#pine center

[paintedcrows]

Some Fords! (and Martin K Blackwood is also there)

[wayward-wren]

Thinking about. Stanley Pines. Once summer, not long after Weirdmaggedon. Sitting in his seat, staring at the tv but realising slowly he's not really watching TV, he's listening.

Listening to Soos, taking a tour group around the Shack, his voice confident and happy, eagerly telling tourists all kinds of tall tales. Soos, with his young son strapped to his chest, held close and dear to his heart, always knowing he is loved and wanted by his father.

Listening to Wendy and Melody, laughter turning to deeper conversations in the gift shop as Wendy pours out her latest dating drama and Melody listens sympathetically--not quite a mother, but an older sister figure is all Wendy wants at the moment.

Listening to a distant boom coming from the basement, a cause for some concern that fades quickly as three peals of laughter follow soon after. One deep and familiar, as comforting and close as the sound of a ship's motor and the open sea. One young and high, cracking with adolescent awkwardness. One loud and cackling, a hint of madness never quite leaving it but more settled than it used to be. And Stan figures it's probably time to send someone down to drag Ford, Dipper and McGucket upstairs before they forget what light is and get too nerdy.

Besides it's nearly dinner time, and he's listening to Mabel's steady, unrelenting chatter in the kitchen, punctuated by a few grunts of acknowledgment from Abuelita as they prepare a meal.

And Stan feels a strange, unusual sensation wash over him, something he hasn't felt for over half a lifetime, by a boat on a beach. A sensation of contentment, of security, of peace. And he realises that if he stood up and walked into any one of the rooms in the Shack he would be greeted with smiles and faces lighting up to see him and cheerful cries of his name.

And he looks down at the darned pig sleeping beside his chair and things, with oddly misty eyes, that he spent thirty years trying to find his brother again. And he succeeded--but somehow, he got more than that. He had formed around him, without even realising it, a family.

[rochan]

Bill fumbling Ford and Ford fumbling Mcgucket is the realest way to end a love triangle

[laskinpublishing]

SCROLL DOWN  ▼for Laskin Publishing's Books & Artwork

Now: Don Laskin’s Uncalled for Commentary on Just About Anything That's Often None of His Business

Even More Tales of The Pine Center

Back in the Forties through the Fifties, in the foothills of the Catskills in Upstate New York, my family owned The Pine Center, a small hotel in what the city people called “The Mountains”. These are their stories.

The Soda Magnate

I was cute. I mean REALLY cute. Well, at least that was the consensus among female hotel guests who couldn’t help pinching my cheeks till they were rosy red…and swelling to the size of watermelons. I exaggerate...cantaloupes.

Worst of all were the two-fisted pinchers. They’d take a cheek in each hand, twist my little head so I’d be looking up at them and squeeze thumb to forefinger on each cheek exclaiming in roughly transliterated Yiddish,” Zaya-a-shane-a.. Zaya-a-kloogeh”, which my limited anglicized understanding translated to “handsome; and so smart.” Still holding fast, they’d add in English, “Ooh, I could just eat him up.”  Fearing there was that possibility, the instant I felt their fingers loosen I was gone.

As it happens, I was exotic as well as cute. These people had never seen a real live country boy with an accent as foreign to them as their Bronxite and Brooklynese was to me. Example:

“You a native?” the kid asked me.

“Uh-huh”

“I’m from Nuh Bronx.”

“New Bronx?” I asked for clarification.

“T-H-E”, he spelled out, adding, ‘”Bronx,” then put it all together, “Nuh Bronx.”

I can’t remember if I’d learned to spell yet, but I got the gist. Eventually, however, we natives and the invaders from New York were able to converse. And once a trading language was established, I began my first tentative steps in the business world selling soda at dinner time and ice cream in the afternoons.

Now our guests literally feasted from morning till night. After a breakfast of orange juice, eggs, bagels, herring, toast, French toast, pancakes, and more, there was a slightly lighter lunch a few hours later to tide them over till a dinner that started with fruit cocktail, cantaloupe or honey dew, followed by chicken fricassee or chopped chicken liver. Then came barley, corn or possibly chicken noodle soup. A main dish of roast beef, pot roast, roast chicken or steak came with a number of sides. Topping things off would be dessert like my Mom’s lemon meringue pie and cookies filled with raisins, cherries and nuts.

The price of the food was included in the accommodations. So no one could really complain about a kid charging a paltry ten cents for a bottle of soda. Also, did I mention that everybody thought I was really cute?

Of course soda wasn’t the only available beverage. We didn’t have a liquor license, so no beer or hard liquor. However, there was hard water. Pumped fresh from our well, the minerals dissolved in it made for lousy lathers, but a unique flavor people raised on city water couldn’t get enough of.

While ice cold well water may have cut into my profits, I made out pretty well — well enough to keep me in bubble gum baseball cards and every issue of Classic Illustrated I could lay my hands on. These comic books were adaptations of literary classics such as Les Misérables, Moby-Dick and Hamlet and proved an invaluable time and energy saver in my later academic career. But, I digress — As I said, I was making out pretty well, so well in fact though I can’t say I remember it happening, it became family lore. It seems that when my pockets got so heavy with change that my dungarees sagged (no jeans in those days) threatening to go down and take my shorts with them, I purportedly told people I had enough money and they didn’t have to pay. Since I am admittedly a rotten businessman, there could be some truth lurking in the retelling.

HOWEVER, the following incidents I remember well. Now, diet soda was a fairly new thing back then, so new that our soda distributor didn’t carry any. At dinner when I went around taking orders, a thin lady with thin lips, a thin face and thin aquiline nose asked me for diet soda. Informing her I didn’t have any, she told me about a store where I could buy it for her.

Everybody in a service business knows the customer’s always right. Naturally however, this doesn’t apply to a kid on summer vacation whose priorities run to swimming, playing hide and seek, climbing apple trees to get to the fruit, building a club house in the woods, reading comic books, collecting bottle caps, catching Monarch butterflies, etc..

The next day when the thin lady with thin lips, thin face and thin aquiline nose again asked about the diet soda, I replied, “I don’t have it,” adding under my breath, “but you sure could use it.” Yes I know. She was already thin. But I was a kid without a fully developed sarcastic vocabulary.

“What did you say?” she called after me as I made my escape pretending not to hear. “Little boy! Oh little boy! Come here little boy!”  Somehow I managed to avoid the thin lady with thin lips, thin face and thin aquiline nose for the rest of her stay.

That story reminds of this one. My father had turned off the water to one of our bungalows to repair a pipe. When he was done, he asked me to run over and make sure the water was on again. Now the top of the door had four panes of clear glass at my eye level. When I knocked, a stark naked lady came to the door. Caesar said, “Veni. Vidi. Vici.” (“I came. I saw. I conquered.”) Donny said, “Veni. Vidi. Cucurri.”(I came. I saw. I ran.”)

Okay, I never said it, but I sure did it. Bolting off the bungalow’s tiny porch I headed out full speed as the lady called after me, “Little boy…little boy…come back, little boy.” No, it was not the same lady as in the diet soda affair. As a matter of fact I distinctly remember this lady as being pleasingly Rubenesque. What she was thinking I couldn’t guess.

Oh, the water was on.

A PERSONAL NOTE:

If you followed my posts (and surprisingly some of you do), you know I tried to get one out every week or so. This is my first one since the end of August when I had a spinal stenosis flare up (translation: damned nasty back ache). I was allergic to the drug I was prescribed causing more problems including a couple of weeks of withdrawal and was likely a contributing factor to a fall that damned near broke my kneecap.

Dorothy Parker said, “I hate writing, but love having written.” Writing is a painful process. Add a dose of physical pain and…well that’s what’s taken so long.

Best,

Don

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[crittermayhem]

ok but who informed stanford about 9/11??? like

ford: I wanna go see the world trade center after all these years!

the rest of the gravity falls cast: 😨

stan: we cant

ford: why not-

dipper: the world trade center is gone

ford: WHAT.

[pepperpixel]

Initial drawings of that old man… I literally, I haven’t finished reading the book of bill yet!!! I had to stop and take a break for a week to feverishly draw fanart of myself petting fords floofy hair and giving him attention and shit…!!!! The urge was too great….!! I’ve literally. I had a crush on this guy the instant he was first REVEALED in the show, but I did not have the artistic prowess to draw good looking old men back then… but I do now… thank god… thank fucking god

[irfrenchfries]

Can I show you one of the most adorable things I’ve ever drawn

What if Fantasy Setting and Stan was a squire and Ford was an apprentice mage/wizard/magic boy?

For @forduary Week 1- Childhood and school years.

[Image description: digital art of Stan and Ford from Gravity Falls as kids in a fantasy setting.

One colored drawing shows Stan in a tunic, offering someone a pair of gauntlets and a big sword with a grin. The other colored drawing shows Ford in a vest, reading from a big spellbook and channeling a spark of blue magic as he sticks out his tongue in concentration.

Below are two rougher sketches. Stan's sewing something, while Ford is carrying around a cauldron with books and quills resting in it. End description.]

[thebestusernamepossible]

I think a really underrated character duo in gravity falls is Dipper and Stan. Like one, I think they are way more similar than people give them credit for. Like Dipper is definitely the one who feels like the ‘inferior’ twin (internally on his part), something reflected in Stan. Also Dipper is generally pretty cunning and willing to throw punches in a Stan-way, you can see Stan rubbing off on him as the show progresses. Dipper in the Stan costume, and that one scene where Stan and Dipper both cross their fingers at the same time for the same promise, both live in my head rent free. In my heart of hearts I think Dipper picks up a bit of Stans con-man tricks in the future (and Mabel goes on some bonding missions w/ Ford, but this post isn’t abt them). Also I just want to say I bet Dipper reminded Stan of a young Ford and that informed some of their early dynamic. Anyway bye just needed this brainworm out

[thinkingabout-girls]

i could make you scream if i wanted.

[strqyr]

i wish i could tell if oscar's "i always knew i wanted to be more than a farmhand, but this? who would ask for this?" is about the shadow war / the merge or if it's about being a huntsman in general. like, they've left what his "more" is pretty vague (as far as i can remember), and idk. the idea that he's talking about being a huntsman with the "who would ask for this?", specifically the reality of being one rather than the idolized life of a hero that is advertised, would so very interesting.

it'd also be a neat parallel with ruby, who specifically wanted to be a huntress instead of any other job that involves helping people, because it was romantic.

also, i just realized that the episode where oscar and oz have their first proper conversation about The Situation is called punished.

ouch.

[saltyhibiscus]

Haha old man hours <3

(Yes i finally painted again and its ford LMAO)

[hahaoatmeal]

This is the lowest effort picmix i've ever made, but im posting it in case there are other ppl out there who really love Kaeya and also Grunkle Stan.

[lunarrosette]

Lark oak Garcia, Stanford pines, and Jonathan sims r the same men in different fonts

[legobiwan]

Two posts I want to make one of these days:

How both Bill and Ford are wildly unreliable narrators (the most unreliable in the show) and shape their personal narratives for self-serving purposes

Something I'm calling "Ford's Collateral Damage." Because my gods, was the man was a human steamroller in pursuing what he wanted, and that came with a calculable cost. (And in this, touching on his moral compass vs. Stan's, and why Bill was so convinced Ford was the one, however you want to define that. And why Bill, despite his myriad of issues, was not off-base in this assessment).

Bonus number three! How both of the above would come into play post-Weirdmaggedon. Because I honestly think McGucket's mind was too blown out to remember just how poorly Ford treated him, Stan was too desperate for his brother's affection, and Ford himself was swinging wildly into self-recrimination and a guilt-martyr complex without addressing some of his base issues, at least as we saw in the series. And if Ford had chilled, to a certain degree, during his time in the Portal...it was 30 fucking years. What happened there?

[fauvester]

tgcf as a long rambling bedtime story shang qinghua tells xuejiao (because story time is one of the few times his little half-demon whelp will cuddle with him) intended to teach a spoiled ass ice prince the value of humility and goodness and dedication to the people. it backfires horrifically because XJ thinks that xie lian is extremely cringe and in true airplane fashion the epic bloodthirsty demon antagonist ends up being a supreme simp househusband. how does this keep happening to SQH

[toxcicada]

My Asexual-old-man X Interdimensional-weird-guy toxic situationship playlist. Some silly Billy songs, some bill-is-pathetic-in-the-theraprism songs, some toxic manipulative relationship songs, some Ford-losing-his-mind songs, some possessed-Ford songs, a couple brotherly conflict songs thrown in, a lotta Get Scared, & various emo breakup bangers.