It’s Timestuck time!!! I imagine this happening a few months post-finale, hence Mabel’s haircut, wintery getup and lack of braces ^^
Poor Mabel is stranded 40 years in the past with a broken time machine and no idea where her brother is or how to get home. Luckily she runs into a familiar face <3
20-year-old Stan has no idea who this random kid is, but if she’s lost and needs help he ain’t letting anything happen to her. Maybe his brother would have some idea how to get her home? Guess it’s time for a cross-country road trip!
Want some angst? Cause you’re getting angst for this one :P
This is probably his first time wearing what would eventually become his signature suit. It doesn’t quite fit right yet, but then… neither does the name he’s using.
I hope you guys love this at least half as much as I do! This is the epitome of “the content I crave doesn’t exist, so I’m making my own” and I loved every second of it. It’s a great way to conclude my second Stanuary!
Here is my fourth and final entry for @stanuary this year for Week 4: Past. It is set in my Lost and Gained AU. Again. But I wanted to write something that I’ve wanted to do for a while and this has been a good excuse for it. There are ocs of mine who are also from the OBWHF AU and new ones for this au. Hope you all enjoy!
Stan took out a photo album of his that documents moments in time he received from his wife Andrea’s parents all those years ago that began their journey together as a couple. The first photos of him and Andy together when they were teenagers. Back then as a teenager, Andy wore her auburn hair short in a bob and she liked wearing turquoise colored tops and blue skorts where the stripped skirt reached her knees and dark blue boots. Stan sighed while turning each page of pictures.
That night at prom where Stan wore that slick pink suit and pants, and Andy wore a blue-green dress with a white corsage around her wrist. Stan carried Andy in a bridal style for the photo with his then-girlfriend having wrapped her arms around his neck. And right next to his picture with Andy was Ford and his then girlfriend/now wife Lucina Evergreen, who came all the way from Gravity Falls to be his date of the evening. The four had a grand time dancing and drinking punch. Stan and Andy did much more after they dropped Ford and Lucina off at their respective places at the time.
the deal is, Ford still reads the incantation to summon Bill, but in some sort of weird cosmic mishap he ends up near Stan instead of Ford.
But bill notices the potential for persuasion that stan’s got
and something that you may or may not know is
all depictions of bill floating around help him
so he gets the idea to team up with stan to hawk products with his image on it
He manages to convince stan to work with him (obviously not revealing any of his actual intentions). He makes Stan into a success, and thats how you end up with this every other commercial break
i’ll make a separate post for ford to keep this one from being too long
meanwhile, without Bill to show up and “help” him, Ford’s having a really rough time trying to tie all his research together
Everything gets engulfed by his quest for answers. He’s doubting his intelligence, feeling like a failure, and starting to neglect himself (now both sleep and grooming). He hasn’t had a friend to talk to in forever and is at his wits end.
He could technically publish his research as is, but what if someone else came along and solved what he couldn’t? All his hard work just for the recognition just to go to somebody else. (So he says to himself- deep down the glory matters less than the fact that it’d make him feel stupid)
He musters up enough care for himself to go to a diner when his fridge is empty
Where he spies a very unusual commercial starring his brother… and someone else
while wondering what this being with all the answers could possibly want with his brother, and why they’re working together to peddle dumb tchotchkes with his face on it- he remembers the warnings he read about him on the cave walls
Ford’s new big question is what is Bill up to? and is Stan in trouble?
One of the reasons I watch Gravity Falls is because I have a twin of my own, so I relate to the Pines on a level I’ve never related to any character before. Unfortunately, it makes it all the more painful when bad things happen between them. Because I understand. Even if I don’t want to.
It’s horrible to imagine thinking of my twin that way, but when I think about it, there’s an element of truth. Sometimes having a twin is suffocating. I keep thinking about how Stan and Ford are implied to be identical, or at least very, very similar in appearance, andhow the last period of their lives they spent together was their teenage years.
Now, I can’t speak for all twins, but I can’t help but feel that in some ways being an identical twin is a bit trickier than being a fraternal one, especially with boy/girl pairs. Twins are thought of as pairs, two of a kind, part of a set. In the minds of those around us, we are often not individuals, and it’s only reinforced when we happen to look the same. Boy/girl fraternal pairs tend to escape the more aggressive sorts of attention because our society is so set on gender binaries that they’re thought of as fundamentally different from the moment they’re born (and boy isn’t THAT a whole other set of issues!)
Identical twins, though? I can personally attest to a lifetime of being stared at, of being poked and prodded and questioned by people who see you as more of a curiosity than as a person, of being given the exact same gifts because no one bothers to find out your separate interests, of being left nameless because people would rather call you “Twin” or “Clone” or even “Thing”(1 or 2) to your face than admit they don’t know which one you are. Sometimes, it feels like your accomplishments can never truly be just your own, like no matter what you do, you can’t escape being one of two rather than just you, and it can get very, very old.
My sister is my best friend in the entire world. We grew up in a very healthy environment and we’re fortunate that our parents went out of their way to make sure we were raised as separate, equal individuals. Yet even then, late high school was easily the most strained period of our relationship so far. There were a lot of identity and individuality issues that cropped up in those years, among other things, and we snapped at each other a lot.
I can’t help but think of Stan and Ford going through all that, only in a worst case scenario. They didn’t have the healthy environment that I did. They had a dad who played favorites, one brother who felt he was worthless on his own, and another who felt he had to be the best at everything just to overcome being a “freak” times two (because, even if it’s more benign than having extra appendages, being an identical twin has a freak element all its own).
No wonder Ford would feel suffocated. I’vefelt suffocated and my life’s been the bee’s knees in comparison! The main difference is that suffocation for me is fleeting. My individuality’s been reinforced without my ever needing to prove myself like that. I’ve been able to experience separation and individuality through college life while still remaining in contact with my twin. Our strained high school years are behind us and have been replaced with more positive experiences.
But Ford? The last he remembers of his existence as a twin is probably a period of struggle against identitylessness, combined strangely with being singled out only for being a nerd and a freak by his peers, and the better brother by his father. What Ford remembers of being a twin is one of the most suffocating experiences a twin can have, and he’s going to need a big wake up call to realize that this is not the norm, that his experience does not apply to Dipper and Mabel, and that his solution to it is neither needed nor desirable.
I understand. It hurt. And it hurts that I understand. Ford suffocated in a relationship that should never have been that way. Which is why he so desperately needs to hug it out with Stan. Because he needs to learn that you can be a twin and still be able to breathe.
(Orig. posted Oct. 2015)
(This 10th anniv. month seems like a nice time to bring back some older posts, and I came across this one recently for the first time and thought it offered a really interesting perspective on this controversial bit.)
