Thinking about Stan and how seemingly skilled he is with the mindscape business, and how Ford doesn't appear to be what with a reliance on a metal plate and project mentem to encrypt and hide thoughts from Bill, when Stan easily did that just by focusing on a paddleball during the final episode
What if Stan has such great control and awareness in his mindscape because of all the studying he did on theoretical physics every single night for thirty years, barely getting any sleep with how driven he was and became a lucid dreamer because of it to help accomplish his goal? What if he grasped learning so much because he used his mindscape to practice?
Maybe this is why he’s probably grumpy so much, other than the bitter loneliness, dude hasn’t had a good deep dreamless sleep in literal years. He’s all wrinkly and worn out because he put his body through so much stress and never gave it time to actually relax and recover. He’s been working on that portal nonstop since the night of the incident, so much so he became a mind wizard. And he never even got to relax from the stressful life he was living in the ten years before that too.
Ford may have gotten 12 PHDS and a homicidal muse plus 30 years of survival training, but Stanley got mind powers that even shocked Bill Cipher, given how Cipher reacts to Dipper’s knowledge of how the mindscape works during their fight when he can’t fathom anyone besides himself having told the kid in the first place. A legit ‘who have you been talking to?! only I should know that!’
Poor Stan was under so much duress for so long, his mind—rather than breaking, chose to evolve, I swear. He disassociated right into X-men territory. Because what do a lot of people do when faced with things they can’t handle? Daydream and escape. I bet he spent the first few weeks cat napping a lot before the food ran out what with all the frustration and struggle to understand Ford’s science jargon he was going through. Perfect mind training and escapism time to practice how physics does and doesn’t work and the science behind it when looked through a comparative lens of the real world vs dreams.
Think it just goes to show how rough Stan’s had it oof... and how powerful his ability to adapt and cope is.
