(i started this in a reply and then was like, fuck it, it’s too long.)
HELLOOOOOO UNRELIABLE NARRATOR FORD.
Truly, one of my favorite little details? I'll always wonder how on purpose it was.
But like... the first one is the guarded, buttoned-down version he tells to the family straight out of the Portal. I like to think that he’s trying to be impartial, a bit aloof. He doesn’t know any of these people, except for Stan. He’s not really ready to be vulnerable to Stan, either, right? I feel a bit like his outfit -- the most formal version of his Researcher era outfit -- reflects that. This is the professional version -- just the facts.
(I think it’s also possible that in this first narrative, he’s distanced himself a bit from what happened. In the scene, his response to Fiddleford is, obviously, not *uncaring*, but it’s not super distressed, either. It makes me wonder, before he was telling his story in that moment, how often he’d truly thought about those events in the last 30 years. Is his memory of them colored by what he knows came right after that? Are those sort of the... cliff’s notes version of that history, the basic gist, but not even necessarily the blow-by-blow account of what happened and how both of them reacted? )
The second one comes during Ford’s much more honest, guilty, and vulnerable confession to Dipper. And this comes right after we saw Ford’s thoughts on that screen, right. I’M SORRY FIDDLEFORD being one of the recurring thoughts. This shows his reaction to what happened to Fiddleford as having been much more distressed in the moment; and it shows much more how comfortable he is with Fiddleford, physically. (I don’t even mean in a shippy way, although folks can interpret it that way. I just mean that holding Fiddleford like that shows a willingness to be physical beyond like, a hand on a shoulder, and to me conveys stronger feelings and greater attachment to the person.)
Is the change because, in the intervening weeks, Ford has gotten to know Dipper better and is more willing to be honest with him, not about about *what* happened, but how Ford felt about it? Has being home, and spending so much time down in the lab again, brought all of this much more to the forefront of Ford’s mind? Has he been thinking about it more, and in the process, remembering it more clearly? I do think it’s key that it comes in a moment where Ford has been shocked into greater honesty than he’s shown up until that point, and with that honesty comes more humility (being willing to confess how big a mistake he made in trusting Bill, which is something he’s deeply ashamed about).
It’s always a bit difficult to interpret what is meant by what we seen on-screen in these two episodes, versus the words being spoken. Like, in ATOTS, it is very clear that in Stan’s story, at least, the images/memories we’re shown are meant to be in clear contrast to what Stan SAYS. “Meanwhile, your ol’ uncle Stan was doin’ great”, etc., while we’re shown him living in his car, surrounded by trash and junk. We’re meant to be seeing how Stan is still sugar-coating his backstory for the kids (and Ford). But, then, it’s really hard to figure out what that means for all of the flashback scenes of them as kids and teens, when they both had memories of those events (or most of them).
So are the images we’re shown meant to be taken as “what truly happened”, no matter what words are being said by the characters? Does that mean the ATOTS version is “what happened”, while the Last Mabelcorn version is how a guilt-ridden Ford remembers it? (Or how he wishes he’d responded? How he *felt* versus what he *did*? Or how he thinks he *ought* to have felt, from the later remove of knowing how much Bill did not have his best interests at heart, how much Bill had manipulated him, and in part turned him against Fiddleford.)
ANYWAY. That’s just how I see it. I feel like those scene are super interesting, but there’s so much going on in BOTH episodes that has to make us question the nature of narrative versus “reality”, that I think there are other interpretations that would be equally valid here.
2087
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