#founders cipher

[personwithatophat]

The Cipher Is Made From The New Logo

ive finally put 2 and 2 together for why we thought it was some kind of pigpen cipher

the new generation logo we got is the base for founders cipher = Edit: I've been seeing people using this so I updated it with all the letters and order, thanks for the support :) = -Tophat

[astrokid425]

chat im missing 2 symbols from generation loss video :(

from what i know abt cipher making usually you would want to do it in the language you speak the most (which is english) or use the english alphabet or something similar. i have 24 known symbols, KXV are confirmed too and only K is used so that means that this can be beat by just counting how many symbols and then comparing it to charts of common letters and do it that way. i have a theory that im missing Z and Q cause theyre the most unused in the english alphabet behind K, V, and X.

i dont think theyre important if they didnt show up but itll mess up me trying to cross examine it with charts on common letters with a computer...

if anyone has theories to where Z and Q are then please repost!!!

EDIT: okay i realized that it might be Z and J missing because theyre the main characters of gen 1. if thats so im absolutely might be screwed. ill try both of my theories. also i think | is a letter, not a space even if it does make sense that they are spaces. If it is spaces then i have three missing letters that are Z, Q, and J i feel

[ckret2]

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

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

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

####

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bill didn't deign to reply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's never stopped you before—"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"—hold on, that's a point for me?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ford suddenly felt very vulnerable.

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

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

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

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

The silence was too much for Ford to bear.

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

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

Bill snapped off the radio.

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

####

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

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

"Friendly?"

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

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

"Can you manage civility."

"Can you?"

"I can if you can."

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

"Then fine."

"Fine."

"Fine." Off to a terrific start.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ye—"

"But before I let you through it."

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

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

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

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

"You must be unfamiliar with poking etiquette!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It was!"

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

"Why would I lie about that?!"

"To impress me!"

"I do not want to impress you!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Not even close," Ford lied.

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

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

And so, he followed Bill through the dark.

####

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

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

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

With, as it turned out, significant personal consequences.

The rebirthmark stretched across his chest itched.

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

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

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

"Memories," Bill said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You expect me to watch these?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ford eyed the newest canister distrustfully.

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

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

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

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

Ford hesitated, then reluctantly nodded. "Fine."

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

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

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

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

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

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

####

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

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

"Ugh."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No you aren't!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

####

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

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

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

####

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

Bill gave him a suspicious look. "What?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's true."

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

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

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

####

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

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

"I'll make all his cardboard armor."

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

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

"Did you... get along?"

Ford paused. "We were—civil."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Fine," Ford said, sighing in relief.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I got worried, okay!"

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

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

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

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

Bill considered that. "Fifth grade?"

"You already knew about it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sorryyy!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

####

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

And then Bill slept.

Or—tried to.

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

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

Him.

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

You already are that muse.

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

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

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

######

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

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

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

[electricalhuzzah]

pov bill cipher does a kahoot

all art is lovingly yoinked from @magpie-22 <3 live laugh love maggie the freakin founder of awesomeness

i cannot edit at all but this vision plagued me for so long i had to get it out of my brain. this fanshitpost was brought to you by presets of the fuckass watermarks in the corner and imovie

[nowimjustastranger]

what does watchdog do when it comes to stans that react fearfully to their fords? does he deputize out a member of his PPS squad to do the saving, or does he act first, think later?

With the PPS up and running, Watchdog wouldn't have to get involved directly for those cases because there are protocols in place for that kind of thing. His workload is substantially lessened once the PPS is established, it more like a part-time job that he gets called into sometimes if things get particularly hectic.

The two founders of PPS are Watchdog and one of his allies in the multiverse who is known as "The Polymath" in order to stay anonymous. The Polymath is a slightly mentally unwell Fiddleford variant who went through the portal during testing and was never able to warn Ford so his dimension was destroyed by Bill Cipher.

(When a person's knowledge covers many different areas, he or she is a polymath. The Greek word for it is polymathes, "having learned much," with poly meaning "much," and manthanein meaning "learn.")

[dranozadystuff]

INTRODUCTION:

I lost my mind and made (still in progress) a full-blown AU. What started as a "what if" spiraled into a sprawling universe where Team Galactic and Team Plasma never existed — because something far colder took their place. Team Plazmara is what happens when convergence replaces control, and ideology becomes obsession. This AU centers around Cytheus, a villain who doesn't seek power or purity, but singularity: the collapse of all realities into one flawless, frozen equation.

"Giratina's future"

I see the veil between worlds decay

I see skies that no light can breach

I see the truths you stripped away

I see the end you dare to teach

The balance once was held in silence

Dreams and wonder, born then gone

But now you conjure cursed defiance

And still you ask what you've done wrong

Whatever fate once meant

All the threads you chose to tear

Because of you, Cytheus, now —

The future is a blank, cold stare

OVERVIEW:

Plazmara is a sprawling, multi-regional syndicate operating across Sinnoh and Unova. The organization emerged as an entirely new power forged from the shadows of what could have been. Its enigmatic leader, Cytheus, rose not from the ruins of prior ideologies, but as the originator of an entirely distinct doctrine — one obsessed with dimensional convergence, psychological manipulation, and control over reality itself.

Plazmara’s influence stretches from the frozen spires of Snowpoint to the decaying edges of Unova’s Desert Resort. They operate in secret laboratories, subterranean fortresses, and corrupted ruins where forgotten legacies of ancient Pokémon intertwine with hypermodern Wormhole technology. They are not seen in the open — they are felt, feared, and predicted like a dark storm on the horizon.

STRUCTURE:

Plazmara is divided into precise strata:

The Architect (Cytheus):

— Supreme leader and founder. Seeker of convergence. Manipulator of Giratina and Kyurem.

The Vessels (Hekara, Arvis, Caeli):

— His closest original disciples — each governs strategic branches of knowledge, war, and psychological manipulation. All were born of Sinnoh or Unova.

The Choir (Anthea & Concordia):

— Once orphans, now mouthpieces of calm philosophical doctrine. They serve both as messengers and guardians of N, whom they helped raise alongside Cytheus.

The Cipher (Colress):

— Genius scientist obsessed with understanding the link between willpower and control. Though not entirely loyal, he remains invaluable for his research.

The Voice (N):

— A creation of purpose. Cytheus did not build N to lead, but to be the mirror that others see hope in. Raised to walk the thin line between control and compassion, N is a living contradiction — and a test subject.

FOUNDING AND POWER BASE:

In the wake of a shattered ideology-less world, Cytheus conquered Sinnoh with unrelenting strategic brilliance. There were no Galactic schemes to compete against, no Plasma uprisings to distort morality — only cold silence, untapped myth, and Giratina’s broken whispers. Through a ruthless campaign of distortion, suppression, and philosophical seduction, Cytheus obtained partial dominion over Giratina, the Renegade Pokémon.

This dominion was incomplete — and dangerous. Though Cytheus held Giratina’s leash, it often snarled, bit, and infected his very psyche. His victory over Sinnoh brought power, but also dreams that rot, shifting dimensions, and fractured identity.

From there, Plazmara spread into Unova, capitalizing on ideological vacuums and fractured regional unity. Unlike past villain teams, Plazmara does not recruit with bombast or terror — they lure with meaning, survival, and truth beyond the veil. Their ranks are filled with scientists, orphans, zealots, and broken geniuses.

Cytheus’s ultimate goal is The Convergence — a unification of fractured timelines and realities through the manipulation of Ultra Wormhole technology and distortion energy. To him, all versions of reality are failures without structure. Without convergence, there is only chaotic divergence, a garden of universes overrun with weeds.

But travel between dimensions is not elegant. It is a violent bleeding of one reality into another. Cytheus’s early experiments — especially using Giratina’s corrupted energy — left entire sectors of space mangled, time loops bleeding into themselves, and living minds rewritten by the trauma of the void.

Even now, Cytheus suffers the cost. Giratina speaks to him in ways no one else hears — not in words, but in images, screams, and reflections of alternate selves. He wears the mask of calm doctrine, but beneath it lies friction, madness, and absolutist hunger.

Cytheus has seen them all. Through cursed rifts and dimensional fractures, with Giratina as both guide and tormentor, he wandered the shattered edges of existence — worlds born of villainy and ego, timelines abandoned by balance. He stood in the ruins of Lysandre’s “beautiful world". He walked the sunken corridors of Archie’s flooded future and the scorched deserts of Maxie’s overheated one. He lingered in the sterile silence of Cyrus’s emotionless void, met the mad sermons of Ghetsis’s liberated anarchy, and stood face to face with Giovanni’s empire — a world meticulously ruled with an iron economy of fear. Even Lusamine, warped by obsession, twisted timelines into playthings for her love-starved delusions. And in every realm, Cytheus felt nothing but confirmation. To him, these victories were not triumphs, but proofs of concept — of how divergence leads to decay, how personal ambition, unchecked idealism, or broken hearts crack the fabric of reality itself. He saw not villains, but failed variables. Not rivals, but cautionary equations. They played with power and called it vision. Cytheus does not play. He calculates.

[jurassic-falls]

FINALLY A MORE IN-DEPTH CHARACTER INTRO POST

This AU will take inspiration from the Jurassic Park and World movies. Potentially the Camp Cretaceous and Chaos Theory shows as well (I haven’t read the books yet unfortunately)

Stanford Pines- Head geneticist and came up with the original idea for Jurassic Park and the InGen cloning technology. His plans and research expeditions were originally funded by the Northwest Family while he was in college, and they helped him acquire Isla Sorna and Nublar (with the promise of getting a share of the money the park makes. He does not fully trust the family and does not want them involved as much as possible)

He’s also in charge of documentation, finding new blood samples, employee hiring, animal welfare, and dealing with potential investors. He’s a very curious person who cares deeply about the dinosaurs and sharing his knowledge of the creatures with the world. However, he can get frustrated easily when dealing with difficult visitors/investors.

His favorite dinosaur is the Velociraptor.

Fiddleford McGucket- Head Engineer and co-founder of InGen and the park. He created the egg incubators and developed the plans for the various paddocks around the island. He’ll also help out with filling in any incomplete gaps in the dinosaur DNA and does routine inspections of the fences around the island. He isn’t a big fan of dealing with the business side of the park, so he mostly stays in the lab and supervises any construction.

Fun fact, any scientists who work in the labs where the embryos and eggs develop are called nursery attendants by the other employees. Fiddleford is not the biggest fan of this nickname. Since he grew up on a farm, he isn’t as affectionate towards the dinosaurs compared to Ford, similar to how he is in canon with the specimens in the bunker. He will help Ford with welfare though since he has experience dealing with “livestock”

Similar to Ian Malcolm in the movies, he was not exactly on board with the park idea, and still holds many reservations about cloning the more dangerous species, but he stays (mostly) silent out of a desire to support Ford and his plans.

His favorite dinosaur is the Maiasaura

Stanley Pines- Head of Park Security. In the story, he and Ford make up much sooner than in canon, and he decides to stay and help with the project after Ford offers him a job.

Stan enjoys the position a lot, and is hoping to one day "punch a dinosaur in the face" (though Ford does not allow any harm to come to the dinosaurs unless absolutely necessary)

In addition to park security, Stan also helps with merchandise ideas and will sometimes help run some of the gift shops in the main visitors section of the park. He's also in charge of search and rescue missions, any potential animal escapes, and transporting any sick dinosaurs back to the laboratory areas for treatment.

His favorite dinosaur is the Ankylosaurus (mainly due to the massive club tails)

William "Bill" Cipher- Head Programmer who is in charge of designing any computer and cyber-security programs the park requires. He also has a fair bit of engineering knowledge and will often help Fiddleford with any inspections of the gates and electric fences all around the island (though they tend to not get along very well)

Not much is known about him other than the fact that he graduated from West Coast Tech. The other employees tend to think he's a bit creepy, but if Stanford hired him then he must be good at what he does, and nobody can deny the fact he's quite intelligent. For unknown reasons, he seems to know a strange amount of information about Ford and his personal life.

His least favorite dinosaur is the Dilophosarus

[pokepollsters]

Best Pokémon Villains Tournament- Individuals Bracket- Round 2: Match 11

With how the seeding has worked out, today is a big day for Orre fans!

Evice and Greevil are the two final bosses of Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, and they head up the sinister Cipher as the Orre Cipher Head and the overall Grand Master respectively. As such, these two petrifying pensioners share a lot of similarities- so let's talk about those, along with what makes them different.

Both men are introduced early in the plot as affable men who either aid the player or need their aid themselves. Evice poses as Es Cade, the jolly mayor of Phenac City, who's concerned about the rising crime- meanwhile he's been orchestrating it behind the scenes. Greevil is a much more mysterious figure, an eccentric rich old man who appears alongside his bodyguards in Gateon Port. By the end of their games though, they've revealed their nasty natures, and do everything they can to take down the player who's been interfering with their Shadow Pokémon scheme.

Not much is known about either man's backstory, but Evice is the grandson of the founder of Phenac City, and seemingly has earned the title of mayor due to the family connection. The family has fallen far it seems, as the wealth accrued by the family is funnelled into dark dealings and the Shadow Pokémon project, with Evice wielding a Shadow Tyranitar as its most vicious invention.

Likewise, Greevil is mysterious, but it's later revealed his bodyguards are actually his sons, Eldes and Ardos, who loyally follow him in his sinister dealings. Greevil is also one of the few trainers in any Pokémon game to face the player with 7 Pokémon, more than we're allowed to wield! He brings Cipher's new masterpiece, a Shadow Lugia, alongside a full team of Shadow Pokémon threats to take you down.

For those that played the Orre games, this may be a hard choice! But if you're just learning about them now, who appeals more to your villainous tastes?

[saltysciencesixer]

Bill Cipher, The Blind Eye

So, I recently saw this video involving the Destruction is a Form of Creation McGucket doodle page on this is not a website dot com as well as the wallpapers from Dispense My Treat. And I was immediately struck by some thoughts involving that video as well as the Book of Bill in general (as well as looking back on the show). Buckle up because there's a lot of stuff here. The main crux of this theory is that Bill is severely vision-impaired. Let's start with two examples relating to my first point in regards to Bill Cipher's vision impairment.

Squinting here trying to read the combination to Stan's safe.

Arguably, the other example could be in Weirdmageddon when despite Ford having a cleft chin and Stan not having one - Bill was unable to tell the two apart. Now, this could just be because it's hard to tell twins apart in general, and Bill doesn't seem like the type to pay very close attention to detail. But... Let's look at the other evidence. In the Book of Bill, we see this sort of flashback pov from that time Stan punched Bill near the end of Weirdmageddon.

Now, maybe this is just for effect. Or maybe this is how Bill actually saw Stan at the time - covered in static because he can't actually see that well. We also have from the Book of Bill evidence that Bill's vision could have been impacted badly in some way. "Eye doctor of a different kind / Wants to make his patient blind" and "Three sips a day to make the visions go away."

In the Book of Bill, there's also this question in the "Intelligence Test" section. I think this may, in fact, be a legitimate question of Bill's. He sees something akin to this in the same way one might see "floaters" "vision spots" or "vision snow" (in people who have that condition). And then going back to that video of the Destruction is a Form of Creation doodle, I noticed some interesting things. I decided to try and recreate the way the images were overlayed and-

This is the Seeyouinmydreams wallpaper that lines up with the stars on the corner of the McGucket doodle. If you look at the writing within this image, It says "I MIGHT HAVE TO TO TELL FORD I CANNOT SEE HIM." Is this one of Bill's dreams?

HE IS BLIND is right next to this Bill statue (which also has some rectangular boxes scribbled in covered over his eyes). It also has "I might be wrong" here - so this could be an acknowledgment that Bill is not FULLY blind - just partially.

Finally, there's the fact that Fiddleford McGucket is the founder of the Society of the Blind Eye. If Bill Cipher is "blind" as McGucket sees it, does this mean the society was centered around Bill? Food for thought: Why was the Society of the Blind Eye located in what looked to be a Bill Cipher Temple? (Watch the episode again - one of the ways to enter the Society of the Blind Eye temple was through pressing a triangle with an eye at the center of it - and if you look on the Society of the Blind Eye page in the Gravity Falls wiki, it talks about how the Pythagorean theorem is written on one of the pillars in the temple). I have A LOT more thoughts about McGucket and the Book of Bill as well which I will post later.

[krutch-0v0]

Triangular family

Participants: Yung Cuz - Nuclear Throne. Video Game God. Don't look at him like that, Y.V couldn't leave his cousin alone, even though he's not a triangle. Friendly to everyone, was afraid of Illum due to his huge size, but with the belt they became friends and started playing consoles.

Yung Venuz - Gun Godz / Nuclear Throne. Rapper god and god of money and guns. Considers himself the founder of the family since everyone lives in his mansion. The calmest of all, owns all the money in the world. Doesn't like Bill and Barr's nagging.

GodHead - The Binding of Isaac Rebirth. God of Essence. Really misses Isaac, who died. Gets a couple hands from Bill. Loves everyone.

Bill Cipher - Gravity Falls. An inter-universal demon who was resurrected in the world of Nuclear Throne (since everyone does it).

Illuminati - from the one US dollar bill and memes of the early 2010s. God of memes. Bill's father. He added his arms and legs because everyone has them (except GD who has no legs). Mocks Barr's threats as he is the most powerful in the universe.

Barracuda - just shapes and bits. Third boss jsab. It may seem that he is huge, but in fact only the top of the pyramid is his body, the rest of it is a controlled device for attack. Doesn't like everyone, appreciates GD for his openness.

Triangolo - from the dancing triangle video. Who the hell is he? He just is and that's all he can do, and he can also dance.

You can suggest more triangular shaped characters in the comments, I'll consider everyone!

[ckret2]

Chapter 77 of human Bill Cipher being a prisoner with terrible fashion sense: beach episode!!! Well, lake episode. Close enough.

And a few other people come to town.

Just after dawn, a sleek, nondescript black government SUV, now dusty from a long drive, parked in front of the Gravity Falls Police Department. Three agents in sleek, nondescript black suits stepped out.

As they left the car, Blubs came out to meet them, Durland trailing behind him. "Agent Powers, Agent Trigger! Good to see you again." He shook Powers's hand, then glanced at the new agent. "And you are...?"

"Agent Dale!" The rookie shook Blubs's hand next, beaming. "Very pleased to meet you. I was just saying in the car—you have a beautiful town here, just beautiful."

"Wouldn't stop talking about it," Trigger muttered.

Blubs chuckled. "Why, thank you. We're quite proud of it ourselves."

Durland said, "Say, Agent Dale—don't you agents usually have tougher-sounding codenames?"

"Agent Clyde S. Dale. Like the horse."

"Ohhh. Yup, that'll do it."

"Sheriff Blubs," Powers said. "I trust you have the requested materials?"

"Right inside," Blubs said. "We've got the readings on last week's gravity anomaly from McGucket's scanners, and reports on this weekend's power surge."

"No overlap between the incidents?"

"None anyone here detected."

"Hmm. Has anything else strange happened since we were last in town?"

Blubs hesitated. "Well—never mind all that." He quickly shifted topics, "Say, I like your 'honk if you want to be arrested' bumper sticker." ("Oh is that what it says?" Durland asked.)

Agent Powers said solemnly, "I can get you the contact information of the shop where I bought it. It's a very nice small business run by art students."

"Would you? That'd be delightful."

Powers paused before following the cops and his agents into the police department, glancing out at Gravity Falls' town square—the modest little main street shops, the town hall, the statue of the town founder, the distinctive water tower with the faded muffin graffiti, and the familiar mountains surrounding the little valley town.

And then he let out a long, frustrated sigh.

"Fine," he muttered grumpily, glaring at the town as though it were an old rival as annoyed to see him as he was to see it. "Let's just get this over with."

He followed Blubs into the police department.

####

"Attention, everybody," Stan said, standing in the entryway with his fists on his hips, Soos beaming behind him. "I've got some great news!"

Abuelita and Bill glanced up from one of Abuelita's soap operas; Mabel and Dipper craned their necks to see Stan from where they were having dinner at the kitchen table.

Stan announced, "It's finally time!"

Dipper and Mabel blinked. Bill said, "Great. I'll get the ritual daggers, you can set up the blood red candles. Dolores?"

Abuelita said, "I will put out the good sacrifice altar." Bill laughed in delight.

"Yeah, yuck it up, you two," Stan said. "We're going fishing tomorrow! I've got the bait, I found everyone's rods, Soos and I patched up the old boat, I even—" He paused at the sound of the vending machine opening. "Hey! Ford!"

Ford ducked in from the gift shop. "What?" 

Stan chucked a hat at him. "I made you a fishing buddy hat! See, it's got your name! That's pretty good!"

"Oh." Ford inspected the letters haphazardly stitched onto the hat. "Why?"

"Fishing tomorrow! Half the summer's gone by, and we haven't gone fishing once! The guys from the lodge probably think I'm too ashamed to show my face. But it rained this weekend, the weather's just cleared up, now's the perfect time for fishing!"

"Oh," Ford said again, trying to drag his thoughts from magical tapes to fishing. "If you'd let me know earlier, I'd have built another fish-summoning beacon like the one on our boat." (Bill glanced curiously at Ford at the mention of an invention he didn't already know about; then stubbornly refused to be interested and dragged his gaze back to the TV.)

"No beacons! This isn't fishing for survival, this is about the sport! Asserting our manhood! Just the skill, strength, and patience of three men—and some women and children—against the lake!" (Soos beamed at being included amongst the men.)

Ford considered that. He didn't assert his manhood very often; usually he just sort of let his manhood hang around minding its own business, like an old cat that wants to be in the same room as you without socializing. It sounded like an intriguingly novel experience. "Okay, great. What time?"

"I want everyone on the road tomorrow morning! By six thirty at the latest."

The kids groaned.

"C'mon, dudes," Soos said encouragingly. "It'll be fun! After about three hours, once you're awake enough to think."

"No griping, we've gotta be there early to get a prime fishing spot," Stan said. "Tomorrow's a lodge fishing day. We're going home with a haul so big they'll be embarrassed they kicked me out!"

Dipper asked, "You mean the lodge for the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel, right? Why'd they kick you out?"

Stan sighed, "Once the town found out about Ford, they realized I'd spent the last thirty years attending lodge meetings under his membership. Since I'd never undergone the—" He rolled his eyes and made finger quotes, "'sacred angler initiation rites,' they booted me. And they said I can't try to join again, just because of that one dumb little white lie! And my extensive criminal record."

Ford hurriedly crossed the living room to avoid blocking Abuelita's TV view. (Bill looked through him like he wasn't there.) "Stan got a lot more out of my membership than I did—once I'd finished my initiation I probably only ever attended three meetings. I tried to petition the Mackerels to let him rejoin."

"How'd they respond?" Mabel asked.

"They kicked me out too."

Bill scoffed. "Big deal! The Fishmasons and all their subordinate organizations are just a big boring social club that got you hotel discounts three hundred years ago. The mystique around them is more interesting than anything they actually do."

"Figuring that out is why I stopped attending after three meetings," Ford said. "I joined to learn about the dark secret underbelly of Western politics—not sit around eating charcuterie and fancy nuts while everyone talks about baseball and makes fun of me for not knowing what a fly ball is. It's a stupid term! Doesn't the ball always fly?"

"Really, they aren't even worth joining," said Bill Cipher, the only person to have ever been kicked out of seventeen separate Masonic lodges in seventeen separate bodies.

Reminded of the fancy nuts he was missing out on at this very second, Stan set his jaw in determination. "Yeah, well, they're a big boring social club that'll rue the day they kicked out Stan Pines! Out the door, six thirty, on the dot!"

"I don't have an alarm," Bill said. "Hey star girl, wake me at five."

Mabel shuddered at the thought of setting an alarm that early. "No way. You can borrow my radio."

"Hold on, I didn't say you're invited," Stan said. "We've already got a full boat! Me, my brother, the kids, and Soos and his girl. Nobody wants to sit on the lake with you for eight hours."

"I wanna sit on the lake with Bill!"

"Nobody but Mabel wants that."

"Relax! I don't want to sit on a boat with you underpainted clowns either," Bill said. "I just want to sit on the beach! I miss sunlight! Sunlight without being forced to hike through half the valley on no food or sleep."

(Ford decided that was his cue to make himself scarce. He scooted into the guest room.)

"Well," Stan said, "we're not staying thirty feet from the shore, we're not leaving anybody behind, and we don't trust you to stay put on the beach without your dumb magic bracelet—so how do you expect that to work."

"I'll just stay with Dolores."

Stan and Soos stared at Abuelita. Soos said, "Abuelita? Do you want to come?"

Abuelita considered it. "Sure. The weather is nice. I can catch up on my reading."

"Yes!" Bill hopped off the couch. "Then it's a plan!"

"Hey, hold on," Stan said as Bill breezed past him, "I didn't agree to—"

"Hey star girl!" Bill leaned into the kitchen. "Need your fashion services! I need a swimsuit before tomorrow."

Mabel gasped in delight. "What kind?"

"Whatever exposes the most skin without getting me arrested. I'm absorbing as much sunlight as possible."

"With sunscreen, right?" Soos said.

Bill turned and gave him a blank-faced stare.

Soos hopefully repeated, "With sunscreen?"

"Don't need it."

"You totally do, dude. Not many people talk about this? But having more melanin doesn't totally protect you from sun damage, it just slows it down," Soos said. "Trust me on this. When I was like eight, I went to this water park—

"Uh-huh, and three days later you were peeling off flakes of your own dead flesh," Bill said. "It's cute how you think you know more about humans from 23 years of passively being one than I do from 500,000 years of actively studying them."

"Oh."

"C'mon, star girl! No time to waste!" Bill grabbed Mabel's hand and tugged her off her chair.

"Wait, my sandwich—!" Mabel grabbed the rest of her dinner off her plate and shoved it in her mouth as Bill dragged her upstairs.

Abuelita shot him a dirty look as he passed, but turned back to her soap opera.

####

Just past five in the morning, Bill crept by the guest room door. He glanced through the wall as he passed; good, both of the Stans were in bed and sound asleep. Bill wouldn't have had a chance to get up to his mischief if Ford had decided to sleep downstairs.

He snuck behind the vending machine; paused to squint toward the future and confirm that when he looked at the stairs, he could only see himself using them anytime soon; then down to the elevator; and down, down to Ford's study.

Bill sighed in relief when the elevator slid open and he saw that Ford had left his study door ajar. He crept into the room, feet socked, hands gloved—Ford was the kind of paranoid to actually check for prints if he suspected anything, and Bill's triangular whorls were very distinctive—and looked through the objects piled on the shelves and furniture for any concealed sensors or cameras. The coast was clear.

He idly scanned the nearby shelves for any sign of his stolen time tape, didn't find it, but didn't expect to. That wasn't what he was here for.

He knelt in front of a half-disassembled filing cabinet, flipped through the files in the removed bottom drawer until he found several folders together about curses and hexes, and flipped through them until he found the one labeled "Curses & Hexes (w/ ingredients)". Good old Sixer, left everything exactly where Bill remembered it.

He rifled through the pages—"aha!"—until he found the paper he was looking for and pulled it out. Handwritten at the top of a ragged-edged piece of notebook paper were the words "Reverse Sunscreen". Bill read through the list of ingredients—"Oh, pepper juice, not pepper flakes, right."—then put the paper back.

He glanced back and forth between the past and present to ensure he put the files back exactly where he'd found them—again, considering Ford's paranoia, he might notice any difference.

And then he returned to the elevator and headed upstairs.

The whole time he was in the study, Bill didn't let himself glance at the back of the room where Ford's shrine to him used to be.

####

"Heya, pal," Bill said. "It's been a while! Where have you been hiding all summer?"

Gompers blinked up at Bill.

"I guess we both look different than we did the last time we met, huh? I think your makeover went better than mine, though! You didn't fall as far as I did." He didn't have as far to fall.

Gompers accepted the backhanded compliment with utter indifference.

"But hey, why talk about the past! Let's let bygones be bygones. Here." Bill knelt, pulled one of Ford's nutrition pills from the folds of his beach towel, and held it out. "A peace offering! A little snack for you."

Gompers eyed it warily.

"Come on, you've eaten worse things than this."

He delicately ate the pill out of Bill's hand.

"Thaaat's right. Tell me how you like that thing later."

Leaning on his car, Stan—the only other person who'd actually been ready to go at 6:30—looked over Bill's shirt and trout slippers, and asked warily, "You didn't forget that humans need to wear pants, right?"

Bill got to his feet, shoved his makeshift umbrella-cane under the same arm as his beach towel, and pulled up the hem of the puma shirt he'd stolen from the gift shop to reveal his bikini bottom. It was teal with little puffy gold triangles painted on. "Cover-up dress. Your arbitrary fashion rules are different for beaches."

Stan considered whether a t-shirt counted as a dress, decided he didn't know enough about dresses and he might as well give this one to Bill, and grunted. "Fine, you're legal."

"Am I free to go, officer?"

"Never compare me to a cop again."

"Stop acting like one!" Bill trotted off to his ride to wait for the other humans to assemble.

There wasn't room for all eight beachgoers in one vehicle; the Pines piled together in Stan's car, while the Ramirezes (including Melody—honorary future Ramirez—and Bill—magic braceleted to Abuelita) took Soos's truck. So that Abuelita didn't have to squeeze past the front seats into the back, Bill and Melody were assigned the back bench; when Bill greeted Melody and she only responded with a vague mumble and an averted gaze, he scooted closer to the middle of the bench, spread his knees to take up more space, and smugly pretended not to notice how Melody squeezed herself against the door.

By the time the Ramirez vehicle parked at the beach, the Pines family was already out of their car: Stan was glaring up the beach with his fists on his hips, the kids were unsuccessfully searching Mabel's supply bag for Dipper's sunscreen, and Ford was lingering back at the car, pretending to check the contents of their tackle box but actually trying to shake the sudden memory of weightlessness and water in his throat. As Bill passed, Ford muttered, "I'm surprised you wanted to get this close to the lake so soon. Considering." It had been less than a week since their joint near death experience.

"Why not? Nearly drowning was the most fun part of that hike." (Ford wondered whether that was a red flag, an underhanded comment about how unfun the rest of the hike had been, or just Bill being Bill; and, for his own peace of mind, decided it was probably the third thing.) "Looks like you got something fun out of the trip, too." Bill snapped the shoulder strap of Ford's waders.

Ford shoved Bill's hand away. "As long as I have them, I might as well use them."

When everyone caught up with Stan, he was scowling at four men, ages ranging from 50 to 80, wearing fishing vests and hats with the Holy Mackerel's distinctive stylized fish symbol. "Eugene," Stan muttered. "Eugene and his goons wanted to kick me out of the lodge for years. Just because I have a grating personality and am generally unpleasant to be around! And tried to get the lodge to pick a local affordable housing fund as our charity for fundraising one year!"

Ford gave Stan a surprised look. "You never mentioned you worked with an affordable housing charity."

"Yeah. The Compassionate Angel's Fund For Gravity Falls Tourism Business Owners Who Are Behind On Their Mortgage Payments."

Ford snorted. 

Bill said, "I think you should've gotten away with it just for being funny."

"Don't even look at them," Stan instructed the group. "These jerks aren't worth it." The collected group studiously avoided looking at the Mackerels, except Bill and Abuelita, who didn't care.

As they walked up the beach toward the pier and veered around the Mackerels, Stan suddenly stopped, turned straight toward them, and said loudly, "Why, Eugene! What a coincidence! I almost didn't notice you!"

A tall, elderly man with a fishing rod over one shoulder and a black wooden cane in his other hand glanced over at the Pines/Ramirez party. "Oh," he said, with a voice like he'd found a fly stuck in gum on his cane. "Hello, Stan-ley. We haven't seen you out on the lake this summer."

Stan laughed loudly, as if Eugene had told a hilarious joke. "Oh, that! I was just waiting for perfect fishing weather! I'm not about to waste my time out on the lake on a bad fishing day!" He gestured behind himself, "Besides, I had to wait until my whole family was free to come along."

(Soos elbowed Melody and whispered excitedly, "He called us his family!")

Stan clapped his hands proudly on Dipper and Mabel's shoulders—who looked like they hoped the sandy beach would swallow them whole—and said, "I don't see your family, Eugene, where are they?"

"Dead." With mournful dignity, Eugene said, "I outlived my wife and all three of my children. Remember? You ate potato chips during my daughter's funeral."

Stan opened his mouth, shut it, and said, "Was that the really boring one that went like an hour?"

Ford, who didn't always have the best social instincts but could tell when Stan had screwed up, started shooing the rest of the family away from the scene, elbowed Stan, and said, "Let's get to the boat. You wanted to get a prime fishing spot, right?"

Eugene looked at Ford. "Ah. You must be the real Stanford Pines?" he said. "So I'm assuming, anyway. Apparently it's hard to tell you two apart."

Stan scowled; but before he could retort, Bill pushed past him to butt into the conversation. "Is it ever! Listen, take it from someone who's made this mistake—you've got to count the fingers on these two, every time."

Eugene huffed sardonically. "So it seems." (Ford self-consciously hid his hands in his pockets and shot Bill a dark look as he shuffled off with the rest of the family.)

"Say, while I've got your attention—name's Goldie, by the way—I couldn't help but admire your cane!" He tapped the tip of his umbrella against Eugene's cane. "I'm in the market for an upgrade from this substitute I've been using! That's no blackwood, right? That looks like true ebony."

"Good eye," Eugene said, surprised. "Yes, genuine Gaboon ebony."

"Must've dropped a lot of gold on this thing," Bill said appreciatively. "You've gotta tell me where you got it."

"I'm afraid I don't remember off the top of my head..."

"That's fine! Look it up—" (he twisted around to speak over his shoulder as Stan grabbed his arm and dragged him away) "—I'm sure we'll meet again!"

About fifteen feet away, Stan growled, "What was that?"

"Networking. I've got plans for that guy," Bill said. "Hey, did you hear him? Gaboon ebony?" He laughed condescendingly. "Easiest way to make a guy look like a moron, start talking about 'true' ebonies. Didja know the word 'ebony' comes from Egyptian? And when they talked about 𓍁𓈖𓏭𓆱, they were talking about African blackwood. Wood so hard it sinks and you have to tool it like a metal! Gaboon ebony is a flimsy usurper!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"But you don't pretend you do, and that's what makes you better than that guy." Bill tugged Stan down by the shoulder. "Listen, Fisherman. I can't tell you where the fish are biting but I can tell you where they're swimming. It'll give you an advantage, but you'll need to do the rest."

Stan squinted mistrustfully at Bill. "What's the catch."

"The catch is you have to accept my help. Do you want it or not?"

"And why are you offering?"

"Because I think these lodge guys are a bunch of snobs. And they should've chosen your charity. It was funny."

That, plus Stan had been the most reluctant to let Bill live; Bill had to convince him he'd made the right choice.

Bill gave Stan directions to a bunch of fish he could see underwater by the Island Head Beast's right earhole; and then, his good deed for the day done, he headed off to claim a spot on the beach.

Ford had gone into Tate & Backle's to properly purchase the clothing they'd borrowed after the eclipse, and Soos was helping set Abuelita up with a low beach chair and a large umbrella. Bill smoothed out a patch of sand about ten feet from Abuelita so he could lay out his beach towel and dump his supplies for the day beside it. While Mabel and Melody got the boat ready, Dipper wandered around looking for sunscreen to borrow. He saw Bill's tube, snatched it without asking, and generously coated his arms, legs, and face. Bill fought back a grin and pretended not to notice.

He tossed aside his t-shirt and fish slippers, settled down on the towel in his bikini, carefully squeezed several horizontal lines of reverse sunscreen across the front of his abdomen and thighs, and drew a few vertical lines in between to break them up.

Ford trudged over from the bait shop to tell Bill, "I thought you'd like to know those ridiculous fish slippers were thirty dollars."

Bill laughed. "Whoa! Seems like a lot of money for some cheap novelty shoes! It's too bad you decided to trap me in a position where I'm too destitute and powerless to make my own purchases, isn't it?"

"All right, all right." Ford's gaze caught on the bruise-blue line discoloring the skin from Bill's left shoulder to his right hip—had he gotten injured during one of his hikes the past week? Or had that always been there? Ford didn't think he'd ever seen Bill's body shirtless, maybe it had always been here—but then he noticed Bill's lines of sunscreen and barked a laugh. "I suppose you're not planning to rub that in."

"Brilliant observation." Bill began smoothing down the lines with a finger, maintaining the pattern he'd drawn.

"You wanted to come out here to suntan? I'm sure you're already aware of the cancer risks from tanning."

"If I'm in this body long enough to get cancer, I'll welcome it." Bill lay down, laced his hands behind his head, and gave Ford an obnoxious smile. "Anyway, basal cell carcinomas are delicious. There's something kinda romantic about them, you know?"

Ford ruminated on that with thoughtful bafflement, shushed the voice in his head trying to point out that Bill was waving ever more red flags, and concluded that perhaps humans weren't meant to comprehend the romanticism of skin cancer. "Fine."

"What's everyone standing around for?" Stan asked, trudging up to Soos and Ford. "C'mon, we're burning daylight! Let's..." He trailed off, staring at Bill.

His bikini top consisted of two triangular red cups. Each cup had an enormous staring eye.

"See something ya like?" Bill asked dryly.

Stan quickly looked away. "Ugh. That's indecent."

"What is?"

"That—design!"

"What's indecent about eyeballs?"

"It looks like...!" He gestured vaguely but emphatically.

"What? What does it look like? Tell me what it looks like, Stanley."

"Never mind!" He turned away with a huff and muttered to Ford, "Can you believe him?"

"I honestly didn't notice anything until you pointed it out." Ford waved back at Bill dismissively as he followed Stan toward the boat. "Enjoy your sunburn."

"I will! I haven't had a good sunburn in centuries! That's one of the best features of earthling bodies!" Bill got comfortable and shut his eyes.

Soos finished getting Abuelita settled, headed toward the boat—but hesitated as he passed by Bill. Bill opened an eye a crack to glower up at him. "What?"

Soos mumbled, "You could've just told me you wanted to get sunburned. I mean—yesterday."

"But you didn't ask if I wanted a sunburn," Bill snapped. "You just assumed I didn't know how they work. And that's the point: you assumed I was stupid instead of considering that maybe you didn't know my plan."

"Oh. Uh... sorry." Soos rubbed the back of his neck. "I didn't mean to make you feel stupid."

Bill's irritation flared higher. He sat up. "I didn't say you made me feel stupid," he hissed, voice low, talking fast. "There's nothing that you could do to make me feel stupid. But that doesn't mean you aren't treating me like I'm stupid, does it?"

"Whoa—!" Soos raised his hands defensively. "Chill, dawg. I didn't mean—"

"What's the phrase, do ut des? 'Do unto others'? Your species's phrase. Don't treat me like I'm stupider than you and I won't have to return the favor—sound like a fair deal, Question Mark?" Bill stared up at him challengingly, brows raised.

"But th— I w— You..." Soos's protests that he'd been doing nothing but trying to do-unto-others Bill got jumbled all around under the force of Bill's spotlight glare. His shoulders slumped. "Sure," he mumbled. "Sorry."

"Good." Bill lay back down. "Get out of my sun."

Soos trudged away; and Bill took a deep breath, tried to get in a meditative mindset where he could shut off his mind, and focused on the feeling of sunshine on his body.

He'd just about managed to drop into a proper trance when Abuelita called sweetly, "Bill? Would you grab a bottle of water for me?"

His face twitched toward a frown as he was dragged back to full consciousness. Hadn't Soos left them close enough for her? Some grandson. 

"Bill?"

He tried to think of an excuse to stay where he was; then growled in irritation and sat up. "Okay, okay." He couldn't afford to offend the chef with access to the poisons.

The bag with the water bottles was right behind Abuelita's elbow; but maybe her joints were stiff. Bill knelt to unzip the bag. "Another bodice ripper?" he asked, glancing at her book. 

"A powerful sorceress queen has been captured by her enemies. She just learned they are led by her former apprentice."

"I can sympathize with that." Bill dragged the bag up next to Abuelita's knee so he wouldn't need to grab another bottle for her later. "Who's the love interest—guileless guard? Heroic rescuer?"

"The apprentice."

"Sympathy's gone." Bill glanced toward the boat to see what the rest of the household was up to.

They'd already reached the spot Bill had indicated and started fishing. Soos was excitedly reeling in his line; the boat listed to one side as everyone crowded around him to see what he'd brought up. Stan dipped a net in the water to scoop up his catch.

It was a boot.

Everyone's faces fell in disappointment.

Except for Ford's, who gleefully snatched up the boot he'd kicked off during the eclipse when he fell in the lake. He dumped the water out of his boot, switched places with Soos, and began fishing the same spot.

Abuelita said, "My grandson has been very nice to you."

Bill looked at her warily.

"Hasn't he?" She had a polite smile and daggers in her eyes.

He had the oddest feeling that this was going somewhere dangerous. "Yeah yeah yeah, sure he has," Bill said. "Nothing but nice. I think I'll take a little stroll, stretch these legs! See ya!" He stood to escape.

He only got a step away before the enchanted bracelet pulled tight around his wrist. He turned around to stare in amazement.

Abuelita had wrapped the slack of the bracelet thread around her hand.

Bill had made a severe miscalculation.

"So," Abuelita said. "Why are you being mean to my grandson." It was a trap all along. She'd agreed to be handcuffed to him so she could corner him for an interrogation.

"Whaaat," Bill said. "Me? No way! I'd never!"

Abuelita stared at him patiently.

"I don't even talk to him," Bill said, trying to think of a conversational escape route.

She raised a brow.

Got it. "He's just too nice, you see! I don't know how to talk to a guy that nice," he lied. "Makes things awkward!" How could any grandmother complain about her grandson being called too nice? "Yeah—not Jesús's fault at all. I don't hold it against him."

"Ah," Abuelita said, "you aren't used to people being nice to you?"

Sure, they could go with that, try to get him some pity. "Yeah! You know how it is. King of Nightmares, scourge of the multiverse—I'm not a popular guy."

"But you have friends, don't you? The scary ones you brought with you to town last year? Are they not nice to you?"

Bill hesitated, trying to figure out his story now. "Sure—they're nice to me. They're my friends! They love me! They'd do anything I say!"

"Oh. So, you're only comfortable with people being nice to you when you can control them." Abuelita smiled sweetly.

Swift, efficient, and brutal. Bill gaped at her.

"I'm glad you have nothing against Soos," she said. "And that you won't be rude to him."

Bill snapped his mouth shut. "Of course not." He gave Abuelita a tight smile. Played like a fiddle. Even though he'd been lying, she still managed to make him look like a loser. How embarrassing. "If you don't mind, I've got a sunburn to get back to."

"I'm not stopping you." She let the extra thread on the bracelet cuffs unwind from her hand and drop to the sand.

Bill trudged back to his towel, snapping as he went, "I hope this is one of those books you hate where the couple only gets hitched because they've got a baby coming."

"The sorceress has magical birth control."

"Course she does."

Bill flopped onto his towel again and stared at the sky. Ouch.

####

(I've been promising Agent Powers AND a beach episode for ages, and we finally get to them both at the same time. Let me know what y'all think so for!)

[goofy-clan]

⭐️PINNED POST⭐️

WELCOME TO GOOFY CLAN!!

“you’re traveling through the woods, it’s calm. It’s quiet. And then it’s not. A bunch of cats are just- doing Non-cat things. It’s strange, and nothing seems serious. The “lore” isn’t working. A small cat with odd eyes asks if you want to come over and have fun! Do you wish to join…?”

Fanart by- @shaded-or-shades

OFFICAL discord ——> https://discord.gg/NrVCCjnp

BLUESKY ——> https://bsky.app/profile/jellylegumes.bsky.social

Hey! Click more for important info and links to comics below!

-----------------------------------

Welcome to the blog!

You can call me ‘Legume’. I’m the writer and artist for this blog!

This series is mainly meme filled and goofy. It’s a kind of way for me to relax and just let loose with art. So let me explain the universe!

…

…

…

Anything and everything happens. That’s all.

Want to read? Start here! —> Beginning

-----------------------------------

INSPIRATIONS!

This series has been inspired BY-

@circus-clangen , @dawn-clan , @moons-of-dewclan , @echoes-in-echoclan , @castaway-clan , @fallenclan , and @juniper-clan !!

The entire thing wouldn’t be possible without viewers like you @officialclangen !!

** PLEASE GO CHECK THESE GUYS OUT!!**

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MINI INFO!

* Each eyes represent a Goofyclan member. Regular eyes represent outsiders or “Normal” cats. Kits born from founders sometimes inherit this

* goofyclan cats have more simplistic designs, whereas other clans/Outsiders have detailed

* Starclan probably hates them

* MoonMoon is technically our Protag

* Rombus eyes/Stars are for starclan cat only.

* Most ciphers I use for clues are Atbash, Ceaser, Morse, and Pigpen!

* Most cats can stand on their hind legs, for comedy reasons of course.

* Memes are refrenced everywhere

* the crater brings life to all

-----------------------------------

ASK RULES:

🌀 No weird/NSFW asks. This is a cat game, be sensible.

🌀 Sometimes asks move plot along, so don’t be afraid to interact!

🌀 If you want to ask, ask as much as you want! It may take a while for me to get to it though-

🌀 NO Magic asks/Self insert stuff

🌀 You can asks kits, but they ain’t gonna say much.

🌀 If you wanna ask me directly, Use “Legume” so I don’t mix asks up!

-----------------------------------

Tags will be: #Goofyasks , #ComicPages , #Doodles , #Asks4Me , #Fanart

-----------------------------------

AND that’s all! Happy reading!

-

-

Don’t eat yellow snow

[dranozadystuff]

“𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃 𝐒𝐏𝐋𝐈𝐓 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐅𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐒. 𝐈 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐁𝐈𝐍𝐃 𝐈𝐓 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐓𝐎𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑—𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐋, 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐓, 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄.”

POKEMON VILLAINS FUSION:

CYRUS + GHETSIS

— Meet Cytheus, the architect of collapse and convergence. The fusion of Ghetsis’s cruelty and Cyrus’s nihilism, Cytheus is not content to conquer just a world. He seeks to overwrite existence.

He is the cold, brilliant founder of Team Plazmara, a sect-like organization with one terrifying goal: Universal Convergence. To him, multiversal diversity is a sickness. Divergence breeds identity, identity breeds conflict—and conflict must be erased. Cytheus seeks a perfectly ordered dimension where time no longer forks, where all choices converge into one inevitable track. He does not wish to be a god. He wishes to be the system itself.

Cytheus is composed, eloquent, and absolutely merciless. He speaks in carefully measured phrases, always calm, never shouting. His cruelty is not sadism— it is strategy. To him, feelings are fractures, and people are broken algorithms. He does not waste time with passion; he corrects. His prosthetic arm is sleek, metallic, and deliberate—an intentional replacement of humanity with mechanism. His half-burned face, left untouched by surgery, is a symbol of survival through detachment. The damage occurred in the early phases of the Chrono-Finalizer’s first activation—an experiment that fractured space and nearly erased him. He was left disfigured, barely alive, but he did not mourn the pain. He looked in the mirror and saw evolution.

IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIPS:

Anthea and Concordia — once prophets of balance and empathy — Cytheus refers to only as "residual noise." He keeps them silenced, tucked away like obsolete code in a system too complex to delete entirely. He lets them live not out of mercy, but as a cautionary subroutine: they represent what happens when hearts guide systems. He neither tortures nor empowers them—just erases their influence slowly, methodically, like overwriting a corrupted file.

Colress, on the other hand, fascinates him. A man of intellect, free from empathy, guided by a similar curiosity — yet hopelessly fixated on the individual power of Pokémon. To Cytheus, this is a flaw: obsession with strength is still obsession with difference. Colress is kept close but never trusted. He is a useful process, not a person. The moment his function becomes obsolete, he will be discarded without ceremony. And Colress knows it. That’s why he stays.

As for N… the child was never meant to matter. At first, he was a cipher — an interpreter between Pokémon instinct and Cytheus’s cold order. But as N grew, as he chose compassion over clarity, the fracture widened. Cytheus now sees him as an error in the equation: unpredictable, emotional, human. A freak, yes, but not because he’s monstrous — because he still believes choice matters. Still, Cytheus does not destroy N. Not yet. For now, he remains… contained. Observed. Studied. The last anomaly Cytheus has not yet erased from the code.

BIOGRAPHY:

Cytheus’s story is stitched from pain, but he’d never call it that. Born in Veilstone City, in a household where silence and obedience reigned, he grew up under the weight of impossible expectations. His father worshipped control. His mother vanished under mysterious, never-spoken-of circumstances. Young Cytheus internalized that love was unstable, and silence was perfection. In his youth, he pursued multiversal science, believing he could find a version of himself that was whole. But the deeper he looked, the more fragmented everything became. Each alternate self was a disappointment. Each dimension, a contradiction. And then the thought came: what if there were no other selves? What if every version of existence could be merged—not into harmony, but uniformity?

He abandoned identity, nationality, even morality. What remained was Cytheus: the man who will erase the multiverse to fix its chaos.

SONG VIBES:

Danger Silent — Existence

Falling in Reverse — Voices in my head

A. M speech — I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

Minami — Hollowness (Lorelai Irving cover)

[stanlypines]

EH FLESH BEINGS, GET GATSBIED IDIOTS!!! In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been un­usually communicative in a reserved way, and I under­stood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, pre­occupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quiv­ering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infi­nite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth. And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If per­sonality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that reg­ister earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This respon­siveness had nothing to do with that flabby impression­ ability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short­ winded elations of men. * * * My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradi­tion that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware busi­ness that my father carries on today. - Bill Cipher

[wil-acid]

GEN LOSS DECRYPTERS HELP

Ok the thing in the final second of the fortune teller vid translates to:

HU'PH ZSAV RDVLU HNSS

The apostrophe in the first word is from a filled in dot that's not a part of the cipher- could be an apostrophe or - or something? unsure

But caesar (tried 2-8) and atbash aren't working

Vigenere tries: 'generation' 'gen' 'founder' 'zero' 'roads' 'fortune' 'teller'

Nothing so far- anyone got any ideas/news/help???

[adiraofthetals]

So @sadmushroomgoblin tagged me in this post

So my WIPs... and I have to tag a person per WIP? Yeah, that's not happening. I will still show all my WIPs but there are a lot.

Star Trek Discovery:

Michael

Arcade Date

Back Home To You | Recharging Batteries

Everything Was Going Fine

Gray & Senna Fic

Morning Routines

Sleepy Mornings

You Can Get Drunk Now (Christmas Alt Story/Cut Ideas)

Untitled document | The Bird Song

So Where Does She Keep The Candy?

Manatee

Double Life

Untitled document | Modern AU Idea

How Mirror!Adira & Mirror!Gray Met

A Troubling Dream (@ajtal we both know what this one is. I need to work on it again)

In Another Universe Where We Were Different Chapters 5 & 6

The 40 song WIPs for the Epic/Discovery Fic. I am not typing it all out.

MarioLore:

I've Been Dreaming Of A True Loves Kiss And A Princess I'm Hoping Comes With This

(Very good btw go watch it. Their cosplays are out of this world! YouTube Channel)

Fallout:

Their Own Pain, Their Own Screams (Another Dane fic what a surprise)

Discovery In Eureka | Eureka x Star Trek Discovery Fanfic Crossover

Just Another Day In Eureka Chapter 5 WIP "Episode 1: Small Town, Big Secrets: Lunch With The Dads"

WIP JACK'S SCENES

WIP JACK LEARNING ABOUT GRAY

WIP "MANY HAPPY RETURNS" SEASON 1 EPISODE 2

NATHAN & ADIRA MEET | I Know What's Down In Section Five SEASON 1 EPISODE 2

WIP "BEFORE I FORGET" SEASON 1 EPISODE 3 / ADIRA & ZOE MEET UP

WIP "I DO OVER" SEASON 3 EPISODE 4

WIP "FOUNDERS DAY" SEASON 4 EPISODE 1

WIP "LIFTOFF" SEASON 4 EPISODE 11

WIP "One Small Step…" SEASON 4 EPISODE 19

Those Four Years I Waited For My Brother To Come Back SEASON 5

Halloween In Eureka (Cut Halloween Special. Might work on it for this year tho.)

Tal's Past Lives Characterizations and Lives (Help for future fics.)

That's 31 WIPs not including the Epic WIPs. I might have problems tbh...

Also, Rin you use your reminders app on your Samsung phone, not your calendar app. We love you and your insanity tho.

You are all free to ask me anything about these WIPs!! I will be delighted to talk about them!!!

I will @ a couple people I guess uh... @weltato @mxflowercheck @lorcaswhisky @sillygoofynerd @bostoneris @cipher-fresh @noworneverphantom do it if you want to! No pressure ofc!!! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3