What Are Your Guys' Thoughts On How Stancest Could Come To Confess Their Feelings In Ways That Don't

From my strawpage inbox : "How do you think stanley bros celebrate new year?"

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Stan never liked celebrating new year it was just another excuse to get blackout drunk, and the concept haven't been in Ford's mind for 30 odd years now. But for their first year aboard the Stan O War II, Stan decided to do something special, since Ford had long forgot about the traditions of the celebration.

They docked near a small yet lively pier so Ford could enjoy the occasion, without the possibility for the experience to be soured by the intensity and overcrowding. It was supposed to be a nice and quaint occassion for them, well mainly for Ford.

The festivities brought out their whimsical sides, reminding them of their childhood, a simpler time. Fairs by the pier of Glass Shard Beach that they would visit after working on Stan O War, catching a moment of tranquility as they watched the sun set before the reality faded back in. Browsing through the endless fair games that they never had enough money for, not that it mattered, they were with each other, and that was enough.

But as the midnight approaches, Stan dragged Ford out to a quieter part of the pier, away from the crowd, from eyes that might catch the two brothers getting just a bit too intimate. And Ford let himself to be dragged along, while he enjoyed the fair, even after 30 years, he wanted a quiet moment with Stan too.

Enjoying each other's company, they huddled together, Stan's head leaning against Ford shoulder, five-fingered hand on top of the six-fingered one, as they listened to the faint countdown from the crowd. And as it reaches midnight, fireworks blooming in the night sky, Stan watched the firework show from Ford's soft eyes, his eyes twinkling so beautifully.

For a moment, it was just the two of them, the world around melting away. Ford leaned in, only to find Stan doing the same, it just felt like the right thing to do.

New year finally meant something for them, it marked another year together with the love of their lives, in each other's arms, instead of just another day to wallow in sorrow. And they look forward to spending the rest of their new years together.

Thinking about Alex’s recent interview and its confirmation of how I view Stancest... Desperately needing each other! Indeed!

I think what many people don’t get about Stan and Ford’s dynamic as children, or even as teenagers, is that, no matter what Stan and Ford think or say about it, they were not like Mabel and Dipper. That just highlights their lack of self-awareness, my poor dumbasses.

Here’s a more lengthy analysis for any friendly soul and fellow shipper who cares to read:

Mabel and Dipper have overall very different interests and hobbies and act separately on them. They have other friends and spend time with them—well, at least Mabel has Candy and Grenda, as the bubbly social butterfly she is; Dipper seems way more preoccupied with deciphering the mysteries of Journal 3 than anything else. As fraternal twins of different genders, no matter how alike they look (and despite Mabel’s joke of being “girl Dipper”), they still manage to retain pretty distinct identities. No issue here.

With Stan and Ford, things were very different. First of all, the absurd codependency. When asked about Shermie, Alex observed that a crucial part of their dynamic is that they only had each other. No younger or older brother to support them. From my own observations about their parents, that point is only driven further home.

Filbrick is, well, Filbrick. I don’t think I need to explain much here; every one of us has different interpretations and headcanons about him, but they seem to all agree on the common factor he wasn’t a good father—how much that can be justified by their time period or stretched to accommodate the most heartwrenching stangst is up for debate, just not a subject for this post.

Caryn is more complicated. I think there’s a big tendency to treat her as a good mom, something I particularly don’t agree with as I take a Watsonian approach—that is, she might not have been intended as a questionable mother, but a questionable mother is the woman we ended up with given the writers’ lack of thought about their side characters.

This is not to say she was a horrible person, not necessarily. I think Filbrick was definitely ‘worse’ than her, so to speak, at least in a more obvious way, and she has canonically demonstrated a modicum of care/affection towards Stan. According to her, Stan’s rambunctiousness can be attributed to an excess of “personality,” he’s her “little free spirit.” She was, most notably, one of the two people present at Stan’s funeral if the info on the new website is to be trusted. We see her smiling brightly in the picture of baby Stans included in TBoB, which hints at the fact she liked her kids.

(Interestingly enough, we have so little on her relationship with Ford. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Stan was her favorite child? Most irl people with siblings I’ve encountered seem to think there’s always a favorite.)

But the fact that she, as an adult, didn’t intervene when Stan was kicked out is simply, in my point of view, inexcusable. One could say she was momentarily paralyzed from an overwhelming fear of Filbrick, as a supposed victim herself, but a) that’s already entering headcanon domain, and b) I think that’s far from the truth and directly contradicting the comics, in which she looks quite comfortable in the company of Filbrick: kissing him on the cheek, comfortingly stroking his back... I don’t think Filbrick is meant to be seen as a monster, not in an exaggerated way. (He’s shown to be touched by Stan’s little stunt with the golden chain, too.) Just a really shitty father, in a common, boring, more nuanced, no less traumatizing, way.

To me, the most telling thing of all is the fact Stan calls for Ford to help him, not his own mother. Ford, his brother, same age as him, who was at the moment beyond furious with him and very unlikely to show any compassion. Ford, whose attempts to change Filbrick’s mind would more likely than not have been unsuccessful. Not Caryn, adult, who probably had much greater sway over Filbrick. They say a child’s first instinct is to call for their mama. Clearly not in this case!

I find it fascinating how easily, in the comics, baby Stan opens up to Ford about his feelings of inferiority towards Ford himself. The sheer vulnerability of that moment. The implicit, profound trust, especially coming from someone like Stan, packed to the gills with toxic masculinity. And the manner with which Ford gently comforts him, as if he were used to do so. As Stan, too, had been shown to do when Crampelter mocked Ford’s fingers. They were clearly accustomed to being each other’s emotional pillars, in the way kids who learned early on they can’t count with adults or lean on authority figures in their lives start building their own little safe space.

(The way I see it, they got along extremely well, for better or for worse. No sibling bickering. No fights. How could they? They were literally each other’s only friend. If anything, their first major fight was caused by lack of communication, among many other things; they repressed their frustrations with each other to a ridiculous point instead of simply externalizing them like you would expect of a normal sibling dynamic.)

Second of all, they were monozygotic aka identical twins, as strongly hinted in the show, comics, and books, and as confirmed by Alex on Twitter. They were both named Stan, they had the same face. I’ve read irl identical twins’ confessions about the nature of such a relationship re: identity issues and how people tend to treat you, and it’s often not pretty. In the Stan twins case, their sense of identity was beyond blurry, and it’s not difficult to see why. If you pay attention to the show or the comics, you’ll see many hints of this unhealthiness: the way they were both called to the principal’s office, the way Stan was called a dumber, sweatier version of Ford by Crampelter, the way they had already pretended to be each other before, not in their childhood but adolescence (Stan’s idea, according to hilarious extra material in the DVDs).

I find it adorable that Ford, in the comics, basically grounded himself for Stan! Filbrick had been very clear about grounding Stan, only, not both twins. But Ford stays with him as if he were grounded as well, as if he didn’t even have a choice. Where Stan was, there was Ford, not far behind.

(As an addition that occurred to me just later, after you guys have already started reblogging my post, is that baby Ford has demonstrated this tendency before, in a much more unhinged way, when he exclaims, “Oh my God! We killed the Sibling Brothers!” Ford, honey, if anyone had killed the Sibling Brothers, it would’ve been your brother, the person who shoved them in the first place. Not you.)

They were an unit. Inseparable. As simple as that.

Until they weren’t.

In the same interview, though, Alex added: they, quote unquote, “desperately need each other” as old men. And honestly? It can’t get more intense than that.

'Folgers Incest Commercial: Stancest edition!'

In the Stancest discord I promised someone (I don't remember who, this was weeks ago) that I would write a fic about that stupid coffee commercial staring our favorite idiots! So, I did that and it almost killed me, but here it is! Happy holidays!

Omg ok I think I found another extraneous detail that I can wildly contort into something that feeds my sick Stancest needs.

Stan’s fanfiction.

So here’s an excerpt of official audio from Alex:

The setup is that the duchess cheats on the duke with this self insert “stable uncle”. Ok what you’d expect so far, he self ships himself with the attractive female lead, and his romantic rival is a very well spoken duke with whom he has some mutual disdain for (hm… well spoken and antagonistic toward him, I wonder if there’s anyone he drew real life inspiration from…?)

As a side note, I would like to point out that he describes the affair as “forbidden” implying that forbidden love is an appealing idea to him...

But what makes this really interesting is the title of his fanfic. Which is this:

The DUKE’S Temptations, not the stable uncle’s or even the duchess’s temptations. The DUKE’S. Now this is a little odd considering that this duke character isn’t his insert character but rather a RIVAL to his insert character. The assumed scenario from the audio would be that the focus is on the duchess having an affair with Stan’s insert, but this suggests that the focus would shift and that the duke himself is tempted into an affair.

Given that the duke’s speaking patterns sound awfully similar to ford’s as well the petty jabs at each other sounding just as familiar, I think it’s safe to say that the duke is the ford insert character.

And being that the title is what it is, I really don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the duke must become the main love interest for stan’s insert. I mean Stan’s character must remain the protagonist right? It would be odd for him to write an insert fic without his own romance being the main focus.

So there would be a change in attitudes on both sides. Literally enemies to lovers. Two men who come to understand each other amid their competition and develop a mutual passion that runs much deeper than their contempt ever did. A forbidden and dangerous affair. A temptation that neither can resist. Wow. Soos needs to needs to upload this to ao3 asap. I wanna read this now.

fuckass 2023 trend go brrr yaay 😗😙

also without the video 😚

Inspired by shmisky's post, here's my redraw of Stan and Ford from the iconic scene from Princess Mononoke. I just HAD to get this one out of my system, I was obsssesseddd

One morning, in the Oregon shack, Stanford, Stanley, and Fiddleford were having breakfast together. Fiddleford brought up a paper he’d recently read, The Evolution of Social Attitudes Towards Homosexual Relationships in 20th-Century America: A Historical Analysis, and shared some of the views it mentioned. For example, gay men might tend to pursue fashionable and personalized styles of clothing and have a higher appreciation for pop music, dance music, and the arts. Additionally, they might show a distinctive social behavior pattern with more frequent and intimate interactions within their social circles.

Stanley: Ha, I always thought men who liked theater were kind of sissy.

Stanford: I think the article oversimplifies things. Just because someone likes art doesn’t mean they’re necessarily gay.

Fiddleford: That’s true, just like being gay doesn’t necessarily mean you enjoy theater. I don’t believe that a gay man’s social behavior can be summarized; there are always exceptions. And those who haven’t acknowledged their orientation haven’t been observed either. They probably just seem like regular people, like you and me.

Fiddleford: Haha, but a guy like Stanley probably wouldn’t be mistaken, right?

Stanley: Oh, no, I’ve been with a guy before. But you can’t tell, right?

Fiddleford: Hold on.

Fiddleford: Raccoons doing the jitterbug! You’ve been with a guy??

Stanley: Yeah, it was a long time ago. We were in high school, and we broke up ages ago.

Fiddleford: Wow… that’s… unexpected, in every way. I thought you were into women; I even saw you flirting with Susan at the diner. Don’t you like women?

Stanley: I’ve only been with that one guy. But I guess gender doesn’t mean much to me—I’m open either way. Sex is just sex; as long as there’s chemistry, it’s fine.

Fiddleford: So, back in high school, it was just about sex? Then I’m not sure that would classify as a gay relationship since straight men do that kind of thing too—sorry if that’s too blunt.

Stanley: No problem, I don’t mind. We’re just chatting. We did go on dates a lot, so I guess we were pretty serious back then.

Fiddleford: So it was a relationship? You must have faced a lot of pressure back then.

Stanley: Yeah, some.

Fiddleford: Who confessed first?

Stanley thinking: I don’t think… anyone confessed. We just ended up together.

Fiddleford: You didn’t talk about it? How does that even happen?

Stanford: It happened naturally, just going with feelings.

Stanley: Lust, that’s what it was.

Fiddleford: Wait, uh, Ford, you knew about this?

Stanford: I did.

Fiddleford: Well, that makes sense; you’re twins, after all. I guess secrets are hard to keep. So, when did you two break up?

Stanley: Right around graduation. He was a good student and wanted to go to college in another city. I didn’t care for school and wanted to work right away. We couldn’t agree, so we just split up.

Fiddleford: You didn’t try long-distance?

Stanley: You know that never works. Thinking that letters and calls can keep a relationship going—that’s a lie told by cowards who don’t have the courage to break up. Right, Ford?

Stanford: True enough.

Fiddleford: Makes sense. Sounds like you’ve thought about this for a long time. So, were you the one who broke it off?

Stanley: No, it wasn’t me.

Fiddleford: Oh… I’m sorry. That must have been hard on you. My first breakup had me crying with my banjo in my room for three days. How long did you cry?

Stanley: I didn’t cry.

Fiddleford: Really?

Stanley: It’s been a long time. Everyone goes through breakups; I don’t care anymore.

Fiddleford: But it was your first love, and you broke up over something like that. It’s a shame. Have you kept in touch since?

Stanley: Yeah, we have.

Fiddleford: And now that you’re both working, you haven’t tried to—

Stanley: —Oh, no. No way. Getting back with an ex is just plain stupid.

Fiddleford: But you were happy together, weren’t you? Honestly, distance isn’t an insurmountable problem, and you didn’t break up because of a loss of love. If it were me, I’d at least try to see if it could work.

Stanley: You’ve got the wrong idea. We broke up pretty badly. But yeah, I still have some good memories.

Fiddleford: Oh?

Stanley: We used to go to the beach a lot. We didn’t do much, just talked. Well, and other things. The beach was right by our town. It was beautiful when there weren’t people around, so we’d skip class and go there in the afternoons. A few years back, when I passed through our hometown, I went to see it. Now it’s a tourist spot, packed with people.

Fiddleford: Skipping class? Didn’t you say he was a good student? Why would he skip class?

Stanley: Yeah, why indeed?

Fiddleford: Right? I mean, with all the homework, studying, and essays, I was constantly busy back then. How did he manage it?

Stanley: Huh, I never thought about that.

Stanley: Ford, how did you manage it back then?

Stanforddrizzling maple syrup on pancakes: Stayed up late doing homework.

Stanley: Ah, so that’s it—stayed up late doing homework.

Fiddleford: Oh.

Fiddleford: Wait, hold on.

I feel Fiddleford would have to make these two stop fighting all the time.

Not that anyone cares, but I finally gave in and made this side account because I couldn’t resist interacting with the ships and content I enjoy. That said, I’ll probably stay quiet most of the time (if not always) and just stick to liking or reposting stuff. Part of it is because I’m shy, and the other part is that my English is almost nonexistent without a translator lol. I just wanted to leave this here to mark the start of this profile or something.

Muse