Do you think Stan Pines is quite overrated in the fandom? Like, I dunno, the fandom tends to overemphasise Ford's flaws while deflecting Stan's away, even tho Stan is much more morally dubious than Ford. "But he loves his family!" they say, even tho Stan refuses to hold hands for the Zodiac
yeah. not only does the fandom tend to deflect Stan's flaws and pretend they're no big deal in comparison to Ford's (as if that makes any sense lmao), but they also tend to focus more on his suffering over Ford's and act as if his pain was more valid or even plain worse than his. which is stupid. pain olympics doesn't a good discussion make. i focus a lot on Ford's pain in my fics because of the oversaturation of fics focusing on Stan's pain, honestly.
it's tiring to see everyone fawn solely on Stan. It's getting a little better in that regard but... not as better as i want it to be haha.
anyway yeah. that's my response. a slight tangent.
What was Ford reaction to the twins saying i love you to him for the first time?
Why don't i show you?
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"I love you, Grunkle Ford!" Mabel exclaims with delight as the bus peels away, "It's so good to see you again!"
"I love you too!" Dipper joins in before the words sink in properly, "We're both happy to be back to see you and Stan!"
On first glance, it shouldn't be that surprising after weekly calls with Dipper and Mabel every step of their boat journey, for the twins to love him like they apparently do, but they hadn't singled him out for an 'i love you' without Stan inherently in their line of love as well. It... makes it somewhat easy to distance himself from them loving him individually, if Stan's included.
As if they only say I love you when Stan's around, that they don't actually love him and just say they love them both out of obligation, though Ford knows that's probably not right. He and Stan were always together when they called the twins after all.
But they specifically called him out this time, even though Stan is right beside him. They're hugging him now, looking up at him with so much love in their eyes, and he can only return it and try not to cry. Ford doesn't know why they felt the need to tell him like this, used to being lumped in with Stan, but he's more grateful than he's ever felt before that they have.
"I love you too, kids," Ford murmurs in their ears, valiantly hiding his emotions as he hugs them tight, "You're the best things that's happened to me."
The kids melt in his arms at the words, before one of them point out something Ford missed in his efforts to keep his emotions discreet.
"Grunkle Ford, are you okay?" Mabel asks, her voice precious as she looks up at him with those deep brown eyes that are full of concern he's not quite grasping, "You look like you're about to cry."
The words make his eyes pinprick, though he wishes he didn't have to feel so weak about feeling their love.
"Grunkle Ford?" Dipper asks soon after, his voice as gentle as ever, "What's going on? Did we upset you?"
Ford shakes his head almost immediately, he can't be having these kids believing that they did anything wrong. The opposite, actually.
So Ford just holds them at arm's length and smiles from ear to ear, even as thin tears find their way down his cheeks. The kids smile back at him as he finds the right words to explain.
"No, kids, you didn't upset me. Far from it," Ford sniffles a little, trying to keep his voice as steady as he can make it, "I'm just so... happy... that I have two wonderful twins like you in my life that love me."
Dipper and Mabel beam at him, their eyes glittering as emotions spread to them, before Ford feels the inevitable vacuum in his heart as they move on sharing their love with Stan.
But it's a vacuum he knows will be filled again and again and again over the coming summer and the rest of the year, so he doesn't mind just watching them hug Stan as much as he initially expects he might. He still feels their love, even from here, and that's all he cares about.
The twins soon run to Stan's waiting car with all their luggage and Ford feels himself hanging back with his mind all wrapped up in thoughts he can't possibly unravel.
At least not without help.
For Stan has a hand on his shoulder and a question in his eyes and Ford can only wait to hear it in his mouth with an expectant smile.
"You're finally feeling all of their love for ya, aren't ya?" Stan asks, a grin on his face as Ford feels confused that he knew something about that, "Don't be so surprised I know that, Six. That look on your face is like a traffic light, heh."
Ford can only chuckle in return, he knows he's not very subtle with his facial expressions after spending the last 10 months with Stan and his easy and accurate judgements of his feelings while adventuring on their boat.
"Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with that one," Ford comments good naturedly, before feeling another wave of emotion nearly strangle him, "I guess i just didn't know if they were only loving you when they said they loved us. That I was only being included out of obligation of being in the same call..."
Stan gives him a quick noogie, before patting him on the back.
"You and your little overthinking problem is gonna give me a heart attack one of these days," Stan jokes, but sobers up a little as Ford's face grows worried, "I'm kidding, but seriously, those kids love ya to pieces. Don't you go forgetting that."
"I'll try not to," Ford smiles and hugs Stan a moment before they get ready to head back to the Shack, "And thank you, Stan. I needed the perspective."
Stan nods and gets in the car, waiting for Ford to do the same. The kids excitedly start relating their entire school year that they hadn't already told them over calls as Ford sits in the passenger seat, filling Ford's heart up with joy as they drive home.
For Ford doesn't want to forget how much they love him.
what occasions do you think Ford would tell his family he loves them? he feels so deeply and cares about everyone so deeply, I think he struggles to put it into words the sweet sweet boy
i think he says the words "I love you" at birthdays and when they meet up all together for the summer and in his goodbyes when they go home, during really scary and hard moments when he isn't sure of the outcome, after being comforted or comforting another, and other such times.
but i think he's more comfortable expressing his love through action more than words. Joining in with Mabel by letting her paint each of his twelve nails and doing his makeup, going on little research hikes with Dipper where he explains certain anomalies and other such things, listening to Stan as he explains how to fish or how his day is going. I don't think anyone in the Pines family is left unaware of how much Ford loves all of them, especially when they get to know him and his quirks better, even if he doesn't strictly say "I love you" to them as much.
What are some examples of Ford's mischaracterisations you've seen in the fandom?
mostly anything to do with ego. ford doesn't actually think he's all that great. but he thinks he has to be great or he's nothing but a six-fingered freak. there's a difference. otherwise he's just a man with terrible self-worth issues trying to parade as something more than what he truly thinks of himself.
also that he doesn't care about family at all. he has difficulties in his relationships, especially with his twin, but there's just too much evidence that says he cares about his family to say he doesn't. it is annoying when people say that kind of stuff.
anyway, that is all i care to bring up right now. thanks for the ask!
thank you for always getting that Ford is a good person. his arc is really important to me for the message we all make mistakes and it's strength to face that and it doesn't define us when we aim to do better like he always does, I wish everyone got that nuance and I've appreciated your thoughts on that. and he is just wonderful.
You're so very welcome, anon.
I really wish i knew how to articulate just how disappointed i am in how this fandom views Ford. There's so many things they just get wrong and i wish they could see Ford for who he really is, not that fanon bullshit they think he is. I really hate how he gets treated like he's uniquely flawed in the face of the other characters in the show, as if everyone else is perfect or completely justifiable or whatever when that can't be further from the truth.
they think we have to list his flaws every time we praise him or just say how much we love him. that we have to hold him accountable for his flaws and mistakes, as if he's a fucking real person and not a fictional character who does stuff that pushes the story forward. it's okay to acknowledge that characters are flawed, but it's like saying that the sky is blue. no yeah duh they're flawed. we don't need to confess their flaws like we're part of some catholic church or whatever. they're flawed and they make mistakes but that's not the fucking end of the world.
i just think this fandom needs a lot more perspective than it has right now. Ford is a good person and he's trying to do his best with what he knows and sometimes he messes up and hurts people, but he's trying. He feels his guilt so deeply that he has 'I'm sorry, Fiddleford' running through his head all the time and he carries that photo of him and Stan on their little boat through everything.
He tries and he tries and he tries so hard to stop Bill's plan to end the world and when his deeply held trust issues from everyone in his life abandoning him and hurting him so deeply - purposely and not - make things that much harder and everything backfires on him, he tries and he tries and he tries to end it and keep the equation from Bill and wishes he could sacrifice himself to save everyone but he just couldn't and he had to let Stan do it for him. which was the hardest thing for him to do. Not because of pride or ego, but because he loved Stan so much and he'd been denying that to himself until he had to let him go and it hurt and he wanted to make everything better with him and Stan because he loved him that much but he was gone.
And you look at all that trying he does at every turn and how everything slaps him in the face and wrings him out like an old rag and you try to say that he deserved worse and all i can say is i don't think you understand what you watched or read. he isn't gonna get better by torture, the worst part of his life was right before the portal incident when bill was psychologically and physically torturing him and instead of that making him better, he was thoughtless with Stan because he was in his own pain and his own pressure to stop the apocalypse too much to see how much Stan was hurting too. he was being crushed by the weight of the world and what he'd let Bill do but that didn't make him better. it made him say that Stan had never done anything of worth and his errand was the only thing that would give him that and that was mean. He got better when he felt Stan's love for him in the sacrifice he gave for him and his family. he got better when the kids showed him love between twins that goes deeper than codependency and gave their own love to him. he got better when he got the chance to offer Stan that trip on the boat and Stan accepted and they got the chance to support each other the way they hadn't been able to in years and in better circumstances.
Ford is a good person. He makes mistakes and he suffers for them and yet he still ends up getting the support he needs to improve and be even better than he already was. His family loves him so much and that's all he really needed to get out of the hole he'd been stuck in by the abusers in his life. He is forgiven for the worst of it and i just wish the fandom could see why. i wish the fandom could see that people need support and love before they can truly make a change. I wish Ford wasn't such a controversial character when all he did was make mistakes and try to make up for them even when he went about it in less than ideal ways. he's a character and he's written incredibly human in a way that feels intensely relatable to many people, including myself.
anyway, thanks for the ask. i got really carried away but i hope you enjoyed this ramble about my favorite character!
Regarding that answer about Ford mischaracterisations, I think actually what I would add is that - he's actually a fun and silly guy sometimes. Like, there's that gin-juice-tonic post about writing Ford and they pointed out how Ford often makes offhand humorous remarks after saying something serious: https://gin-juice-tonic.tumblr.com/post/787919870341824512/hi-i-really-love-your-comics-and-the-80s-ford
So to put that all together, you get “Breaking his standard manner of speech, Ford (sometimes) reacts in a frank manner to other characters.” Generally this happens (when he's perhaps trying to make) a joke.
Much of the fandom tend to characterize Ford to be super serious but you can tell he has a certain brand of silliness and humor. Not sure if that's the writers' intentions but that seem to recur also in J3. He can also be quite impulsive and curious, at least from the flashbacks we see in ATOTS. Tl;dr to say: Ford is a lawful character but its by his own set of laws and principles
yeah, of course that's also a mischaracterization of Ford that's out there. i just didn't feel like writing every single one i see (my motivation to answer some of these asks about gravity falls is starting to wane in general and i have to push myself sometimes to write stuff out)(has something to do with my hyperfixation fading a little)
but i will say that I hate fics that make him super serious and unable to make jokes of his own. he's such a silly guy when he's not under serious duress that shakes it out of him. he'll go with mabel's whims (like when he wore witch hats with her to the bill statue) and make puns in his journals (he's gourd-geous, anyone?), and the speech patterns that Gin mentioned in that post of his that you linked aren't fully formal or serious like people think they are.
he's such a fully fledged character that is more than his character trope that i hate seeing takes that he's just one-dimensionally serious and unfun (seriously think they haven't even seen the show at that point, ngl). man, i love ford.
I'm curious, but what are your thoughts on the Shapeshifter? I've seen Ford haters claiming Ford mistreated him as a pet, but also, I can't help but sympathise with Shifty a bit for being locked up in the bunker for 30 years
I do sympathize with Shifty somewhat, mostly for that thirty years trapped thing.
But also what people sometimes fail to realize is that Ford didn't know Shifty had higher intelligence during the early stages of his research into him. And that his attempts at keeping his journals from Shifty was purely for safety reasons. There are so many dangerous anomalies he'd drawn in those journals and he didn't want Shifty to use forms that could harm him or Fiddleford. Which is like... the most reasonable thing Ford could've done as a precautionary measure tbh. he's terrible with lab safety but he's still got some caution in his skull hehe.
Hell if someone wants to harp on Shifty's poor treatment, Mr. Fiddleford "let's freeze it right out of the egg" McGucket is right there, haha. i mean, the whole point of getting Shifty was to test the cryogenic chambers but Ford was the one who became reluctant to go through with it when confronted, so... idk, make of that what you will.
Ford clearly cared for Shifty in a way, even though his methods of caring ultimately felt more like one would treat a particularly interesting exotic pet. He had no way of really knowing of Shifty's intelligence until he started speaking and making plans for its escape.
But by then, Shifty had already attacked Fiddleford and pretended to be him in order to get a hold of the journals and potentially escape. Which would be a very terrifying encounter that Ford would want to prevent as best he could. And the only real way to guarantee that without killing him would be to lock him up. It is sad when you consider how Shifty must've felt, and i don't blame people for feeling bad for him, but i can't honestly say that Ford was in the wrong for taking those measures once Shifty hurt his friend like that. Shifty could do similar shit to other people in town and that would not be good. He doesn't know Shifty's real intentions after all.
About the thirty years thing, it would be very difficult for Ford to rectify that while he's in the multiverse, ngl. he had other shit that was higher priority, especially after the betrayal, and Shifty just got forgotten until Ford couldn't possibly do anything to help.
idk, there's nuance. Ford may have messed up with Shifty, but i also don't think all his actions were wrong with what information he had at the time, if that makes sense. He tried his best with what he knew and what he knew wasn't the full picture.
Do you think The Book of Bill should never have been published?
not really.
I think, while it has its flaws (*cough* theraprism *cough*), it was good at being clear that what Ford went through with Bill was abuse. It had Bill do literal playbook abuser shit, like love-bombing and ghosting to keep Ford desperate and isolating him from his meager support system in Fiddleford and plenty more i don't have time to mention. Granted, most of this was also in Journal 3 but it was made very obvious in TBoB. Slap you in the face kind of obvious. Kinda crazy some people still missed it, honestly. It was very validating to see it as it was all along, as i know some in this fandom agree.
it also does better at completing Ford's arc than Journal 3 does, in my opinion. It shows that his family loves him for him and just thinks of Bill as the pathetic loser he is rather than the shameful experience Ford thought them reading the book was going to be. I've always felt off about Journal 3's kinda bleak ending with Ford debasing himself like Stan would ever stand for that shit and i love that TBoB gives him more love from Stan and the kids, even through the pain.
I don't really care much about the BIll shit in most of the book myself but i get that it's mostly just trying to set up for the journal pages and the ending so i don't mind them being there. it makes sense that Bill would spend a whole book talking about himself and his achievements as the self-centered bastard he is. i just wonder if we're gonna get a book that has nothing to do with him to give everyone a break, like a sea grunks journal or something. that would be nice.
My only gripe is really with the fandom's takeaway from it. Mostly those who saw the abuse Bill put Ford through and decided to ignore it all in favor of shipping nonsense. it's one thing to interpret their past relationship as romantic, it's quite another to erase/dismiss abuse just because you think they're 'toxic yaoi uwu'. It's very uncomfortable to pretend that Bill returning to Ford's life post-Weirdmageddon isn't a horror nightmare scenario where Ford's probably in hell and Bill's making it worse in the only way he knows how and is instead a scenario where Ford has to 'forgive' Bill for shit he ain't gonna be fucking sorry for and worse, get back with him.
It's just... frustrating. Doesn't mean i feel like it shouldn't have been published, though i wish the surge in popularity it wrought either didn't happen as big as it did or this fandom didn't be this fandom about everything. but i digress.
thank you for giving me something to think about with this ask haha
