The ongoing moth saga

when he's always striven for perfection but in his eyes they have it immediately

we are not doing his father's "I'm not impressed" in this house he is so impressed by everything they do and he will let them know it!!!

ford's lifetime of objectification is so important to me.

when you first watch the show, you don't really see it in tots. just taking the show in isolation, stan's experience is much easier to latch on to: stan is being neglected by his parents and the education system, and he compensates for it by becoming useful to (and therefore needed by) ford. the codependency and abuse are the themes that stand out.

which makes sense, since we've been following stan so long by this point we're bought into his character arc. alex has even said that ford was built to be someone who would explain stan's trauma response. we are meant to be looking at stan for these reasons and because ford lies to us (by omission) during his story. yes stan lies too, but only in the narration; we are shown the truth. ford's story is a lie both in narration and in visuals.

but as the show goes on and as the books come out, we are directed to start looking more and more at ford's experience.

when you read journal 3 standard edition, what stands out is bill's manipulation and how ford fails to grasp the lifelines fate throws him. we see ford transform from a man wanting recognition and connection to being isolated and unable to trust.

but then you read journal 3 blacklight edition, you realize it wasn't just bill: fiddleford was hurting him too. when fiddleford first presents the memory gun to ford, ford tells him that it's dangerous with a high risk for misuse, and to destroy it. not only does fiddleford lie about agreeing with ford and lie about destroying it, he also turns around and starts routinely, non-consensually using it on ford. whenever fiddleford wants to do something he knows ford will disagree with or be upset by? zap zap! conflict averted, no compromising or debating necessary. (and then, of course, he starts stalking ford to ensure nothing happens to him that fiddleford deems deleteable.)

and then we get tbob and watch bill hijack and mutilate his body, rewire his brain, and threaten his life. his value reduced down to a pair of eyeballs bill is more than happy to pluck out to use as keys if ford won't deactivate the retinal lock.

with this new insight, it makes ford's experience in tots significantly easier to see. filbrick didn't care about what happened to ford, he cared about what he lost. yes stan probably did care about what happened to ford, but not enough to tell him about the accident with time enough to fix it. not enough to let him be angry, let him grieve, let him figure out alternative college solutions. it was just right back to what stan wanted: sailing away together. for the entire scene, ford's opinion weren't asked for, his emotions not given a platform, until they were useful for what stan wanted: not having him kicked out. ford's experience of the event was so unimportant, he'd gone to his bedroom while filbrick and stan fought. he was no longer needed.

neither bill, nor fiddleford, nor filbrick, nor stanley see ford as a fully realized human being with wants and goals and dreams and aspirations of his own. at least, they see him as a fully realized human being only up until what he wants conflicts with what they want. after j3 blacklight it starts to become obvious that ford is a tool, a concept, to the people ford thinks are his closest allies.

to bill, ford is an escape (with just the show and j3 we think only into our world, but after tbob we learn that this is both literal and metaphorical). to fiddleford, ford is freedom (from his marriage, from societal expectations, from the pressure of being more than his roots). to filbrick, ford was stability (i refuse to believe it was just about the money, but more about what the money represented. filbrick and caryn wouldn't have to worry about making ends meet, wouldn't have to worry about their children's future; all reasonable desires for parents to have but inappropriate responsibilities to place on a teenager. not to mention how the lasting impact of the holocaust combined with the rise of holocaust denialism in the 1970s would influence filbrick's perspectives). to stan, ford was everything (he was willing to throw away his life on shore, both what he had and what he might have, to sail with ford, just the two of them, forever. and he did throw away his life bringing ford home: he murdered stanley pines and sacrificed 30 years in exchange for his brother. stan believes he is only one half of a dynamic duo, that without ford there is no him).

in a way, ford was a portal for all of them. something they could use to get a better, happier, fuller life. ford is fought for, someone hard decisions are made for, someone people do terrible things for. but not for him, but for the opportunity to keep him, to control him. hell, even his doctor said they want to kidnap him.

because keeping stanford pines is extremely difficult. he's hard to get close to, but once you're close he loves fully, trusts implicitly. but if he's wronged, he's vindictive, he holds a grudge, he pushes you away and he runs.

princess unattainabelle indeed.

doesn't it make sense, then, after all of this, ford would grow into someone who insists upon his own agency? that he was forced to become self-confident, self-assured, a man of action. that he would become an avid journaler so that his wants and goals and dreams and aspirations would become concrete, would become tangible. that he would become someone who lies about his past in order to have control over how he is perceived, how his life is remembered?

because after what fiddleford and bill did to him, wouldn't it make sense he would become someone anxious about his reality, his memories, his sense of self? how much of who he thinks he is and what he believes and what he knows and what he can do is because of changes they made to his mind?

does he even have himself?

for the entire duration of gravity falls, every character, at some point, to some degree, is chasing ford: his journals, his inventions, his knowledge, his identity, what he is able to give them, do for them.

but how many of them are chasing ford.

edit: just want to add this disclaimer for clarity. i intentionally left out other characters' nuance. if this reads uncharitable, that's not an accident and also i know there's a more nuanced perspective. that was just not the point of this.

@raccoonhusband #also a different point i think you failed to mention: being born as a twin caused him to have deep seated identity issues just like stan#causing him to fixate on his observable differences (his fingers and his intelligence) as a desperate attempt to assert an identity#he subconsciously blames his identity issues on stan both due to their obvious codependency (which is reasonable to want to break away from#and the scapegoating stan has received since birth (ugh that 'extra stan' stealing his identity! the selfish bastard!)#it's the reason he never contacted stan in those ten years and erases his existence from his life#because if stan is gone then he can only be judged as himself#but still not getting that from the people around him who don't treat him as a person#and he's still failing internally bc he mentally slots him and stan as the same person#stan's face is 'his face' on tv committing crimes even years later#he's not a fully realized person even to himself#basically his sense of self was fucked even before bill and fiddleford came along tbh lol

you are right, but the point i wanted to make was how other people treated him and how that impacted the person he grew to be. however, these tags are beautiful and worth peer reviewing here and give me a great chance to jump off them and pontificate more lmfao

because you're right, he was already treating himself like an incomplete and unworthy person. he already believed that his only value was in how he could change society for the better. so much of ford's hubris is rooted in his all-or-nothing thinking about himself.

just look at when fiddleford tried to convince him to walk away from the portal, just publish his research. ford was unwilling to be theoretical, he wanted to have figured it out and built it. yes maybe he could have gotten live specimens of the creatures from gravity falls as proof, but look at how the tourists reacted to dipper's gremoblin. ford wanted to have the theory, and the specimen, and the explanation. he didn't want anyone to build off his work, he wanted to be the final say in the paranormal. because being anything less wasn't good enough.

ford became the man he wanted to be, he erased his past and erased his twin and he busted his ass to become the scientist he always dreamed of. and despite all of ford's hard work, despite separating himself from stanley and moving across the country and getting 12 phds and inventing interdimensional travel--

it still wasn't good enough. it didn't get him anything.

his relationship with the people of gravity falls was so poor that ford was shot just for playing chess in public, ford believed bill's rat gift was a threat some towns person left. from the time he left new jersey to the time he left this dimension ford made two friends: fiddleford and bill, both of whom ruined him.

ford became a man he could be proud of, and everyone still either hated him or used him.

i understand why stan acted the way he did when ford called him for help, but imagine stan's reaction from ford's perspective: you realize you built a portal to hell, the devil has been torturing you for weeks, you haven't slept or eaten in days, you fully believe you're on a suicide mission, and you get so desperate you call the brother you haven't spoken to in over a decade because he's the only one who might still care about you and that's how he responds. not even at your lowest point, the lowest point any human being has ever been at, with such serious stakes, is it enough for stan to hear you, see you, understand you. he does exactly what you thought he was going to do when you debated if calling him was worth the risk.

and then ford meets jheselbraum and hears the prophecy, that he has the face of the man who defeats bill. finally, finally, he has proof of his worth, of his value, that all this pain had meaning. that he will finally be someone. that he will change things for the better: he isn't going to do something as small as bring humanity into enlightenment, he's going to save the multiverse from bill cipher!

and then stanley does it.

yes, the audience obviously is meant to understand they both did, that neither could have done it alone and they both have the face that defeated bill. but that's not how ford sees it. ford sees stan as the hero. ford sees stan as the one who defeated bill.

he didn't even get that.

what has his life amounted to? what has all this suffering been for?

what was the point in trying to excise himself from stanley if, in the end, even the prophecy saw them as one person? why keep trying to fight to be an individual?

ford went on a journey to build a life for himself, and in the end he wound up throwing it all away and sailing off with stanley anyway.

he probably should have just cut out the middleman.

i don't understand acephobia because why the FUCK do you care about whether i am fucking someone or not? stay in your fucking lane you fucking dimwit

love advice

in a perfect world where yaoi wins </3

whichever madman pointed out that the new rift on bill's body in the theraprism is meant to parallel ford's cracked glasses after he emerges out of the portal,,,, MY SOUL IS YOURS TO TAKE ANYDAY MY GOSH

shoutout to billford shippers for being brave enough to say maybe actually the puppet really likes what the puppetmaster is doing to it. maybe the puppet really gets off on it

16 MORE PAGES UNDER THE CUT VVV

In The Strange Case, straight up Jekylling it and by it. Haha.. let's just say my Hyde.

crazy? i was crazy once. this is a revamped hd remake of this beast from last year! had to split it up to save the quality, i'll link the full connected image in the rbs. happy anniversary, tbob!

Street in Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890, Ateneum, Helsinki - by Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890), Dutch