face, tangling with his own in indistinguishable strands of silver, and two arms wrapped around his waist, nearly squeezing the breath out of him.

“Wha..?” Stan slurred.

Ford - in his late fifties again - reluctantly released from the hug, but still kept his hands on Stan’s shoulders. “Stanley, are you okay?”

“I… what happened? I was fine ‘til you went through that bright door.”

Ford glanced at the shop’s door, face warped with confusion. It was anything but bright after years of rust and rot.

He turned back to Stan and smiled anyway. Deep and genuine, not a worry covering smile. “It was one of your spells. You’ve had them before. But don’t worry.” Ford hugged him again. “I always make sure to stay with you until they’re over.”

“Why did you help me back up? You didn’t do that the first time.”

“What? I always help you back up after your spells.”

Stan shook his head. “Sorry… brain fog.”

“It’s alright. I should be the one apologizing, actually.” Ford looked up at the building again, then back to Stan, his eyes squinched. “I shouldn’t have brought you here in the first place. I thought it might help more of your memories return, but maybe this step is too much for now?”

“Well…” Stan looked up at the building himself. Yeah, this place hurt, but a deeper part of him told him he had every right to be here. To walk back in that door. It turned the shame in his gut into a little ember of anger. “It’s fine. Let’s go in.”

Ford grabbed his hand. “Stanley, are you sure? I don’t want to cause another of your spells again.”

“I’ll be fine, Ford. ‘Sides, I gotta show you how a real criminal trespasses on private property.” Stan chuckled and cracked his knuckles. “I’ve been wanting to see this dump again for years.”

“Oh. You have?”

“Maybe comin’ back here will help me put together who Stanley Pines really was?”

“Stan, I already told you, you’re a hero.”

“Don’t think I don’t remember how pops threw me out.”

Ford’s eyes widened. A response tried to crawl from his throat multiple times, but no words managed to escape.

“Dad tossed me into the street, and you let me leave. What kind of hero is treated like that by their own damn family?”

“Stanley…”

“Whatever. Call me whatever you want. But I don’t believe you.”

“Why would I lie to you, Stan? Look, that whole night was-”

Stan pushed past Ford and walked inside.

The shelves and glass cases were still there, albeit covered with dust instead of mismatched items. Even the barf green wallpaper was the same, tattered in long strips over wood panels and creaky floor.

“Yeesh! What even happened to this dump? Looks worse than it did when we were kids.”

“Ma and dad lost it in that recession in the early eighties. They moved in with Shermie after that.”

“Good ol’ Sherm.”

Stan pictured a man that resembled their mother more than they ever had, nose aquiline, hair a shade darker, and his frame slighter like Ford’s. What little he did remember of Shermie was a much taller, older figure in a navy uniform. Someone that gave him affectionate noogies with tattooed arms, taught him to swim and ride a bike, and “scared” monsters out of his and Ford’s closet.

“We’ll need to check in with him at some point, too.”

“Think he’ll punch, or hug me?”

“Yes.”

They shared a chuckle.

“So, what happened to Ma and Dad, anyway? Do I wanna know?”

Ford hesitated for a long while after that question. It wasn’t until they went up the stairs that an answer finally came out. Stan looked up as Ford spoke, paused on the last step behind him. It was strange to see Ford’s face outlined in the fading, ghostly light from the front window. The familiar golden wallpaper behind him fit right, though.

Stan stayed in the shadows of the stairwell. He didn’t belong up there with Ford in the gold and light.

“They died after I disappeared. You were the one that told me about them, actually.”

“Oh.”

“I bet they’d be pretty proud of you, though.”

No. Stan knew that instinctively. Ford was the son to be proud of, with some scraps left over for Shermie’s white picket fence and two kids. Stan glanced over to the living room cabinet. There were never trophies or military awards with the name ‘Stanley Pines’ on them there.

Stan walked to the front window by the large dead neon eye.

Closed. Never blinking ever again.

He stands above the casket, the walls of it as velvet red as her lipstick. Gray hair falls in careful waves down her shoulders. Then there’s the peace on her face. No one living ever looks that calm, especially not Ma, who guzzles coffee like fish drink water. And she doesn’t smell comforting like she used to - like incense and Virginia Slims and Charlie perfume.

All her traces are gone. Cleaned and embalmed and made so perfect it’s untrue and disgusting.

At his side stands the man who looks like him. He isn’t right, either. A black suit has taken the place of the yellow one.

“They’re both dead now, Ford.”

That’s not his name. But Stanford nods. Stanley is dead, remember? His gravelly voice has been buried by a smoother, deeper one, scrubbed of its Jersey swank, polished to academic, elevated perfection. It was funny how the less Ford was like Dad, the more Dad was proud of him.

He has another finger now, too, made of styrofoam stuffed into a black glove. Thank God it’s Winter, otherwise it’d have caught some stares. Now he knows how his brother felt trying to hide it all the time.

But Winter…

Why did snow always surround death?

“I know, Dad.”

“That idiot broke her heart, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“She was never the same after he left. First was the asthma. She stopped eating much at all. But she held on for years ‘til the can-”

Dad was never a man of many words. But few could choke that thick throat of his with a lump like that. Stanford puts a reluctant arm around him. To his surprise, Dad leans into it.

“She did Tarot readings on it every night, you know? Stupid cards always said Stanley’d be back here. Always. Never did, though.”

“Did she really miss Stan that much?”

A nod. “Then the crash happened. It was seein’ that newspaper article that did her in. I just know it.”

Breath catches in Stanford’s throat. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“Maybe… maybe if I’d been around her more, she would have missed Stanley less?”

“She knew how important your work was to you, Ford. Nah, if anyone’s to blame, it’s Stanley. He was the hub of this wheel. When he left, it spun outta control and broke apart.”

He looks at Ma in the casket again. Her image blurs and the rain starts to fall. “Yeah. You’re right.”

They both let the silent rain fall together for a while. Every glance to his side is a glance into a chisel-jawed, teary mirror.

Then comes a question that hurts to even try to ask: “Did you ever miss Stanley, too?”

A long pause. A shrug. “Maybe a little.”

Flowers and velvet and cleanliness shifted back to dust and torn wallpaper. Stan blinked, still standing over his mother’s table by the window, fingers death-gripping the wood and clawing marks in the dust.

Those Old Spice and aged book arms were around him again.

“Ford?”

“Oh, thank God, you’re back! You blanked out again.” Ford pulled out of the hug. He looked at Stan’s face with concern. “Are you… crying?”

Stan shrugged. “Maybe a little.”

Ford tried to hug him again, but every attempt made the casket and roses come back. Stan tore out of Ford’s grasp and walked off to the side, into another room. There, he found the final piece of furniture his parents left behind.

A three-panel mirror. Stan stopped in front of it, and he saw himself in the light with the gold wallpaper behind him this time, instead of Ford. Cracks etched down the side panels, but the middle mirror was in perfect condition.

“Hey Ford? Got a science question.”

Ford stopped sifting through a stack of moth-eaten comic books in the corner. “Yes, Stan?”

Stan gazed into the mirrors. Three versions of himself stared back, two from different angles, one from face on. They showed a mystery he didn’t recognize, with a red cap on its ashen hair, its white shirt blotched see-through with tears under a long leather coat.

The left panel looked like someone’s beloved son. The right, like a washed-out criminal.

But the one in the middle...

“If you’re lookin’ into different mirrors at the same time, which is the truest reflection?”

Ford raised a brow and he chuckled. “Well, they’re all true. They’re just reflecting light from different perspectives.”

“All Stan, hm?”

That was when Stanley Pines lifted his left hand, smiled at it, and pulled it back in a fist.

Every question mark needed a hole at the bottom to make it complete, right?

---

Stan was back in the breakfast nook on the ship again that night, a wide grin on his face, left hand outstretched. Antiseptic slathered cool on his bloody, cut-up knuckles as six fingers worked over them.

“I don’t know why you’re always hurting yourself, Stanley,” Ford said as he wrapped bandages around Stan’s hand.

Stan chuckled from deep in his gut. “Dunno. Still think I’m a hero? You’re the one always fixing things and patching me up.”

Ford laughed. “Of course you are, Stan. We've gone over this a thousand times.”

They spent the rest of the night anchored in the Glass Shard harbor, surrounded by fog and sparkling lights, some from the pier behind them, millions of others reflected on the sea ahead of them.

By the next morning, the fog and shadows had finally dissipated, and the ship’s full form and identity were unveiled under the bright golden light as it sailed out, the first four-letter word of its name no longer obscured.

Ford made breakfast once more. As the oatmeal warmed on the stove, he took a seat across from Stan at the nook.

“Working on that puzzle again? I thought you’d given up on it?”

Stan shrugged. “I kinda did.”

“Well, I don’t mean to brag, but I do have a mind for mysteries. If you don’t mind, can I help you solve it?”

Stan looked up at Ford and - seeing his reflection in his twin’s glasses - grinned.

“I think you already did.”

#stanuary 2023 #week one: mystery #stanley pines #stanford pines #gravity falls #fic #sea grunks #minor filbrick and ma pines moments #hmm but which four letter word did I mean?#wink wonk

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thelastspeecher · 3 months

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In Pollution Powers AU, Stan is shipped off to the boarding school on his own. His family drives him to the airport, but he gets on the plane to Oregon alone and takes a bus to Gravity Falls alone and takes a cab to the school alone.

However, Ford is accompanied by Ma Pines and Shermie the entire way. When Stan sees his twin arrive with their mom and older brother, when he had to do it all on his own, he feels a lot of Emotions. Emotions he immediately stuffs down because Stan Pines isn't the kind of person who addresses his emotions in a healthy manner.

#Ma Pines and Ford wanted to accompany Stan to the school but Filbrick didn't let them #but Ma Pines gets her way when Ford goes there #Stan does feel like if she fought for Ford she could've fought harder for him #bc he felt abandoned and scared and all those things when he made the trip on his own #not that he'll ever admit to any of it #Pollution Powers AU #speecher speaks

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commehter · 1 year

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Two - Gravity Falls Fanfic

Rating: Teen Genre: Slice of Life Pairings: Filbrick Pines/Ma Pines Characters: Filbrick, Ma, Shermie Summary: It's a sweltering summer day in 1952. Spending it in a hospital waiting room with a bored nine-year-old was not ideal, but at least it was something he had been expecting. What came after the waiting was done? That was another matter.

A stubborn tough New Jersey native, Filbrick wasn't too creative. Having twins was not his plan, so he just shrugged and named both Stan. - A Tale of Two Stans

~.~.~.~.~

Chapter 1: Not His Plan

Glass Shard Beach, NJ June 01, 1952

Filbrick Pines watches as his son Sherman flips through the same magazine for the fourth time. The nine-year-old's head is resting heavily against his fist and his eyes are half-lidded in boredom, but he isn't making a fuss and Filbrick is contemplating on what might be an appropriate reward for the (considering the circumstances) good behavior. And, perhaps, he is only actually looking for a way to stave off his own boredom; the two of them have been trapped in this muggy hospital waiting room for hours, after all.

Sherman sighs loudly before tossing the magazine onto the low table in front of them. "I almos' wish I was at school, instead," the boy grouses, "At leas' the air conditioner works there." He then proceeds to make a show of pulling his sweat-dampened t-shirt away from his chest.

"Boy," Filbrick says, his tone warning enough that nothing further is needed.

"Sorry, Dad," the child immediately responds, "It's jus' so hot! ...and I'm bored."

Filbrick sighs and rubs at the bridge of his nose. He can't argue on either count. The pawnshop owner himself has not only discarded his suit jacket, but also rolled up his sleeves, loosened his tie, and even gone so far as to undo the first three buttons of his shirt. 'And still sweating like a pig,' he thinks despairingly. And, to top it off, there really is little to nothing to occupy themselves with in the room.

He stares down at Sherman long enough that the child starts to squirm under his gaze. "We'll stop for ice cream on our way home," Filbrick finally decides.

Sherman brightens immediately at the thought. "Really?" he asks, bouncing slightly in his chair.

"Hmm," Filbrick returns, the barest hint of a smile hidden beneath his mustache, "if you keep on your best manners while we wait to meet your brother."

"Yes, sir!" the boy chirps before he blinks and adds, "I thought Mom said I was getting a baby sister?"

The man shrugs. "Your mother says a lot of things."

"Yeah..." Sherman stretches the word out as he eyes his father carefully, "but normally you jus' agree with her."

A surprised snort of laughter escapes him before before he can stop it, followed by a chuckle. "Come here, you scamp." Sherman grins widely before abandoning his own chair for his father's knee. "Firstly," Filbrick begins after the boy is settled, "I 'normally just agree' with your mother because it's too much work to argue with her. And if you tell her I said that, you can kiss your allowance goodbye for a month." Sherman nods quickly, pressing a finger to his grinning lips. "And second... Your mother and I don't know if the baby will be a boy or girl, just that they're coming. We find out today."

"Oh..." the boy thinks for a second and then suggests, "Maybe I'll get both! A baby brother and a baby sister!"

"Twins?" Filbrick manages as he tries to stifle further laughter, "Don't let your mother know you're wishing that on her, knucklehead. She wouldn't appreciate the thought of having to deliver two babies instead of one."

"Why?"

"Oh... Well..."

Both of the Pines males are distracted from their conversation when a new sound is added to the background noise: namely, a very loud, high-pitched crying.

"Mister Filbrick Pines?" a harried nurse inquires as she sticks her head through the doorway.

"That's me," Filbrick responds as he quickly rises from his seat and deposits Sherman in his place, "Did something happen?"

"I'm terribly sorry, Mister Pines," the nurse rushes to explain while entering the room properly, revealing the squalling newborn she's holding, "This isn't normal procedure, but it's Sunday and we're running on a skeleton crew and I really do need to be getting back to help the doctor with the rest of the delivery. Here, this is your son. Careful, now! Support his head. We just weren't expecting two!"

Before he has had time to truly process what is happening, the nurse has successfully transferred the crying babe into Filbrick's arms and is scurrying back the way she came.

'Two?' he thinks faintly, 'We're not prepared for twins! Oh God, what if the nurse is wrong and there's more than just two?'

"Wow, he's really loud! Are all babies like this? Does this mean my baby sister is next?"

The words jolt Filbrick from his worries and back to the present. "Hmph. We'll see." The man finally tears his gaze away from the door the nurse had disappeared through and redirects it to the screaming bundle in his arms.

A grimace of disgust takes over his face. The boy is still covered in the gore of childbirth. 'They didn't even bother to clean him up before dragging him all through the hospital?' He teases a corner of the blanket free and uses it to wipe away some of the blood (and other fluids he doesn't want to think about) from his son's face.

With the loosening of the fabric, it isn't long before the wailing child works one of his arms free. "Hush now. You're safe," Filbrick mutters to the upset child while gently prying away the fingers clutching his shirt. He does his best to ignore the smeared handprint left behind. The shirt was already ruined, anyway. Probably.

Heedless of the piercing wails, Sherman edges closer to look at the baby. "Why's he so angry?"

"He's probably more scared than angry, Sherman. This is all new to him."

"Oh," Sherman gazes up at his father, "You should sing."

Filbrick blinks and then turns to look at the nine-year-old. "Excuse me?"

"You should sing," the boy repeats with a nod, "When I get scared, Mom sings, and then I feel better."

"Boy, I do not sing." Sherman looks like he might try to press the idea so Filbrick adds, "Believe me, if you'd ever heard me attempt to do so, you'd be grateful for that fact."

Sherman frowns for a moment, and then, "If you don't sing... Should I sing?"

Filbrick shrugs, bouncing his newborn son in his arms with the motion. "Not sure it'll help, but you can try."

~.~.~.~.~

You can read the rest of the story on AO3.

6 Chapters

10K Words

Completed 07/10/2016

Happy reading!

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snapback-gravity-falls · 2 years

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Sail Away With Me

Summary: In this dimension, Stanford tries to sail away with Stanley.

This fic is inspired by and based on this comic. Thank you @daidz-art for making this beautiful comic! (Cross-posted on AO3)

It was supposed to be fine. Everything was supposed to work out.

But it didn’t.

West Cost Tech had rejected him.

If it had been because his project truly wasn’t up to snuff, he would have been fine with that. He would have been able to move on.

But his twin did this.

He had taken away the only opportunity either of them had to get away from New Jersey. Of course he’d have been by himself in the school, but he’d have scraped up enough money after college to bring his brother to him. That had been the plan.

It wasn’t the plan anymore.

He yelled without regard to how his twin—the only other one that mattered other than himself—flinched, without really paying attention. He saw his future—their future—shattered before his eyes. It hadn’t involved treasure hunting because that wouldn’t have been viable, but it would have been something. It would have been better.

It wasn’t so much the words that had snapped him out of his angry stupor, but it had been the seething voice that slithered down his spine. It wasn’t a roar, but it didn’t have to be.

Filbrick Pines could make himself heard without even raising his voice.

Stanley stared up at their father with fear written all over his face. “Wait, no, I can explain! It was a mistake!”

“A mistake?” He shoved his son down onto the couch and stared at him for not even a heartbeat before he stormed out of the room.

“Stanley, what happened?” Caryn demanded as she bounced the crying baby.

He didn’t even look at his twin, he was busy looking down the hallway where they could hear Filbrick riffling through things. “I-I broke—Ford’s project. It was an accident though, I swear. It was still moving when I left so I thought it was fine.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You should’ve told me! I could’ve fixed it last night.”

Stanley looked over at him, eyes wide and pitiful in a way that they had never been before. “I—”

Footsteps started down the hall and everyone went quiet as the storm rolled in. There wasn’t time to ask any questions because before they knew it, he had grabbed Stanley and started hauling him down the stairs.

Caryn started after him. “Fil—”

“No, you’re not gonna get him outta trouble this time!”

Stanford knew what would happen—it was inevitable with their father’s temper. He went to their room, determined to give Stanley the silent treatment when he was returned with red marks on his back and legs. Stanley always squirmed.

Upon opening the door, he saw the window was open and clothes were strewn about in a way they hadn’t been when he left earlier that evening. It was clear to him that their father had rifled through their room, but why would he open the—

He heard the front door open downstairs and rushed to the window to look outside just in time to see his twin sitting on the sidewalk with their father standing over him. His eyes weren’t drawn to the two men, but rather to the duffel bag that sat beside Filbrick’s feet.

He threw the duffel bag down before he walked back out.

He had been packing Stanley’s things.

He was kicking Stanley out.

The bag was thrown into his twin’s chest, and he barely managed to catch it for all of his shock. “Stanford, tell him he’s bein’ crazy!”

He gaped down at the scene, unable to quite process what was happening.

He couldn’t kick out Stanley. He was just supposed to give him licks and send him back upstairs. He was supposed to give him a lecture and take away privileges. Stanley wasn’t supposed to be thrown out of their lives.

“Filbrick, what are you doing?”

“Quiet, Caryn!”

That snapped him back to reality. “Pa, this is crazy! You can’t kick Stan out!”

Because for all his faults, Stanley was the one that had been there for him most. When their mother was distracted and father was ignoring them, they had each other to rely on. They were brothers—twins—and that meant something.

“You stay outta this unless you wanna tag along with him!”

There it was. Exactly what Stanford had expected.

He was one mistake away from being kicked out, too. It hurt. It made him angry.

As much as he wanted to go to WCT, as angry as he was with Stanley, he couldn’t… he couldn’t live with the thought of his brother on the streets.

Because that’s where he’d end up and that’s where he would stay. Stanley was more stubborn than anyone else in their family. They wouldn’t see him again until he made millions… if he made millions. How could a kid without a high school diploma make that kind of money?

He couldn’t.

The worst part was… he could see Stanley dead in a ditch without any of them knowing.

And that made up his mind.

“Fine!” He yelled back, turning on his heel and hurriedly packing his own things. He turned to shout out the window, “We can make it on our own!”

After he was sure he’d gotten everything they would need—including the money they had stashed away—he ran downstairs and pushed past their father.

“Can’t we just talk about this?” Caryn pleaded. “Boys, come back inside.”

“No, Ma, he made his choice!” Stanford pointed to their father. “Shermie wouldn’t even come around if it weren’t for us—” He gestured between their ma, himself and his twin. He didn’t break eye-contact with the towering man. “—and when we’re all gone, no one’s even gonna visit your grave.”

“You’re not thinking clearly,” Filbrick stated, voice low and warning.

“Well, neither are you.” He turned and pushed his twin towards the car. “C’mon Stanley. We’re leaving.”

He got into the passenger’s seat and threw his bag between his feet, refusing to look back at their parents. If he looked at their Ma, he would break and go back, but he couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave Stanley.

“Ford, are you s—”

“Just drive!”

With a sigh, the car was started, and they were driving away.

They would need a plan.

Moses, what would they do?

“If the college board isn’t impressed with my experiment tomorrow, then okay. I’ll do the treasure-hunting thing.”

“Take us to the beach,” he said suddenly, staring at the road ahead with his mind filling with broken dreams and childhood fantasies in place of the weight of reality.

“Go home, Stanford.” Stanley had never sounded so tired before, so resigned.

He couldn’t think of that: of his brother’s sudden change in mood or reality. He could only follow through on his promise.

Their promise.

“The beach, Stanley! Drive us to the damn beach!”

There was a long silence before he wordlessly turned the car to take them on the familiar route.

His hands shook in his lap, but he ignored that.

They would set sail tonight and reach the next port by morning. He’d use the money they’d scraped up the past year and a half to get supplies. They’d been fishing enough to know how to survive. They would take work on the docks, rent out their ship for tours. They could do it.

He would make it happen.

The car parked and there was the beach.

Dark water kissed the pale sand under the pale moonlight. In the distance, the silhouette of the Stan O’War stood proud like a beacon calling to him.

He grabbed their bags when Stanley didn’t move and got out of the car, determined. They would come back for the car tomorrow, for now they needed to set sail and let the ocean wash everything away.

He threw the bags up onto the deck and pushed against the boat. After a moment of it not budging more than an inch, he realized his twin was still off to the side looking at him.

“H-help me push the boat,” he panted.

He couldn’t do it alone. Neither of them could ever do anything alone. He should have known better.

They could go, they could run.

They could disappear into the night.

“Ford…” Quiet—Stanley was never quiet—and resigned—Stanley never gave up.

Why was he like this? Didn’t he say this was the silver-lining? They could sail around the world and hunt treasure—he said that was the plan wasn’t it? Stanford had promised him this would be their fall back. They had to sail away.

He turned and started pushing against it with his back, looking at his brother with desperation. “We’ll go sailing together! Just help me!”

Stanley lowered his eyes, dejected. “Stanford, stop… just go home.”

Go home? That place wasn’t home without laughter and Stanley was the only one that made them laugh. He was still upset, but he couldn’t let his brother go without him. He couldn’t lose him forever.

The thought alone made his chest tight and vision blurry. “Stop saying that!”

Stanley glanced at him but couldn’t hold his gaze. He looked so broken and tired. It wasn’t the Stanley he knew.

“I… I don’t wanna go home without you.”

A weak, sad chuckle. “You must be pretty stupid if you wanna run away with me.”

There was so much inside him—anger, sorrow, anxiety, and emotions he wasn’t sure had names—and somehow, despite knowing so many words, he couldn’t find any to express everything he felt he needed to. What came out was immediate and desperate; it made his raw voice crack and hands shake.

“I said we’d go sailing if WCT failed! It failed!” His hand fisted his own shirt. “I promised!”

Stanley grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “I know… but sometimes promises break.” He looked up with quiet, dejected earnestness. “You can make something of yourself if you go back. You don’t have to be a fuck up like me.”

“Stop that! I’m not leaving you—never!”

“You think I’m gonna die out there on my own… don’t you?”

His breath hitched.

He wanted to deny it. He wanted to shake his brother and tell him that he was amazing even if everyone else thought differently. He wanted to be angry at him for ruining his chances at getting into the college of his dreams, to demand to know what he was thinking, to get that goddamn look off of his face so he could be mad at him properly!

Most of all, he wanted to go back in time to fix everything so Stanley wouldn’t have to look at him like that.

His knees gave out from under him, and he sat heavily in the sand, back pressed against the boat as a sob escaped his lips. His hands moved as they always did when he cried: pushing his glasses up so he could hide his face without smudging them and tangle his fingers in his hair.

“I don’t wanna lose you,” he confessed through the tears.

It felt as if there was an eternity before he noticed a warm body sitting next to his. When he looked over, Stanley was staring at the stars above them, head leaned back against their boat. He’d known Stanley every day of their lives and he had never seen him look so old and tired. Would he always look like this if he was alone?

“I always thought it was you and me against the world,” Stanley said quietly, chest heaving. “Now I know better.”

“Stanley—”

“We both know that you shouldn’t be here.” He turned to look at him with tears streaming down his cheeks and a sternness that hadn’t been there before. “Go home. I’ll be okay.”

Without thought, he grabbed Stanley and pulled him close, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. “No, not without you. It’s you and me against the world—always.”

Fingers dug into his shoulder, but he was neither pushed away nor pulled closer.

“Go home.”

“No.”

“Plea—… please, just go home.”

“No.”

#Snapback Fic #daiidz-art comic #Ambiguous Ending #Corporal Punishment (Mentioned)#Stanford Pines #Stanley Pines #Filbrick Pines #Ma Pines #Caryn Pines #Shermie Pines (Mentioned)#Who is the baby? No one knows #Ask To Tag #Cross-posted on AO3

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mamabelverse · 10 months

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Chapter 15: ...And make it double!

Summary: After learning that her baby is actually a set of twins, Mabel is scared, but still happy to accept the surprise child.

But as soon as the second twin is born... things don't seem to be going well...

Notes: Tw : Depictions of birth, (almost) stillbirth (the baby is fine in the end! Don't worry!)

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cheemscakecat · 2 months

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Y’know, I don’t usually talk about ships I dislike, but this is one I haven’t seen criticized.

So the Gravity Falls fandom is riddled with bad ships, ranging from “Ah yes, let’s ship the victim with the demon that abused them” to “Incest between 12 year old twins is so great”.

Which would explain why all the effort of criticizing ships is going to those infamous ones and not any others that might be less ugly by comparison.

Heck, that note to Mabel in journal 3, saying Bill would have thrown Dipper’s body off the water tower was probably the creator’s way of saying “Stop shipping Dipper with the demon Dorito.” She’s terrified of that thing from trying to get Stan over his fear of heights, and Bill ended the letter by asking if she wanted to join Dipper at the bottom.

StanChez is the lesser evil ship I’m talking about specifically. But keep in mind, I’m a Gravity Falls fan, not a Rick and Morty fan, so my knowledge of that show is from video essays and osmosis.

It’s not on the same level of awful as saying Ford and Bill should be a couple after watching the man get chained and electrocuted.

Or well drawn incest between the two main characters, who are based on the show creator and his sister.

But StanChez is toxic. And I’d like to explain why on Stan Pines’ behalf, because he deserves better. And I also don’t think they’d get along for more than a few days.

Reason 1: Rick is a different level of Criminal

People seem to gravitate towards this ship because Stan and Rick are both criminals and bad influences on those around them, but it’s more surface level than you’d think.

The most we know about Stan’s kill count is that he killed a llama and Bill. And in his words “that llama had it coming”. Other than that, his main crimes are swindling and conning, with tax evasion through false identities.

But if a state full of angry people goes after him, his response is to run away and start a new fake identity. Not attack the people he conned or the police. And even though his bad products gave people rashes, they never crossed over into something truly heinous.

youtube

He also tries to befriend other criminals and attacks them out of self defense, and not intent to kill. Stan knows how to fight, but his intention is very rarely to kill, and that’s a healthier mindset to have.

Rick is in the habit of ruining versions of earth with his experiments, and then running off to take his own place in another dimension instead of staying to try and help. That’s not running away from a minor con like Stan, that’s leaving billions of people to die, over and over again.

Rick is also in the habit of killing people who are an inconvenience to him, whether they pose a real threat or not. He’s so used to killing on sight that he doesn’t bat an eye at making Morty take someone’s life.

Stan is a different kind of bad influence than Rick that isn’t as heinous. Not by a long shot. Dipper and Mabel may have to go on a character arc where they stop swindling people, but they’ve never been taught to kill or maim. They’ve never watched Stan murder people and ignore their distress when he does it. Or been forced to bury a body.

Dipper and Mabel may become worse because of Stan, but it’s nothing so serious that they’ll never recover. But Morty? Morty is in a very toxic situation where he’s been traumatized and started to go numb inside.

Reason 2: Stan’s self esteem

Stan has a lot more in common with Morty than you’d think. He was always “the dumb twin” and “the screw up”. Sure, his Ma tried to negate his father’s terrible words, but one of his parents still made him feel hated and useless.

For goodness sakes, it was Filbrick kicking him out as a high schooler, telling him to come back when he made a fortune, that set him on the path of greed!

It’s also Filbrick’s terrible parenting that made Stan try to be tough with Dipper and favor Mabel, the way Ford was favored.

Stan’s self esteem is much lower than it looks on the surface, and prolonged exposure to Rick would only make it worse.

You see, Rick doesn’t explain what dimension they’re going to, what to look out for, and what’s safe before bringing Morty on an “adventure”. They’ll get there, Morty will start asking because he doesn’t know, and Rick will drunkenly call him an idiot and barely explain. But Morty is supposed to be the stupid one for it.

Rick also favors Summer, Morty’s sister over him. Even though he’s been dragged along on these traumatic adventures much longer.

Say what you will about Stan being a bad influence, but at least we know he does it out of generational trauma and still cares about Dipper. Instead of being harsher on him for no reason, Stan sees it as teaching him to be tougher by making him do chores.

Rick is just playing favorites. And he’s also well known for talking down to Morty’s dad Jerry for being stupid. To the point fans only recently started to see through it and respect Jerry as an embarrassing but happy normal person.

If Stan started hanging around Rick, he’d be talked down to and compared to his smarter twin once again, but this time by the “smartest man in the multiverse”. He doesn’t need another toxic influence to stomp on his self worth.

Reason 3: Think of the children

Stan never replaced anybody. Yes, he had the wax Stan, but he wasn’t calling it Ford. My theory is he was practicing what he’d do with Ford once he brought him back, and the wax funeral was him remembering that Ford might have died.

Stan is known for letting the kids go off on their own, but he also tried to convince them that the supernatural wasn’t real to protect them.

And when he saw they were in danger, he fought the undead to protect them. Most of the time, he just doesn’t see that they’re in danger because they’re off on their own.

He cares about Dipper and Mabel and Soos and Wendy. Heck, he even gave Gideon a pep talk in the shrink ray episode. Do you honestly think he’d be okay with cloning one of them if they died? Or worse, stealing some other Stan’s family in another dimension?

He was looking for his Ford, not a random one from some other timeline. If Dipper was thrown off the water tower, or Mabel snapped away by Bill, Stan wouldn’t be able to forgive himself. And he wouldn’t be able to replace them. The same goes for Ford, Soos, and Wendy.

So imagine him finding the Morty cloning facilities at Rick’s Citadel. And Rick trying to gaslight him into thinking it’s better to leave the evil Ricks to clone and kill as many Morty’s as they want, because it keeps them distracted. Or finding out about Rick replacing himself in other dimensions without telling the family?

Y’all remember that Dipper asked Ford how he knew Bill, and he said:

“I’ve encountered many dark beings in my time, Dipper.”

I bet the reason why Ford was erased with other memory tubes is because he found out about the cloning and got angry with Rick. Because despite his issues with Stan, he still remembers the little boy getting mistreated by his father.

Needless to say, Stanley wouldn’t be approving of all this either, once he knew Rick was a monster. But if Rick wouldn’t listen to “the smart” twin and erased the interaction, he’s way less likely to listen to poor Stan. Because he’s well used to talking down to people when they confront him or disagree with him. And if he’d do it to his own family, he’d sure as heck do it to Stanley.

So yeah, those are my reasons why StanChez is a bad idea/doesn't work. This isn’t going to become a series or anything, I just thought it was worth explaining.

#Gravity falls #shipping critique #weird ships #character analysis #Stanley Pines #This is NOT a Stancest post. Or a pro-StanChez post #Youtube

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billford-dump · 1 year

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The Pines family, aside from Filbrick, all have some form of Gift, although Mabel and Dipper either got skipped or theirs hasn’t properly manifested yet.

Ma had foresight, a general idea of what's going to happen that grows clearer as the event approaches. She could tell even when Stan and Ford were little that something big was going to happen to them.

Stan has luck. He bends reality and probability in his favor just enough to get by, even if he doesn't know he's doing it. He'd have to be pretty lucky to survive so long after he was kicked out, and with all his body parts intact.

Ford has... something else. He attracts the supernatural, and he's attracted to it in turn. That, and an unusual proficiency with magic. That shield around the Shack was strong enough to keep Bill out for a reason.

#gravity falls #ford pines #stan pines #ma pines #real psychic ma pines #stanford pines: attracted to the supernatural both literally and figuratively

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callipraxia · 1 year

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Dark Nights

Suuuuper late for week three, so I tried incorporating elements of all three of the sub-themes to make up for it!

Historical note, I have no idea if car boots that worked like this were a thing in the seventies. Consequently, we’re working with my vague early memories of the nineties. It is, after all, semi-canon that the GF dimension was a little ahead of ours; aside from Fiddleford’s laptop, there’s also Ford somehow being able to show Stan home movies from their childhood. I looked it up and home video cameras didn’t become a thing in our world until just about the time Stan got thrown out of the house, and it would have made the Pineses early adopters if they had even taken it up then. Can’t really see Filbrick as the type to pay for the most up-to-date fad technology, really.

Summary: Stan Pines once chewed his way out of the trunk of a car. Years later, he starts to remember how that happened, and wishes he didn’t.

It was not, strictly speaking, the worst sensation he had ever woken up, to as soon as he realized first how cramped up his arms and legs were and then that he could not move them far enough to reach more comfortable angles, Stan realized he was in trouble. Then he noticed some of the other things that hurt – specifically, his head; he thought it would have hurt anyway, but the way the surface under his head seemed to vibrate slightly but constantly wasn’t improving the nauseating waves of pain emanating from the lump he was pretty sure he now had on his skull, either. Then he tried to remember the last thing that had happened, came up with an attempt to deny everything that he’d known was doomed even as he’d made it, and groaned before closing his eyes again.

Yep, he was in trouble. A lot of it. And if he didn’t do something and didn’t do it quick, then it was probably the last time he was going to be in any amount of trouble. Which was something that sounded so much better when it meant something besides what it meant in this case.

For once, he was almost glad Ford wasn’t around. Most of the time, his brother had either laughed off or defended Stan’s various misadventures even more readily than Ma had, but every now and then, Stan had done something so spectacularly stupid that even Ford had felt obliged to acknowledge the dumbassery of the behavior in question. His vision was none too good even when he didn’t think he probably had a concussion, but at the moment, he could practically see Ford – in the same state, even, of furious disarray that he had been in the last time Stan had seen him for real – with one hand on his face as though to obscure his resemblance to as big an idiot as Stan was, asking why, exactly, he had thought it was a particularly bright idea to try cheating at poker with a famously unstable guy….

I didn’t, Poindexter, he silently addressed the version of his brother he talked to inside his head a lot. In a vague way, Stan knew that the real Ford certainly no longer really looked like he had back then, no more than Stan himself did, but he avoided thinking about his total lack of exact knowledge about where Ford was and what was going on with him except on their birthdays. It was not their birthday, and so, he barely noticed the problem with his mental image of his twin brother looking so much younger than the last thing Stan recalled seeing in a mirror. Just ran out of better options and hoped I could swing it. Apparently, I was a little too optimistic about my chances, so are you gonna help come up with any ideas about how to get us out of here or not?

Taking a deep breath and forcing himself to exhale slowly, to not give in to the impulse to hyperventilate from sheer terror in the already sparse dark air of what he was increasingly sure was the trunk of a car, he tried to think like his brother.

This was, admittedly, not easy. He hadn’t often understood what went on in his brother’s head even back when they had spent a solid eighty percent of their time together, and when he had, it had usually involved imprecise analogies. There just…weren’t people who thought like Ford did; that was what made him a genius and what made Stan being his twin look like someone’s idea of a bad joke. However, he had spent most of his waking moments around the guy for still just a little more than half his life, so he could at least make educated guesses. Ford wouldn’t get stuck in the car on his way to his own murder and disposal, but he…could get stuck in…something. Yeah, that made sense. Forget the car trunk part, forget the off to be murdered bit, just think about…being stuck somewhere he didn’t want to be. That could happen…

No. That was what was happening. Right here, right now. They had gone hunting cryptids, as they often even before the Jersey Devil had turned Ford’s conspiracy theories into firm beliefs, and a…cave had caved in, right, so now they had to get out of it. So what would they do?

Assess surroundings, probably. What there was to assess, anyway. There were only fine lines of light around what Stan assumed was the lid of his current death trap. Things in here were all close enough to the end of Stan’s nose that he could have seen them clearly if there had been enough light, but there wasn’t enough light, so vision wasn’t going to help him here. Feeling…hard to move, but he could, a little. Not that there was much to feel. Just the rough, carpet-like interior of the trunk, he guessed, the slightest hint of air when he turned his head left…

Wait. The slightest hint of air when he turned his head left?

With an effort that made him nauseous – because if there was nothing to work with after all, puking was going to improve his situation by leagues, he was sure – Stan turned the rest of himself left, too. Yeah – yeah, it felt like there was air, just a little air, coming through. Which meant…was this one of those trunks that could, in theory, be opened from the backseat of the car as well as from the outside of it?

Problem: he didn’t have the use of his hands. He needed more room before hand-usage – or, for that matter, kicking – could come into play.

Solution: use what he did have to work with. Which was…what?

He thought (after feeling, as carefully as he could, around it with one of the less damaged bits of his face) that there was a piece of the backing which seemed loose. If he could rip that loose, he’d be into the stuffing and stuff, right? That would be easier to work with. So…what were his options as far as damaging the panel enough to permit access to the backseat? While, if possible, allowing the piece of panel to function as an impromptu weapon if he needed it?

Nothing. There was nothing. He had nothing. He was nothing, except a soon-to-be corpse. Was that better or worse than being what he vaguely remembered someone calling him right before he’d blacked out, a comment which had involved gutter rats and….

No, he informed Mental Ford. That is crazy.

The Ford in his head agreed with this assessment. It used words like ‘probability’ that Stan had only the slightest of understandings of. It did, however, get one point across pretty clear: two percent chance of survival (using a number he’d pulled out of thin air) was still better than zero, and zero was what he had if he didn’t do something.

This has got to be the dumbest idea I’ve ever had, Stan thought, forgetting to filter his plans through his brother’s voice as he considered the only means of operating something he could think of right now. That brought on a swell of panic – he didn’t make the plans, he wasn’t good at making the plans! He was in this very situation because he did not know how to make good plans! – but there was nothing for it. Gasping, struggling to keep the last thing he’d eaten where he’d intended for it to be, he started putting the plan into motion -

And then opened his eyes, about thirty-six years later, to find himself looking at boards – boards which made up a ceiling, which was, if not high, at least a respectable distance above his head. He also immediately noticed the lack of all the feelings that went with being bashed in the head recently, and that he didn’t currently appear to have teeth at all, even though his jaw was sore for some reason. And, perhaps most notably, he wasn’t alone.

“Stanley?” Ford held up a lantern, looking and sounding half-asleep still. “You all right?”

“Ah – yeah,” said Stan, rubbing his jaw. He must have been clenching it in his sleep. Made sense, considering the dream he’d been having – wild dream, that one. Way, way too much detail. “Sorry…dream. Somebody was trying to kill me over a game of cards.

“That is always unpleasant,” Ford said, and Stan exhaled in amusement at this statement of the obvious. “I imagine especially in…your case.” It took Stan a beat to realize the implication - that the matter-of-fact way Ford had said that, it wasn’t because he was just…stating the obvious. That it sounded more like Ford was somehow perfectly familiar with how it felt to unexpectedly remember times when someone had…decided to take the hands-on, one-guy-deemed-unnecessary-at-a-time approach to solving overpopulation, so to speak. After a second, Ford added, “do you, eh, want to talk about it?”

“Not in the slightest,” muttered Stan. He rubbed his jaw again. “Damn, I hope that wasn’t real. I mean, if it was, that might answer the question of why you’ve got your original teeth and I don’t, but – “

“What, you really did chew your way out of the trunk of a car once? I never could decide if I believed that.”

Stan sat up and stared at his brother. “Huh?” he asked. “How do you know that?”

On the other side of the cabin, Ford’s expression changed slightly, probably without him even noticing. It was the look he got when he was feeling guilty about something stupid again. “It’s…one of the more memorable details about the night you arrived in Gravity Falls,” he said. “I was so sleep-deprived I could barely think straight, much less remember much after – everything else that happened that evening – “

“After I decided it would be a great idea to hit you two feet away from something you’d just told me could put holes in reality, you mean?”

“Er, yes. I suppose.” With a visible effort, Ford got back to the point instead of going into one of his absurd point-by-point analyses of why actually, everything had been entirely his fault, first to last, and everyone else was entirely blameless in the affair. Stan had finally lost his patience with it about a month earlier, and while getting into a fistfight on the deck of a fairly small boat had also been kind of stupid behavior, nobody had died or gone off to see another galaxy, and Stan guessed the point had been made. “But at one point you were yelling about various things you’d done…while we were estranged, and that one was bizarre enough I remembered it.”

“Huh. I…guess I can give myself points for creativity in a crisis, anyway?”

“You do seem to have a knack for that, Stanley. An…unfortunately frequently self-destructive kind of creativity in a crisis, apparently, but….”

“Eh, smashing things is my calling in life,” said Stan. “Apparently, including my own teeth.” He stood, muttered something about getting some air, and went out onto the deck in the dark.

It was the new moon, but it still wasn’t as dark as his already-fading memory of the what the inside of that car trunk had looked like in his dream. It had been lighter outside, when he’d somehow managed to push the cushions concealing the opening into the trunk apart with his head without blacking out, but still a dark night. That, he guessed, was how he had gotten away with it….

Stupid, he thought irritably. Sheer dumb luck was the only reason he’d gotten away with it. Sheer dumb luck that it had been one guy in the car, sheer dumb luck that the guy had been tired and distracted and listening to the radio, so he hadn’t noticed anything going on behind him until it was too late to just shoot Stan then and there –

The vivid feelings of the dream were all but gone, but he still remembered events as…normal memories, he guessed, now that he’d been reminded of them. And he was starting to remember the rest of it, too, however foggily: trying to strangle a guy with his bare hands for lack of better options. The crash as the guy in question lost control of the car. Stealing the gun and walking – well, limping – away, after all, telling himself that of course the least lucky of the two luckless idiots involved had gotten himself out, too, and not ended up dying like that…

No, it hadn’t just been a dream.

It had been a long time, even with what Dipper called his ‘supplies for the Scrapbook of Crimes Past,’ before Stan had remembered even a little of his years on the road, his life more and more like a nightmare while he was awake than it usually was when he was sleeping. After he’d discovered Ford’s history of criminal shenanigans in the multiverse – well, of course he’d made fun of him, because how could he not? When was he ever going to get a chance like that again? Ford had practically been setting himself up to get poked occasionally about that one, trying to maintain his prim-and-dorky façade after he’d gotten home when he knew full well that he was as much of a liar and thief as Stan had ever even dreamed of being. It would have practically have been a crime to not have some fun at his brother’s expense about that, almost as bad as it would have been if, knowing how distressing everyone found his ‘case,’ he’d ever said out loud that sometimes, he wondered which of them, him or Ford, was really the lucky one.

The more he remembered of his own life and the more he collected of what little his brother let slip about the past thirty years in hyperspace, the more Stan thought they might be more alike than either of them would have ever imagined, even when they’d been kids. He wished he didn’t know enough, about either of their lives at this point, to form that thought.

When he had still had very little real memory at all, and had been trying to learn the faces in old photographs and tapes well enough to pass himself off as remembering them more than he did, he’d thought that Ford was the lucky one, between the two of them. They’d both had to do things they had emphatically not wanted to do in the Fearamid, but at least Ford hadn’t ended up walking that endless tightrope that Stan had for that first week or so, constantly on edge, constantly terrified of disappointing someone, constantly worried he was going to get it wrong. The more tidbits he heard about Ford’s life, though, and the more he remembered about his own…there were times, now, that he thought a blank slate was the greatest gift he’d ever been given. Even the nightmares, after all, didn’t seem as vivid as he thought his memories once had, and even a partial picture of his own life let him know that he would be happier if he didn’t get everything back eventually.

Time wasn’t a river, he’d realized at some point. Not if the past was considered part of time. The past could be a lovely swimming pool for some people, maybe, but he wasn't one of the people it worked that way for. His past, he became surer with every memory, was just what was left behind after a flood. Dead water, standing where it didn't belong, and not to be walked in - no telling what was down there, but it was pretty certain that it contained a lot of stuff that couldn't even be guessed at from the surface, and which nobody would ever want to think of.

#stanuary #stanuary 2023 #week 3 fear #gravity falls #gravity falls fanfic #stan pines #ford pines #stan's memories #violence referenced vaguely

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variantia · 4 months

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Gravity Falls muses

CARYN “MA” PINES canon

Shari is a stay-at-home mother who also works as a psychic hotline operator. (She’s not actually psychic, but she lies well enough to earn clients.) Her husband is pawn shop owner Filbrick Pines, and her sons are Stanley and Stanford Pines. Although she was unprepared for parenthood and lacks the nerve to stand up to her husband, she loves her children very much and always tries to keep them all safe as much as she can.

REBEKAH OC

Rebekah is a demon who originally existed in the Dimension of Temperance. She was always different, and eventually liberated herself by transforming herself into a succubus-beldam and fleeing from the dimension. Now she exists in the Nightmare Realm/Dream Dimension, as a part of Bill Cipher’s gang of henchmaniacs. She’s been known to kidnap children of any species as well as hang around Stanford Pines, with whom she’s completely infatuated.

WILL CIPHER AU – Reverse Falls

Will is a timid dream demon who’s become shackled and bound to Dipper and Mabel Gleeful thanks to forming a contract with them. At their hands, he suffers abuse that they justify as punishment because he regenerates fairly quickly. He’s lost an eye to Mabel before, as well as been chained in a dungeon-like room. He’s unfortunately very easy to upset, crying at the drop of a hat and being afraid that anyone new will hurt him. If shown kindness, however, he will do his best to keep whoever showed it to him safe.

#reference #muse page post

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eregyrn-falls-art · 9 months

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youtube

And here it is, the video version of the "Trouble" Multi-Artist Lyric Comic! All the kudos in the world to @stariousfalls for editing this whole thing together!!!

Go here for the post with all of the lyric page art viewable separately. Go to the Trouble Lyric Comic tag on my main blog to see links to people's posts of their art.

Below the read-more, please find the credits, with tags/links to everyone's blogs!

And once again, huge thank you to everyone who participated in this project -- it was so much fun to work on! And special thanks to @mercury-falls for helping me to organize all of this! I'm still so jazzed to see this final product -- the "amv" to this song that I've been wanting to see since 2016, and here it is, and it's wonderful! And it's even MORE wonderful because this represents a LOT of people coming together to express and share their love for this show.

(Go here for some more extended thank-yous!)

CREDITS

Photo Collage One: Elishevart, Pinkplatiploo, Zephrunsimperium, Creativepup, Batman-gif, Fordtato (all newspaper clippings), Shadeartstuff, Skysdrawings

I’ve been a beggar: lemonfodrizzleart

And I’ve been a king: kingsofjersey

I’ve been a loner: muria-art

And I’ve worn the ring: everlight_283 (instagram)

Losing myself: batman-gif

Just to find me again: tazmiilly & gin-juice-tonic

I’m a million miles smarter: eregyrn-falls-art & stephreynaart

But I ain’t learned a thing: annakitsun3

I’ve been a teacher: gobblewanker

And a student of hurt: skysdrawings

I kept my word: orangephoenix6

For whatever that’s worth: mother-ofthe-universedraws

Never been last: jackyjackdraws

But I’ve never been first: jasmine-sketchbook

Oh I may not be the best: stephreynaart

But I’m far from the worst: spectralreplica

Oh I may not be the best: elishevart

But I’m far from the worst: zkyeline

Oh, I’ve seen trouble: fexiled

More than any man should bear: mischieflily

But I’ve seen enough joy: ginandshattereddreams

I’ve had more than my share: gin-juice-tonic

And I’m still not done: morcian-draws

I’m only halfway there: jamesfenimoreharper

I’m a million miles ahead of where I’m from: fordtato

But there’s still another million miles to come: deerpines, orangephoenix6 & fordtato

Photo Collage Two: Creativepup, Cbmagus49, Inkdrawndreamer, Bluefrostyy, Fordtato, Mother-ofthe-Universedraws, Fordtato & Jamesfenimoreharper, Shadeartstuff, AlphaZeD, Bewildred-grimsley

Oh I keep on searching for the City of Gold: vililae

So I’m gonna follow this yellow brick road: cbmagus49

Thinking that maybe it might lead me on: cutebatart

I’m a million miles farther: hellmandraws

And a long way from home: eregyrn-falls-art

I know that there’s a plan that goes way beyond mine: possumbreath

Got to step back just to see the design: pottersfieldcustodian

The mind fears the heart: rechoclo

But the heart doesn’t mind: novantinuum

Oh I may not be perfect: tazmiilly

But I’m loving this life: hubbabubbagumpop

Oh I may not be perfect: athgalla-arts

But I’m loving this life: thisiswhereidraw

Oh I’ve seen trouble: purblzart

More than any man should bear: shadowofaghost5

But I’ve seen enough joy: alextwdgf01 & fordtato

I’ve had more than my share: dragonsheepstudios

And I’m still not done: acetyzias & stephreynaart

I’m only halfway there: cryptidjeepers

I’m a million miles ahead of where I’m from: chiiroptereh

But there’s still another million miles to come: stephreynaart

Photo Collage Three: Cbmagus49, Fordsy, Puppylove, Lemonfodrizzleart, Jamesfenimoreharper, Gin-juice-tonic, Fordtato & Vililae, Rusted-blue, Sciencevillain, Mother-ofthe-Universedraws, Possumbreath, Shadowofaghost5, Pinestwinssimp, Nour386, Cutebatart, Possumbreath, Melodramaticwolf, Tazmiilly, Eregyrn-falls-art

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jacky-rubou · 2 years

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Hope I’m not bothering you, but some more inverted Soos? I’ve been struggling to get the second chapter out and seeing it around is keeping me going, lol. Maybe some of Ford’s POV for the angst, or something fluffy like Soos being proud of his kid for something or another.

Ford ran to his room, ominously loud stomping echoing from the stairs. He opened the door, locked it, and climbed up the bunk bed to hide under the covers. Ever since Stan was kicked out of the house, Dad's frustration had been turned on Ford, under the guise of 'toughening him up'. With nobody in the house to defend him, his Ma out on the town doing some clothing shopping, his room felt like the safest place.

"Out of your room, boy," Dad's voice thundered from just outside the door, "I just want to talk." The door rattled and Ford couldn't help but squeeze his eyes closed fearfully, his breathing small and fast. Ford wasn't nearly as tough as Stan, he usually depended on him to defend him. Stan probably hates you now, good job ruining that, Ford. Ford scowled at himself.

Ford whimpered and clung to the sheets as his father started pounding on the door, threatening to break it in. He thought back to what he did to earn his father's wrath. Ford had accidentally tripped and fallen onto the jewelry case, shattering it and scattering all the precious contents onto the floor. His father had found him on the ground and began yelling at him for being so clumsy. Ford had smelt the bitter stench of alcohol and booked it. Dad was always a hundred percent worse to him when he was drunk.

Ford clamped a hand over his mouth as the door jerked open with a crack, scared silent tears running down his face. The hairs on his neck raised as his father stepped inside, unsteady but intimidating. Ford moved not a muscle, hoping he was too drunk to find him up here. He held his breath when the footsteps sounded just beside the bed. Ford shouted as the blanket was torn off of him sharply.

"Very clever."

Ford felt himself being yanked off of the top bunk by his shirt and thrown to the floor with a loud thump. He laid there, trembling, as he braced himself for a beating. But it didn't come for longer than normal.

"Get up. Or I'll make you get up."

Ford didn't know if he heard him right, but he managed to get his knees under him and slowly pull himself to his feet, his back aching from the fall. Just as he straightened out, he was grabbed by the collar and harshly pulled out into the hall. Ford rubbed his neck when his father let go, being half choked by the collar in the whole ordeal.

"I'm sorry I broke the jewelry case, it....it was my fault for stumbling over my own feet," Ford stammered his apology, wanting to lessen the punishment any way he could. His father blocked the only way out of this hallway, his stance threatening. There was no escape.

"This ain't about that darn jewelry case, boy." Ford looked at him in confusion, "Put up your fists."

Ford hesitantly did so, all six fingers clenched and held up to shoulder level, but before he could even register what was going on, a fist flew straight into his jaw. Ford fell backwards onto the ground, cradling his face. He got up at his father's order and it happened again, this time he was struck on the eye. He didn't get back up, still reeling from that one.

"See? You're weak." He kicked him for good measure, causing him to groan in pain, "You're mighty clever, but that's no good when you can't even defend yourself without that brainless twin of yours."

Ford was incensed at that insult directed at Stan, who wasn't even here. But he was already in so much pain, he couldn't find the words to defend his name. He got up to his feet, only to be grabbed and thrown against a wall, along with more jabs at Stan. Okay, that was enough. Ford approached his father, balled his fist and swung directly at his head, filled with fury. Only for his father to catch his arm and twist it the wrong way.

"Aaggh!" Ford cried out, tears stinging his eyes at the pain. Ford found himself hiding within his own head as his waste of space father continued to beat him up. The beating climaxed when his father pulled him over to the closed stair well and threw him down the stairs. Ford's whole body was in agonizing pain as he laid there at the base of them. He tasted blood on his lips and felt his heart beating erratically in his chest.

Ford felt grateful to see his Ma opening the door to find him lying prone on the ground, his father standing threateningly over him. She rushed to his side and helped him to his unstable feet after putting down her new clothes on the ground outside the stairwell. Ma guided him to the car, ignoring the angry protests her husband made.

Ma started the car and Ford kept falling in and out of consciousness on the way to the hospital. Eventually they reached the hospital and Ford was given the treatment he desperately needed. He came out of the hospital with Ma with his arm in a sling and several bandages for the cuts given by the jewelry case. Ford was also given pain medications for his ever so aching body.

"I was thinking, instead of heading home, we could stay at a hotel for the night," Ma suggested, unwilling to subject her son to more pain from Filbrick. Ford nodded about as enthusiastically as someone under this much pain could nod. So it was decided. They would spend a night at a hotel. Sure beat sleeping in a room that had a broken lock.

..................................................................................

As Ford lay on the hotel bed, his thoughts wandered to Stan, being unable to sleep through the pain. Was he faring any better out on the streets? Ford sure missed him a lot. Though he'd never wish for Stan to be forced back to this horrible household. Anywhere was better than under his father's thumb. Even this dingy hotel.

Ford, out of curiosity, took a peak under his shirt at the damage. Black and blue bruises mottled his chest like an abstract painting. Ford somehow hadn't noticed through all the pain, but he had been given a pretty nasty black eye from that sucker punch. His whole body hurt so, so badly. Not even the painkillers were enough. It was fortunate the bed was so soft.

Maybe he should run away. Try to find Stan and make up or something. His life was a living nightmare as it was. He would've seriously considered it, but... someone like him being on the streets felt like suicide. He had no defense skills or social skills, and his extra fingers alienated him from practically everyone. He felt stuck. At least Ma wasn't nearly as bad as his father, though a big liar. She was there for him when she could.

Ford sighed, he should probably try to sleep. Ford felt tears sting his eyes as he once again thought about poor Stanley. Was he even still alive? Or did he die somewhere along the way? Oh Stanley, I wish I was a better brother... Ford thought as he cried himself to sleep, his tears drenching the pillow. If only things were different.

#abuse tw #gravity falls #ford pines #filbrick pines #ma pines #angst #being beat up #bruises #hotel #and don't worry about bothering me #i love writing your prompts #might've gone a bit carried away with this one though haha

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