Am I The Only One Who Gets Annoyed That Dipper And Mabel Don’t Submit The Photos Of The Goblewonker?

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.

posted new Infinity Train fic that's not new because I've been working on it for at least a year: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62476399/chapters/159892666

here's a quote from chapter one: “When you said she was metal, I thought you meant, like . . .” Mr. Cosay struggled for words. “The slang word–cool, rad, all that stuff.”

"Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Cosay?" I tried.

"Trust the process"

The process:

We need to talk more about the redstone aunts. Get the redstone geniuses of their individual times, Ellegaard, Harper and Xara in a lab together (with Olivia shadowing and also spontaneously combusting from the fangirling) and there will be things invented no one has ever seen before in mcsm. Be prepared for a speedrun of multiple-back-to-back technological revolutions and also intergalactic space travel in like a month. That or the three of them would end up killing each other and the planet at large first (mad geniuses are notoriously bad at getting along with other self-proclaimed geniuses). It's a match made in either the Aether or the Nether.

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how do i get these proships off my suggested stuff

The only kind of hero I can admire is the one who can defeat a three headed ghast and land in the coolest way possible, but still makes decisions like stepping on a pressure plate linked to a piston that kicks them in the face.

~~~

The Northwests are cannibals now.

Let me explain.

So I have so many stories that it's hard to keep track. It doesn't help that some of these stories have multiple documents: one for the actual story and one for the notes and outlines and such. Recently, I've been coming up with a bunch of new stories. I want to write them all eventually, but I also want to finish the ones that I already have. So I decided that to organize my stories, I should create another document! It is called "List of Stories." It is exactly what it sounds like. I have it organized by fandom (there's also a section for crossovers and a section for one-shots) and I put the title of the story or series, then below that, I put the titles of all of the documents that are a part of that story or series, and then, depending on the story I'll put a brief description of it. (One of the descriptions is just "crack narration." I haven't posted that particular story yet.)

Now, the name of my documents often don't match the name of the actual story. This is partly because of Not Wanting People Who Might See My Documents To Realize That I'm Writing Fanfic (even though anyone who might see my documents will most likely already know that, lol), partly me being embarrassed about the titles (again, because fanfic), and partly me being secretive for no reason. So I don't remember exactly what I named all the documents. (Or, at least, the names are vague enough that I'm double checking the documents just in case.)

So I'm clicking on these documents to double check that I'm putting the right ones. There's an AU I came up with several months ago - I'm not going to say which one, though I've mentioned it on here before - that I had a little bit written of. I clicked on the document for the notes/outlines and part of my notes was "Things Pacifica thinks are normal but are not."

Now, it's been a few months since I opened that fic. I've been focusing on other stories. But underneath that heading I just mentioned was...

Butler hunting. The Northwests are cannibals.

I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote that. But it's going in the story when I finally write it. It's so horrifically messed up but so ridiculous that I'm laughing as I write this, because what was I thinking??!!

Anyway. That's my ramble for the day.

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.

Wendy even gets a turquoise bandana like thing in the last few episodes, which I thought was funny because it reminded me of Petra

I dunno if this counts as a "confession", but Petra is basically Wendy (Gravity Falls), right?? In a totally good way. I think that's why I vibe with Petra's character so much. I just cannot see them without thinking of the other!

~~~

Expanding on this, I'd just like to say that if we call people stupid for hating Mabel, they're not going to want to listen to us when we explain why she doesn't deserve the hate.

well, just explored the "mabel pines defense squad" tag

there were a lot of strongly worded posts