"one-sided dipford" this "stancest w/ jealous dipper" that. yeah okay but what about dipford with one-sided stancest. HEAR ME OUT
stan has spent 30 years trying to get ford back he, inarguably, loves him. he is in love with him, even if he hasn't realized it yet, hasn't accepted it yet. then, dipper and mabel come into his life, and he loves them too, but never as much as he loves ford. he risks, not only his life, not only the universe, but dipper and mabel's lives to get ford back. he was willing to risk EVERYTHING that he loved just for a chance at getting ford back. do you realize how insane that level of devotion is??????
so, my point is. even if stan pretends not to give a shit about ford after he comes back, he would obviously be deeply hurt by the realization that his brother is fucking their nephew. his brother, who he loves literally more than life itself (not just his life, either, but all life.) his nephew, who he loves almost as much. how could ford DO this? how could his nerdy brother hurt a kid like this?
there are two possible solutions to this:
ford isnt who stan thought he was. at least, not anymore.
stan is missing something - something that makes this okay. because his ford, the one he remembers, wouldn't do something SO not-okay, he just WOULDNT.
the first option is... unreconcilable. because that means that he wasted 30 years of his life - almost 50 years of it, if he's being honest - trying to get back a monster.
a monster. it doesnt make sense. that isnt ford. ford is GOOD. hes always been the good one, the moral one, the correct one, even if he could behave irrationally sometimes.
so, the second option. stan isnt afraid to admit that he doesn't know everything. he's never been the smart one. but something so intrinsically wrong... its hard to wrap his head around a way that it couldn't be. it goes against everything he's ever been taught, and even his flimsy moral compass spins like mad at the thought.
what stan chooses next is reliant upon ford's actions, i think. and while i dont think ford realizes the extent of stan's love just yet, he knows that it's there. stan wears his heart on his sleeve, even if he pretends to be hard-shelled. ford could always see through that. he knows his brother. and so he knows enough to appeal to stan's emotions - his desire for ford to apologize, for ford to thank him, for ford to love him. he takes advantage of that, because that's the only way to wiggle out of this situation he's trapped himself in.
it works far better than he ever imagined. he realizes, then, how devoted stan could be if ford gave him what he wanted (though, he does not know what stan wants quiet yet.) he realizes how much stan trusts him.
stan... turns a blind eye. he doesnt say anything about what he saw, even though, the morning after, he notices things he'd never noticed before - the exhausted slouch to dipper's shoulders, the shy way he smiled at ford, the bags under his eyes that seemed deeper that ever. his stomach turns.
his morals are compromised. pitted against his love for ford, they didn't stand a chance. so he helps cover for him. because ford is his everything, and he seems so pleased with him with every excuse stan makes for him, every false alibi. stan helps cover for him, and he hopes that, maybe, he will be rewarded with what he really wants: the same love he feels for ford, returned. love that knows no logic or boundaries. love that cannot end, because it has been the foundation for his every action for 50 fucking years, and if it crumbled now so would everything else in his godforsaken life. its too late, now, too late to cash in his chips. he's invested far, far too much into ford. a lifetime.
his entire life is a sunk cost, and he has always been a man of fallacies.
tldr: stan enables ford's pedophilia crimes because he wants to hit that so goddamn bad













