[It's like Ford said to Harry not long ago-- it feels as though some long, complicated story is a unifying factor in the people drawn to this world. If he were a little more predisposed to believe in fate he might think it's something karmic, some good to balance out all the bad. He isn't and he doesn't, but it's difficult not to notice all the same.]
I don't think any man is without regret.
It throws things into much sharper focus to know there are potentially-infinite universes out there in which I did not make the same mistakes, or at least not all of them. I've visited a couple. I was happy in them.
[It rankles deeply to know he was likely the first Ford to fall for Bill's tricks hard enough to bring on the apocalypse, but it made everything make a lot more sense once he realized that Bill had had that many tries to perfect his pitch.]
But there are lessons I have learned and things I have been able to experience that the Stanford Pines heading the respected scientific institute has likely never even imagined. Do you know what I didn't see in that 'better' universe? My family.
[Stanley got on that boat and sailed as far away as possible. Probably dead, or rotting in a foreign jail. Dipper and Mabel? Who knows. He didn't know they existed at the time, he couldn't have known to ask, but he has a sinking feeling that a Stanford with all his childhood dreams of 'showing them all' realized would have distanced himself as hard as possible from his humble beginnings on Glass Shard Beach and everyone who'd been a part of them.]
no subject
I don't think any man is without regret.
It throws things into much sharper focus to know there are potentially-infinite universes out there in which I did not make the same mistakes, or at least not all of them. I've visited a couple. I was happy in them.
[It rankles deeply to know he was likely the first Ford to fall for Bill's tricks hard enough to bring on the apocalypse, but it made everything make a lot more sense once he realized that Bill had had that many tries to perfect his pitch.]
But there are lessons I have learned and things I have been able to experience that the Stanford Pines heading the respected scientific institute has likely never even imagined. Do you know what I didn't see in that 'better' universe? My family.
[Stanley got on that boat and sailed as far away as possible. Probably dead, or rotting in a foreign jail. Dipper and Mabel? Who knows. He didn't know they existed at the time, he couldn't have known to ask, but he has a sinking feeling that a Stanford with all his childhood dreams of 'showing them all' realized would have distanced himself as hard as possible from his humble beginnings on Glass Shard Beach and everyone who'd been a part of them.]