apocalypsegay gravity falls sideblog because im. going crazy. sorry.
🔞🔞🔞 Read my OCxStanley fanfiction boy Art Tag do not interact with me or my posts if you're super into incest or pedophilic ships i didnt think this had to be said
(puts hand on the shoulder of every 'stan hurt ford sooo muchhhhh' truther) ford was going to leave stan homeless, something stan would never, even at gunpoint, ever do if their roles were reversed
i know everybody wants to do 2014 tumblr sexyman bill but wokely but ive noticed a trend where peoples human bill designs are often the darkest skinned character in the cast. and well. it is interesting to me that you would pick the character who is very selfish and extremely violent and unpredictable to do that with. especially when most human designs of him are made with shipping in mind. and so you end up with the dominant controlling character in this abusive relationship being dark skinned. hm. interesting decision!
seeing fanart on pinterest where they design him to look arab specifically and all the comments are "omg wait why is this is so fitting for him" i think you guys are just racist
Gravity Falls is a fascinating exercise in censorship, coding, and implication because one of the main characters is an old man who spent 10+ years homeless, in and out of prison, running drugs across borders, doing sex work to survive etc but the main cartoon canon can’t focus on this obviously. it gets spread out across different material. so yeah Grunkle Stan is genuinely one of my favorite characters.
example: we know he was institutionalized because of an aside in a coloring book. we know he’s on some kind of psychiatric medication from an aside in the DS game.
actually, one of the really clever things that makes it into the show is finding out that one of his old identities was Andrew '8-Ball' Alcatraz. it’s a sly coded message (in a show all about decoding messages) that says Stan Was Incarcerated For Drug Trafficking. (8-Ball is a classic unit of measurement by weight for a few different drugs and Alcatraz is a prison.)
you can really tell when a guy character has become a tumblr popularboy because everything about him that can be wrung dry for overwrought angst is wrung dry for overwrought angst to the point of making him sound like a dog that's going to die at the end of a children's movie
If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.
1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.
2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.
3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.
4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.
5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.
Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.
Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.
Stan and Soos' sorta-Dad and Sonployee relationship
We of course have Soos assigning Stan as his father figure the moment he got hired
But Stan holds that moment dear too, with Soos becoming his main source of company after the Mystery Shack, his first big success, was starting to hit rock bottom. And he made sure to keep the screwdriver that led Soos to him for a decade which unfortunately gets stolen by a certain time traveler...
(Their meeting being a paradox of Soos' family leading him to them is super sweet too!)
Playing one game of catch with their dads still was a dream for both of them, even when it was clear that it'll never happen, even when Soos knows that the Pines are his family and he shouldn't care about that biological deadbeat, even when Filbrick threw Stan away like trash.
But both of them end up finding closure with each other anyway.
Along with Stan likely teaching him how to fix golf carts (to the point that Soos is pretty skilled at it now), he also taught him boxing and tried to do something about his birthday, which is another sore spot for the both of them.
In the Sooscast, we have Stan continuing with the podcast despite learning this horrifying truth/not understanding what the hell is going on.
Noticeably, we see that Stan is a lot more lenient on Soos in comparison to Dipper, mostly because Stan doesn't project most of his issues onto him. (Not that he's immune from chores or shitty tasks but that's the burden of being a sonployee...)
And in NWHS, Stan trusts him to guard the lab with no questions asked (even if that ended up being foiled by Soos loving Mabel and Dipper too)
The comic story is Soos helping Stan regain and continue one of his childhood dreams, with the website having Stan continuing to draw on the Stan o' War.
And while unfortunately most of their father-son relationship content is at the end or after the series, Alex still said a lot about them in the commentary and interviews!
Before they met, Soos was someone who appeared to only really have his Abuelita and cousin, while Stan had.... a baby goat. And a disappearing frilly lizard.
We have Stan claiming that the reason why he never had children was because of his own dad and that money is basically his child (which just loops around back to his money obsession being his desire to get back his family)
But even still, he passes down the Shack and fez to Soos with barely any pause, the fez in particular being tied up with a lot of complex emotions. But Soos getting his own suit fitted just for him and not being pressured to wear a girdle to hide his weight kinda symbolizes to me that the role of Mr Mystery is now free from that baggage.
And whenever we'd end up getting Stan o' War stories, I'm sure the two of them are gonna get way more father-son moments
(Filbrick's impact on Stan post, Stan projecting on Dipper post)
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