*twirling hair* haha wouldnt it be crazy if you told us more about the vampire stan au you got.... unless 👀
( ;;OwO) Unless…!? Haha, you've activated my yap card! I've always liked the spooky, the ooky, and the creepy. For some reason I've been on a vampire kick lately-- can't get the damn things out of my mind-- SO I decided to play around with my dolls and get to the brass tacks of what about vampires I like so much. Doesn't help that I've reread Carmilla and have been attempting to catch up with Dracula Daily [again]. I just… I think classic-style vampires are so so good. They're more like a spooky ghost story than the modern interpretations are, and I kind of love that?? And that's more or less what I wanted to do here: build a ghost story out of a bloodsucker. I'm too scrambled to sit down and write anything too long or coherent [because I'm using that energy on TPMI, my passion fic and hopefully the first longfic I'll ever get to finish, haha], so most of the lore just exists in my head atm. If I were going to write this out as a fic fic, I'd set it in summer of 2012 with Ford and Stan living together in Gravity Falls, and have Dipper and Mabel's longterm mystery be solving some ~mysterious disappearances~ in town that turn out to be the result of a vampire. They'd be all like, "oh no, we gotta find out who the vampire is and how to stop them!" and slowly figure out that Stan's a vampire, and they'd hypothesize that he's the one eating people and he's using their Grunkle Ford as his unwilling thrall, and then whip out the NWHS where they try to stake him and it turns out that no, actually, Stan's not the BBEG after all- there's some other douche out there draining people dry! But I'm not, so y'all just get my limited and spoopy-scawy vignettes that have like. no context whatsoever, lmaoooo.
Gimme a minute to collect all my ramblings from my WIPs and I'll get on back to ya.
*rustle rustle*
Still here? Awesome. I'll give you the low-down on the lore:
Late March of 1971, Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey, what always happens to the Pines twins happens to the Pines twins. You know the deal. Science fair, an accident, an eviction. We've been over that part. Stan, however, does not make it out of town alive that night. His body is found in the Stan'O'War a week later by some kids on the beach, and the Pines family holds a funeral. The day before Stanford's 18th birthday, in June of that same year and not even three months later, Stanley shows back up on the doorstep of Pines' Pawns, seemingly alive and unharmed, wearing the clothes they buried him in. [Stanford lets him inside.] What follows is… not normal.
Stanley doesn't quite act the same on his return. He's upbeat, sure, but there's an odd distance to him. He acts like he's ill, staying in bed until late in the afternoon, not eating, avoiding everyone unless absolutely necessary. He's squeamish, too, now-- he can't stand to be in the room with someone if they're recently injured or have become sick. Sometimes he disappears at strange hours of the night. Stranger still is the illness that sweeps through the lead paint district, with no known cause. Most folks recover. Some… don't. The Pines family stays untouched. [They say nothing of the tension in the house, strangling them in its silent, unspoken judgement.]
Stanford Pines, on his own, takes apart the Stan'O'War and builds something else out of the wood. He stores it in the trunk of his brother's refurbished El Diablo and keeps the key.
He still goes to college. Stanley was adamant on that, as much as Stanford was against it. He claimed it was so that while Ford studied, he could go out and earn some extra cash- a nest egg to use when Ford graduated, so they could find somewhere that belonged to them. [A college dorm is not a home. Neither is the cramped bedroom they once shared, now that Stanford is grown. Stanley holds no invitation to such places, no matter what his brother tries to say.] Stanford, reluctant, agrees on the caveat that they stay in touch. Stanley's happy to comply. His travels those five years take him all over, and he's on his own for all of it. Between odd jobs, quick scams, and the occasional treasure hunt, Stanley keeps his ends met, though through his own poorly-planned behavior he's often banned from whatever city he sets his sights on before too long. [He's thankful, so thankful, for the gift his brother left him in the trunk. It's the only reason he can leave their hometown at all.]
They move to Gravity Falls, after that. It's a hotbed of strange and anomalous activity, so says Stanford's research. An unusuologist could take a lifetime to uncover its mysteries. Stanley thinks it's perfect-- a town rife with gossip and the gullible, a valley full of adventure, a place where he and his brother will be left alone-- and so does Stanford. [It could provide the answers he's been looking for, on how to save his brother.] They build a home out in the woods. Stanley complains about how crowded the property feels, but it's a small compromise to make considering how much they paid for the land. [They take the gift Stanford made for Stanley and they hide it beneath the house, in a secret room in the basement. At least this way, he won't have any unwanted roommates.]
Stanford spends half a lifetime trying to solve the unsolvable. Stanley spends the other half trying to keep things lighthearted. [It's a one-way street, he thinks. He's satisfied just knowing that his brother wants him home.]
