I miss your madoka auuuuuu
In the comic where Ford remembers, how did Stan convince him? Does Ford know how many times Stan looped?
What would Stanley’s worst loop?
Was there moments in the aftermath of saving Ford, where Stan woke up in a cold sweat, and Ford bursts into see his brother curled up, begging for him not make the contract, and Ford tries to gently hug him, but Stan wraps around him, shaking. Saying that this isn’t real, that it’s going to loop again—that he’s going have to go back to the start and Fords gonna—
And it’s heartbreaking to Ford, because Ford can only hold him not knowing how to…what to…
Ford feels too inexperienced to be dealing with this but he has to be better, Stanley put all this effort into saving him, Ford has to save Stanley back, he has to
Because if not…then his brother put all this sacrifice into nothing, all because he made a deal with that STUPID…cat demon thing.
Like or not, here Stanley is laid to pieces at his feet,
Torn in every way a man could.
Ford would just have to put the pieces back together, even if slowly. Maybe one day his brother will be able to wake up without screaming his lungs out as if he’s been murdered, one day Stan would stop flinching or having that utter look of blankness in his eyes.
He can fix this, Ford would fix this…he had to.
Hey, nice job predicting Ford's whole deal post-timeloop for the next ten years! lol. I'm glad you're liking my madoka au! I like it too (:
Realtalk, I do think there are maybe one or two moments where they're both kinda fucked up about it-- but neither of them is going to be willing to admit it outwardly. Ford because he only remembers one loop, so he's got none of the time loop fatigue and hasn't decided that the way they were taught to deal with their emotions is bullshit and ineffective, and Stan because he got his happy ending, so why can't he be happy about it? He's got to be happy about it.
I think for a while the two of them are more inseparable than usual-- not to say that they do the same things together, but rather to say that they'll exist in the same room at the same time? "Parallel play" and such? Because neither one of them is willing to have a conversation about what they went through yet [and the longer they don't the less they want to], but at the same time the stress of what they went through makes both of them hesitant to let the other leave their sight. Stanley because If I Don't Stay Constantly Vigilant My Brother Will Die From Being Eaten By A Witch, Turning Into A Magical Girl And Being Eaten By A Witch, Or Turning Into A Magical Girl And Then Turning Into A Witch [Part Two Electric Boogaloo], Ford because Oh God I Wanted To Not Think About My Brother So Hard I Didn't Notice He Sold His Soul For Me And Now I'm Terrified That If I Stop Paying Attention To Him He Will Spontaneously Explode And Die.
What makes it REALLY fun is when their positions on College Vs. Adventuring Together are completely reversed-- Stanley, having had a taste of the "adventuring life" and seeing his brother beef it terribly in varying ways, wants nothing more than for Ford to go to a nice fancy nerd school where the most dangerous thing that can happen is a papercut. He'd very much like it if his brother got a job doing nerd things like pushing pencils and kissing numbers and reading books forever, actually. And then, maybe in a couple years if Stanley hasn't been eaten by a witch or something, the two of them can go sail around Europe and comb beaches for gold or bones or whatever it is nerds do that lets them see the sun. Archeology is basically adventuring for geeks, right? And all the stuff they're looking for has been dead for ages already, so it's completely safe!
But now that Ford has experienced one loop, watched his brother almost-die, and has been faced with hard proof that the world is full of magic and possibilities and [most importantly] danger, he's got a one-track mind. Fuck school! His brother almost died!! His brother might STILL die!!! He can't waste his time kowtowing to more authority figures for grades on a piece of paper when he needs to solve the problem of getting Stanley's soul out of that little magic bauble and saving him from Ford's mistake. A problem that wouldn't have existed if Ford hadn't been so desperate to right a perceived wrong that he let himself get tricked. Knowledge can be obtained anywhere- not just in school. There are books, and there's experience, and he can get his hands on both of these things in equal measure on his own.
To answer your second and third questions: Ford doesn't know how many times Stanley looped. He's tried to ask, he's tried to solve it with math, but he's entirely unable to get an answer to it. This is because Stanley actively chose not to keep track of how long he was in the loop for-- since the month reset, that's a do-over and it doesn't count. It couldn't count, really, not if he wanted to stay sane. If Stanley had to recognize how long he was doing it for, he never would have made it through. So he focused on the present. That being said, there were some loops that were better than others. Marginally speaking. [They were all bad, because his brother died in all of them, because if there was one where his brother didn't die then that means that Stanley won and got out-- which he did. In the last loop.] Best loop was saving Ford, hands-down, no notes. Second-best was the time he blew up the high school trying to figure out a more efficient way to kill witches so he didn't have to stick his neck out so much. [And now he knows how to build bombs! And Greek Fire (read: napalm)! Score!]
The worst… eurgh. That one's difficult to say. Not because there wasn't something bad enough to count as "the worst loop" but because every loop is the worst in the same way, for the same reason. I think, taking that into account, it would have been a loop that was kind of early on. One where it was just dawning on him how long things might take, how much in over his head he'd gotten, and how little he knew about his relationship with his brother and what Ford wanted. He'd find out that saving Ford meant more than just "convince him not to make a contract"-- it was figuring out why he was actually mad, without being able to talk to him because, for Ford, it's always been just after the worst day of his life. Stanley realizes that even as he himself gets farther and farther from the night that ruined his own life, Ford's trapped in its direct aftermath, and there's no world where Stan can make him "look on the bright side". So he has to settle for keeping Ford alive long enough for him to stop being mad. It's rough. It's a rough time.
To answer the first question……..I have no idea, lol. If I did, I would've put it in there. The HEALTHY way, I think, would be that Stanley makes an effort to see Ford's side of things, accepts that they might want different lives, and learns that he can apologize for doing something harmful without it also meaning that he's the scum of the earth and he'll never get better. [These two are not healthy.] The way I think it would more believably happen is that Ford, not wanting to admit that he's become embroiled in a conflict above his pay-grade and kind of beyond his current scope of understanding, ends up in a precarious and life-threatening situation in an attempt to "help" his brother [read: show him that he's being ridiculous and selfish and really, Stanley, would it kill you to let him have this one thing for himself-?]. Stanley saves him at the last second at the cost of a grievous injury that means he has to either A) reset the timeline and start over, erasing all the fucking progress he just made in finally keeping his brother alive and convincing him not to make a wish with Kyuubey or get tangled up in witch-hunting, or B) die and let the timeline continue as it is now that he knows his brother won't make a contract. Ford essentially threatens Stanley into resetting the loop by claiming that he'll contract with Kyuubey to save Stanley and-- well, you read what I wrote!
God, I wrote a lot lmao. Thanks for the ask!!
