Based on this art by @aukives
Stan’s mind is a mess of misdirection. He thinks day in and day out only of himself; only of Stanford Pines. He is selfish and standoffish and a charmer and a con and there’s no way of knowing what’s really going on. He is old and tired but determined and driven and lazy and hard-working and he only wants one thing.
Money. Family. Money. Family.
What’s the difference? He never learned. A million hard-knock lessons and he never learned if a million bucks would buy back his family because they’re all dead now anyway. He buries his memories and his heart and his family and his hope under crusty old man who grumbles reluctantly but comes through in the end and will re-prioritize everything if he finds a cause, but who so seldom accepts a cause.
Stan Pines’ mind is a mess of misdirection just as his life is and the reason Dipper and Mabel didn’t see Ford was because he already existed—Stanley Pines is dead and Stanford remains.
His hopes are locked away. It’s safer that way. Hope only ever burns and stabs and breaks down into broken dreams, broken project, broken sailboat. Hope only ever made him lose again and again.
Hope is for suckers and dreams are for kids and love is so foreign he wouldn’t know it if two kids hugged him and stayed in his house for a whole summer.
Hopes? The door you didn’t open because a code to a safe wouldn’t be inside but the secret of Gravity Falls Stan Pines was there, two brothers a lifetime ago with all their broken pieces on display and mending behind the door named
Hopes? The door to hope?
It opens to a brick wall.
It’s a dead end.
A cursed door.
Hope?
It’s just another misdirection.
Ford is behind the door of
FEARS
(for all his mistakes, he fears for him. It’s his fault it’s his fault it’s his FAULT)
Ford is behind FEARS because HOPES have no home in Stan’s mind.