Latest Posts by quiina - Page 4

Fallen child

Bill Cipher's like "I was oppressed and restrained in my dimension so now I'll do whatever I want without considering the well-being of anyone around me!" girl you are perpetuating the cycle of cruelty 😭

girls will say "he's just like me fr" and he is a space demon who's deeply traumatized and lashes out and drowns out his problems and is literally so awful that there is none but a single being in the entire multiverse who is willing to help him

bill cipher is the character ever. he swears in cartoon sound effects. he has beef with a baby. he didn't know what colors were until he was like at least 27. he's the most powerful being to ever visit earth. he only exists in dreams. he's an alcoholic. he's a victorian. he almost certainly worked retail. he doesn't know about his own gender. he also doesn't care about his own gender. he's depressed. he likes silly straws. he knows everything. he's stupid as shit. he thinks that normal is just a setting on a washing machine. he's touchy about his sides being uneven. he's a flatland oc. he's owned by disney. he responds to "willy." he thinks in all caps. he has a reddit account

The mood is being mad at 2012-2014 era Tumblr for sexifying Bill Cipher and Cecil Palmer and drawing them in suits when they’re just silly little guys who dress like the gays they are, with zero color coordination or regard for the weather.

The oracle, time baby, and axolotl making fun of Bill like:

"You where mortal once, and it shows 💅"

bill cipher is so funny to me i love him so much i cannot believe people thought he was some kind of sexy tall guy back in the show's heyday. like are you kidding me this is a cute little thing with a silly hat and a funny bowtie and he has noodley arms and tiny hands and sock feet. he looks like a cereal mascot. he looks like an oldschool kirby antagonist. he looks like a bootleg toy you'd win at a fair. this creature is a small animal to me. i want to lounge on the couch watching tv while i pet him in my lap. he would leave me gouged out eyeballs of local wildlife and neighbour's pets on my front porch but i would just tell everyone Its ok he just has a lot of energy and ambition and personality :) don't worry about it

you've heard me talk about Bill having a horrible relationship with his parents, now get ready for

I think it's kinda funny that Bill himself drops a Flatland reference and the fact that he doesn't have a family anymore in the Reddit AMA because all I can imagine is him being like "haha people will be so freaked out by me hinting that I killed my family and came from a bleak dimension" meanwhile I'm just like "ah this poor bastard had parental issues and was traumatized by the society he grew up in"

youve gotten a few asks about billford before, and your plans for ford's relationship with bill in your fic, but im curious if you personally ship it yourself/*like* it. and, just for the hell of it, if you have any opinion on billdip too, since that one's even more controversial.

I'm gonna put most of this under a cut since it's not only long, but also long about two different topics, but the tl;dr is:

Yeah, I'm a fan of billford. I don't think it's canon, inevitable, or necessary to their dynamic, and I'm still on the fence about whether things will tilt toward the romantic in my fic or if it'll stay platonic, but I do enjoy the ship a lot because it has a lot of (obsessive, weird, unhealthy, angsty) elements that interest me to explore in ships. Billdip, on the other hand, does nothing for me. I don't care about how people ship imaginary characters in their fictional fandoms and I'm not gonna block anybody for liking it, so this isn't a moral stance, here—I just don't like it personally.

One of the things that intrigues me most about a ship is the idea of love that's gone so far it isn't even love anymore but punched out the other side into unhealthy obsession, and "I'll spend the next thirty years of my life hunting you to death" versus "What if I turn you into a gold statue and carry you around to stare at you a lot" sure fit right into "unhealthy obsession." On top of that, some of my favorite ship dynamics are:

the worshiper and the person they've picked to revere as their god, either metaphorically or literally—with bonus points if the person they've devoted themself to doesn't deserve that worship and maybe isn't even all that special, and the worship actually reveals more about the mind of the lover than it does about the (un)divine nature of the beloved

the mad scientist and the muse who gives them ideas and inspires their work (one of my all-time OTPs has a line where the mad scientist says to his ex "we were each the muse to the other"), with bonus points if they both get so caught up in "what can we do together? What dreams can we make reality—" that they plunge into full "so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should" territory—and bonus bonus points if they eventually come out of the haze of SCIENCE and one of them is horrified by what they've done... but maybe the other one isn't.

two people who are wildly compatible with each other (similar hobbies, tastes, worldviews! they fill in the gaps in each other's personalities! they each happen to be the other's type! they understand each other like no one else can! whatever, fill in the blank!), but for some reason one betrayed the other, they've tried to kill each other, and now things are vicious and bloody and painful and raw between them; but if they talk to each other and accidentally let their guards down for even a split second, all that history is still there, they still like the same stupid movies and share the same stupid inside jokes no one else will ever understand and have the same stupid complementary life dreams, they could have been good for each other, but there's no road back to where they were before the betrayal. Their chemistry is like two huge magnets strapped to land mines: the attraction is as powerful as ever but heaven help them both if they ever touch.

or, alternatively, two people that have all that chemistry, but are just really toxic and do bad things when they're together and enable all each other's worst tendencies, even if they don't necessarily do bad things to each other; and they've got to navigate the fact that they might adore each other so much but they are objectively worse people when they're together.

I like ships with inhuman things. As a writer I like waxing romantic about the inhuman things and trying to convince the reader that yes, this too is beautiful and lovable when seen through the eyes of a lover. I will make you take the stupidest love interest seriously for five minutes. I've romanticized a sticky pile of goo, I've romanticized a robot spider, I've romanticized the concept of being a disembodied voice, I've romanticized a pteranodon made out of lava, and I'll romanticize a cyclopic gold-plated corn chip too, don't test me. Who better to adore a sentient triangle than a scientist-artist who sees the beauty in precise angles?

Depending on the headcanons and/or AUs you're working with, you can get all of these pretty darn easily out of Billford.

I like writing Ford as the awed naive intellectual, hungry for knowledge, for the secrets of the universe, for more, who was utterly dazzled and starstruck by this divinity who tantalized him with esoteric secrets—and who's been furious at Bill for thirty years for betraying him, hurting him, threatening his home and everyone he loves, but underneath all that also furious at him for not being what he advertised when he could have been that; and Bill, meanwhile, playing it cool, far too comfortable playing the role of faux god, but privately, secretly distraught that his favorite "student"—the one who takes Bill's "teachings" and gets creative and inventive with them, the one who always wanted to know more, not just about the universe but about Bill personally—his favorite student no longer worships him, doesn't even respect him, doesn't even see him as an equal, but looks at him like he's the scum of the universe, and Bill won't even admit that it bothers him but it's killing him that nothing he does can get his favorite to so much as smile at him again.

That's the dynamic in my head when I write them. You could play it as purely professional, a god disappointed to lose a worshiper like a boss disappointed to lose his best employee or a celebrity disappointed to lose the president of his fan club; or you could play it like platonic friendship, maybe a QPR; or you could play it like a romance. I like the zest added when you toss romance into this already nasty mess of emotions. I like capping off all that heartache with, "—and if things had turned out differently, maybe I would have taken your hand and traveled with you to the ends of eternity, if only you weren't [such a brutal heartless backstabbing piece of shit]/[unable to forgive a few white lies and some light torture]."

Billdip, on the other hand, does absolutely nothing for me. Not even just for the age reason—that does squick me out, but even if I try to look at it like "okay pretend he's aged up" or "stick it in an AU where they're both dumb kids having dumb kid crushes" I just, see nothing there. I don't even see anything there platonically. Like, legitimately—for the fic I'm working on, I've been trying to figure out what kind of dynamic/interactions they'd have beyond just "Dipper scowls at Bill a lot" and even on that level I've been struggling to think of something compelling between them. I look back on the fact that for a good few years billdip was the ship in the fandom and I go, "why? where's the meat? what do they do for each other?"

I'm forced to imagine that the ship must have been based on some combination of "fandoms naturally want to ship the everyman main character with the charismatic fun villain," "a bunch of teens with crushes on Bill were using Dipper as their self-insert stand-in," and "people assumed Bill wasn't lying when he said Dipper impressed him and didn't start revising that opinion until we got to see firsthand that he uses lines like that on everybody." It feels really uncharitable of me to the shippers to assume that their OTP is founded entirely on statistically average fandom trends and character misinterpretations rather than, like, y'know, traits actually present in the characters, so I'm taking it on faith that there's probably more to it than that and I just don't see it because it just ain't my jam.

When I do try to speculate harder on "how would I get them to interact with each other in a compelling way, like, just in a platonic sense?" my brain starts going "well, dipper's a nerd who's into the paranormal, he wants to know about mysterious things? maybe he's fascinated with bill as a mysterious thing? and maybe... idk, why would bill give a hoot about dipper—maybe bill takes advantage of that fascination, tempts him with more information, maybe he's amused by Dipper's curiosity about weird things—?" and that's usually about the point where I go "this is just, the way Bill and Ford met. This is the watered-down junior version of Bill and Ford's first few weeks." In trying to figure out what the heck Bill and Dipper would even talk about I keep accidentally recreating a less interesting version of Bill and Ford's dynamic.

I want and need Bill and Dipper to have an interesting character dynamic in this fic so being unable to come up with something that personally compels me has been actively frustrating me lmfao, but it does serve to illustrate my main point here: man, billdip does nothing for me so hard that I can't even see them platonically interacting.

Anyway obviously there's the dreadful implications of Bill's relationship with his family being "worse than Stan's" and the Oracle specifying that he killed his parents while destroying his dimension but I'm also thinking about the specific phrasing being "including his parents and everyone else he'd ever known". Like damn he had nobody to hold onto back there huh.

me talking about bill 99% of the time: look bill is tragic when you look even a little bit beneath the surface, but i'm not gonna act like his defense attorney, he's already got one of those. at the end of the day he is a fundamentally fucked up person, and while it's incredibly sad to track how and why he got that way and he may be capable of improvement, nearly every action he has ever taken in his adult life has been horrifying and abusive and there's no excuse for all the people he has abused, tortured, hurt or killed over the countless eons he's been alive

me the minute i start to think about the circles:

I already said before that Bill Cipher is literally the worst character to get emotionally invested in but it's true. Like oh yeah I could cry over this silly cartoon triangle. Why? Oh let me just explain Journal 3 lore and tidbits from the Reddit AMA that reference a victorian novela that gives us the best picture of what his past and home dimension was like and also this secret poem that only exists in a spin off book thats otherwise non-canon and goes into how he regrets some of his actions and could potentially become better and also let me explain how all of this recontextualizes all these scenes from the show and his relationship with Ford. Btw all the horrible shit he did only fuels the fire like oil.

“I liberated my dimension, Stanford.”

Ever think about how impressively vulnerable Bill’s confession in the Fearamid was? Bill looks uncharacteristically serious and even distressed while delivering that line; it’s clearly a hard thing for him to admit. “Says he’s happy, he’s a liar.” This is something he regrets, a mistake. He misses home. He’s scared and he’s hurt, but he’s also angry and powerful and that’s one destructive combination.

Moreover, I really don’t think he’d make that confession to someone he just considered a throw away pawn. Hell, Bill was fully prepared to give Ford literally everything. I can only imagine the fact that “literally everything” was unacceptable just because Bill was the one offering it made Bill’s loathing way worse.

No wonder he tortures Ford, that’s a painful thing to be confronted with and no one does that to Bill Cipher! I’m almost certain he’d turn his own pain onto Ford: “Your family isn’t coming back. No one actually loves you. You’re worthless. You were never special.”

Let Them Say Fuck, Semi-Finals

My brain provided me with

"Fordsy was a pain in the backside even when I didn't have one."

I like the idea of Bill horrendously mishmashing flatland and Gravity Falls sayings.

(Also I like to headcanon that the Bill code we see in the Journal is plain Flatlandese script and Bill got such a chicken scratch handwriting he's automatically a doctor)

I've got a line coming up like "Would you stop walking around at night without turning the light on? It freaks everyone out." "And do you also want me to start doing a peace cry so I can't sneak up and stab you in the back too??" so Bill sprinkling in some Flatlandisms is a go.

Since the code in the Journal would be impossible to write/read in Flatland and since we also see variations on it being used by Ford and being used by aliens in Lost Legends, I assume that it's a common multiversal alphabet, or at least is commonly used in the Nightmare Realm.

For any writing system to be useful in Flatland it would have to visually present as a straight line, since that's all they can see at a time—so I headcanon their native writing system looks kinda like Morse code written out, all dots and dashes. My version of it also uses two different colors/tones, to introduce another element besides just dots & dashes to differentiate each letter.

The somewhat tragic upshot of this is that by headcanoning "no, that code ISN'T Bill's native writing system," it means we've seen him using multiple different writing systems & ciphers but we've never once seen him share anything about his own language. And that's sad! 🎉✨

bill: I've destroyed my homeworld without remorse in screams and fire! theres no place for heroes in my world! everyone will be doomed forever!! I'm essentially doing all this just for fun 😊

also bill: I liberated my dimension! I'm just trying to save everyone from the lies they've been told! I want to liberate this dimension! I want to free you from your shackles!!!

Man something about Bill being associated with fire that feels haunting. Like there was fire when his entire home was destroyed and there was fire when he died. Above all, I think it's narratively satisfying that he burned in Stan's mindscape after having burned down a dimension but it's also like. Those two events are arguably among the worst in his life. and they involve fire. which is something that's strongly associated with him.

this is your daily reminder that sans the skeleton canonically loves eating cigarettes.

THE ENTIRE TIME

I WATCHED GRAVITY FALLS

MY FATHER

THOUGHT BILL CIPHER

WAS A FUCKING

CHEESE WEDGE

UNIRONICALLY

HE THOUGHT BILL CIPHER WAS A

WEDGE OF CHEESE

Get the hell off my screen.

I just felt the need to compile these, I've been unwell about them if you couldn't tell.

Bill missing his old home dimension this badly drives me nuts man. Like, Bill has very good and valid reasons to resent his old home. Obviously destroying the place and everyone living in it was uncalled for and messed up but while his actions weren't justified, his feelings absolutely were. And it just makes me wonder what makes him still want to return. Is it nostalgia? A familiarity forever gone? The finality of what he did weighing down on him? Does he realize he could've potentially utilized his powers in a more productive way to change his dimension for the better? Do you think he would've tried reconciling or at least talking to his parents again if he could go back? Does Jheselbraum mentioning them specifically among the many other people Bill killed underline how much he hated them or how much it haunts him that he has their blood on his hands?

The scene where Bill tells Dipper that he made so many sacrifices for Mabel and she never paid him back activates my fight or flight because Mabel haters used it as an actual argument but also it's sooo interesting in terms of like. Bill could know he's 100% bullshitting here but he could also be genuinely thinking that Mabel WAS selfish for not paying Dipper back for every single nice thing he did for her but rather than judging her for that, he admires that and that adds onto the whole "Bill sees himself in Mabel" thing.

bill cipher is so funny to because if you have even a little bit of knowledge of flatland or even sort of read into what he says about his home dimension he's like pure meow meow material but he's such lil bitch it doesn't even matter. like, most flatland truthers i've seen, no matter what their headcanons about bill's upbringing and how he functioned in flatland, come to the same conclusion of "what a mess of a person" which is so funny. we're just watching this awful immortal victorian man's cringe compilation. he sucks so bad it captivates me

bill hating his parents and having an awful relationship with them being like an extra-canon/word of god trivia is so interesting to me because it really hits you in the face with "bill cipher is just a person" and also ties into the major theme about family if you think about it a bit

Something I don't talk about often but think about So Much regarding Bill's character is the eldritch and the incomprehensible of it all. Like this guy is from the second dimension. There was a period of his life where so many things that are extremely normal and mundane and natural for humans would be incomprehensible for him. But at some point he broke out of his world and shot completely past all this and spent the majority of his life in a pocket dimension that is a chaotic amalgamation of many other dimensions and now the rest of multiverse has become so dull to him and the lives of every creature that would've deeply fascinated a being like him at one point have become completely meaningless.

biting cables thinking about how Bill doesn't exactly not care about other people, but always puts himself before anyone else. like his henchmaniacs are still lackeys he lashes out against and he's fond of mabel and traps her away in a cruel fantasy world as a display of "mercy" and there's a ton of evidence he started to genuinely care about ford shortly after the betrayal yet it doesnt stop him from degrading and tormenting the poor man and he's apparently also willing to kill both of them once they cross him too much and bill being so self-centered literally goes back an eternity ago because he destroyed his dimension INCLUDING the people in it that were in just as bad if not worse positions in it as him and pretends he did everyone there a favor. GOD

Since I wrote an analysis looking into Bill's view of and relationship with Ford a while ago, I thought I'd do the same with Bill and Mabel, especially since the other analysis is partially supported with points about those two.

Comparing these posts, while the one about Bill and Ford is like "I believe Ford is very important to Bill and here's why", this one's more the reverse, as in "it's confirmed that Bill is fond of Mabel and I'm gonna look at their interactions and relevant episodes through that lense"

Bringing up the points of confirmation first, "Dipper's and Mabel's Guide to Mystery and Nonstop Fun" has Bill bringing up that he likes Mabel

and in the DVD commentary for Sock Opera, Alex Hirsch says the following:

“Bill genuinely believes that Mabel’s kinda like him. He sees Mabel as a chaos agent. Like, Mabel has got a little bit of a seed of anarchy in her, she’s a little bit selfish, she likes to have fun at whatever cost. And Bill is all those things times a billion. So he thinks when he lays it all out for her like: ‘How about instead of being lame, you do something fun! And crush whoever you want in the process!’. He thinks that’s gonna go over. And he’s not wrong in seeing that side in Mabel but Mabel is a better person than Bill Cipher.”

Which are just really interesting to me, especially since the show doesn't make it very obvious that Bill has this view on Mabel. But it certainly does put their dynamic into a new perspective.

For instance, there's the scene in Sock Opera where Bill tries to convince Dipper to make a deal with him by "calling out" Mabel:

which I'm tempted to compare to the bit in Journal 3 where Ford mentions that Bill "warned" him that Fiddleford may not be dedicated to the portal project.

To be exact there's two ways I'd compare these interactions. For one, in both cases Bill is putting a wedge between two people via manipulation to further his own goals. Second, you could argue that Bill himself genuinely believes what he's saying here.

I mean, this is the episode with the commentary basically telling us that Bill believes Mabel to be as selfish as himself. The examples he gives Dipper of the so-called sacrifices he made for Mabel aren't even that strong? One is Dipper just rescuing Mabel, one is Dipper fixing a situation that he messed with in the first place and caused Mabel to loose something, and the one where he did make a sacrifice but just so Mabel can help a third party, rather than for her own personal interest.

But of course Bill would view these as sacrifices that Mabel would owe Dipper for. Bill wouldn't give anything up for someone else if he's not getting something out of it.

As for the Ford and Fiddleford situation, if you haven't read my other post my thoughts on Bill's views on Ford basically boil down to "Bill defenetly started out bullshitting Ford when he told him he was special and they were friends, but these feelings became genuine".

And while you can make a strong case that it hasn't gotten to that point until shortly after the betrayal, considering Bill was gloating when Ford confronted him, I still want to put the idea out there that Bill started to believe Ford was actually outstanding and Bill may be able to let him in on his full intentions eventually while Fiddleford had far less potential to go through with everything.

But anyway all this really goes back to Bill possibly genuinely thinking Mabel "owed" Dipper something (because helping someone and expecting something in return is something he would do) and using that to manipulate Dipper, and him also thinking Mabel was seizing the opportunity all those times without ever returning anything to Dipper and as a result starting to see himself in her because that is something he would do.

But the reality is that while every party has to put effort into a relationship, relationships aren't transactional and Mabel wouldn't leave Dipper in the dust when it comes down to it, which this episode builds up to.

Now, I do want to say here that Sock Opera is about addressing Mabel's selfishness and that she was in the wrong here, but do not take this as me hating her or anything. Mabel is a twelve and will make poor choices in her own interest sometimes. And the point of comparing her selfishness to Bill's is that she's willing to own up to it and clearly has her limits because she cares about other people whereas Bill doesn't own up to anything and has no concern about how his actions affect anyone else.

Also, assuming Bill did take a liking to Mabel at this point, I think it's intruiging to think about the above dialouge as Bill wanting to "help" Mabel. To convince her to ditch Dipper in favor of her own self-interest because it'll be freeing. Because Bill's own reckless, selfish choices have only made him feel less restricted and absolutely never ever caused him any regret at all.

Well anyway let's skip forwards to Weirdmageddon.

The build-up towards Weirdmageddon concerning Mabel comes with her gaining more and more reason to be afraid of the future and the struggles that she expects to come with it until everything just boils over and Bill manipulates her into handing him the rift by posing as Blendin and promising to let her have a bit more time in Gravity Falls. And, in a way, he keeps that promise.

Despite Mabel and Bill not at all interacting between the rift breaking and the climax of the finale, I think the whole Mabel Land situation is sooo interesting in terms of showcasing the ways Mabel and Bill are similar but yet so different.

Now, the section of the Axolotl poem I put just a bit above in this post carries some very intruiging implications with it. Like you're telling me Bill regrets burning his dimension yet frames it as a positive thing and even plans to do it again with another dimension? And despite his silly jokester demeanor he's actually unhappy?

Perhaps being afraid of acknowledging his mistake and growing past it and accepting that life will always come with difficulties?

being so very deep in denial about it and his own feelings about it?

and drowning all that out by reveling in the chaos of the Nightmare Realm and throwing parties even though none of that will really be fulfilling?

You can also probably say something about how both Mabel Land and the Nightmare Realm are pictured as literal bubbles.

and how Bill thought it was basically impossible to escape Mabel Land and was pretty confident in that to the point where he seemed to just stop paying attention to it and not notice it bursting despite it being placed in the most notable location in the town, near the Fearamid.

And to go back to "despite their similarities, Mabel and Bill are very different", part of the reason Mabel escapes her literal and metaphorical bubble and Bill doesn't is because she has a support system. Mabel has people who look out and care for her because she has looked out and cared for them.

Bill on the other hand? His relationship with the Henchmaniacs doesn't go much deeper than party buddies who are also his lackeys who are also his punching bags if he's upset.

And while he's shown to be willing to be vulnerable with Ford, he's still way too deep in his own denial to open up a wound that deep, on top of Ford having every reason in the world to want to have nothing to do with Bill. The man has tried to kill him several times and was entirely justified in that.

-

Moving on to a point that's more about Bill being fond of Mabel rather than similarities and that I also brought up about Ford, the fact that Bill spares their lives during Weirdmageddon.

Like, the Bipper note and Bill telling his henchmen they can go eat Dipper tells me he's very much down to kill anyone who's a threat to him. And once you take the Quantum Destabilizer out of the picture, the only apparent threat is the zodiac wheel. Meaning every member of the zodiac has a target on their back.

Note that the only zodiacs Bill has contact with during Weirdmageddon, prior to the climax, are Dipper, Ford, Mabel and Gideon.

Dipper, again, he attempted to get killed even before Weirdmageddon. Gideon temporarily served as his henchman as part of a deal and was possibly only kept alive afterwards for the sake of being punshed.

Mabel and Ford meanwhile? Got their lives spared for no apparent reason other than Bill simply wanted to.

I guess you can argue that the whole Mabel Land business was part of the deal with Gideon but I always assumed the deal was just for Bill to break him out and put him in a good place during the apocalypse, plus Gideon didn't seem to care much about Mabel's well-being at this point. Still, it does help Bill if he can hold Mabel in front of Gideon but I do like to think he also spared her just out of having grown a liking to her.

The more it strikes me then that the scene at the start of Weirdmageddon where Bill could've easily taken out Mabel but just snapped her unconscious instead,

seems to mirror the scene near the end of Weirdmageddon where he's about to snap out her life.

This and Bill seemingly being done with Ford at this point as well almost feels like Bill is dissapointed by the fact that Mabel and Ford both proved to be more different from him than he thought - Mabel by getting out of the manifestation of escapism and Ford by refusing to accept Bill's offer no matter what - and lashed out at them for it.

We should talk more about storyboard Bill like look at him he's just a lil guy. He vibin