this was an excuse to draw him š
"The ONE timeline where they kept their bodily organs, out of the INFINITE timelines where they're erased, shattered, drowned, frozen, or dismembered...ā
OLD MEN TEARING EACH OTHER APART WOO!!
ā¼ļøTW for blood/gore if you zoom in!ā¼ļø Nothing too graphic but still :>
Inspired by Joe Pitt's illustration in The Book of Bill (ā  ͔⠰ā Ā Ķā Źā  ͔⠰ā )
oh god.. I want to join too, but I don't have a suitable hat..
Are fedoras really that bad?
YES YES THEY ARE
Better world ford meet Reverse portal dtanley
Oh, boy, that would be something!
For anyone reading this, you might want to check out this first, or you wonāt understand!
Ok, so. Moving on. I think that Better World Ford can be interpreted in two ways: 1) the one in which heās devastated by the loss of his brother, but still functional and clinging to the morals he does have, and 2) the more dramatic and darker one in which heās a bit... cray cray, as Mabel would say, driven mad by grief and potentially overprotective and possessive over any Stan heād happen to find. From my profound fanfic knowledge, I think most people (not just shippers but the fandom in general) would prefer the second option, hahah. I will try to answer what would happen in both of these scenarios!
Letās think of reverse portal!Stan first. I assume you can only mean a Stan who went through the portal instead of Ford. Iāve talked about this possibility before, here, and to shorten things: I donāt think Ford would ever genuinely value the āgreater goodā over Stan. He didnāt in Weirdmaggedon, when he was ready to offer the entire universe in exchange for the lives of three people (Stan, Mabel, and Dipper), and he wouldnāt back then, either, when he had much less discipline and control than old man!Ford. But Ford is a complicated little guy, isnāt he. So there are a number of reasons why he could, hypothetically, decide to not rescue Stan. 1) He assumes Stan is dead, 2) he somehow manages to gaslight himself for a while into believing he values the greater good over Stan (only to regret it bitterly, because that isnāt who he is at his core), or 3) someone (Bill or Fiddleford the Cult Leader) purposefully or accidentally messes things up for him.
Personally, I think the first option is the most likely one. Despite his admirable determination, Ford can be a pretty fatalistic, pessimistic man. When Stan lost his memories, he did indeed believe Stan was lost to him completely, and would have continued to think so, if Mabel hadnāt attempted to resurrect the old Stan through her scrapbook. āIām sorry. Stan is gone,ā he told his desperate grandniece.
Not just that, but thereās a very juicy reason (to me) why Ford would believe so: Bill. Bill, who knows exactly how much Stan matters to Ford. Bill, who already tried to hurt Stan to get to Ford once, in TBoB. (And who turned everyone into tapestry in Weirdmaggedon but spared Stan and the kids to use them against Ford! We have a pattern here!) Ford would sink into despair thinking of all the things Bill could have done to his brother before killing him. I think Bill could go and put more wood to the fire by appearing to Ford and making something up on the spot to brag about, about how Stan screamed and begged for mercy and died thinking Ford hated him. Ford would then assume Stan was really and truly dead, because if he were alive, then surely Bill would make an attempt to blackmail him, to convince Ford to fix the portal to get his twin back. The fact Bill isnāt doing that is proof enough. The possibility that Stan just managed to escape Bill and is still evading capture wouldnāt even cross his mind.
But while this Ford would be utterly devastated with the burden of having killed his brother, Portal!Stan would not know this. No, he would assume Ford decided it wasnāt worth it, to fix the portal and get him back. That he wasnāt worth it to Ford. He could easily be led to think that his relationship with Ford was now wrecked beyond repair. Heād feel like something he never noticed he still had (hope that Ford loved him deep down) was being taken away from him.
Most people, when they think of Portal!Stan think of... well, our canon Portal!Ford, but make it Stan instead. Same thing! ButāIām realizing only as Iām writing thisāI donāt think Portal!Stan would be exactly the same thing as Portal!Ford. Ford is, surprisingly, more hardcore in his violence than Stan! There are many moments in the show that highlight this, but Iāll try to be somewhat brief.
Think about it: both of the Stans had their years running from the law. Stan was banned from US states, while Ford managed to make himself an outlaw in many dimensions. A state is inside a country that is inside a continent that is inside a planet that is inside a solar system that is inside a galaxy that is inside an universe that is inside a dimension, and somehow Ford want us to believe he was ājust as wantedā as Stanley! Uh huh! Ford managed, somehow, to be known across the multiverse as āarmed and dangerous,ā even in his younger days, while he still had brown hair (which is what his Wanted poster in J3 says in code, btw!) The aliens were afraid of our guy! Mullet!Stan meanwhile, homeless and presumably struggling to survive just as Ford was, didnāt seem to have a similar (in)fame. We can see his own Wanted poster in his box of memorabilia in Not What He Seems, but they merely list his conman-typical crimes. Donāt get me wrong, he would end up very different from our canon Stan nonetheless. I think he would be just as hard to catch as Ford (Bill would be after him as well, for sure), and perhaps even develop a sense of revenge against Bill for hurting his brother if he put two and two together and Bill appeared in his dreams to brag. He just wouldnāt have the same vibes, imo, and would perhaps rely on different skills, such as his silver tongue and ability for lying and understanding people, instead of making himself known interdimensionally as a dangerous threat like Ford. Bill would repeatedly warn bounty hunters about not underestimating him, but somehow they always would, and Stan would always escape.
Now, now. Finally, letās talk about Better World!Ford! I said there are two versions of him you could imagine, the more reasonable one and the cray cray one, but no matter the version, heād be mourning his Stan deeply, like half of himself had died.
Letās assign some names for them so we donāt get lost, first š
BW!Ford = Better World!Ford
BW!Stan = Better World!Stan
RP!Stan = Reverse Portal!Stan
RP!Ford = Reverse Portal!Ford
Moving on again.
I picture RP!Stan visiting the Better World dimension for some reason and BW!Ford immediately wanting him to fill the emptiness caused by BW!Stanās death. I canāt see BW!Ford not being overprotective of RP!Stan, considering heād be 1) traumatized about losing BW!Stan and 2) terrified of what Bill could do to RP!Stan. Because again, Bill knows how much any Ford, of any dimension, loves his Stan. Bill could try and use Stan to hurt him! (Which would be, in fact, exactly what Bill was trying and failing to do for so many years, hahah.)
RP!Stan would be shocked by BW!Fordās transparent and overwhelming love for him. Didnāt every Ford Pines despise Stan Pines? Perhaps BW!Ford was faking his love! Perhaps BW!Ford was just completely different from RP!Ford!
But if so, whereās BW!Fordās own Stan? What happened differently? Something terrible, perhaps? Did BW!Stan have to die or something for BW!Ford to start caring? But then again, RP!Ford (apparently) had left RP!Stan to die after pushing him through the portal, so perhaps an average Ford wouldnāt even care about an average Stanās death... (Iām sorry if this is getting too confusing! š)
(RP!Stan also considers the possibility that BW!Stan was just a much better brother than him, but that hurts too much. BW!Ford wisely doesnāt tell him about the fact BW!Stan had obeyed his order to take away the journal.)
Letās suppose that RP!Stan then makes the mistake of telling BW!Ford about RP!Ford, who (apparently) hadnāt bothered to fix the portal to get RP!Stan back. I think BW!Ford would realize what actually had happened, and then he would have a decision to make: to tell RP!Stan the truth or not. If he did, perhaps RP!Stan would then embark in a journey back to the arms of his RP!Ford. If he didnāt...
Here I think it depends on how you interpret Ford (and his morals) to be. I think his morals are pretty loose, but nonetheless he can be pretty noble and self-sacrificing and prone to profound, if sometimes repressed, guilt. He could still feel empathy towards his other self, knowing intimately the utter pain of living while blaming himself for Stanās death. If he decides to be the good, selfless guy, then happy ending for RP!Ford, unhappy ending for him.
Could he believably decide to lie to RP!Stan and say that yeah, his own Ford didnāt care for him? Yes, imo, with the right rationalizion. As Alex mentioned before, Rob Renzetti (coauthor of Journal 3 and his Ford expert) made him understand a fundamental truth about Stanford Pines: that he can do anything as long as he manages to justify it to himself, because one of his greatest powers is rationalizing. I think even a Ford with canon Fordās morals could justify lying to RP!Stan if he managed to successfully convince himself that what he was doing wasnāt against Stan, but against the other Ford. Ford on Ford violence, if you will. He can be very self-loathing and very hypocritical at the same time, so if he somehow twisted the narrative inside his head so as to paint RP!Ford as the villain who deserved to lose his Stan and himself as the one who will take better care of RP!Stan... Especially considering Bill, and the fact he could consider it unsafe for RP!Stan to leave the BW dimension at all...
And if you want to go a touch darkerānow I believe weāre approaching a darker!Ford territory; that is, I donāt believe canon Ford would be capable of bringing himself to do this, but his BW version has been twisted by griefāhe could ensure RP!Stan never leaves him quite easily, through many different means, including Fiddlefordās memory gun. That would mean a definitive unhappy ending for poor RP!Ford, forever without his Stan š
hate drawing backgrounds
happy 9th anniversary undertale!!!
poor kid :Ń
pronouns: he/she | 16 yrs | hoi!! | just a small fan fiction writer :3 | here you will see very much content about stancest!!!
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