#cat!stan

[kayiiin]

I really want a cat😭

Cat!Stan belongs to @dark-lord-of-awesomeness

[rurumustbedone]

ok... Cat ears Stan? Yes. I'M SOLD!

Now here's a question!

What if Susan saw the ears? What if multiple people in Gravity Falls love their local cat man? Stanley? He sharpens his claws on things... and Boyish Dan makes him a scratcher. Susan is his local Nip dealer. Someone from the lake giving Ford a fishing rod with a feather dangler at the end.

But Ford's the only one allowed to give him cheek rubs at the corners of his mouth, to run his fingers through Stan's hair, to make his brother mew into pillows...

– @trashfiretango

Based on this post

Hehehehe!!! I like this idea! GF is a weird little town with weird folks, and somehow they ended up loving Cat!Stan. Stan will be a little suspicious of the others. But in the end, I think his heart will melt...

I also love the idea that Susan will persistently try to befriend Stan because she thinks he's a fellow cat lover and she's just so determined to show it, lol. She knows Ford as "the mysterious scientist", so she was surprised to see all the cat-themed stuff.

Fishing rod with a feather dangler at the end? hasahsasshaa

(he got really into it, lol) (at night))

I think they'll work something out :)

And.... just a bonus. Only Ford is allowed to pet Stan >:(

murmurmurrr :зс

[caninescreations]

thinkin' bout that cat!stan from Bill Wins by DarkLordofAwesomeness again. good shit, great shit, everyone being convinced that stan's actually a completely normal cat that bill twisted into the shape of ford's missing brother and then trying to gaslight ford into believing the same is in fact peak comedy, actually

[cutebatart]

[missflora]

idk what i drawing😅

[zodi-aries]

I have no excuse. Feral cat Stan and domestic house dog Ford! Enjoy!!

[caninescreations]

Oh, the artist you are. Thank you for letting my brain worms infect you, 9 years, 9 months, and 9 days was so well written i shed a tear, and then many more because you made me very emotional even though I decided stan growing up as a cat was a good idea in the first place.

Your creative liberties really took it to the next level, when Ford started thinking of stan as "archer" and "it" I wailed aloud. Filbrick almost putting stan down?! Twice?! Even though he was doing the dad cat bonding thing?! His evil knows no bounds. Baby 12 year stan hearing his dad say he was going to have him killed, omg stan is the biggest victim on earth. Horrible horrible witch cursing him for years on PURPOSE in this, God!

Seriously, your writing so amazing and I can't wait to see it on ao3 so I can kudos, bookmark, and then reread it every night before bed <33

Hey, thanks for posting the brain worms that infected me! Very brutal, very devastating. Writing it was a fun exercise for me- exploring that world and what it would look like in these tiny glimpses forces me to pick and choose what the most important pieces of the puzzle were. There's something about quiet slice-of-life type vignettes that really pulls at me, especially when in tandem with such a fantastical happening? Like, what's important might not necessarily be the "how's" and "why's" of Stanley's transformation but rather the effects of his absence on the family structure, and the slow but sure dehumanization of him through Stanford's subjection to [unintentional] gaslighting by way of his family and authority figures.

You may be surprised, but the first scene I wrote for this was actually Stanley's transformation back into a human! It was from Filbrick's perspective, too, because I wanted to have it seen from the angle of someone who's not only never seen the Weird and Strange, but has never had the desire to. Someone who now has to contend with the fact that not only was his missing son never missing, but that the son that was still here had never lied. You know- normal man cast into extraordinary circumstances, and all that jazz.

I did want to avoid portraying him as evil, though. As much fun as the fandom has in casting Filbrick as The Big Bad in any young-Stans fic, I feel like it does a disservice to Stan and Ford's characters and narrative. The hardest part about having an abusive parent- or even a parent that is "only" negligent or aloof to the point of harm- has never been the "being hurt" part. Or at least not to me. It's the fact that, somewhere, somehow, the love was there. And then it wasn't. Or maybe the love is there, still, but it's not enough.

It's about how Filbrick is, in his own way, loving Stanford. He doesn't know Stanley's a cat, wouldn't believe it unless it happened right before his eyes- all he knows is that one of his sons is missing and the other is falling apart. It's his responsibility as a parent to raise a "productive member of society"- but to him that is someone who's not interested in anomalies, someone who doesn't shy away from their peers… someone who doesn't pretend that a stray cat they found is capable of human thought…! The worst part is that, by his own metrics, he is doing right by Stanford: he's trying to keep him grounded in reality, to prepare him for a hard world.

But even if Archer had been a normal cat, Filbrick still would not have been in the right. No matter if Stanford was right about Stanley being magically transformed or if it was a strange coping mechanism for a strange kid, Filbrick's actions were cold and callous and that is what makes it painful! His is a cruel kindness!! He's doing what he can to help his son and it's all the wrong things and he's making the problem worse!!!

AND WE HAVEN'T EVEN TOUCHED ON HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH STANLEY. Like you said!! Fucked up for a twelve-year-old to see his dad so casually and thoughtlessly speak of condemning him to death!! For what, being there to comfort his brother? My vignettes didn't get a chance to see things from Stanley's perspective. All we get is an outsider's view of his behavior as a cat. But we know Stanley is willing to take a cat nap on his dad's lap, enough so for Ford to know this is a habit. We know that, despite Filbrick's hard attitude, he still let Ford keep "Archer" for years. We know that Stanley won't let anyone outside of his family hold or touch him without a fight, but he's happy to sit and bask in the attention of his family no matter what kind it is.

But we don't know when- or even if- he stopped using Morse Code to talk to Ford. We don't know at what point- if ever- Stanley gave up hope of becoming human again. We don't know what he thinks about any of this. And in this way he's dehumanized further- even the narrative doesn't treat him like a person! Truly the wettest cat [metaphorically]. When I do post this on AO3, I think it'll be expanded more- as I said on the initial post, it's completely un-beta'd and I wrote it in two nights with little editing. There's a lot more here that I want to explore and refine.

[And hint at, as well. Note the age of the candy provided by the witch- any important details there?]

Thank you again so much for sending in this ask and reading my fic! I'm super glad you enjoyed it (:

[cutebatart]

Kofi