things that exist in the same universe and at the same time
The Magnus Archives
Gravity Falls
Welcome to Night Vale
now, you might be asking: crow, why do these three separate pieces of fiction media that are all beloved by queer youth have in common? other than that, of course. well, buckle your seat belts, buckaroos, because this is a wild ride. TMA S5 spoilers?
so the magnus archives has shown us that there are people and places wherein certain fears are prominent, such as locations gearing up for a ritual and avatars. it is solidified in my mind that Bill Cipher is a manifestation of the spiral, similarly to the Distortion but, you know, different. Bill’s not an avatar - he’s the closest thing we get to the actual entity. when Stanford Pines makes a deal with Bill, Stanford is essentially signing on to be an avatar of the spiral in exchange for knowledge. you might be thinking that Ford should be aligned with the eye, but look at it as his thirst for knowledge leading him down paths that shouldn’t be walked down and decent into madness through that knowledge. him being an avatar of the spiral also makes sense in reference to Old Man McGucket and what happened to him. I don’t think Stanley Pines is an avatar - he’s a person who Ford almost led down a path of madness. The entirety of Gravity Falls was a moderately powerful spiral domain. I think there was also a lot of influence of other entities within Gravity Falls - the weird memory-erasing cult were the dark, that candy monster on halloween was the stranger and the extinction, the anti-teen convenience store ghosts were the slaughter and the end, etc, but the majority of Gravity Falls was centered around the spiral.
this brings me to my next point. weirdmaggedon. in my mind, weirdmaggedon Gravity Falls is a TMA fearpocalypse domain in the interception of the spiral and the extinction. It makes sense - the overall weirdness & insanity of it all, the constant fear that Bill would get out and it would be all their fault, everything fits so perfectly.
so where does WTNV fit into this conspiracy-board level theory? It’s also a fearpocalypse domain. you heard me! if you’re asking, “but WTNV has been going on for years, and weirdmaggedon lasted 3ish days! how does that work?” well, first of all, time is fake in general, so I don’t care. second, time is canonically fake during the fearpocalypse, so it doesn’t matter. Night Vale is actually just the US, fearpocalypse style. That’s why Cecil, an obvious avatar of the eye, sits in his office presiding over Night Vale, which seems to have every avatar in it in an alternating rotation so that the entirety of the United States compressed into tiny town night vale can get their dose of extreme fear. It makes sense - if you tried hard enough, you can pick out something in Night Vale for every entity.
This is a pretty weird hill for me to die on, but I will, so here we are.