Yea so I saw @disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word ‘s crutches meme and Could Not Resist

[text above Ford hitting the person says “Preston Northwest”]

(EDIT) I can't believe it took me so long to get around to doing this but someone reblogged with an image desc they wanted me to add for accessibility! She doesn't want credit, just this addition to the post.

[Image description: a digital meme redraw featuring Ford Pines from Gravity Falls, who’s using a pair of forearm crutches. The meme is captioned: “Why do we have crutches? There are many reasons:”

First, Ford is shown silhouetted and partially in shadow, raising one crutch whose end is opened as a weapon into the air as his eye gleams a menacing red. He is captioned: “look badass.” Next, Ford is shown smacking Preston Northwest in the side of the face, and captioned: “hit the ableist” with “hit” in all caps.

Then, only his hand is visible as he shakes a crutch at a distant Bill Cipher, captioned: “shake stick at God.” Lastly, the cuff of the cane is shown to have a “What is the Mystery Shack?” sticker on it, along with several stars, hearts, and smiley stickers, and is captioned “sticker display.” End description.]

Love your paralyzed ford au, It really puts into perspective of what could of happened had the fight even worse. I wanted to ask how did Ford cope with being in a wheelchair and being unable to talk, both at first and near the end. Did he struggle with routine and being dependent on Stan?

Yeah, it really does put that into perspective. They really could've seriously injured each other even worse than Stan getting branded. Or even straight up killed the other on accident.

As for your question, oh boy did he struggle at first. Sometimes in the early days of his paralysis, an exhausted Ford forgot his legs just didn't work and fell off the bed trying to stand up. Things that had been a normal height for him before were now impossible to reach without help. Not to mention the house was an absolute nightmare to navigate before Fiddleford made it more accessible, often requiring the help of Stan when he wanted to go upstairs for various reasons. And of course, the nothingness he felt below the waist was something he didn't feel he'd ever get used to.

As for losing his voice, Ford hated it without a doubt. He often caught himself trying to yell to Stan when he needed something, then just balled his fists when no sound came out of his mouth. It didn't help that his hands were now much too trembly to write legibly. Ford often resorted to knocking on loud things to grab Stan's attention until Fiddleford added a buzzer to his wheelchair (I thank @eeveelotions for that idea, I hadn't thought of it before). It was a mercy that Ford was able to pick up ASL with little issue. Otherwise he'd go insane trying to mime what he wants to say.

He didn't like being so dependent on someone else in the first months of being disabled, often going and doing things on his own that he should've asked for help with. Like getting that bowl in the fic (I debated whether or not to add this to the fic and ultimately decided not to, but Ford tried to take a bath on his own and freaked Stan out) Losing much of his independence was a big blow to his pride, feeling utterly ashamed when any simple task he'd done a million times before became incredibly difficult without the help of his brother. Thankfully he earned some of it back when Fiddleford made their house more accessible to him and made him a wheelchair that could handle rough terrain to a point.

Coping with all that was very hard. He often tried to remind himself that at least he had survived the injury and had a brother that cared enough to stay around to help after the accident. In the early days when they were still figuring out the portal junk, Ford absorbed himself in directing the destruction to distract himself from thinking too much on his condition. He also found a surprising amount of interest in Stan's little tourist trap and helped where he could. He also took up hobbies like birdwatching that ended up weirdlife watching more often than not from their porch or, when Mabel came around that summer, knitting. Basically he tried to keep himself busy in an attempt to forget how much he missed being able bodied. It took some time and a self reflection or two, but eventually Ford found peace with his disabled body. He realized he couldn't mope about it any more than he could walk and talk or he'd always be miserable. That realization reached its peak when he and Stan reconciled on the mountain. He kept his newfound love of his hobbies throughout the years though, picking up several at a time, because he actually liked them and not because of a want for distraction. He even learned to love himself after not feeling it for months.

By the time the summer with Dipper and Mabel came around, Ford had been disabled for many, many years. That's not to say he didn't have his struggles, but they were struggles he was certainly used to by then. Like days where he was in too much pain to get out of bed. It made his whole summer when he learned that the twins had taught themselves some sign language so they could understand him. The only thing holding him back was his own declining health. But he didn't let that stop him, often getting in on Dipper and Mabel's adventures when he was feeling up to it. He loved them so much. They gave him a reason to hold on just a little longer.

Anyway, I hope that was a sufficient answer to your question. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to talk about him!!

Based on true events

He is a nerd.

He is a badass.

He has a physical disability/deformity.

He has 12 PhDs.

I am him. I aspire to be like him.

Is there a reason why you didn't make triangles be near the bottom of the society hierarchy? Is it bc you didn't want Bill to have some basis for seeing himself as a "liberator"? Bc you wanted to focus on the child celebrity/cult leader angle? Something else?

Flatland was, when it was published, a commentary on the society the author lived in.

The setting Flatland is meant to be a distorted, exaggerated mirror of (what was) modern society. Bill is a mirror of the Pines' worst character traits and reflects ideas (conspiratorial, political, existential) found in their modern society.

You fail to honor both what Flatland is intended to represent and what Bill represents if you decide that Bill and his homeland mirror a society that ceased to exist over a hundred years ago.

To me, there's an absurd irrelevancy in giving Bill a rigidly Victorian backstory. It optimizes him to serve as commentary on facets of society that SIMPLY DON'T EXIST in the era of Gravity Falls. That's not to say that there aren't still remnants of Victorian-era problems in the current day, like yeah we still have inequality, we still have sexism, etc.; but we've reached a point where the majority public opinion has decided that institutionalizing or euthanizing anybody with a disability because they're allegedly inherently less law-abiding is, in fact, an extremely stupid and morally heinous idea. The entire section on banning colors is absurd if you don't know that it used to be illegal for poor people to wear certain fancy garments so they couldn't impersonate the rich. Our issues are different.

Unless it's intended PURELY to be a piece of speculative fiction worldbuilding with NO INTENT AT ALL to satirize real human society, a Flatland-derivative work ought to reflect the modern society in which it's being written—not a dead society. A fanfic about Bill Cipher interacting with humans is UNABLE to be pure speculative fiction worldbuilding because he's already tied into a work about a modern human society. Make him Victorian and you flub a billion opportunities to enhance his ties to the main cast and his ability to serve as their foils.

Just for a couple examples—you can't build strong parallels between his life and Ford and Stan's "get rich & famous or die trying" young adulthoods if he's BIOLOGICALLY FORBIDDEN from accruing wealth or socially advancing. You lose opportunities to explore the mingled specialness/ostracism of being born a "freak" if his society has NO CONCEPTION of odd physical mutations even POSSIBLY being "special."

It's very easy to look at Flatland as it is and go "oh, yes, that's a very bad place." There's no nuance to that, there's not much fresh to say about it, Flatland is a reflection of a society we moved away from BECAUSE we decided those beliefs were bad. We can't relate it to our own society except in loose senses like "well... sexism is still a thing." (Sure, but not sexism like THAT.) To maximize how much Bill's culture meaningfully interacts with Gravity Falls' culture, you have to maximize how much Bill's culture mirrors Gravity Falls' culture.

The Victorian era was 120 years ago to us. So Flatland was 120 years ago to Bill.

audhd luz noceda | adhd princess carolyn | audhd bluey and bingo heeler autistic: ford pines | mane six | homestuck cast bpd nimona | neurodivergent welcome home cast | npd wheatley plural mr. owl | disabled subway seat | ptsd lapis lazuli

day 8 of my 5-year anniversary event, neurodivergency | disability | etc.!

dni link

Not!propaganda for Eye Round 2:

Bill Cipher (Gravity Falls): “I know lots of things…LOTS OF THINGS.” A triangular inter-dimensional demon, formerly existent only in the mindscape before succeeding in gaining access to the real world. He is nigh-omniscient and somewhat clairvoyant, apparently because he can spy on anyone through their mental worlds. He claims to see a "kaleidoscope of temporal probability with fluctuating range" and infinite alternate universes as well as alternate versions of himself. He often flaunts his abilities by offering to tell a person the exact time, date and cause of that person's death. He can also read the minds of other beings in the mindscape, as demonstrated when he summons Xyler and Craz from Mabel’s imagination. Bill made a deal with Stanford Pines, offering to be his muse and help him create an interdimensional portal in exchange for the ability to possess Ford’s body, which was actually a ruse to enable Bill to merge the Nightmare Realm with Ford’s world. Unfortunately for Ford, Bill’s powers let the demon to invade his mind until he resorted to surgically installing a metal plate in his head to keep Bill out. Furthermore, he can spy on the physical world through any image of himself, and he’d influenced Ford to collect triangular memorabilia, convert his study into a place of worship to Bill, and integrate representations of him into his house’s architecture, allowing him to spy on the Pines with impunity. A page about him in Journal #2 has a picture of him on the -$12 bill that says "Semper vigilantem", "Always watching.” Bill is an expert in using the many things he knows to push just the right buttons to get people to agree to his deals: he manipulates Dipper through his desperation and desire for knowledge, the Author through his intelligence, and Mabel through her fear of the future.

Santa Claus (Christianity): The traditional explanation for Santa's ability to achieve his annual deliveries is that he is a magical being. In works that think about or play with the implications, this may involve his being The Omniscient: he personally knows where everyone lives, what they want, what they have been doing, and whether they live up to his personal standards of “naughty” or “nice.” According to “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” a central piece of Santa lore, “You better watch out / You better not cry / You better not pout / I'm telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town,” indicating that children must be on guard because Santa watches their behavior The directives to neither cry nor pout might be attempts to stop him from feeding on their fear, although the lines “He sees you when you're sleeping / He knows when you're awake / He knows when you've been bad or good / So be good for goodness sake”--already deeply disturbing in and of themselves--suggest that he searches for any visible sign of fear in his victims and punishes it by branding the unfortunate children “Naughty.” He also employs the services of the Elves on the Shelves, who surveil children under the guise of being innocent children’s toys, teaching them to be perpetually afraid of Santa’s watchful spies condemning them to his judgement.

The DoctorDonna (Doctor Who): The DoctorDonna was a composite being created when Donna Noble touched the Tenth Doctor's regeneration energy affected severed hand and sparked a "two-way biological meta-crisis". She retained Donna Noble's personality and physical appearance, but also had all of the Doctor's memories and intelligence. Jubilant at the abilities at her disposal, the DoctorDonna quickly used her new-found intellect to deactivate the reality bomb and disable the circuitry on the Daleks' controls and helped use the magnetron to bring twenty-six of the planets back to their rightful places in the universe. However, the DoctorDonna's brain overloaded, with her and the Doctor both recognising that the reason no human-Time Lord meta-crisis had been recorded before was that they were not viable, and the DoctorDonna's overload of cognition was slowly killing Donna's human body. The DoctorDonna begged the Doctor to let her die as she was, but the Doctor chose instead to lock away all the information relating to himself in Donna's brain — restoring Donna's original human mind and allowing her to survive, but also wiping away her memories of her pre-meta-crisis travels with the Doctor, and meaning that their travels together had to come to an abrupt end lest the extraordinary things she saw, and the sight of the Doctor himself, reawaken Donna's locked memories and, with them, the DoctorDonna and the death sentence threat she represented. The Doctor also implanted a "defence mechanism" inside Donna's mind in the form of a shockwave of regeneration energy that would put her and everyone in her vicinity to sleep if she started to remember, before the DoctorDonna could fully awaken and kill her. Despite this, she continued to "fight for [them]", sending Donna's conscious minds hints which helped the Doctor and Wilfred Mott foil Joshua Naismith and the Saxon Master's plans.

Raphaella la Cognizi (The Mechanisms): The science officer of the Aurora (who calls her “the with the weird look in her eye scientist”) and pianist of The Mechanisms, known for her metal wings and her thirst for knowledge. She is “as cruel and brutal as she is science” (“The Mechanisms Episode III: Revenge of Spaceport Mahon”--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eYALygp32w) and is is canonically wanted for unlawful human testing (https://the-mechanisms.tumblr.com/post/35778726288). She was not given a mechanism by Dr. Carmilla, which leads many to speculate that she may have mechanised herself. However, much of her backstory remains unknown--her crew profile doesn’t even say anything about her origins. She was in The City during the events of Ulysses Dies At Dawn, working on scientific experiments with Athena (not exactly known for ethics herself), and wanted to keep some of the brains from the Acheron when The Mechanisms destroyed the planet because “‘A few minds from the Acheron would make fine specimens’” (Eskhatos--https://themechanisms.com/fiction/eskhatos/). According to “Death to the Mechanisms,” the song revealing how The Mechanisms die for the last time, “There is so much to know in this universe, so much to learn. But when her research has become monotonous and her observations are dull, Raphaella will decide to partake in one final experiment. Taking a fragment of the ship once known as Aurora, she will cast herself into that black hole. Beyond the event horizon there, maybe to die, maybe to learn something new one last time.” Also, she likes magnets, which isn’t really relevant but is neat (“The Mechanisms’ Tour of the Pitt Rivers Museum”).

Drumbot Brian (The Mechanisms): Pilot of the Aurora and drummer of The Mechanisms. According to his bio and his scrapped origin song, “Indistinguishable From Magic,” he crashed onto a primitive planet with no memories and practiced science to mixed responses--some believed he was doing good for the people, but the religious sort, led by a priest, thought he was messing with things best left for gods. Brian used his advanced mechanical prowess to revive the priest from death, but he was branded a witch and launched by a mob into space to die; Dr. Carmilla made him immortal by replacing his body with mechanical parts (save his heart), and gave him a morality switch with the settings Means Justify Ends and Ends Justify Means. He has prophetic abilities (https://lucky-sevens.tumblr.com/post/628480002206351360/drumbot-brian-and-prophecy), which have resulted in him acting as a prophet on multiple occassions. During Ulysses Dies At Dawn, he works as a consultant for Tiresias’ near-omniscient Oracle database as the Oracle of Delphi: he “would give good ‘moral’ advice to assuage the guilt of atrocity wreakers: everything was excusable as long as the ends justified the means. He also provided fascinating glimpses of future technology, which were always useful for investors” (“Orpheus, Dionysus, Muriatic Acid and the Strange Whirring Thing”--https://themechanisms.com/fiction/orpheus-dionysus-muriatic-acid-and-the-strange-whirring-thing/). In High Noon Over Camelot, he is the Hanged Man/Merlin, who gave Arthur advice that enabled him to take control of Camelot. He gives prophecies to the main characters to try and guide them toward saving Fort Galfridian, but his efforts either fail or only cause madness and death, and he’s forced to watch helplessly as the fort goes into the sun.

Hansel and Gretel (The Mechanisms): King Cole's scientists who work on the Rose Red program, creating the clones of Rose who serve as the king’s unstoppable army. According to their backstory, “Gingerbread” (https://themechanisms.com/fiction/gingerbread/), “From [Hansel’s] earliest memories, he remembered the expression on their faces when he asked what the inside of a cat looked like. Such inquiries, he now knew, were not proper for three-year olds, but when his sister Gretel arrived with her own set of idiosyncrasies, he finally had an accomplice willing to indulge him in finding out.” They murdered their parents for abandoning them and eventually were found their way to the lab of Doctor Totenkinder: “Its every surface was covered in equipment, computers, apparatus. Simply put, the place was made of science, and had presented an irresistible temptation for the pair.” Totenkinder offered to let them help with her experiments, then imprisoned them and performed experiments to increase their intelligence. After a few doses, Hansel was smart enough to realize the doctor was going to kill them after the experiments, so he feigned idiocy to get Totenkinder to try and kill him, then had Gretel murder the doctor with her own concoctions. Afterward, they claimed the laboratory for their own to do science: “‘Now? Why, dear sister, we have a laboratory” Hansel replied without hesitation, “so we experiment.’”

Kyoko Kirigiri (Danganronpa): The “Ultimate Detective,” whose powers of deduction are so great that Junko felt the need to wipe her memories to try and stop her from interfering in her plans. Despite this, her analytical skills allow her to correctly identify the crux of each case way ahead of the others, all without remembering herself as a detective. During the second investigation, Kyoko sees past the crimescene setup and both notices Mondo refer to Chihiro as "dude" and discovers Chihiro's secret, two details unnoticed by everyone else; her classmates comment on how “frightful” she is for this. During the third incident, Kyoko was entirely not present from the start, yet instantly identified Celestia's plan to mask her killing behind a separate first killing, all from reviewing the crimescene and the evidence. The fourth investigation has Kyoko guarding Sakura's body, and despite her constraints she still works out every single person's involvement, and uncovers the deceptions that even Byakuya fell for. She explains her methods to Makoto in the final investigation by telling him that she actually has several outcomes/variables/possibilities/situations/scenarios running through her head at any given time, and in turn will be slowly ticking those probabilities off her list as the facts pour in (always on the lookout for inferences she can use). Besides her knack for exposing people’s secrets, she also has a deep fear of being known herself. She always has some theory for why someone can or can't be trusted (coupled with the same kinds of trust issues typical of abandoned children), and the amount of time she entertains these theories causes her to withhold quite a bit of information under fear of losing her only advantage against the Mastermind. Pretty much any time she's asked to explain herself she gives a cryptic and unhelpful answer, if she gives an answer at all, and her need to keep secrets results in her being suspected as the traitor and almost getting Naegi killed. School Mode implies that this is just a general habit of hers with or without a deadly game to justify the paranoia, where she tends to dodge questions that would require her to talk in-depth about herself.

Odin (GOW: Ragnarok): All-Father of the Nine Realms, King of Asgard and greatest of the Aesir. Odin's quest for gaining knowledge and preventing his death in Ragnarök in Norse sources — such as giving up his eye in the well of Mimir in exchange for wisdom and imprisoning Fenrir to prevent the wolf from devouring him in the future as it had been foretold — becomes his main trait and motivation in the series, in which he obsessively pursuits new ways to gain and hold more knowledge about the machinations of the world and his own fate at the cost of causing harm to other people and even himself. His ruthless cunning and charismatic leadership enthralled many gods and mortals over his lifetime, allowing Odin to exploit his subjects in his growing hunger for life's hidden wisdoms. He's very good at spreading this amongst his enemies to divide them and turn them against each other, rather than himself, using his vast knowledge to say the exact right things to cause friction and divided loyalties whilst appearing as a reasonable mediator on a surface level (think Elias’ shenanigans). He doesn’t appear in God of War (2018), but he spies on Kratos and Atreus through his magical ravens (the Eyes of Odin). He once hung himself from a branch of Yggdrasil, impaled himself with his own spear, then bled to death over the Well of Destiny so that he could plunder the secrets of Yggdrasil and the undead realms. Aside from defying fate, his biggest life's work has been trying to gather the pieces of a mask that would allow him to look into a green void that's supposed to house the infinite knowledge of the universe. He's convinced himself that everything he does, whether it be enslavement, filicide, fratricide, or outright genocide, will be worth the answers he can get from the rift. When Atreus breaks the mask and seals the rift in defiance, Odin's infuriated and cannot comprehend that everything he's done has been made completely meaningless; Atreus even tries to makes one last offer to him to give up, but he insists that "I have to know what happens next. I'll never stop."

Charlie Cale (Poker Face): A cheating gambler turned casino cocktail watress who has the power to tell when someone is intentionally lying. She exposes her boss’ attempt to cheat a whale in revenge for him murdering her friend, who was going to bust the whale for what is implied to be involvement in a child porn ring; however, exposing her boss as a failure to his father drives him to suicide. Her boss’ dad comes after her, so she goes on the run; wherever she goes, someone gets murdered, and she ends up having to solve the murder using her power and deductive skills to expose the criminals. She also accidentally drives another person to suicide by publicly exposing her as a murderer, causing her to have a guilt-induced breakdown and jump to her death. She’s an Expy of Columbo, being a shabby looking investigator who’s very good at picking up important, contradictory details at a glance and withers down suspects through obfuscating stupidity and annoying persistence.

The Ancestor (Darkest Dungeon): The living embodiment of “fuck around and find out.” As a young man, he tried to murder The Countess at a party and ingested her blood, granting him a vision of the Heart of Darkness beneath his manor and the horrifying true nature of the world. He began searching for forbidden knowledge, learning from the Necromancers and the Hag and hiring mariners to retrieve artifacts and relics for him. Using blood sacrifice and summoning rituals, he put dark spirits in the bodies of pigs, creating the Swinefolk that he left in the Warrens. He also sold a village girl who had a crush on him to the Pelagics of the cove (who turned her into the Siren, their monstrous queen/breeding slave) because he needed jewels to finance his search and her following him around was bothersome. When homeless man started preaching that The Ancestor would bring doom upon the world and turned the people against him, he tried to kill the man multiple times, then lured him to the dig site: “There, I showed him the THING and detailed the full extent of my plans. Triumphantly I watched as he tore his eyes from their sockets and ran shrieking into the shadows, wailing maniacally that the end was upon us all.” The Ancestor finally unleashed The Heart, bringing cosmic horror to The Hamlet, and killed himself after sending a letter to The Heir asking them to come fix his mistakes (or possibly to lure them in, depending on whether he was actually serving the Heart at the end). His foolish quest to unearth The Heart of Darkness and all of the immensely horrible things he did to everyone around him to make that happen left The Hamlet in shambles and the surrounding lands infested with all sorts of nightmarish monsters.

The Protégé (Darkest Dungeon II): The Protégé was a savant of the Occult who crossed paths with the Academic as student and teacher, a bond that would soon melt into a genuine respectful friendship. Together, the two would feed each other's enthusiasm for the dark arts, finding comfort in each other's company. The Protégé that found the Iron Crown, a symbol cemented in the oldest cultures of the world. They pressed the Academic to present their findings to the larger University and faculty, but the Academic chose caution and forbade his student from sharing their research, fearing it would be stolen or dismissed without the proper evidence. The two would spend the next few months studying day and night, the Protégé's resentment towards their mentor building with each passing day. This would eventually fall apart, as the Great Library where the two researched was burned from an unknown source. They then received a letter from the Ancestor, inviting them to his manor. With no other leads on the Iron Crown, the duo followed the directions on the invitation, finding themselves at an abode with the Ancestor himself alongside a throng of Occultists and Necromancers. The two stayed at the home, engaging in various dark rituals with the other members to the Ancestor's delight; while the Academic continued to advise caution, the Protégé was enthralled by these activities. It eventually transpired that the Ancestor had murdered the other guests and prostrated their bodies on the points of the Crown, a failed ritual to summon the full strength of the Crown--a cosmic entity embodying madness, despair, sorrow, and pain--for himself. While the display disgusted the Academic, it lit a corruptive fire in the Protégé, who replicated the ritual with the Academic as the final sacrifice. Doing so imbalance the cosmic equation and summoned the Crown, turning their body into the malignant’s power host. Their faults--denial, resentment, obsession, ambition, and cowardice--were embodied as titanic monsters while the Crown’s power brought the end of the world, driving humanity mad with the horrible eldritch truth.

.

You mentioned that Belos fits into a handful of tropes, including the "big scary monster" one, which got me thinking. Belos has no way of knowing that Stanford Pines is one of the biggest monsterfucker in the human realm, and would likely assume that his horrible skeletal decomposed deer carcass form would be utterly repulsive to him. My question is, what the hell does Ford do that alerts Belos to the fact that somehow, against all odds, this human man is horny gripping the inside of his coat like his life depends on it while gazing upon an affront to nature and all her creations?

this is a very good question.

i feel like there are a few paths here. for starters, Ford could end up being witness to a curse episode - he's nosy and curious and if Philip suddenly started getting all wobbly and weird, it's highly unlikely Ford would listen to him saying to gtfo, and then he'd see something.

(it's my personal belief that the whole deal is that he needs an internal source of magic for the glyphs to draw on for him to do various types of magic without his staff, thus the palismen, but eating the palismen transformed him into the goop deer thing, so he needs to continuously use magic to maintain his human form, thus more palismen, and so now if he isn't careful he'll run out of magic and stop being able to maintain his form - sort of an old lady who swallowed a fly kind of situation except much weirder and with way more body horror -

the upshot of this being, it's entirely possible he burns through his internal magic reserves carelessly because he's Showing Off For The Human Man He's Courting With Fancy Party Tricks, and doesn't have a terrorizable nephew handy to fetch him a palisman to ward off a full transformation)

so if that happened, well - there's the monster! and of course he's not going to just attack Ford, he has more control over himself than that, but he does fully expect Ford to be terrified and repulsed, and is instead very surprised when Ford is just fearlessly fascinated

from here the genre briefly shifts into sort of one of those horse girl movies. you know the ones. Philip is the bad-tempered stallion who won't let anyone near him and has killed or permanently disabled 12 stablehands, Ford is the angsty misunderstood teen girl who sees a kindred spirit, he approaches the beast with love and purity in his noble heart, Philip's a bit tentative but doesn't lash out, Ford's able to reach up and take his big ol' goopy glowing face in his hands and when he breathes out "Oh, look at you, this is fascinating", that's when Philip realizes he's down for it.

the other option is that Ford's monsterfucking tendencies shine through in the way he talks/asks/acts about other demons, and Philip starts to get jealous - why thirst after them when you have an unholy abomination who's already into you right here?? - and contrives a series of events to gradually reveal more and more of his curse to Ford to see how he reacts, culminating of course in the two of them alone one evening in his lab when he 'accidentally' has a full transformation, and then see the above scenario

“Better Than I Deserve”

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. “~ Pablo Picasso

This story isn’t mine either, it’s from my writing redneck hero, enjoy! ~CT

________________________________________________________________

This story isn’t mine, but I’m going to tell it like I heard it. I first heard it from an old man who drove a Ford. And I have a soft spot for old Ford men.

So, there he is. The old man is driving. He sees a car on the side of the highway. A kid stands beside it. Hood open. The man pulls over.

He’s America’s quintessential old man. He drives a half-ton Ford that he’s been babying since the seventies. He changes the oil regularly, waxes it on weekends. The candy-apple red paint still looks nice.

He looks under the kid’s hood. He can see the problem right away, (a) the transmission is shot, and (b) it’s not a Ford. Fixing it would cost more than the vehicle.

The kid is in a hurry, and asks, “Can you give me a ride to work? I can’t afford to lose my job.” So, the old man drives the kid across town. They do some talking. The man learns that the boy has four children, a young wife, and a disabled mother living with him. The boy works hard for a living. Bills keep piling up.

It rips the man's heart out.

They arrive at a construction site. There are commercial framers in tool belts, operating nail guns. The kid pumps the old man’s hand and thanks him for the ride. “Take care of yourself,” the man tells the kid. The kid takes his place among workmen, climbing on pine-framed walls, swinging a hammer.

The old man decides to help the kid. He doesn’t know how. Or why. But it’s a decision that seems to make itself. That same day, he’s at a stop light. He sees something. An ugly truck, sitting in a supermarket parking lot. A Ford. A for-sale sign in the window. He inspects it. Single cab. Four-wheel drive. Low mileage. The paint is flaking. Rust on the doors. It’s a glorified hunk of metal, but they don’t make them like this anymore.

Out of impulse, the old man makes a deal. Old men who drive candy-apple Fords have been known to do that.

When the workday is over, the old man pulls into the kid’s jobsite again. The kid is loading work vehicles. “What’re you doing here?” the kid asks. “Came to give you a ride home.” The kid hops in. They drive. They talk again. The sun is lowering. The kid smells like sweat and sawdust.

They arrive in a supermarket parking lot. The old man shuts the engine off.

“What’re we doing?” the kid says. The old man points at an ugly truck with a for-sale sign. “What do you think of that truck?” The kid’s face gets serious. His eyes become large. “I asked you a question,” the old man says. “I know it don’t look pretty, but with a little work, it can be a dependable vehicle.”

The kid is unable to speak. He looks like he might even cry.

The old man doesn’t care much for tears—men from his generation don't. So, he tosses the kid a set of keys.

“She’s all yours,” the old man says. “You gotta be kidding,” the boy answers. “You BOUGHT that truck for me? You don’t even know me.”

“No, son,” the man says. “I didn’t buy that truck for you. I bought it for ME. I’m gonna fix her up, make her pretty again.”

The old man pats the steering wheel of Candy-Apple Red.

“THIS is the one I’m giving to you.”

Old men. May I live long enough to be one someday.

~ Sean Dietrich “Old Trucks” May 14, 2022

” I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.” ~ Plasms 37:25 

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Today’s disabled character of the day is Ford Pines from Gravity Falls, who has postaxial polydactyly

Character: Stanford “Ford” Pines

From: Gravity Falls 

Representation: Religious (Jewish), Survivor (Abuse), Mutation (Polydactyly)

Their Importance: Ford is seen as going through two distinct abusive relationships in the course of the show. His father is abusive, and constantly emotionally abuses his twin brother, Stanley Pines. While the show doesn’t make it explicit that Ford was affected as well, he still grew up with an abusive father and experienced the after-effects of it. He’s also shown to be in an abusive friendship with Bill - while it’s not romantic, it shows how what you consider friendships can still be toxic. Due to Bill betraying him, Ford also spends 26 years wandering and essentially homeless, with no other family members or friends during this time. While this is an obviously extreme example that was done for the show, I know many people who identify with him and I haven’t seen any characters with polydactyly who weren’t evil. 

Thanks to anon for the write up! 

Thinking about Ford using crutches after Weirdmageddon.

Thinking about Ford using crutches out of the Portal.

Thinking about Ford using crutches.

(You can’t look me in the eye and say he wouldn’t come up with a bunch of needlessly flashy acrobatic moves that primarily rely on arm strength. You Cannot.)

[Text: arrows pointing to the crutch drawing say “Mabel’s scratch n’ sniff stickers” | “nerdy doodles” | “Mystery-themed” | “Journal Red (TM)” | “science stickers” | “reinforcement charms” — the text on the top left says “PARKOUR!” — above Mabel it says “catching him up on the summer”]

A little late for week 2 but I did it, I finished the @forduary prompt Anomalies! It’s set in my new au where Ford became blind halfway through his journey in the multiverse, this specific fic is about an anomaly that became a guide for Blind!Ford! I haven't finished the main fic for the au yet though, so I hope this isn’t too confusing or anything. 

Some Gravity Falls OCs of mine! Ask me about any of them!

We got Nicolai Northwest; Pacifica’s less social brother.

Duke Sabers and Hellen Jimenez basically become Dipper’s Candy and Grenda in AU’s where the twins live in Gravity Falls, with Hellen also being Mabel’s goth girlfriend.

Lena Watskey and the LeCult brothers are a part of the Felony Squad; Stan’s closest friends from his homeless days. I posted about them before.

Ross Pines is Shermie’s wife and Dipper and Mabel’s grandmother, who’s character is super based off my Nana.

Irelin Corduroy is Wendy’s mother; a small woman with a muscle disability who might not be able to kick ass but she can take names.

Buzz Halburd was Stan’s childhood boxing coach, and a better father figure to the twins than Fillbrick ever could be.

And finally there’s William Snakespear; a snake demon who’s got a side hobby of bounty hunting, who became Ford’s nemesis while he was out in the multiverse. There are multiple kinds of tensions between the two.

Hiya! I'm Hubris or Vodka, he/they pronouns, 24 years of hell, trans, acearo, disabled. I've been writing on ao3 (Link) for a hot few years.

Other blogs

Movies/Main: @nothingbutyourchains

Writing blog @writingsofhubris

Personal: @heartofhubris

18+ Aes: @aesofhubris

Norman Osborn, Ford pines, misc RP blog: @sxientist

Otto Octavius RP blog: @drdemeaning

Current hyperfixation/characters + tags:

Doc Ock, Alfred Molina,

Writing:

About/BTS | Published | Gravity Falls Masterpost|Marvel Masterpost

Tags:

About me, Liveblog, Gravity falls, face, Original content, Cat Tag, Favorite posts, autism posts, ear worm, music, (fan) Playlist,

Characters:

Doc Ock, Eda Clawthorne, Fiddleford, Ford Pines, Norman Osborn, Raine Whispers, Silco, Stanley Pines,

Ships:

Octogoblin, Fiddleauthor, Fiddlestan, Raeda

Found family, ace/aro rep, and ableist takes on the topic.

Found family is an awesome trope, and ace people, aro people and aro-ace people are 100% valid, and that meme that says we don’t write enough about queer friendship even though we write a lot about queer romance and sex is not wrong.

But I am a shipper.  I don’t know about this whole “pro-ship” thing because I don’t get paid for it and I don’t “support” all ships; I just support the human right of people to have their imaginations and write whatever ships they want to write, because fictional characters can’t get hurt.

And as a shipper, I’ve seen a lot of people be really fucked up about insisting that a certain character is “canonically aro-ace” when that’s never been explicitly said in the source material, or that a certain relationship has to be “found family” and not a sexual/romantic relationship when that’s never been explicitly said in the source material.

And the fucked-up thing about it is that a lot of these purity-culture-fuelled arguments come with a whopping side order of unwanted ableism, because the characters involved have disabilities.

I am a Gravity Falls fan, and Stanford Pines is, canonically, kind of thirsty.  We know he’s dated a siren. We know his map of the human brain has some hints in it that he thinks about sex a lot. He acts very much like a lot of autistic people we know and love.  He is often claimed as ace/aro (and shipping him is claimed as ace/aro erasure) because he once said he didn’t understand how romance worked and because he’s known to have not had a whole lot of success in the romance department.

But here’s the thing. Everything he said about having trouble with making romance work and not getting the unwritten “rules” for it is stuff that I’ve said, and I’m not ace or aro.  I’m just...kinda autistic.

Yelling at people who relate to Ford for shipping him because you’re ace and you’re mad that not everyone sees him that way isn’t really okay, because some autistic people are really tired of being treated as though they are ace when they’re actually not. They want relationships; they just don’t know how to get one or what to do with it when they have it yet.

And when you start talking about how ‘pure’ such characters are, and claiming they’re ‘above’ that, you’re being sex-negative and ableist, because you’re infantilising neurodivergent people, and that’s not okay.

I am also a Ravage/Soundwave shipper.  (I’m going to just side-eye the whole “bestiality” argument against this ship because Ravage isn’t an animal. Ravage is a Transformer with the same spark every other Transformer has. Ravage being cold-constructed, someone else decided to put this spark in a cat-shaped body. But Ravage is 100% sapient, capable of deep philosophical conversation and emotional depth, shows attachment to Soundwave and Megatron, and loves them.  Ravage is not their pet cat.)

I sometimes get to hear a lot of arguments about how Ravage and Soundwave ought to be “found family” and how Ravage is really Soundwave’s parent, but they were adults when they met each other. Ravage and Soundwave are also both neuro-atypical. Soundwave is more extremely so than Ravage is, but they both have severe problems with focus and executive dysfunction and being overwhelmed by sensory stimuli.  It’s worse for Soundwave because he can read minds to the degree that he has a hard time telling who he is, and Ravage took him in and helped him figure that out.  But they are still two adults with synaesthesia, enhanced senses, sensory processing disorders who are coping with all this, plus poverty and oppression, when they meet each other.

That means that if they decide in someone’s fic to have an adult relationship, a romantic or sexual relationship, that is 100% okay, especially since the cassette/carrier power imbalance was forced upon them in at least one continuity and they did not start out in that situation.

And if you are going to write platonic or found family fic about them, stop using Ravage/Soundwave as your tag here and on AO3 and then getting mad when shippers who love this rarepair are unhappy.  The “Ravage & Soundwave” tag exists for a reason.

When people insist that this relationship can’t be romantic because there is at least one grown-ass adult in it who has disabilities related to being neuro-atypical, they are yet again infantilising neuro-atypical people and people with sensory processing disorders.  I’m in that group, so I resent this. Soundwave was an adult when he met Ravage and moved in with Ravage and the two of them put up with some really extraordinary bullshit in order to not be separated by a casteist society. “Friendship” is not the only explanation for people moving in together and refusing to be separated.

They don’t have to be lovers and they are never so described in canon, though I can find you canonical evidence that they could have been lovers and at least one person thought they might have been. But saying they cannot be lovers because letting someone else with a similar disability live with you and helping them deal with it makes you their parent?  That is not okay, dude. Don’t read my fic if you don’t like the idea, but also don’t @ me because I find it incredibly romantic that Soundwave could remember Ravage’s name when he was having trouble remembering his own.

Don’t get me started on DBH. Someone in that fandom flipped a table just because shippers liked their artwork. Again, the two male characters being shipped have an age gap and a life experience gap, but they’re not actually related to one another, so they don’t have to regard one another as out of bounds, as they are both functional adults.  It upset me, because I ship the characters based on RP interactions and wasn’t even aware that it wasn’t canon, so...maybe again, be nice to people who are new to your fandom.

Write people as ace or aro if you want to. Write them that way because you like the headcanon. Write people in platonic friendships and found family if that’s what you want to do.  Write whatever the hell you want about any character.

But for fuck’s sake, do not yell at people who see characters or relationships as potentially sexual or romantic because you don’t want these characters and relationships “debased” by sex and romance, despite there being no canonical evidence that such a relationship couldn’t exist.  That’s not okay.

(And don’t insist, as one galaxy-brained DW RPer I encountered did, that Ravage or Hank is “taking advantage” of Soundwave or Connor and being predatory if they’re attracted to someone more ND than they are.)

You cannot claim “ace/aro erasure” for characters who canonically date and want sexual/romantic relationships being written in sexual/romantic relationships. And you cannot claim that a relationship between unrelated adults who are often viewed as “found family” is actually incestuous.  Just don’t read shipfic for those characters and leave it alone, and stop being nasty to people who mention conversationally or in the tags of a post that they see those characters as lovers. And if you’re going to claim that a character’s awkwardness, neurodiversity or disability prevents them from having a sexual or romantic orientation, please shut up and don’t do that.