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I made a past post showing parallels between Gideon & Bill a while back but the main parallel I noticed are their relationships to Ford and Mabel:

They used to be close to Ford/Mabel before their messed up actions caused a falling out between them

Gave them chances to join their side

Held them captive during the course of Weirdmaggedon

Now this could've been accidental and me just reading into things but the Book of Bill had this recurring idea of Bill being Ford's toxic, abusive ex. It just really cemented this parallel and the idea of Bill being Ford's Gideon.

IN ADDITION - While this might be reaching, I think with this idea in mind, there's an additional way to read to Gideon's line:

"Bill explained it to me nice and simple. She was always destined to be mine. Now that I have her trapped in a cage, she'll learn to love me. I have an eternity to wait"

Another way to read that is, Bill's projecting onto Gideon & Mabel a bit and this was what he initially had planned with Ford: Keep them trapped, and use the endless amounts of time they have to make him "learn" to love him, but then the barrier surrounding Gravity Falls derailed that

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idk if you've ever answered this before (probably, the answer is always probably) but is Bill, like... capable of empathy? Of sympathy? Of love (any kind) or compassion? I guess what I'm asking is how does he relate to other people? Are they all just tools and idle amusements, or does he develop any actual genuine (positive??) attachment to them?

Everything I know about him comes from 8+ year old memories of a cartoon I haven't rewatched since, and discourse I see through your blog, so I'm not sure what the canon consensus is but your word is god enough to me on at least your specific interpretation of Bill.

(I guess it would be moot to ask why he's so fucked up. Feel free to ignore any and all of this ask, it's 12 AM and I'm trawling the web before bed)

for my specific interpretation of Bill? Have this post about empathy and a couple of posts about romantic love. (Okay—three about romance.)

But now let's forget about my interpretation and talk canon.

Empathy! You can roughly split empathy into two categories: "I can logically identify and understand what you're feeling" empathy, and "when you're sad i feel sad and when you're happy I feel happy" empathy.

We absolutely know that Bill has "I understand what you're feeling" empathy, because he uses it again and again to manipulate his victims. He has VERY good emotional intelligence. He understands his victims' insecurities, their desires, how to make them feel happy, angry, ashamed, trustful, mistrustful; he knows when and how to manipulate them based on their mood to maximum effect; etc. We see it in how he manipulates Dipper & Mabel in the show; we see it in how he turns Ford against Fiddleford in Journal 3; we see it in TBOB and on thisisnotawebsitedotcom in the way he talks about how and why he manipulated Ford.

We have no evidence he experiences "I feel what you feel" empathy. That doesn't necessarily mean he DOESN'T, but there's no evidence for it. Never see him get excited just because someone else is excited, never see him cringe sympathetically when someone else is hurt. You could say "maybe on top of being a manipulation tactic, when Bill relates to Ford's estrangement from his family by talking about his destroyed universe, he's also feeling empathy for his situation," but you could also just as easily say "nah it's just manipulation."

Common sense would say well, if he feels other people's pain, it would be harder for him to manipulate, betray, and hurt people so blithely. But we're not talking about common sense, we're talking about canon evidence! It's possible for empathetic people to hurt other people; they can just... learn not to care about that person's feelings. Which is particularly easy to do if the target is someone the person sees as "less important" or dehumanizes them. Bill sees everyone as less important than him. We can't rule either way on whether or not he's got a capacity for emotional empathy we just never see. All we can say for sure is he doesn't appear to turn it on for anyone we see.

Though we see him come close. Although he doesn't feel with any of the Pines, we can see him relate to Ford (during Weirdmageddon, throughout TBOB), to Stan (on TINAWDC), and to Mabel (in TBOB and the Dipper & Mabel's Guide book) via projecting his struggles and beliefs on to them. But in a way this is sort of, reverse empathy?; it doesn't let him feel how they feel, but it makes him assume they feel the way he does.

Sympathy! The definitions of empathy vs sympathy vs compassion are contested so I'm gonna present the definitions I'm using for this post: empathy is "i [feel/understand] what you feel" and sympathy is "i care about how you feel." There's a couple of moments in his interactions with Ford in TBOB that are blatantly manipulative (when he shows Ford what's left of his dimension; to a lesser extent, when he "helps" Ford celebrate his birthday) that might also secondarily be fleeting displays of sympathy. It's ambiguous.

Compassion! Compassion is "i'm moved to help because of how you feel." There's a moment in TBOB when he gets so irritated at Puritan misogyny that he teaches a bunch of Puritan wives how to be witches and has a girls' night burning men at the stake with them. He apparently gets no benefits from this himself, aside from funsies. Is he motivated by compassion for the ladies or ONLY by irritation at how boring the men are? Again, ambiguous.

In TBOB when discussing his exploits in the Nightmare Realm, he mentions freeing patients from insane asylums and criminals from prisons. He also repeatedly mentions disliking captivity. He might be motivated by compassion derived from empathy for prisoners. He doesn't present his motives.

Love! He calls the Henchmaniacs his "family," repeatedly brings up their worries about being erased from reality, and says he takes his party hosting duties to them very seriously. We don't know whether he actually cared about them, or merely called them a family in recognition of their consistent loyalty and obedience. He's pretty disrespectful/violent toward them but that isn't incompatible with being emotionally invested in them beyond their utility. We don't have confirmation he cares for them, or confirmation he doesn't.

Hidden in TBOB and absolutely riddled through TINAWDC are references to his parents caring about him and tender quotes. When he's so blind drunk he doesn't know where he is, he tries to call his mom and asks her to make him a sandwich after school. We know he resents how they pathologized a mutation he was born with; beyond that we can't confirm whether or not he loved them; but just beneath the surface, he's unceasingly haunted by how they loved him.

Romantic love! I wrote a post about the evidence for/against romantic attraction in TBOB. He's confirmed to have at least two ex girlfriends; in the book, he mentions missing them both. He mentions having "seduced" galaxies; we don't know whether these seductions were sexual, sexual+romantic, or metaphorical. He denies having in the exes in the same book where he discusses them, and claims that love is the pupa for hate.

You can choose to interpret this multiple ways. To me it reads most strongly as "he's been in love but sucks at maintaining a relationship because he's an asshole, and he's got sour grapes about it"; but you could read it as "he wants love but his relationships fall apart because he can't feel it and he doesn't examine why" or "the relationships were based on something other than romantic love" and not technically be wrong based on the evidence we have. What we know for sure: he's had multiple relationships; he misses them; he tries to deny they happened; he claims love's dumb.

Genuine attachment to his tools! Bill claims torturing Ford was normal Henchmaniac hazing and he wanted him to join the gang. (Dubious evidence of emotional attachment.) He goes on a raging bender when Ford refuses to join him and escapes before Bill can torture him into joining. (Stronger evidence of emotional attachment.) In Weirdmageddon, seconds after Ford tried to murder Bill, he asks Ford to join him and then turns him into a statue he carries around everywhere when Ford refuses—and this is BEFORE he discovers Ford might still have a practical use for him.

On TINAWDC, he has an exchange that boils down to "Ford was just a tool?" "You say that like it's a bad thing!" "So you never cared about him?" "I didn't say that." He goes on to refer to Ford as his pet and henchman. Demeaning—but, people do feel positively toward their pets.

(It may be worth noting he also calls Teeth the Henchmaniacs' pet. Maybe this is a consistent element to how Bill relates to sentient people.)

There's evidence in TBOB that he felt similarly about his first human henchman, the shaman—at minimum, he's very bitter when the shaman turns on him and he says he's gonna find a "new best friend."

Summary: There's evidence that Bill develops facets of positive attachments to the people around him; but we don't have any evidence that any of these attachments ever added up to a positive & healthy relationship. In all the relationships we see in depth, the toxic aspects outweighed the positive ones.

Summary of the summary: Bill has the capacity for healthy relationships but is too big a douchebag to utilize it.

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i know it doesnt seem that way on the surface but once you do some digging and thinking?? bill cipher is kind of a tragic character. hes like a trillion year old kid who could just never learn a lesson because nobody was able to level with him in a way he could appreciate before he became unbearable. there’s a lot of unsaid angst in this character thats rearing its little ass up on the outskirts of the canon show.

Sixty degrees that come in threes. Watches from within birch trees. Saw his own dimension burn. Misses home and can’t return. Says he’s happy. He’s a liar. Blame the arson for the fire. If he wants to shirk the blame, he’ll have to invoke my name. One way to absolve his crime. A different form, a different time.

— Axolotl’s poem, Dipper and Mabel and the Curse of the Time Pirates' Treasure!: Select Your Own Choose-Venture

LITTLE TIP FROM SOMEONE WHO'S BEEN AROUND THE BLOCK- "TRUTH" IS A TATTLETALE WITH NO FRIENDS. "TRUTH" IS YOUR ANNOYING UNCLE WHO SPOILS THE MOVIE. "TRUTH" IS A CONCEPT INVENTED BY POWERFUL LIARS TO GUILT YOU INTO GIVING THEM MORE POWER. DONT FALL FOR THE TRAP. LIE UNTIL WHAT YOU WANT TO BE TRUE BECOMES TRUE. LIE UNTIL YOU CANT REMEMBER WHATS A LIE AND WHAT ISNT. LIE UNTIL YOU ARENT LYING ANYMORE

— Bill, Reddit AMA

“Alex, why is Bill lying about being happy?” Um, y’know… for courtesy.

— Alex Hirsch, Alex & Dana Charity Draw-A-Thon

If you think Stan’s relationship with his family is bad, Bill’s is worse.

— Alex Hirsch, NYCC 2015

Mabel, on the other hand—her, I like. ‘Fun’ is just another way of saying CHAOS, and I’m the master of that!

— Bill, Dipper’s and Mabel’s Guide to Mystery and Nonstop Fun

My concept is that Bill genuinely believes that Mabel’s kind of like him. He sees Mabel as a chaos agent… she’s a little bit selfish, she likes to have fun at whatever cost. And Bill is all those things times a billion. So he thinks when he lays it all out for her, like “How about, instead of being lame, you do something fun! And crush whoever you want in the process!” He thinks that’s going to go over. And, uh, he’s not wrong in seeing that side in Mabel, but— but Mabel is a better person than Bill Cipher.

— Alex Hirsch, commentary on Sock Opera from the complete series boxset

Why is Bill so mad at the world? I think there’s a lot of people where you can ask, “Why are they so mad at the world?” I think Bill is angry at the world for the same reason that anyone sometimes can get mad at the world. Everyone has days where they don’t get their way, where you have to go to bed early or you have too much homework to do or you can’t eat the candy that you want or you miss your favorite TV show and, in those moments, you just want to tear the whole world down.

Bill is a character who has been around for countless billions of eons, but he hasn’t grown up in that time. He’s a character who has accumulated many frustrations, many moments of destruction like that, and they’ve built up over time. Now he’s decided that he wants a world where there is no homework, where there is no bedtime—where you can eat any candy you want, and you can do anything you want. But because he is such a crazy guy, when he does anything he wants, it turns out to be terrifying. So I think little frustrations over thousands of years have built him into a sort of spoiled brat. And he takes it out on the world, and it’s up to our heroes to finally teach him some rules.

— Alex Hirsch, AV Club interview

it just really gets you thinking about him

theres a feeling of fleeting pensive sadness about bill. yes he deserves punishment. but it just feels like it didnt need to happen in the first place. if he had someone he could be open about his vulnerabilities to so that he doesn’t have to lie about being happy. or someone who could’ve advised and righted him in an unobtrusive way so that he had a large degree of freedom but was still being guided to grow in a positive direction. from just these glimpses you cant help but ask “what happened to you?”

whatever the “different form, different time” entails, he’s going to need someone who can immediately read past his bullshit but be tactful and patient with him about it in order for him grow into a better person.

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if Gilbert Gottfried isn’t voicing this slamming power bottom then what are we even doing here

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Woody dragging Young Master Xehanort through the mud in KH3

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generate a random wikipedia article

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...okay rambling time~

So here are the sprites again only in their original resolution from when I edited them in MS Paint. I just have been using Pixilart website to help scale them up and make the earlier gif.

So if anyone uses the sprite sheets just send a link(?) of your work, so I can come over and enjoy your stuff (^v^)

Here are also the transparent images from earlier just tiny... and not so transparent

This was a fun learning experience, and am quite happy how most of Magolor's outfits turned out. Definitely my favorite Magolor so far is his western one and here is a interesting fun fact about his outfits. Compared to most of Magolor's outfits his Merchant, Sad Kitty Epilogue, Ninja, and Cowboy outfits all lack the purple on his gear motif. (Although, I am unsure if the purple is on the Manger outfit?)

As I wrote before, this project really got out of hand since I miscalculated just how many outfits Magolor now has with RTDLD (10 outfits for one snazzy fellow).

If I kept working on Magolor sprites I would want to give the Music Festival Magolor a guitar and looking through some of the merch he also has a violin?... and another hat for Merchant Magolor?!

THis is all just for Magolor without the Boss stuff?!?...

Another reason why I am so happy with how the Cowboy Western? Magolor truned out is I was able to pose him as he appears in the mini game. Most of the others I just tried to complete their outfits, palettes, and basic hands so if I come back to this I have a continue point.

...here is the original png from my previous post as an reward to getting past my rambles again.

Welp, time to continue lurking on the internet. Not sure when I will post something again. My original plan was to work on Magolor for around Easter and umm that plan kinda fell through.

Really want to work on Susie's and Taranza's sprites. *cough* definitely not biased towards the wave 3 friends *cough*

Until next time~

What started as a simple project, and I then realized just how many outfits Magolor has now (not even including his other forms).

Going to do a follow up post where I ramble, but here are some enlarged sprites for you until then.

....I also have this

He definitely would need more frames (and hands), but look at him go!

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What started as a simple project, and I then realized just how many outfits Magolor has now (not even including his other forms).

Going to do a follow up post where I ramble, but here are some enlarged sprites for you until then.

....I also have this

He definitely would need more frames (and hands), but look at him go!

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ok so im not seeing things i think since the original rtdl his ears have Definitely gotten much bigger and longer than they were before

he grew up

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Promotional 1991 Dr. Mario sticker.

Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source

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it’s been almost half a year and i still have that dream about fecto elfilis at ikea pretty regularly. girl help the chinchilla won’t leave me alone.

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Meanwhile, on Twitter:

Brain farts, a thread

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Had a weird thought process yesterday and went What if I combined the M&L artstyle with the paper mario art style and uh… then I drew it

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today’s bird is:

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Wait tho pls tell me non british people have also seen this advert bc it’s amazing and very important to me

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this quiz sorts through characters from like dozens of fandoms and finds the one you’re most like. I’m not even a little bit surprised by my result