Jesse: Do You Think I Could Fit 15 Marshmallows In My Mouth?

I’m so glad that someone mentioned the humor in this game because the face of sheer disbelief Ivor makes when you choose to take out the Eversource crown/white pumpkin instead of the ender pearl in the Crown Mesa right before getting apprehended is God-tier comedy

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just misspelled dipper's name as diper and it autocorrected to diaper

Potentially a hot take but I think Dipper might be the most emotionally intelligent out of both sets of Pines twins, but in a very specific way.

Ford really isn't overly concerned about people's feelings; it's just not something he really tends to think about or prioritize. And when he does think about it, he tends to only view people's emotions based on how he would feel about the situation.

Stan is skilled in knowing how to handle people and quickly grasping their intentions. He's a con man that understands crowd mentality and how to play it. Overall, he just knows what people tend to want to hear and gives it to them, so quick with a lie. And because of this, he's wary of when people tell him what he wants to hear. He's a con man that recognizes a con, and knows a person's intentions and desires are important so he looks for them. But he doesn't really know how to interact and connect with people genuinely and openly. He wants to have genuine connections, specifically with his family, but for all of his life he's either delt with people that didn't care for him and made it obvious (his father), people who didn't seem as invested in having a relationship with one another as he did (Ford), or people he's had to constantly lie to and thrown on a persona to survive (his years being homeless and being Mr. Mystery). Because of this, genuine feelings and connections are difficult for him to navigate and articulate, or even really understand.

Mabel, out of all of them, definitely cares the most about other people's feelings. She spends time thinking about others feelings long after the fact, considers them carefully, with the end goal of everyone being happy. But she can get so caught up in what she thought would make everyone happy, that it can be difficult for her to take a step back and look at if what she's trying to do is really the right thing for people.

But Dipper is the one that tends to just, like, quickly grasp the heart of an emotional situation and just points it out. And, unlike Mabel, he doesn't really prioritizes everyone being happy, so when he points it out he tends to be very blunt about it. He also, surprisingly, is the first to take a step back and look at a situation, and what the right thing to do is, even if it's not what he wants, something Mabel and Ford have difficulties with. He also doesn't get upset if he's the one in the wrong, able to admit it easily once he realizes it and immediately has a desire to amend what he did wrong. However, he too has a blind spot, as does everyone. This blind spot being his paranoia; if he doesn't fully know about the situation, the conclusion he'll end up at will always be the worst one (stan portal situation). Dipper very rarely takes previous loyalties into consideration when trying to figure out what's going on; if it's someone he knows and loves he'll try to find out proof that go against his suspicions, but if he doesn't immediately find any he'll jump to an answer that speaks to his paranoia (opposite from Mabel, who is predisposed to firmly see the best in others even if there is evidence proving otherwise).

*writes two chapters*

I could have a buffer!

*thinks about it*

Mmm nah.

*double update*

*slides in the link to my weird apocalypse crossover story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65027080/chapters/167198482*

hello people of tumblr, i have brought food for the 5 xara fans out there!

i remember Petra saying like "when people are alone for some time, it's not good for their mental health"

oooh she's speaking from experience isn't she...

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#i really do think that people are able to distance themselves from bill’s actions because he’s not human#the book of bill#

you just made my point so much more succinctly than I did lol

I have a theory.

This is going to be a long post, but I don't know how to do the "read more" thing, sorry.

Bear with me for a minute. So I realized recently that I don't actually see that much Mabel or Ford hate, it's mostly stuff I hear from other people. (What I see is generally more subtle, like I read a fic that was good, but Ford took responsibility for Filbrick kicking Stan out. What was he supposed to do? He's 17 too! I also saw someone say the apocalypse wasn't Mabel's fault, it was Ford's. I'd just like to say that it was Bill's fault and Ford was manipulated into building that portal.)

But I do see a lot of Billford. It keeps on showing up in my suggested communities and the "For You" thing, despite The Book Of Bill portraying it as a very manipulative, horrifically abusive relationship. (When I say relationship, I don't necessarily mean romantic. It could have been a completely platonic horrifically abusive relationship.) And I have to wonder if, because Bill is a triangle, we let him get away with things we wouldn't if he were a human and/or doing these things directly to Ford.

Say that there was a movie. In it, there are two human men. Their relationship is clearly built on manipulation, and when the manipulated realizes that he's being manipulated, he tries to leave. The manipulator proceeds to torture him. You see this onscreen and it's horrible. The manipulator drives a nail through this guy's hand, shoves spiders down his throat, humiliates him . . .

Would people ship these two characters? This is the main fandom I'm in, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say probably not. (I'd like to say that I don't have a problem with people who write them as together . . . as long as it's portrayed as the abusive relationship it actually WAS and not a good relationship.)

All of those were actual things that happened in The Book of Bill. I didn't even mention the psychological torture (He makes Ford forget his OWN NAME) and forced sleep deprivation.

But Bill is a triangle. Bill isn't doing these things directly to Ford. He's doing them while in Ford's body, which is arguably possibly more horrific than if Bill was a separate person doing these things to him, but it's not something that could happen in real life.

But in this analysis of Ford: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58698496/chapters/158032750 when speaking of the torture Ford endured during Weirdmageddon, Callipraxia mentions that the fact that people can't electrocute others "takes at least some of the realism and therefore some of the horror out of the situation." (I apologize if this quote is incorrect, I couldn't find the part where she says this in this quite long work.)

And that makes me wonder if, again because Bill is a triangle and the things he does are literally impossible, it makes people less inclined to see his relationship with Ford as abusive when I have read two separate analyses (one of them is the one referred to above) that straight up say "This reads like a domestic abuse situation." One of them (the one NOT linked above, I'll look for it later) says that Bill hits every. Single. Criteria. For an abuser.

Even before Ford learned what Bill was really there to do, their relationship wasn't good. Bill doesn't show up for months and when Ford asks him where he's been, Bill responds by basically gaslighting him and making him doubt McGucket.

And there's one more thing I noticed. I wasn't in the GF fandom when the show was airing, but I'm pretty sure Billdip didn't become a popular ship until after Sock Puppet Opera, much the same as Billford wasn't so popular until TBOB. It's a pattern of "Bill abuses someone, then gets shipped with that someone." It's quite disturbing.

I know people are going to ship what they're going to ship, but Bill x Pines family members really shouldn't be so popular imo.

Tl;dr: If Bill were a human and you saw him torturing Ford, would you still ship them?

I'm pretty sure I forgot some of what I was going to say, so I might edit this later or reblog it with the extra information.

I do want to say that I do NOT support being rude, sending hate comments or death threats to people who do ship this. Don't do that. Just wanted to say, just in case.

I also want to say that though I put "anti Billford" and "anti Billdip" in the tags, I'm pretty sure I'm not an anti, though I haven't been able to fully figure out what the term means.

Another addendum: I am NOT qualified to be talking about abuse.

This is just a theory.

we passed a sign in boring that said their sister city is dull, scotland

There’s too many adults okay with casually drugging children in this series

.

I was going to lament the complete lack of longer fics centered solely on Dipper and Mabel's relationship, before realizing that I have, in fact, read one story like that. However, Dipper was so traumatized he acted pretty different.

This is also the story that convinced me I shouldn't read main character death.