Comics Based On By The Skin Of Your Teeth By Rev (apathetic_revenant) On Ao3

NSFW thing

This is a Stancest acrylic stand I drew and shared with other Gravity Falls fans at the largest fan convention in China. I personally love this stand because it looks absolutely delicious 🤤🤤. The one next to it is an acrylic stand of Randy's poop from South Park, and the stickers in the background are of Deadpool."

do u guys fw fiddlestan.

It’s okay if he get’s a girlfriend, because you can comfort him when they inevitably break up

caption bottom text

EDIT: how Ford learned Spanish

in which a sphere regrets teaching a square how to write

"feeling so many illnesses at once. and a new illness somehow"

-@non-bun-ary

What people often get wrong about young Ford

Strong title, I know. By “young Ford,” I mean baby and teen Ford.

When people think of baby Ford, what kind of personality do they envision? Many times—as I can attest due to fanfic reading—they seem to picture him as shy, sweet, quiet, and, in Stan’s words, “Mr. Good Nerdy-Shoes” who couldn’t stand up for himself nor think of disobeying adult authority. Look at his adorable little face.

When they think of teen Ford, he is not so sweet anymore, true—but he still contrasts greatly with his adult self, who is so assertive and confrontational, and even with young Stan, who looks extra brash next to him. That is ostensibly why Ford couldn’t stand up for Stan in the principal’s office, even though he would have had if he had more courage.

Is this general portrayal faithful to what we’re shown in canon? My own answer would be a firm no. I’ll elaborate why, exactly, below the cut.

The first thing we have to establish, imo, is that young Ford isn’t a completely different creature, a boy unrecognisable from the man he is going to become. That even baby Ford already shared, to a certain extent, some of adult Ford’s traits, and not only the most “wholesome” of them—the endearing fascination with science and anomalies and nerdiness, that is.

We can notice, for example, his ambition (back then):

We can notice he’s apparently (from what is shown to us, which is not much) the one used to decide what the Stan twins did every day, the Phineas to Stan’s Ferb:

Stan asks him, and he answers—a perhaps unintended but still fascinating parallel to how Ford was also the one to decide their destiny in the finale, namely to hunt anomalies in the Arctic.

He’s the one who rides their bike in the two panels we see them riding it. Maybe an insignificant (and definitely unintended) detail but fitting, imo, with the pattern of Ford leading and Stan tagging along.

Despite these two observations being more my particular observations than anything else, the need to draw a visual parallel between baby Ford with his adult self was the whole point of dressing them in similar outfits, with the red turtleneck:

That said, let’s focus on two major things here...

Was Ford ever a goody-two-shoes?

I think nothing is more fitting than to start this topic with Stan’s little nickname for Ford in the comics: “Mr. Goody Nerd-Shoes.”

If you have read Journal 3—hell, if you have watched the show at all—you know that Stanford Pines is far, far from being a goody two-shoes, despite indeed being a huge nerd. (An important distinction! Ford doesn’t fit nerd stereotypes!) The guy stole radioactive waste from the government even before his portal days, became an intergalactic criminal described as “armed and dangerous,” lent a mind-control tie to a child... Stan is just living in the past and doesn’t understand that Ford changed, right? He isn’t that sweet little boy who could do no wrong anymore!

But... was he ever?

He found it hilarious when Stan mocked their teacher with an unflattering caricature, and doesn’t even bother to hide it.

He helped Stan cheat on tests/assignments (it’s not clear what exactly they’re doing here, but the fact Stan was trying hard to copy it from Ford and not from the blackboard tells us he wasn’t simply copying notes, but answers). Do notice that Ford doesn’t seem bothered, not even anxious or afraid of the teacher catching them. He’s smiling.

Both occasions seem to indicate that despite taking his studies seriously, Ford didn’t have a particularly strong fear of adult authority.

And of course—the best for last—he found it perfectly normal to impersonate two boys he mistakenly thought were dead:

Alex elaborates on the shenanigans those two would get up to in the commentary A Tale of Two Stans:

We played around with the idea that you would see them working together doing little science games or pulling little pranks. There was actually a scene that—I think some of it was even storyboarded—where they have a treehouse. And they’re in the treehouse together and Crampelter and his friends have tracked them down and are begging for their lunch money and Stan and Ford have used their jerkiness and geniusness to rig up like a water balloon throwing machine that knocks Crampelter in the head. I remember him saying, “oh no, my old-timey paper crown!” We were really hanging a lampshade on all these sort of Little Rascal cliches.

They were—both of them—an utter menace. I think Ford just happened to be way subtler about it than poor Stan, causing his misbehaving nature to be easily ignored by both the audience and, luckily, his father Filbrick.

Was Ford ever meek and conflict-avoidant?

I think many people think Stan was the protector and Ford the protected in their early years, but it was never as straightforward as this.

Young Ford is very sensitive about one thing in particular: when people mock his hands or imply he’s a freak. The way I see it, it’s because he believes that, deep down. He believes he’s indeed a freak. On top of that, he cares more about general public opinion than Stan does, since Stan is only ever shown to care about the opinion of his own family.

The insecurity about his hands is something that arguably follows him to adulthood:

(Of course, Ford doesn’t blush and doesn’t demonstrate any insecurity here, but he’s gotten way better at hiding and/or suppressing his feelings. I doubt Bill would have chosen this to pick up on if he didn’t think it would hurt.)

Outside of that, however?

He was quite confrontational! Certainly way more than I remember being when I was his age, as a conflict-avoidant child.

Quite angry, too:

(Notice how, in the original idea of Stan and Ford rigging up a water fountain described in the previous topic, Ford wasn’t afraid to pull a prank on Crampelter, either, despite being sensitive towards Crampelter’s targeted mocking of his hands.)

And most interesting of all—he was not afraid of stand up for Stanley, even when it would cost him to do so (considering that the Sibling Brothers had threatened to frame him as well and let him face Filbrick’s punishment along with Stan in case he made the wrong choice):

Not even when Filbrick was involved directly, instead of being used as the Siblings Brothers’ invisible threat! Pay attention to how Stan hides behind Ford as he tells Ford, “tell ‘im, Sixer!” basically using his brother as a shield, hahah. And, by the way, subverting the common fanon perception that Stan would often protect his twin from his father while a helpless, scared Ford would only watch and let him take the punishment. This is one of the reasons why he gets angry at Stan for lying: “I defended you!”

When Stan is being kicked out, he actively asks Ford for help, once again, just like he did as a kid!

Not even their mom, Caryn, but Ford!

And Stan knows Ford like the back of his hand! Why would Stan ask for Ford to defend him, to stand up to Filbrick, if he didn’t think Ford was capable of it? Ford’s protection was something that Stan thought he could rely on, if only this once, with such high stakes and urgency... despite...

... despite Ford completely failing to defend him in front of the principal, yes.

Remember how Ford always struggled to defend himself from comments that he believed deep, deep down? I think a similar thing was happening here, in the principal’s office. Of course, he wouldn’t have thought of Stan as “a clown,” at the very least not consciously, and he loved his brother, but at that point in their lives the difference between Ford’s and Stan’s accomplishments and abilities must have been undeniable, with the world at large pointing it out more and more often.

This moment in the series was also probably inspired by the real moment in Alex’s life that inspired the scene in which Mabel overhead Ford’s proposal to Dipper, according to the commentary of Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future:

This idea of Mabel overhearing Dipper and feeling left out actually came from a real thing that happened between me and my sister. This is a weird anecdote about me and my sister but we did this kind of like, sort of competitive improv games when we were in middle school, very nerdy. And we did pretty good, like, our team made it to the international competition every year, and there was this high school team... [...] We had a pretty good team, but there was a team above us, the high school team, that was like, legendary, that we wanted to be like. And when me and my sister went from junior high school to high school, like, this is going to be our last year to do this sort of competitive improv, and I got a call from the high school team saying “hey, guess what? we already raided your team for the standout members, we’ve taken the people from your team that always do good scores and we’re combining the high school team and the middle school team into a super team and we would like you to be on the high school team. And I was like, “what about Ariel?” And they were like, “well, there’s only seven members per team—” and Ariel was listening on the conversation and I remember her like, bursting into tears because they had basically been like yeah, we got two Hirsches [and] we only want one, and I didn’t even blink. I just said, “no, I refuse to be on this team.” Like, I couldn’t, it was just like, this is so messed up, you’re breaking this whole thing apart, like yeah, it’s a great team, yeah, you guys are awesome, but I’m not gonna do this without Ariel.

Based on Alex’s immediate and strong reaction to such a proposal, it’s not a stretch to think Ford’s silence here was indeed telling—especially because in Alex’s case, Ariel was never insulted. The principal, on the other hand, calls Stan a “clown,” says “he’ll be lucky to graduate high school.”

And because Caryn (who failed to defend Stan when he’s kicked out) did react about the way the principal was talked about him/did ask about him, in the two opportunities that were given to her, basically taking Alex’s irl role in the situation:

Dipper himself also asked about Mabel, even though he was being given an opportunity to learn from The Author of the Journals, whom he admired to the point of almost worship:

A significant factor I think could have changed for Ford to stay silent as the principal badmouthed Stan is: Ford’s priorities. Before, when they were children and more carefree and naive, it was Stan > the world (such as other people’s opinions and his ambition). Now, though, with a true opportunity to finally prove himself—one unlike any other he had before, capable of earning him the approval of even their “tough as a cinderblock” father—he was clinging hard to it.

And you might also be thinking, “but the examples you gave of Ford being assertive were only of baby Ford! Teen Ford could have grown more insecure. Perhaps Stan hadn’t realized that yet, or perhaps Stan was just desperate.” To that I say... fair enough! We don’t have enough canon material regarding teen Ford to decide how he behaved.

But we do have something regarding college Ford, just as he entered college, likely just months after Stan was kicked out—when he met Fiddleford, as described by Fiddleford himself on the TBoB website:

Lines such as “[...] my room mate, a freshman from New Jersey, barged in like he owned the place [...]” and “confidently declared” are very telling here. Of course, Ford didn’t stand up for Fiddleford in front of the whole class, but I honestly think that a) it was a different situation, considering the sheer amount of people/the presence of a public audience, and, partially due to that, b) it would have been a very unintelligent move if he didn’t have anything to defend Fiddleford with (to brag about something with zero backup, even if motivated by anger, is a very typical move of cartoon characters to create conflict for the plot... and also quite annoying to me personally, so I’m glad Ford didn’t go that route, hahah). Deciding to prove that Fiddleford’s theory was accurate first to shove it in everyone’s face second is a way smarter move and way, way more in line with Ford’s modus operandi, who—well—loves shoving the undeniable truth and/or his undeniable superiority in people’s faces. (From Journal 3, when Ford was already living in Gravity Falls: “I traveled to Northwest Manor to confront Old Man Northwest with the evidence of his family’s deceit [...]” and “Imagine the look on the dean of West Coast Tech’s face when he saw that the student he refused was now the next Einstein! Imagine how proud my family and hometown would be: the ‘Freak’ would return a hero!”) Personally, the vibes I get from this seem to indicate a very confident Ford already! A Ford who would have defended Stan if he weren’t already slowly internalizing and subconsciously agreeing with the things people said about his brother, or—at the very least—asked the principal about Stan’s fate, like Alex, Caryn, and Dipper did/would have done in his place.

We also have a clear parallel between baby Ford in The Jersey Devil’s in the Details and teen Ford in A Tale of Two Stans. Both have people telling them they’re better than Stan. One defends Stan strongly, the other listens quietly. Both feel betrayed by Stan. One forgives Stan, the other doesn’t. Filbrick was involved in both situations—one wasn’t afraid of being framed if it meant standing with his brother, the other didn’t stand with his brother even as his brother was kicked out of the house.

Let’s remember the Sibling Brothers’ words to him:

“One day you’re gonna realize that you’re too good for him.” Unfortunately, that prophecy came true! Way too true!

In the commentary of Dipper and Mabel vs. The Future, Jason Ritter (Dipper’s VA) suggested that Ford believed than “you can be held back by your siblings,” to which Alex agreed. It’s not necessary to accept Word of God to understand this fact, either:

I didn’t want to end all of this on such a bitter note, since my last intention with this post is to give people more reason to hate on Ford. He is actually my favorite character and, if the parallels between The Jersey Devil’s in the Details and A Tale of Two Stans teach us anything, it is that Ford did have reasons to distrust Stan/not believe Stan was telling the truth about it being an accident. (Stan lies really, really well when he wants to! See: Not What He Seems!) It is exactly because of him being my favorite character, though, that I am so fascinated by his characterization, and I think baby Ford’s loyalty and courage deserves more appreciation. Teen Ford, on the other hand—it was never courage that he lacked.

In StanLand you’ll sail anywhere but tomorrow! The crew will guarantee the voyage lasts a lifetime