When does GoGs Stan find out about how much harassment ford faced pretty much anytime he stepped outside? And how does he react once he does?
Hohoho okay so here’s the thing. GoG Stan doesn’t have one grand revelation moment per se; rather, he spends 30+ years slowly getting scraps of a full picture which finally click into place.
Stan is coming from a place of low information and low communication, so it’s already a struggle to read the room properly.
The first piece of the puzzle he gets (which continues throughout) is the rumours and how people talk about Ford. However, it’s been years at this point and he has no way to verify if it’s true or not. But what he does know is that he can read people very well, and these people seem to believe what they’re saying. But it is now widespread knowledge that Ford is scary and dangerous etc. etc.
The Second piece is when Ford first encounters Stan and has his meltdown. Stan knows Ford has always felt very swayed by others’ opinions of him, but he also knows this reaction is particularly severe. Still, it’s been years and Stan has no clue what being the chosen of a chaos demon god will do to you mentally.
Past that, Ford refuses to see him and seems to believe any genuine attempts at amends are false. Hm. Weird okay.
I think the third piece is probably when Stan becomes aware of the gap between the rumours and reality. This could start happening earlier in theory, but I think when the younger twins fall through the portal and Mabel joins Team Evil and the rumours don’t stop being so outlandish, that’s when he starts getting the necessary evidence to draw conclusions. He witnesses their ‘evil’ firsthand and goes okay. Either my brother got really good at acting the past few decades or something is up.
The fourth piece I think is when Stan realises just how isolated Ford has been. I think there’s a slight awareness of it beforehand - mostly when the Axolotl talks to him after Ford’s initial meltdown and basically says like okay this guy is having a really rough time we gotta help him and he realises Ford was doing bad but isn’t sure why. The decreasing / scarce sightings of him are a potential implication, but he also knows that in an infinite multiverse tracking one man who doesn’t want to be found is… troublesome. Not sure how entirely he finds out the full extent of it yet but there’s definitely an “…Oh.” The thing is that even Bill-aligned and evil Fords don’t tend to end up this isolated - GoG Ford just skirts a very unique line of moral and social ambiguity which repels most people. But for that reason Stan, who only became more surrounded with people post-godhood, was simply not able to anticipate how absolutely alone his brother has been.
^ this aspect gets much worse when he realises the reason he’s this isolated is in large part because of what happened in that meltdown and he doesn’t want to hurt people again. That’ll pull his heartstrings.
Piece five, where we’re approaching threshold, is when finally Stan learns what precisely sets off Ford’s powers and how. The understanding that powerful bad emotions are the source of all the destruction raises the question of what has been making Ford feel so unbelievably bad all these years?
It’s a bit of a loaded question lacking one neat answer, but boy is there a major contributing factor sitting pretty in the corner of the room waiting to be addressed.
Sixth (heh) piece is what clicks all the others into place. And that’s simply being around Ford and observing. It’s Stan’s specialty, and he would’ve reached his conclusion far far sooner if they were never split up. The way Ford winces at unexpected voices addressing him, the way he shrinks away from strangers, subtly tries to hide in whatever room he enters, doesn’t speak up, doesn’t announce his presence the way the Avatar of Chaos should, the way he glances at people and the way others glance at him in turn. Most people are not willing to be rude to the Avatar of Order’s twin brother directly in front of him. But that does not mean there are not lingering remnants or shows of that sentiment. It does not take Stan long to recognise: 1. All these people seem to hate or fear Ford for some reason; 2. Ford seems to expect literally everyone to go off at him at any given time. He’s walking on eggshells constantly wtf.
That’s when he flat out asks Ford. And Ford, in typical Ford fashion, reveals just the smallest bit of it - least extreme stuff with like an it’s fine it happens mentality. But Stan also knows Ford and he knows that that’s horseshit and this is an iceberg problem and he sees absolute red.
Oh cool yeah my brother has been systematically isolated and emotionally, verbally and sometimes physically abused by the entire multiverse for 3 decades despite being a deity and people took any negative response to that as some sort of dangerous evil force attacking innocents. Yeah okay. Normal about this. Ford had the power to kill a lot of people for this and didn’t, also. Mhm yeah uh huh.
Some days it’s very difficult to be a pacifist, yannow? People incorrectly assume GoG Stan, as a healer, lacks a lot of offensive capabilities. That’s not entirely accurate, see, he absolutely can annihilate a lot of people it’s just a lot more visceral and war crimesy than just stabbing them yknow? The ability to restore something to a previous state? Yeah what if I restore you to before you were born or before your matter was even assembled. The ability to heal/regenerate? Yeah what if I heal/restore every dead or deactivated virus, bacteria or cancerous cell in your body yknow at once. Very scary stuff.
Stan believes that he has a lot of restraint that he doesn’t simply reactivate a bunch of ancient viruses and start a multiversal epidemic. He has the power to exact a lot of vengeance - but he knows it isn’t fair to everybody. They were scared, most of them didn’t know better, etc. thank the Axolotl he’s the Avatar of Order, right? Because if he was less intrinsically stable or if he’d gotten Ford’s abilities instead, there wouldn’t be much multiverse left to take it out on.
No, instead he does the calm, orderly, composed thing and does what he knows will upset every single person he’s healed, been worshipped by, blessed, or graced.
More specifically, he gets up and leaves with Ford (and Mabel and Dipper, if they haven’t gone home or whatnot). He tells nobody where he’s going, leaves no remnant of his power, and ghosts the fucking multiverse.
Abandonment by a god is very heartbreaking to most civilisations, as it turns out. This is an extremely effective punishment.
Stan gets exceptionally clingy and refuses to leave Ford alone for just about any space of time for a very long while after that.
