#dottymeta

[dottysdokis]

the moment when misty stopped in the middle of crying over ben, slapped herself and muttered to get herself back together? that was the moment she decided she couldn't let herself break over every life she can't save anymore.

that was the moment she became the cool, calculated hospice nurse we see in the pilot. she refused to get attached to her patients from that point on.

but nat's death hurtled her psyche right back to that weeping girl's.

[dottysdokis]

currently crashing out over the fact that the other yellowjackets pushed misty into defending ben the same way they passed off all the worst chores no one wanted to do onto her as a form of bullying (see van's derisive little "isn't he your boyfriend" remark). they were ready to declare ben guilty from the get go and set misty up to fail.

but not nat. even if she isn't particularly fond of misty's eccentricities, she earnestly believes in her intelligence (hence why she tried her best to distract misty from ben's snare traps, because she knew she'd put the pieces together) and her affection for ben, no matter how twisted. she truly believed misty was the best shot ben had and trusted her with that duty.

and nat knew exactly how to convince her, too. she appealed to misty's helper instinct, her incessant need to be needed, and her status as a misunderstood outsider (one shared by ben and nat as well).

[dottysdokis]

The missing Journal 3 pages in TBOB are so interesting to me in further contextualizing Ford's mindset of shame regarding Bill. We'd gotten a snippet of it in the original J3 release:

But Bill shows us the less pragmatic motivations behind his actions, the mushy feely stuff he was too embarrassed to properly journal, putting certain series events into new context. Particularly this scene where after a whole episode of dancing around it, he finally opens up to Dipper about the nature of their relationship:

"Bill wasn't always my enemy, Dipper. I used to think he was my friend, long long ago..."

But does he really tell the full truth here? The cat's out of the bag, Dipper knows they had a deal, there's no reason not to tell everything. But Ford proceeds to explain his reasoning for summoning Bill as a purely practical, scientifically-driven one.

"I had hit a roadblock on my investigation of Gravity Falls. Until I found some mysterious writing in a cave. Ancient incantations about a being with answers. It warned me not to read them, but I was desperate."

Desperate...for what? Ford would have us believe it was for the sake of knowledge. Yet TBOB shows us that this is the entry immediately preceding his and Bill's first meeting.

Ford isn't some unfeeling robot powered solely by knowledge, he has human needs. He was lonely, lonely enough to summon a demon for companionship. A companionship so intimate, he describes his meeting Bill as the best day of his life, and laments the periods of absence from him.

That desire for intimacy is ultimately what drove him, and even with all his dirty laundry laid out he can't admit that part to Dipper. Maybe he doesn't even realize it himself, at least not until the post-Weirdmaggedon sections of TBOB:

Under the shame of unleashing Bill Cipher's destruction on the world, there's a much deeper shame: that Stanford Pines is not a lone-wolf, unfeeling sci-fi hero, but a fallible human being, capable of illogical sentimentality and longing for approval and (in)human connection. The exact nature of this sentimentality and longing is left to interpretation, but the efforts he goes to to conceal it make me lean towards something beyond platonic. Alex Hirsch's own words might support this:

"I think he is deeply, deeply hiding from his real feelings about things, because at some point early on, he decided that he could run from hurt by achievement and by creation, and has dug that hole so deep that he has no relationships. He doesn't have friendships, he doesn't have romantic relationships, he is someone trapped in a tower of his own mind and estranged. Ford shows none of that. He has sublimated himself romantically so, so deeply. (…) I really thought of Ford kind of like Tesla in that realm.”

TL;DR Ford is up in his feelings about Bill and repressing hard. This is also eerily reminiscent of the self-blame abuse survivors engage in, the hesitance to tell others, and shame over persisting feelings for their abuser.

[dottysdokis]

"tools are useful! you try putting a nail in a board using your forehead and tell me how you feel about hammers after!"

so then. bill. life before ford was like banging your head against a nail in a 2x4? it was physically painful? you need other people so much it's painful to go without them? is that what you're saying?? you're saying that with your whole chest and think you're making a good point about people being disposable?? you stupid yearning idiot???

[dottysdokis]

when i say bill is ford's soulmate i mean in the sense of like. this guy is so utterly Fucked. it's fate in the same way a lamb is cosmically ordained to be slaughtered on the altar.

bill is going to come into his life, and he will fall into the jaws of the beartrap as easily as moth to a flame, and even when he escapes from the trap and finds love and fulfillment and healing he is going to be haunted by him. part of him will always long for the beartrap.

[dottysdokis]

this post digging at billford shippers as Stupid Media Illiterate Abuse Fetishizers is even funnier now after the recent mslb podcast where alex hirsch himself flat out says "what kind of intimacy is that, to let someone into your brain?"

it's almost like the same action, from the same person, can be intimate in some circumstances and become a violation. the cruel betrayal of that trust and intimacy is the tragedy. instead of the straightforward "everything ford felt for bill was completely coerced and he never enjoyed any of it and never has any complicated feelings like many real abuse survivors do", it's much sadder imo if beyond the manipulation and violence, there was an inkling of true desire.

this does not cancel out the fact that his consent and bodily autonomy were violated! a consent that cannot be revoked is not consent. "but he liked some of it" is not a defense, that's the exact excuse bill gives.

yeah, a lot of billford stuff does focus on the "honeymoon" era. but i think it's generally with the understanding that we all know what bill is really doing and what happens after. it's dramatic irony, it's lingering on the calm before the storm because it was so ephemeral and fleeting. wouldn't it be nice if we could stay in the period of ignorant bliss, where trust was freely given, before intimacy turned to violation? sure, it was built on a lie, but wouldn't it be nice?

[dottysdokis]

Hey! I absolutely adore all of your reblogs, especially the Billford ones- but with you leaning into a bit of Hazbin Hotel, I'm quite curious! What are your thoughts on Lucifer? I don't see you reblog much of anything on him, and I'd love to know your thoughts on his character, his development, etc!

Aww thank you so much! I'll admit Lucifer still isn't one of my top favs (that honor belongs to Vaggie, Angel, Vox and Charlie) but he's definitely grown on me. I guess I had a fuckton more thoughts on him than I assumed, your ask gave me the opportunity to ruminate and organize them a bit. Go my scarab of retrospective/critique/defense/analysis/speculation:

I was initially attached to the pilot-era inference that Lucifer was the strict parent and Lilith was the understanding but absent one, so I was kinda blindsided by goofy depression dad, voiced by soft-spoken, youthful sounding Jeremy Jordan, who weally weally wuvs his daughter and is just bad at communication uwu! But the more I think about it, his deadly sin of pride (thinking oneself better than everyone else) would naturally lead to isolation, being unwilling to ask for help, and depression. The disappearance of his wife, one of the few others he respects, naturally exacerbates this.

In reconciling with his daughter, he's also forced to share space with those he respects the least: sinners.

(Despite everything, he still defers to Heaven's authority. And if he wasn't good enough for Heaven, there's no way sinners can be.)

(continued under the cut!)

The only hotel resident he shows any affinity for besides Charlie is Vaggi, Charlie's girlfriend and a fellow fallen angel (though he still struggles with her name, get it together dude).

(Greeting her warmly, while he either ignores or actively fights with the sinners)

(Lauding her underappreciated efforts around the hotel, albeit to piss Alastor off)

(Disclosing a tightly held, dangerous secret to her with little prompting when he could have simply refused to do what she asked because he's the Motherfucking King of Hell)

Another aspect that warmed me to him was S2, which assauged my two main concerns from S1 that made him feel kind of flatly written to me: his relationship with Charlie and his amount of power.

I didn't buy him and Charlie's sweet reconciliation in the same episode he's introduced in S1, it felt too neat and didn't ring true to a strained father-daughter relationship the way say, Stolas and Octavia do to me. But S2 made it clear there's still issues between them, which I appreciate.

Additionally, his Big Damn Hero moment in the S1 finale had me worried he may become too OP/a deus ex machina/a writer's pet/Gary Stu. His edgy "I'm so cool haha fuck you" dialogue while he dunks on Adam, as fun as it may be, didn't help.

So naturally, I adore the "can't hurt sinners" limit on his powers, proving my concern there wrong. What a perfect punishment for the prideful angel who gave humans free will! Make him live with the worst consequences of that and unable to fight back!

I know it's fun to make "X character is a fraud" jokes but like. It's Hell. Of course it's gonna be full of frauds and liars who act like they're hot shit. Power is based on who's the best salesman, the best performer in the circus ring. For a while, that was Lu and he's still riding on that reputation a bit, but without Lilith to back him up that power is being challenged.

Lilith, as a former human herself, was evidently much better at connecting with sinners, and likely helped remind him of the positive side of giving humanity the power to choose. On his own, Lucifer is weaker than ever and more prone to regretting that decision. S2, much more than S1 where the main antagonists were the angels, demonstrates why he may feel that way by showing some of the worst downsides of a free, lawless society.

What's the good of free will if the majority of people choose to reject self-actualization in favor of senseless violence?

What's the good if they choose to turn their brains off and follow a conman/aspiring techno-dictator? (Man, do I feel this one.)

What's the good if they use their free will to override the consent of those weaker than them?

I think it's significant that Lu was absent for the entirety of Hear My Hope, stuck in a torture machine devised by Vox, and unable to see a group of sinners come together, reject Vox's plan and choose to value life more than hatred.

In the aftermath and with little context of what happened, he's in a more vulnerable position than ever. As far as we know, this is the first time a sinner has learned his weakness and exploited it, and he got dangerously close to all of Hell discovering it. He has more reason than ever to fear sinners (and as mentioned before, he is likely too prideful to admit this or ask for help).

(Maybe I'm reading too much into this and he's just embarrassed about being clumsy, but doesn't he seem a bit wary here of the new sinners who have checked in? Like "Oh shit they can't see me fumble again what if they figure it out")

And with S3 poised to heavily feature the Morningstars and Alastor...well, things are about to get interesting. Especially since Alastor seems to have already known this secret, and Lu knows he knows.

(...There's some kind of arrangement between the two of them. Either it happened offscreen between seasons, or they were just pretending to meet for the first time in Dad Beat Dad for secrecy's sake.)

[dottysdokis]

fiddleford mcgucket and things that go bump in the night

i understand why people like to explore scenarios in art/fic where fiddleford is aware of bill and has face-offs with him while he's in ford's body, or he works with stanley to try and get ford back post-portal incident, but to me personally? nothing beats the canon scenario where he is left entirely in the dark. because it's so horrifying.

you know the principle of horror that the monster is much scarier when it stays in the shadows than when it's revealed, usually towards the end of a story, because until then, it's left to the depths of your imagination to fill in the blanks? fiddleford chooses to not investigate those shadows, and even further enshrouds what he fears in darkness, because he's too scared of what he might uncover. he's the child who refuses to check for the monster under the bed and instead stays awake all night under the covers frozen in terror. that's the appeal of his character to me.

canonically, he doesn't know bill or stan exist. because ford refused to even trust his best friend with the knowledge of his muse, or anything about his past, even the fact that he has a twin. he actively hides childhood photos of him and stan from fiddleford. presumably, in college he kept all their conversations strictly to their interests and passions.

can you blame fiddleford for becoming infatuated with the guy? a talented, bright, yet mysterious individual. he probably longed to slowly break down those walls and gain his trust, learn more about this man who has made an effort to be unknowable. happily offered up stories of his own life back in tennessee, his family and aspirations, and prayed one day ford would do a little of the same. but he respected him too much to pry.

and then, when they reunite, he slowly notices his dear friend acts a little Off sometimes. unnatural. but how well does he really know him anyway? surely he speculates about the life ford is hiding from him, people he may be talking to, mental afflictions he may have, but he can't pin down anything due to how left in the dark he is, and his own fear of asking too many questions and overstepping boundaries. so he can only suspect. ultimately all he knows is there is some sort of evil afoot, and the machine him and ford are building will bring it about. all he has to go off of is his calculations and a vague dread.

until he starts making the choice to forget, which may be a little easier since there's already so much he knows he doesn't know. what's the harm in losing a bit more, especially stuff that is causing him pain?

and so he starts to lose his mind in turn, and he can feel it as it's happening. he knows he can't trust his deteriorating memories. but he can't stop because of the mechanisms of addiction.

and maybe one day, before everything is entirely gone, he's made aware that stanford pines, his ex-friend, has converted his lab into a tourist attraction. not one fiddleford can afford to attend with his increasing reliance on dumpster diving and beggaring to get by, mind you. but perhaps he gets a glance at the proprietor, this man claiming to be stanford pines, and feels that old sense of wrongness in his gut.

he's pretty sure that's ford's face, but something's off about it. and his hands. something's wrong with his hands. didn't ford have something with his hands? fiddleford didn't notice it at first in college until ford pointed it out because he's mighty insecure about it, but he's forgotten what it was. but honestly, how much of his own fragmented memories can he even trust?

he feels a shiver down his spine. perhaps it's best to forget about stanford pines altogether.