Chase; They/them, 35, Geologist Fandom obsessed. Ships Stancest, and other "bad ships"; you have been warned. Don't follow if you're under 18. I'm not your parent, I can't tell you what to do, but I'm not going to censor myself either. Am now a Piccolo x Krillin blog.
hi yall sorry ive been MIA I've been super busy with work and my thesis year summer work <33333 im not dead i just wanted to get off most socials so i could focus on that LOL everything was submitted today though so i let myself draw for fun yesterday
Buckle up, guys. This is FORD HAS ALWAYS LOVED STAN VERY MUCH, the meta.
I think a big misunderstanding going on in this fandom, both in our cesty inner circle and outside it, is the idea that Stan was the one yearning for Ford while Ford was too busy passionately hating him (at worst), or indifferent (at best), too focused in his research and academic accomplishments to pay his repressed love for Stan any mind. Ambitious, self-centered Ford, who would be shocked at the preposterous idea that he still loved Stan deep down if, say, his post-Weirdmaggedon future self revealed it to him. “I thought I hated you, but I was wrong,” old Ford would say to Stan, regretful. Now, this couldn’t be further from canon 😭
My controversial take is: Ford has always known he loved Stan. Yes, even at his most bitter. He just didn’t think Stan was worthy of that love.
So I have dedicated this particular meta to pointing out not all (because that would make it longer than Tolstoy’s War and Peace) but the most telling moments re: Ford’s repressed but obvious love for Stan and their implications. With pictures and one (1) random gif I happened to find.
When thinking about Ford’s love for Stan, I often think of I Bet My Life by Imagine Dragons:
I’ve been around the world and never in my wildest dreams
Would I come running home to you
I’ve told a million lies but now I tell a single truth
There’s you in everything I do
Because Stan is in literally everything he does, sometimes in ways so subtle that people miss it, and in ways that Ford himself would love to deny, even if it meant lying to himself. Like I said in a previous meta, Ford is very, very sentimental, and that is reflected in his relationship with Stan through the decades, with all the different paths he takes to cling to his past and the idea of his brother.
Let’s explore some examples, shall we? We don’t need to go far.
First of all, the Mystery Shack cottage, commissioned by Ford and built by Dan Corduroy, is clearly based off a childhood toy he shared with Stan.
It doesn’t stop there, of course. Ford loves his boat motif decorations.
And would you look at that, his favorite place in his beloved Gravity Falls, a town full of wondrous places full of fantastical anomalies and literally a weirdness magnet, is, for some reason, a lake. A very weird lake? A very cool lake? No, a lake that reminded him of his childhood aka Stan. “There is no other place in Gravity Falls I would rather be than the lake.”
But that isn’t enough for Ford. He must keep, still, pictures and videos of Stan. People usually focus on the overall adorableness of, say, Ford leaning his head on Stan’s shoulders or Ford’s apologies to notice the implications of what Dipper says: “Ford even found an old film reel of them as kids, which he amazingly saved all these years.” Even Dipper himself is amazed. I’ve seen people assuming that Ford had these and forgot about them, or that Caryn (their mother) was the one to send him these and he simply agreed to avoid a fight (because there is a tendency in this fandom to think of her as a very loving mother). Years later, TBoB was like, “nuh-uh, children, that was all Ford Pines being Ford Pines!” How so? Ford not only does remember these itens, but he makes a conscious effort to hide them from Fiddleford, worried that his friend was getting “too close” (from what? from the inner depths of his heart and mind, where Stanley was?) “I’ve quickly re-hidden here, away from prying eyes.” Oh, Ford.
And a picture of teenage Stan, too! You would think he would just attach himself to the idealized version of baby Stan in his head to feed his nostalgia and completely ignore teenage Stan, the traitor, the one who destroyed his science project. But no, Ford wouldn’t be Ford if he acted normal about Stan. The funniest thing to me about the ripped yearbook page is that it implies Ford made the conscious decision to include Stan as he ripped the page off, when he could have just focused on his own picture. And then we also have his drawing of Stan, a perfectly accurate portrayal of Stan’s face as he got kicked out, implying that not only he paid an enormous amount of attention to his brother and how he looked like back then, but that particular image was living rent free in his brain. Very vividly. With details.
Now, folks, do we have any doubt whatsoever of the power Stan had in Ford’s psyche? Seeing that this is how the bedrock of Ford’s mind looked like? The boat, the swing set? I’ve seen it suggested before that these items represent Ford’s greatest regrets — I don’t know if I fully agree with that take, seeing as the swing set is fully intact, unlike in Stan’s mind, but one thing is true: they represent what Ford deep down thinks is most important, and two of three are directly related to Stan. Even the portal, from a certain angle, is connected to Stan.
But back to pictures. In a previous analysis, I’ve pointed out that, according to Alex, that picture of Stan has always been in Ford’s coat pocket, through all the decades, even before Bill’s betrayal. That’s why it’s so damaged. He was dimension hopping with it. I don’t think I even need to make any comment here, hahah.
But one last thing I would like to point out is: Stan Pines is very much his weakness. Ford knows this and accepts this with shocking ease. How so? Well, first of all, the nightmare he had. As he tells us about it in Journal 3, even though he attempts to make light of the situation, his hand is clearly trembling as he writes, making drops of ink splatter on the page. The climax of his nightmare, the peak, the scariest moment was when Ford realized he was not the one at risk; rather, Stan was. “I realized my hand wasn’t chasing after me at all—it was chasing after my brother, and it was going to squeeze him to death!” And then, may it be noticed, there was no hesitation whatsoever on Ford’s part about whether to save Stan or not, nor does he try to hide his protective reaction. It was immediate and instinctive. “I tried to run to help him, but my feet were frozen.” It’s very telling that the Dream Hipster, the nightmare inducing ghost, thought that Stanley Pines would be the most effective thing to make Ford shake in his boots. Not even, say, failing and being ridiculed by other scientists, considering how ambitious he was.
And you know who else has noticed this weakness? Bill Cipher, of course. After psychologically, emotionally, and physically abusing Ford in horrific manners (including but not limited to: forcing him to eat spiders, driving a nail into his hand, and making him wake up on the snowy roof of the Mystery Shack as a symbolic threat of forced suicide), Bill involves Stan, as the grand finale. “But then he crossed a line.” Oh, did he, Ford? Why was your brother that line? “No. He wouldn’t.” Ford couldn’t even believe Bill’s audacity in involving Stan, even though he very much already knew Bill was as evil as evil could get. Because Bill knew, having free access to Ford’s mind, how terribly important Stan was: the person Ford loved the most in the world, more than himself.
That is why, when Stan-as-Ford tells Bill, “My only condition is that you let my brother and the kids go!” Bill easily believes him. Because he thought that it would be in-character for Ford. And Bill wouldn’t be wrong, not at all. He wouldn’t, because Ford himself was the one to tell Stan: “We need to take his deal. It’s the only way he’ll agree to save you and the kids.” It’s blaffling to me how many fans seem to forget Ford’s own words, and the fact Ford was very, very much willing to damn the whole universe (with seven billion people living on Earth at the time) to save three (3) people, including Stan. That Stan himself was the one to oppose and stop him. I think that happens because people buy Ford’s facade of Cold Responsible Greater Good Guy, which couldn’t be more deceiving. At this point I’m begging you guys to look deeper!
And, as the grand finale, I choose to point out how young adult Ford, still in college, with his bitterness and resentment still very fresh, admits to missing Stan. He wrote, “miss you” in their Bro Code, the code he memorized and never forgot. He not only thought about Stan, which would be understandable, since all of us have intrusive thoughts, but he took the time to write it down, and in code, which would be even more difficult than just writing it in English. That requires at least some level of acceptance. You may not be able to filter your thoughts, but you are able to filter your writing.
Ford does attempt to filter his writing, I know, by crossing out a lot of lines in Journal 3, most of them about Stan. But he does not cross out all of it. He freely admits to having a nightmare about Stan, to wanting to protect Stan from the giant six-fingered hand, to having the lake as his favorite place, to missing Stan, etc. I think that Ford, if asked about his love for Stan back then, would also freely admit to it, as well. Stan is his twin brother. Of course he loves Stan. He just doesn’t like Stan, or trust him, or think Stan is worthy of that love.
The way I see it, Dipper was someone Ford loved (deeply rooted, complex emotion), liked (felt fondness towards), and trusted (to be capable of handling all the mystery stuff). Mabel was someone he loved, liked, but didn’t trust (due to his constant projecting). Stan was someone he didn’t like nor trust, not anymore, but still loved with a fierce intensity of one thousand suns.
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