Wanted to practice (still finding) a style and trying a more rendered coloring approach so I chose Fiddleford! It all started with the reference pic in the corner that reminded me a lot of Fiddleford and it kinda went from there. Still really happy with how it came out, despite drawing this months ago.

OLD MAN YAOI BRACKET ROUND 2

Propaganda:

Fiddleford McGucket/Stanford Pines:

lab "partners" who broke the laws of physics and nature together but it went horribly wrong and one of them got stranded in alternate dimensions and the other wiped his memory so hard he went mad. 30 years later and they were finally able to reunite during the apocalypse. even though both had changed so much they wanted to forgive each other and move forwards

if fiddauthor isn't real then why is there only one bed in the bunker. if fiddauthor isn't real then why did they go stargazing and talk about wanting to start a family. if fiddauthor isn't real then why "my partner" and "my fiddleford". if fiddauthor isn't real then why does fiddleford subconsciously hang out around the shack decades after he stopped living there. if fiddauthor isn't real then why does ford have dreams about him every night. if fiddauthor isn't real then why did fiddleford leave his son and his failing/failed marriage to go live alone in an isolated cottage in the woods with his best friend from college. if fiddauthor isn't real then why is ford's ideal world one where he gets to work with fiddleford for the rest of time. if fiddauthor isn't real then why "life would be a nightmare without them" and "it's the most meaningful thing in the world". if fiddauthor isn't real then why did alex hirsch change that one scene in the book to sound less gay. if fiddauthor isn't real then why did fiddleford make his laptop password ford's name. if fiddauthor isn't real then why did they hold hands while hugging. if fiddauthor isn't real then why "i could have sworn that as he joyfully played, i could see the age lift off his face, and see the fiddleford who had been my friend so many years ago". IF FIDDAUTHOR ISN'T REAL THEN WHY DID FORD'S MORE HONEST RETELLING OF THE PORTAL SCENE FEATURE HIM GENTLY CRADLING FIDDLEFORD IN HIS ARMS

Bob Zanotto/Helmut Fullbear:

THEY LITERALLY MADE MR CRY THE FIRST TIME I PLAYED THE GAME. THEY LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH AND THEY FINALLY GET TO BE HAPPY TOGETHER. YOU DONT UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH THEY MEAN TO ME.

they are married in canon and are epic and amazing. they had sad canon events where bob thought helmut was dead for like 30 years or something but helmut WASN'T dead his brain was still alive and they are reunited in the game first by way of stealing an evil dictator's body and then later on they put helmut's brain in a ball as a temporary fix while they go out to find his body which has been frozen in ice. the game forces you to walk through bob's memory of saying his vows at their wedding ceremony and it's seriously some of the most romantic and heartwarming shit i've ever heard, especially "just when i thought i was turning to seed, you made me bloom again" like my god. i love them

they're gay and old as hell!!!! there's a level dedicated to their wedding!!!

Helmut is voiced by Jack Black and is currently a brain in a ball, and Bob knows him so well that the mental image of him in his drunken mind says things Bob KNOWS the real Helmut would never say. Also Helmut is temporarily in the body of a guy voiced by Elijah Wood-

Sometimes I wonder if Ford had a hard time with Bill gone after Weirdmageddon. Like, on the one hand he can finally sleep peacefully and doesn’t have to worry about the world ending.

But I also wonder if he feels like he lost his purpose. Not all the time; when he’s with the kids he sees how much he means to them, and he loves teaching them things and getting to know them and exploring and learning together (whether the woods of Gravity Falls or just life stuff).

But when he’s alone, does he ever wonder what good he’s really done for the world? What was worth saving from Bill to begin with? Does he ever have brief flashes of almost wishing to go back, then immediately shooting them down because “What’s wrong with you, why would you ever think such a thing?”

I guess I’m not sure if Ford realizes he doesn’t need a mission to be worth something yet. He’s starting to, but I imagine he could fall back into trying to find a logical explanation for why they should love him or a mathematical reckoning of his relationships rather than accepting them as they are–which would lead to a weird almost-nostalgia for Bill because at least then things were black and white. There was something big he could DO to deserve his existence. He created a problem, and he was paying for it, until someone else paid for it and threw off the system.

Ford wouldn’t allow those thoughts to live long, but…

Okay but Fiddauthor is so cool actually. It’s a scrungly old man and a scrimblo bimblo old man who have both enacted unspeakable horrors on the world. But despite everything they heal and forgive and love each other. And they were lab partners and roommates. It’s even aspec.

So. I made a 2 hour video applying queer theory to Gravity Falls.

YALL KNOW WHAT DAY IT IS‼️

It’s fiddleford friday AND the day he first went to gravity falls!!!!

Does anyone happen to have that tweet (I believe) where Alex mentioned a little bit about Ford and Fiddleford's friendship in college, something about how everything would have sucked/been harder to get through without each other or something along those lines, on hand by chance?

I could have sworn I saved something with it, but it's long buried elsewhere now and I haven't been able to find it.

Ford + reclaiming the trust that Bill abused

Ford’s story matters so much at times like these, where I’m reminded how heroic it is to relearn trust after betrayal. Sharing your affection, passions, and innermost thoughts and feelings is such a sacred, vulnerable, dangerous thing because violation of them is social death. It’s soul-crushingly exhausting to absorb dehumanization from the world time and again, then a thousandfold from someone you bonded to when they pretended to protect you from it. “I was desperate.” It’s decaying in silence under the unspeakable absurdity of what they did to you. It’s seeing their pattern, voyeuristic gaze, and insipid, insidious words everywhere - in everyone. It’s suffocating in a cold sweat at the shock-collar realization that opening up to them, chaining your identity to them, was opening a rift in you. “From now until the end of time…”

…or until you get out, and find room to breathe and grow - opening up like a pinecone to the ones whose warmth doesn’t burn. Who will want you without possessing you. Ford reminds us the strength to take ourselves back is real, “even when it seems impossible.”

But you have to reach out from that void, belonging will never come to you. It’s out there somewhere in the woods, waiting.

I have this habit that when things are going wrong, I lay on the floor. I just lay down on the floor.

I’ve done it at work and those floors are gross, I can only imagine how gross Stanford’s labs are.

I genuinely, truly hope that the assumption with which the book was written is correct: that the primary audience will not identify with ford, but rather with dipper. that the kids who read it will be too young for it to make sense, and will leave it thinking about love and that being different does not always have to mean being alone, that humans are meant to live in beautiful constellations as varied as the stars in the sky and that those constellations do include you--and that they will not carry the belief that failing to not be alone is on them alone, and god forbid--that the ability to relate with and connect to others (especially through abnegation) is the only trait that makes you worthy of love and support, and the rest of you is worthless.

do i want to spend time complaining about journal 3? is it worth kicking the hornet's nest of a dead fandom in the year of our lord 2022

"I am strange" is a statement born of shame.

"I am alone" is a statement born of shame.

"I can't afford to be anything less than great" is a statement born of shame.

"I can't afford to be known" is a statement born of shame.

You can't heal shame with more shame.

do i want to spend time complaining about journal 3? is it worth kicking the hornet's nest of a dead fandom in the year of our lord 2022

but it is a story for children, ultimately, although i had hoped it could be more. i hope any child reading this book who feels alone and too strange to be loved--who has been wounded over and over by people who say they love you--can take the message to heart that you can be loved as you are, that you can grieve for what was done to you and take responsibility for mistakes you may have made without carving the letters into your skin, without rejecting the version of yourself who made those mistakes, without subjecting yourself to more internal torture and abnegation and believe that this time, it's right because it is convenient for others. That forgiveness is not owed you, but your needs and your healing are important. That you do not need to be punished for having them, or having them fulfilled. That yes, it is a beautiful thing to be present and surrounded by those who love you and feel that love in return--and yes, that you are brave for overcoming the obstacles to reaching that state, obstacles that despite it all are not evidence that you arewere some broken thing.

do i want to spend time complaining about journal 3? is it worth kicking the hornet's nest of a dead fandom in the year of our lord 2022

is it worth repeating what people have been saying for years? will it matter, in the end, for one random blog that got taken over by a fandom in 2015-2016 to ask a renowned, respected, hardworking and clever creator what he was thinking? he was thinking about an interesting story with a lesson in it and not thinking about all the ins and outs of how it will affect certain portions of the audience. he was not thinking from the perspective of people who understand the perspective he was writing. it's bizarre and uncanny to watch the third dimension bleed out.

do i want to spend time complaining about journal 3? is it worth kicking the hornet's nest of a dead fandom in the year of our lord 2022

do i want to spend time complaining about journal 3? is it worth kicking the hornet's nest of a dead fandom in the year of our lord 2022

Hear me out: they make up early

I guess my biggest problem with a lot of gravity falls meta about Ford and Stan is that the general attitude seems to be that Stan’s misfortune was out of his control, and Ford’s was his own doing, when its definetly more like…an even mix across the board