OK I REALLY LIKE HOW IT TURNED OUT-

I LOVE IT

I haven't seen GF in years but was abruptly reminded a while ago and found your blog and your Pinecest+Stancest posts while looking at the Pinecest tag so I gotta share this plot that's now trapped in my brain. If I got the details about canon wrong, blame the passage of time, not me lol.

Ok I'm sure I'm not the only one who came up with that but: Mutually Unrequited/Pining Stans that both never acted on their feelings and spent the entire separation depressed about it and blaming the way they were hiding their feelings partially for how things went down. Enter Pinecest, only just clocking that this is Not Normal Sibling Feelings.

Stan encourages it when he first realizes it because he never got to even try, but maybe Mabel and Dipper can be happy. So he bullies any boys Mabel brings home, shuts down Dipper's flirt attempts with Wendy & Pacifica - Dipper catches on to his feelings first and wants to prove to himself that he's NORMAL OKAY??? he is, in fact, super not normal, but he'll scream that he is at the top of his lungs - and then Ford returns.

Ford also immediately catches on to Dipper's crush. Because he gets Dipper, and of course, he'd love his twin. He can't see Mabel's feelings as easily because he's insta-transferencing her and Stanley and the idea of her liking Dipper back is unfathomable (read: heartbreaking) because then it means perhaps Stanley could've loved him too.

But he cares about Dipper, so Ford thinks the best he can do is maybe help cut off those feelings at the knees before there's no going back for him, at least Dipper might not totally lose Mabel the way he and Stan thought they had lost each other, might eventually lead a normal non-recluse full of regrets life unlike them. So Ford offers to let Dipper stay without letting on his real reason to do so, and Mabel FLIPS OUT.

The thoughts have been building in the back of her head for a while, and she's suddenly confronted with what she never thought possible. Losing Dipper. And it hurts so so much and then Weirdmageddon comes and things go completely off the rails and now she knows she loves him but he's her brother, the world is ending and maybe he doesn't actually like her at all.

It ends with Dipper admitting to Mabel why he was even contemplating separation and Ford is trying to stop him while Stan has been working for this for months, damnit, and Ford's attempts at shutting the confession down just kill him. Dipper says it anyway, and Mabel thinks she's dreaming, but yeah, dummy, I love you too. How could you even think otherwise?

And seeing their dramatic first kiss totally guts Ford. He's happy for them, clearly, but he wants this oh so much and he can't have it. Stanley is shocked at how much Ford's affected by this development and things just blow up from there, and before either of them know it they're kissing.

Meanwhile Mabel and Dipper finally remember where they are and who they're with and fuck this is going to be difficult to explain - wait wtf GRUNKLES WHAT ARE YOU DOING. Well nothing they weren't right before that.

The rest of summer is an insanely awkward transition period where both couples are trying to work out how to deal with this new dynamic and what it means for their lives, especially for when Dipper and Mabel go back home. But everyone is insanely happy and when Dipper and Mabel come back to GF it's together, to a married couple of Grunkles (in everything except the eyes of the law).

And perhaps someday a - but lbr it'll be two - Pinecest Baby crawls around the Mystery Shack to everyone's delight...

ANON YOU'RE SO CRACKED AAAAAAAAH

such a cute premise of them finding out about each other's budding relationships despite the warnings from Ford and adamant attitude from Stan. SO good. flavor.

also implying that ford and stan were like watching/listening from around the corner or something is peak. honestly? this ask means so much to me.

Sometimes I see people absolutely losing it over Stan bros fanart because they can’t tell if it’s platonic or a ship—and honestly? It’s because, deep down, they know it could be a ship. And yeah, it gets kinda exhausting how much people feel the need to emphasize “it’s just brotherly!!” Like… if it were that obvious, would you really need to say it?

I don't want to be (too much of) an asshole but the whole "I shouldn't have to explain this isn't Stancest" to me is so sad... And frustrating. I genuinely want to ask these people to take a walk with me and show them their own work... Show them the way the characters lounge on one another, how they sleep cuddled together and live in the same house and kiss each other on the cheek and forehead and hold each other in bed... And then ask them "Would you sleep with YOUR sibling like this?"

Genuinely. Would YOU, the artist, sleep with YOUR SIBLING like this? Look. I wish we lived in a big beautiful world where anyone can cuddle with anyone and it doesn't have to mean anything, but we don't LIVE in that world. There is such a thing as couple codding, and the way that the twins get drawn draped over each other, placing their hands on each other's pecks etc etc... This is COUPLE language. Put ANY OTHER CHARACTERS THAT ARE NOT SIBLINGS in this situation and then look me in the eye and tell me that they are not a couple. Stancest does not have to involve SEX if you do not want it to- queer platonic couples are a THING. What you are drawing are queer platonic Stancest. The worst part is there are a lot of artist who draw QPR or nonsexual stancest, who embrace the term without feeling drawn to the sexual side. And I don't want to be like "Back in my day shit was better", but back in my day there wasn't this same violent hatred there was, and people were a bit more ready to be open about liking it. If you look at old Stancest art from when the show was still airing, you'd find pieces with a LOT more attention then they'd ever get now, and I don't think it's just because of lesser audience. I think the GravFalls fandom is thriving. I just think that fandom is so much more widespread and therefore so much more policed then it used to be. Anyway. It sucks, there's no fixing this, but I'm glad the Stancest fandom has gotten a little laugh out of it. But also maybe don't harass people, all right?

The modern Gravity Falls fandom is so spoiled 😭😭 ppl get so up in arms and annoyed about fully legal, fairly inoffensive ships but don't know the hell we had to suffer thru back when this shit was airing. Like everyone knows BillDip reigned supreme back then but we've kinda erased the fact that Pinecest was also MASSIVE. Y'all don't know how good we have it nowadays. Just let ppl ship whatever combination of unrelated grown adults they want

Idk. Back in my day we had to walk uphill both ways to school or something

Sure ig..

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.

as much as i want to see fiddleford recover and enter his much-deserved era of good mental and physical health, i also want to see the effects of his head trauma follow him forever. it’s important to me that while he heal and find a level of normalcy and peace, he never return to his old self.

kind of a side bar, but it’s relevant so: i also think there’s something to be said about old man mcgucket’s confidence. boldness? idk how to describe it. i wouldn’t say his paranoid tendencies have vanished, but for the most part he’s. breezier. part of it is the brain damage, and maybe part of it is genuine self-evolution in the right direction. but i think the obsessive mind-wiping just… broke that part of his brain. it’s like he’s no longer affected by fear in the same way. and i hope we see strong traces of that damage until the day he dies.

it’s important to me that fiddleford heal and emerge into self-awareness once more. it’s important to me that ford still look at him as very much the same person, despite all of the damage. but he’s also changed severely and irreversibly. i think of old man mcgucket as a much rawer version of fiddleford in that he holds less reservations and has no filter. he’s healing but he’s also broken, and those scars will forever be visible. and that’s important to me because it also changes ford and fiddleford’s dynamic a lot.

ok one last sidebar, then i’m done. when i say it changes their dynamic i mean it in the way that because fiddleford now wears his heart on his sleeve and ford himself is a bit wiser about relationships, there is less self-sabotaging going on between them. romance or friendship wise. and if nothing else, they both feel they’re getting too old for biting their tongues, so i imagine the discussions of certain difficult topics comes a bit easier now.

like, given that they’ve both made many catastrophically terrible decisions over their lives, they have a better perspective on life in general and have had time to reorient their previously fucked priorities. ford lives with a lot of shame for how he treated stan, dealing with the devil, and bringing about the end times. fiddleford lives with a lot of shame for how he treated emma-may and tate, starting a cult that ruined lives [especially his own], and not to mention the multiple death robot incidents. even though they both had good intentions or else thought their actions were justified at the time [mostly], it all collapsed on their heads because these actions were ridiculously stupid.

i think all of this is part of why the rekindling of their friendship happened so easily. fiddleford is eager to forgive ford and embrace him because he’s learned first-hand what grief and paranoia can drive a person to do, and so he feels the best thing he can do is accept his old friend back into his life, no questions asked. maybe ford will forever think he doesn’t deserve it, but he learns to accept mcgucket’s kindness and tries to learn from it. they’re both healing even if it’ll never be Backupsmore again. it’s still them, despite it all.

Synopsis: Growing up is tough especially when you don't know that your a half to a duo.

Do You Ever just wonder what it would be like if Stan and Ford were separated at birth?

Woo new chapter is out now

I’m sure this has been talked about before, but my brain exploded when I saw a TikTok edit of Stan and Ford with Would You Fall in Love Again, at least the first part of the verse—"Is it you?" I just now realized how obvious the parallels are between Penelope/Odysseus and the Stans.Especially since most of the comments agree that Stan was basically Penelope, waiting for 30 years and doing everything he could to see Ford again. I know a lot of people see it as platonic, but if you show me an edit with that song and that parallel, there’s no way I can see it that way. They are definitely husbands 😭😭. Now I really wanna see a full edit or animatic of them with the entire song.

Brother kisser.

yatta my first teen stancest

comics based on by the skin of your teeth by Rev (apathetic_revenant) on ao3