After The War, I Want The Kids To Rot.

Just Ivor✨

Mabel's perspective in Sock Opera is equally, if not more sympathetic than Dipper's: An Essay

Most people generally wouldn't consider Mabel to have a terribly sympathetic plotline in Sock Opera, even those of us who don't necessarily feel that she's horribly selfish. I think that's because, from a narrative perspective, her plotline is (as it so often is) shafted in favour of Dipper's, and from a viewer's perspective, Dipper's makes more sense. We, as viewers want to know who the author is. We, as viewers, know that Gabe is inevitably going to turn out to be some variety of impossible, and we know that the Author of the Journals is a major mystery. However, from Mabel's perspective, none of this is true, because she doesn't have the luxury of knowing she is in a TV show. Even if you take out Gabe, her perspective still makes perfect sense.

At the beginning of summer, Dipper found this journal, and Mabel has generally been pretty happy to go along with his adventures as the journal has led them, but it's clear she doesn't have the same degree of fascination with it. Maybe she may have been a little intrigued by who the Author is, she's probably a bit curious, but not to the same extent. By the time of Sock Opera, she's probably reasonably ready for the Journal fixation to be over, considering that they nearly all got killed by a shapeshifter trying to find the author. She knows that trying to investigate the author is dangerous--Stan warned them away from the supernatural, they've all nearly died multiple times, but Dipper cannot be stopped. And now Dipper has decided to spend hours and hours and hours, forgoing sleep, sitting in front of a screen, typing in passwords. The fact that Mabel tries to drag him away from it is a good thing--anyone with a relative who spends excessive amounts of time in front of a computer can tell you that. Generally, having someone close to you become deeply fixated to the point of obsession with anything can be challenging, however in Mabel's case, Dipper has become obsessed to the point of prioritising getting into the laptop above anything, and this isn't just a regular hyperfixation: this is a hyperfixation that has nearly gotten them both (plus their loved ones) nearly killed multiple times in the last few weeks. It's absolutely the responsible, good thing for Mabel to do to not enable that behaviour.

And then if you add the puppet show back into the equation, then yes, it is kind of ridiculous of Mabel to put on a whole show of that kind of magnitude just for a boy (regardless of whether the boy deserves it), however, as viewers we must accept that this is, in fact, thoroughly within character for Mabel, who is kind of ridiculous. Any kind of production of that size is a huge commitment, especially if you've given yourself a week to work, and I'm not remotely bothered by the fact that Mabel has to get everyone involved on this. And to Mabel's credit, she does try to help Dipper as soon as he appears to her in puppet form, she just isn't immediately willing to stop the show. Back in high school, my drama class did a play that I mostly wrote, mostly managed and also had a small acting role in (yes, I was an overachiever in drama), and let me tell you, it would have taken a lot to have gotten me to call off the show halfway through, much less publicly sabotage it. A demon threatening the lives of one of my siblings? Probably yes. That probably would have done it. And Mabel does allow the thing that she poured blood, sweat and tears into to go literally up in flames in front of everyone, once she realises that's what she has to do (and personally, I don't think that there's anything wrong with not immediately being willing to drop everything for this. It's not like Dipper doesn't dig in his heels about doing what's best until the very last possible second). I don't know why people insist it's not 'technically a sacrifice', because while, yes, obviously Dipper's life was more important, and she 100% made the right choice, it's not easy to wreck something you worked hard on in front of people.

All this is to say that although it's easy to become irritated at Mabel during this episode because she's hindering Dipper's ability to figure out who the author is, it's also very easy not to realise that she has a thoroughly reasonable perspective, simply because the narrative puts greater emphasis and attention of Dipper's perspective.

Haven't looked at any of these but some of them seem like they'll be useful for future me . . .

Resources For Writing Sketchy Topics

Medicine

A Study In Physical Injury

Comas

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Broken Bones

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Portraying a kleptomaniac.

Playing a character with cancer.

How to portray a power driven character.

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Playing a character with Orthorexia Nervosa.

Writing a character who lost someone important.

Playing the bullies.

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How to portray a sociopath.

How to write characters with PTSD.

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Playing a pyromaniac.

How to write a mute character.

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How to play a stoner.

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How to portray someone with dyslexia.

How to portray a character with bipolar disorder.

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How to play a serial killer.

Writing insane characters.

Playing a character under the influence of marijuana.

Tips on writing a drug addict.

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Writing a character with Nymphomania.

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Writing a character with Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Writing a character with depression.

Writing a character who suffers from night terrors.

Writing a character with paranoid personality disorder.

How to play a victim of rape.

How to play a mentally ill/insane character.

Writing a character who self-harms.

Writing a character who is high on amphetamines.

How to play the stalker.

How to portray a character high on cocaine.

Playing a character with ADHD.

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Writing a compulsive gambler.

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Playing a prisoner.

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How to play a character with social anxiety.

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I forgot one of the best ones . . .

My sister after I tell her about people blaming Mabel: "I can see why, but she's also a twelve year old. She made a very reasonable decision for a twelve year old."

Watching Gravity Falls with siblings is great.

"I didn't think it was possible to be a worse guardian than Stan, but at least he has some idea of child endangerment." - my sister when Ford brought Dipper to the alien ship.

"That's not up to him, that's up to his parents." - my sister on Ford's apprenticeship offer.

"Is she about to get Bill'd?" - my brother when Mabel is in the forest.

"This show took a turn." - my sister in the episode thats name is like Xqthfqx or something.

"It takes a special kind of brain to come up with this." - my brother on the same episode as the previous quote.

how do i get these proships off my suggested stuff

"WE ARE JUST ROOMMATES. PLATONIC. WE'VE BEEN TELLING YOU THIS FOR THE LAST 33 YEARS!"

(They were actually all the ages they were in their respective series! I guess they learned time travel lol cuz they were all teenagers/young adults.)

Last night, I had a dream where there was a fanfic where all the main characters of Infinity Train only had platonic relationships between them and I was so happy because I'm not particularly invested in any of the common Infinity Train ships. They all held hands and danced in a circle?? I think they were in a band together?? Maybe?? Ryan had his guitar, anyway. He and Min-Gi were roommates and Ryan actually shouted "WE'RE NOT DATING! WE'RE ROOMMATES!" And not like in a "we're in denial" way but in a "we legitimately are platonic friends" way. Now that I think about it, the dream was really weird.

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https://archiveofourown.org/works/55534525/chapters/159614359

Just wrote and posted the penultimate chapter of A Fight To Remember! It's the final battle!

So instead of working on The "We Really Minded All That" Act story or A Fight To Remember, I start a Reverse Drifting Stars AU where Dipper gets pulled through the portal and write two 500 word chapters for that. Then I start on a "watching the show" fic I've had in mind for a while, but just the transcribing episodes part. I do this by looking up a transcript for the episode and like . . . idk how to describe this, summarizing it? Episode 1 took me TWO HOURS. Idk if I'm going to be able to do the whole show without going insane . . .

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I have too many projects.

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I have to reblog this because it's funny. Funny because it's true

For a fandom surrounding a story about friendship and forgiveness, we sure have an issue with those concepts sometimes.

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