Myths. History. Just different ways to interpret the past. Thousands of years of humanity's thoughts and beliefs, scattered and buried. Just waiting to be found.
John Steinbeck was particularly enamored with the performance of Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, feeling that he perfectly encapsulated everything he wanted to convey with this character. The two became good friends. Indeed Fonda did a reading at Steinbeck's funeral.
HENRY FONDA in THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940) | dir. John Ford
I'm not gonna lie, at first I was skeptical of Ford's claims that the Weirdness Magnetism had an effect on him. Like, yeah, the whole having six fingers thing isn't exactly common, but it's a naturally-occurring event. Stan describes it as a birth defect, and there doesn't seem to be a noticeably great number of people with those in Gravity Falls. It wouldn't be all that farfetched for Ford to think he was just Built Different, for like, at least 7 reasons, but then you start actually thinking about it.
Polydactyly isn't exactly common. Approximately 1 in 1,000 babies are born with some form of polydactyly. While it's true that postaxial polydactyly (extra digit is past the pinkie) is the most common form, which is shown to be the kind Ford has in the x-ray at the beginning of AToTS, there are several other extreme circumstances.
Extra digits in polydactyly aren't usually found on all limbs. It can occur on hands and feet (and Alex has confirmed that Ford does, indeed, have six toes on both feet) but rarely does it occur on both feet, or both hands, much less both hands and both feet. And even when it does occur more than once on one person, the extra digits aren't usually fully-formed. Oftentimes they don't even have bones. When they do have bones, they're usually much smaller, or barely opposable (if they have joints at all). When they're big enough to be maneuverable, they usually interfere with the structure of the hands/feet in negative ways. All this means that an extra finger or toe which doesn't direly require a surgery to remove the extra digit within the first year or two of life is incredibly uncommon.
And let's remember: that's just for one extra digit. Ford has four.
For Ford to have fully functional polydactyly on both hands and both feet, to the point where it's basically impossible to tell which one is finger x without x-rays... the odds of that are astronomically unlikely. Never-before-recorded, one in a kazillion, borderline medically unfathomable sort of rare.
I think I do believe the Weirdness Magnetism could've affected Ford, actually.
You made a post saying “it has been zero days since our last alex hirsch hates ford so much bullshit” and i know it was mostly hyperbole, but you have some really good takes that I would love to be elaborated on in terms of how ford is written
it really wasn't hyperbolic. over the years he's just really shown a lot of hatred towards this one character.
content warning: discussion of abuse
i want to start with this clip from the commentary which i think of as a microcosm for how the writers and especially alex think about ford.
transcript:
rob renzetti: i mean he [mcgucket] should've basically knocked ford out, and... and destroyed the... you know, tied him up, and, destroyed... and...
alex hirsch, speaking over him: yeah he should've beat ford with a wrench and taken this thing apart piece by piece! he's the one who understood how to built [sic] it, but...
... so that seems like a pretty violent course of action. shall we unpack that?
ford is a character who's pretty explicitly written as a victim of abuse, and who now has c-ptsd as a direct result of the abuse he experienced. alex hirsch believes that ford deserved everything bad that happened to him, that it's ford's own fault, and that he also deserved worse things to happen to him. this is why, given every narrative chance, alex hirsch has piled more suffering onto ford's plate. the biggest example of this i can think of is in the journal, when he wrote that fiddleford was actively erasing ford's memory (despite this being a massive timeline contradiction which i still refuse to accept). because god forbid ford even have one remotely healthy relationship with somebody. that would be too good for him.
ford was manipulated and lied to by bill, but alex repeatedly compares him to icarus, a teenager whose demise was the result of his own ignorance. this comparison is still so fucking offensive to me. the sun did not lie to icarus, did not guarantee icarus all of the happiness and success and sense of belonging which he had been denied all his life, did not actively shut out the voices of those around him who would try to help him.
alex in general has a very strange relationship with abuse. he seems to get really upset when people read his characters as victims of abuse. the strongest instance of this is actually not with ford, it's with pacifica - especially in the nwmm episode commentary. the episode says "pacifica's parents have conditioned her to respond to a bell" and alex says people got "the wrong idea" about it. like. dude. what the fuck. you wrote abuse. even if you didn't mean to, that's what you wrote. you can't say people got "the wrong idea" just because you didn't think about the subtext of what you were writing.
anyway, back to ford: i believe this extends to him as well. alex wanted to write a character who's a foil to stan and who was a selfish unlikable victim of his own arrogance. however that's not what he wrote. he somehow seemingly accidentally wrote a really compelling and relatable awesome autistic guy who had to fight for every good thing he he ever had in his life only for it to be taken from him every single time. but alex can't let go of seeing ford as just "the opposite of stan". when he talks about "how someone as smart as ford could fall for bill's tricks", he refuses to realize he wrote a situation in which a man was being psychologically manipulated and tortured.
it goes back further, too. people repeatedly theorized that filbrick was... not a very good father, to say the least. on top of the very explicit and canon fact that he threw one of his children out on the street (seriously, there is no defense for this), people pointed out that stan would flinch at filbrick, that ford seemed upset by things filbrick said but dared not talk back, that filbrick was mad at stan not for hurting his brother, but for "costing the family potential millions". but alex can't have people seeing ford as sympathetic. ford can't have it bad like stan did. ford had to have everything and he lost it all because he sucks so much. so he wrote the graphic novel story where ford is filbrick's favorite child and filbrick also is not even a bad parent you guys he's just stoic. ignore the whole thing in dreamscaperers where stan perpetuates the abuse that filbrick did to him. ignore the fact that ford was shouting at stan and then completely shut up as soon as filbrick entered the room and did not say another word for the rest of the night. ignore all that because i just made up this story where he cries at a present from stan. filbrick loved his boys for sure you guys!!!
i'm not even touching on how alex repeatedly villainizes traits commonly associated with mental illness and neurodivergence. ford's hypervigilance becomes arrogance. his passion for knowledge means he's a know-it-all. his difficulty socializing and making friends means he's a misanthrope. his lingering resentment for the way he was raised means he hates his brother and is the worst human being to ever have lived. i could go on, go even further into how the finale reaffirms this, but i feel weird talking about this too much.
As fans, we’re all aware that Filbrick sucked as a dad.
But do Stan and Ford understand that?
It seems obvious to us outside viewers, but I don’t exactly recall any comments by either senior Pines twin that would suggest they have connected those dots. I believe it’s fairly normal for children of abusive, neglectful or just simply bad parents to think their parent’s behavior was normal or that they deserved it or whatever, and in addiction to not being able to remember a moment where they admit their dad sucked, they certainly have both internalized his words.
Ford continued to pursue his education and was obsessed with academic excellence, as that seemed to be the one and only thing that made his father show him any kind of appreciation.
Stan continued to obsess over money, as his dad told him that was the only way he was allowed to return home. And let’s not forget his comment in the finale “dad was right, I am a screw up”
But again, and please please correct me if I’m wrong, I can’t think of anything either of them has said that criticizes their father’s actions. There’s the comment that he “wasn’t easily impressed” which I think more than anything, serves more as an excuse for his actions. Heck, in the flashback of Stan taking boxing lessons, I felt that whole scene was framed as Filbrick being a good dad, personally, I thought he was a good dad up until A Tale of Two Stans.
Idk I guess I just always assumed that after several decades they started to understand that Filbrick wasn’t a great dad, but it’s perfectly realistic for neither of them to have come to that conclusion, and frankly, the tiny bits of evidence from the show support this being the case.
I rambled a bit here, but what do you all think? Did I forget a moment that proves they do see their dad wasn’t a good dad? Do you think they have processed that part of their childhoods?