Here it is! I’m not great at drawing but I did it!
(Image ID: Ford disguised as Stan holding Stan disguised as Ford immediately after Ford erased Stan’s memories in order to defeat Bill Cipher. Ford is holding Stan in the same position that Ivan the Terrible holds his son in the 1885 painting, Ivan the Terrible and his Son, Ivan. The memory gun lies discarded beside Ford. Text fills the majority of the background. End ID)
Text:
He’s gone but at what cost? This is all my fault. If I hadn’t made that deal or let him get kicked out… Why was I non-stop? History has its eyes on me. I should have done less. I should have done more. What have I done? Is he even still alive?
Relationships:
Bill Cipher & Mabel Pines, Bill Cipher & Stan Pines
Characters:
Bill Cipher, Mabel Pines, Stan Pines
Additional Tags:
Blind Bill Cipher, Handyman Bill Cipher, Bill Cipher is Trying, Bill Cipher is Too A Real Adult, Family Fluff, Slice of Life, we solve uncomfortable conversations with violence in this family, RIP Bill's Cipher's hot rod, Domestic Fluff, Adulting, billford status: the tiniest crumb mentioned, Post-Weirdmageddon, will the real adults please stand up, Best Friends, very emotionally mature, Drunk Driving
A-dolt-ing
Summary:
Sure, Mabel knows that Bill is old, but she has doubts that is Bill a true, capital A, Adult-Adult…(Blind Bill AU, set at some comfortable, everyone's-chill-now point)
I’ve seen it a few times where people have commented that, after his reveal in Season 2, Ford should have been added to the group-shot in the opening instead of being given his own picture and alienated from the group.
And yeah, okay—he didn’t really score any pointers when he first came through that portal, but hey: the rest of the crew wouldn’t have shut him out on-purpose.
It’s also been said that this was a decision that was probably made to leave the reality of Ford’s allegiances mysterious, as theories went on that he might have been allied with Bill or would ally with Bill in the series finale.
Well, I just had an idea that’s a little sweet and a bit more gut-wrenching:
Ford’s not in the picture because he’s the one who took it.
Let me explain:
For -what?- forty years, while he was separated from his brother, Ford carried that old picture of he and Stan as kids in his coat pocket.
It’s shown in the show that Filbrick Pines was an asshole, and Caryn Pines?
Well, she doesn’t play that big of a role—and the two times she is ever seen interacting with her family, it’s to question Stanley’s future and to figure out why Filbrick and Ford are so angry with Stanley while caring for Shermie’s kid.
We never even see Shermie in the show.
So, Ford carries that picture around because—while he sees Stan as having betrayed him—Stan is still the closest thing he has to a truly familial role in his life.
He keeps the picture to remember him when they’re separated.
After Weirdmageddon, things are different.
Ford has lived with Stanley, Mabel, and Dipper at the Mystery Shack for a few weeks and he’s interacted with Soos and Wendy.
These five have been with him through Hell, proving themselves unconventional but loyal and kind—and by the end, he’s been accepted as part of their ‘found family’.
These guys risked their necks to save him after he spent thirty years on his own in the multiverse, even in spite of his isolation-prone behaviors and ‘rough around the edges’ demeanor.
So, what does Ford do?
He keeps the picture of just himself and Stanley… but his family’s bigger now, so he needs an updated picture.
And he takes one.
Why do I believe this picture was taken post-Weirdmageddon?
Look at Dipper. He’s not only standing with the confidence he gained throughout the series and through spending time with Ford, but he’s not standing near Wendy.
There was a time in the show where Dipper would have done anything in his power to swap places with Mabel and stand close to Wendy, but he’s not.
He’s standing with his best friend Soos and giving Wendy space, while Mabel gets to be closer to Stan—who she bonded with greatly throughout the series, especially after Ford showed up.
And you wanna know something else?
Mabel’s wearing her shooting-star sweater, but Soos, Dipper, and Wendy are still wearing their usual hats.
I’m willing to bet that this picture was taken just before the twins’ birthday party, on their last day in Gravity Falls.
Ford’s planning on asking Stan to leave with him on a boat soon, which is why he’s doing this now: while everyone’s still together.
He probably says something about it being the kids’ last day in Gravity Falls and the group needing a picture, or maybe he says it’s for the journal as he’s writing about the summer and Bill’s defeat.
Whatever the explanation, he gets them all to pose together and he takes a picture.
Stan doesn’t figure out the real motive until they’ve been out on the boat for a few months and he catches his brother looking at two photographs, one old and one new, and smiling.
And he remembers that the journals—even in Mabel, Dipper, and Soos’s sections in Journal 3—were always filled with illustrations, never photos.
Dipper only ever took photographs for evidence in the contest to win $1000 or to keep track of his findings to try and figure out the author mystery (these are the other photographs in the opening), but they were never for the journal.
Mabel might have gotten one of Ford at some point when he emerged from the basement for lunch and squinted at the sunlight in the gift-shop like he hadn’t seen light in years while he stashed one of his journals in his coat, but she panicked when he caught her and accidentally snapped a mid-motion picture that cut off the top of his head.
Ford was “not” amused.
Anyway… the point of this is that Stan gets to laugh at Ford for being a softy for the next three days when he’s really just glad that his brother loves and misses their family just as much as he does.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Fandom: Gravity Falls
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Bill Cipher/Dipper Pines
Additional Tags: Older!Dipper, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, but it nothing really big, Post-Weirdmageddon, ford pines is suspicious, Slow Burn, kind of
Chapters: 12/12 [35k words]
Summary:
“Dipper and Mabel are on vacation at Gravity Falls for yet another summer. They thought things would go just as they usually go: Weird adventure, discovery and good memories with their friends and Grunkles.
But things might be a little different when Dipper decides to vision the 'grave' of a certain demon and things go... a little bit weird.”
