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Player
Name & Pronouns: Ink | he/him/his
Age: 30
Contact Details: PM through this journal;![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
mister_inkwell
Canon Info
Canon Name: Stanford Filbrick Pines
Canon Age: Late 60s/early 70s
Canon: Gravity Falls
Character Summary: Ford was raised poor and Jewish in Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey. His parents were distant emotionally and he was bullied relentlessly both for being a huge nerd and for his two extra fingers. This combined to instill in him a deep sense of Not Being Good Enough. His only companion and defender was his twin brother Stanley and the two were basically inseparable... until Ford got the chance to interview for a spot at a prestigious west coast technical college. He was all set to show off his perpetual motion machine he'd built, but Stanley (accidentally!) broke it, ruining his interview. Ford assumed Stan had done it on purpose because he couldn't deal with Ford going off and doing something without him, and Stan was thrown out of the house by their father for costing their family potential millions. This is a great illustration of Filbrick's parenting style and of the root of a lot of Ford's issues: Filbrick saw his sons as potential meal tickets, and praise was based wholly on how well they were performing and their potential for making him money.
Ford wound up going to a much less prestigious college, Backupsmore, which he saw as a reason to work extra hard to rise above the other students around him and show he was essentially meant for better things. He had one (1) friend during this time, his roommate Fiddleford McGucket, and otherwise basically spent all his time working. He went through to PhD 'four years ahead of schedule' and got a big ol' grant to study essentially whatever he wanted. Having always been interested in the strange and supernatural due to his extra fingers, he chose to study anomalies and for that purpose he moved to Gravity Falls, Oregon. This at the time was the concentration of more strange goings-on than anywhere else in the US, so he figured he'd start there. He began to work on a 'theory of weirdness', an explanation for where these anomalies came from -- perhaps another universe was leaking weirdness into ours? But Stanford Pines is better at soft sciences than hard sciences, and eventually he hit a wall.
So, he made a Faustian pact with a demon! No really. He found information on a 'being with answers', read a mystical incantation, and that's how he met his 'Muse' Bill Cipher. They made a deal that Bill would help Ford create a doorway through to the 'weirdness dimension', while Ford would allow Bill to possess his body. Bill complimented him and talked up how great he was and how this would show everyone who'd been cruel to him, and that pretty much got Ford wrapped around his finger. Eventually Ford recruited his old college roommate Fiddleford, an accomplished engineer, to help with the construction of the portal. This is where things started to go sour. Fiddleford suspected something was up with the mysterious other person Ford was working with that Ford wouldn't tell him about, and after an accident while testing the portal revealed to Fiddleford Bill's true form he quit the project entirely. Ford was now completely alone, having for the second time in his life lost his one (1) close emotional relationship because he chose the pursuit of knowledge and his own desire to prove himself over them. Then he lost another one right after, because this was enough to finally make him catch on that Bill was playing him.
What followed was a period of pretty intense physical and psychological torture, because it turns out when you let a demon into your head they don't stop being able to get in there just because you decide you don't like them anymore. Their relationship was not textually romantic, but it reads very much like an abusive partnership. He was already prone to paranoia and this made it far, far worse, especially because he was putting himself through intense sleep deprivation because Bill could only enter his body when he was asleep. Eventually, feeling as though he was out of options, he contacted the one person in the world he thought he might be able to trust: Stanley. Stan was expecting a tearful reunion, but what he got instead was his brother telling him to take a portion of his research and get as far away from Gravity Falls as possible. Ford was still holding a grudge over not getting into his 'dream school', because when Ford Pines gets upset about something he'll brood about it for basically ever. They got into a physical fight and in the struggle Ford was knocked into his own portal.
He wound up in the Nightmare Realm, a place ruled by Bill Cipher, and quickly fell in with a group of aliens taking refuge from Bill. He resolved to make his mission in life to kill Bill Cipher, and essentially the next thirty years of his life were dedicated to that. He became wanted across multiple dimensions not just because Bill had a bounty on him but because he did a lot of stealing to build the Quantum Destabilizer, a weapon he hoped would be strong enough to do Bill in. He writes about this time in the Journal and, notably, makes almost no mention of any close relationships. In thirty years all he did was stew on revenge, travel the multiverse, get eleven more PhDs, and get really good at combat. His mantra through this time was 'trust no one' and he believes it pretty strongly. If you get close to someone it just hurts worse when they leave you or betray you. So, don't get close to people. Life hack.
Thirty years later in 2012 his brother finally managed to fix the portal and pull Ford back into their dimension. He was able to meet his great-niece Mabel and great-nephew Dipper, but his relationship with his brother was still in the shitter and he spent most of his time down in his basement lab instead of socializing. This only changed when he realized Dipper was 'like him': smart, strange, bullied for being different. In the meantime Bill was working on a way to break into their dimension, and near the end of the Summer he finally managed it. During the initial chaos Ford was captured and turned into a golden statue. Dipper, Mabel, Stan and several other residents of Gravity Falls came to try and stop Bill, and eventually it came down to Ford and Stan trapped together in a cell with nothing to do but talk. Ultimately Stanley decided to let Bill into his mind so that his mind could then be erased, therefore erasing Bill as well. This works, and the day is saved! Stan regains his memories due to the power of friendship, and he and Ford finally start to really reform their relationship. Stan's sacrifice basically shattered Ford's personal lone wolf martyr narrative for himself, and he stopped seeing himself as a lone hero and rather as 'just a hero's brother'. He learned that being emotionally vulnerable was scary, yes, but important, and that closing himself off from other people only hurt him in the long run. He also learned that trust is something you should give people a chance to earn.
I'm taking him from literally before all of that character development! Oh no!
AU Info
AU Name: Stanford Filbrick Pines
Age: 70-ish
Suitability: n/a he old
AU History: The beginning is pretty much exactly the same: Ford was raised poor and Jewish in Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey. He was bullied relentlessly for his extra finger and treated like a meal ticket by his father, and his only close friend was his twin brother. Here, too, Stanley accidentally sabotaged Ford's chances at getting into a prestigious school and was kicked out, while Ford went to a school that was more budget-friendly. The biggest difference is that, instead of taking his grant money and going to study the supernatural, Ford took his grant money to study the phenomena of Dreamers. This would have been in the late seventies and early eighties when Dreamers were not yet widely known about, still considered by some to be a hoax, and Ford was determined to prove it was real and to be the first person to study it.
So he packed up and went to Gravity Falls, which had been having more than usual amounts of runoff from Nightmares and Torments that weren't being dealt with. While there he met Bill Cipher, a recently-awakened Dreamer who agreed to help with Ford's research. The two struck up a research relationship and then a romantic one. This turned sour after Ford's best friend lost all his memories to a Nightmare and Ford found out Bill actually had no intention at all of using his powers to protect people. The reason Gravity Falls was so beset was because Bill let the dream monsters do as they liked: his ultimate goal was to find a way to merge the dream world and the waking world, which would allow him to have his Dreamer powers while awake and thus give him the ability to do all kinds of criminal bullshit.
Unsurprisingly this led to a very messy breakup. Ford had a house and a half finished thesis in Gravity Falls so he stubbornly didn't want to leave, but the thing about Bill Cipher is breaking up with him doesn't make him go away. For the next several months Ford was pretty much a prisoner in his own house. His mental state got worse and worse due to stress and lack of sleep until he wound up having to face his own Nightmare, which caused him to awaken as a Dreamer. This helped his research along tremendously but it didn't really fix his Bill problem, until one day it just sort of... stopped. Ford doesn't know why, but the reality is that Bill was swallowed by the Dream world and is presumably still stuck out there somewhere in the same way he was trapped in the Nightmare Realm in canon.
When the Dreamer Union formed, Ford already had plenty of preliminary research to hand over to them. He saw it as a way to prove his merit, to be Useful and therefore Worthy Of Praise, and the additional bonus of moving away from all the bad memories in Gravity Falls was a welcome addition. He's been living in Japan since then, primarily focused on research but also doing odd jobs in and around the Union because if he keeps himself moving and occupied at all times he doesn't have to do any sort of self-reflection. He went back to school multiple times and is now the holder of twelve PhDs; how did he have time to do this while also being a magical fighter? The man doesn't sleep and he lives on coffee and spite. He also works in sort of an advisory position at Promised Morning, primarily auditing classes, helping develop lesson plans and doing tutoring. In what subject? All of them, he has twelve PhDs.
His primary work is still fighting in the Dream Sphere, however. He is one of the oldest active Dreamers and he shows no signs of slowing down. His combo of being particularly difficult to kill coupled with his natural curiosity make him a great asset when it comes to researching the further parts of the Dream Sphere, and he will often stay in there for much longer than another Dreamer might, just gathering information or seeing what he can find if he goes far enough. This has given him more than likely a reputation of being somewhat aloof and most definitely has got him labelled as a risk-taker. While he's by no means famous it's likely that within the DU he's one of the Dreamers who is known to be unpredictable but good enough at their job that it's worth keeping them around.
His main goal is pretty much to keep fighting Nightmares until he literally drops dead. He has not, at this point in time, made up with Stanley or met any of the rest of his family. He pretty much disappeared off their radar entirely when he left the US and he likes it that way. I also don't want to railroad potential canonmates by dictating how the ending of the show went in this AU, so I figured it was better to leave that out and set him before that development.
AU Personality: Speaking of! Boy howdy. Ford is both better and worse in this AU than in canon.
Perhaps the most important influence on Ford's personality has been his family, and luckily that part is basically the same as it is in canon. Growing up with a twin brother who he was almost never apart from and on whom he depended for both protection and emotional stability left Ford with a difficulty reaching out and connecting with other people. This was only compounded by the bullying he endured at the hands of his peers and the emotional distance between him and his father. All of this was the perfect mix to result in a man who has trouble thinking outside of himself, who has difficulty imagining different points of view and different experiences. He knows they exist, it's just that to him his are more important. This can make him come across as callous and thoughtless, and also cause him to make decisions that impact other people negatively -- he just won't think about those consequences. They aren't on his radar.
That's the thing about Ford Pines. Growing up in Filbrick Pines' household and being labelled 'the smart one' from a young age instilled within him a deep need to excel and impress. He began to equate his genius with his self-worth, something that would last with him all his life, as well as an ingrained craving for validation and a feeling of importance. Indeed, we see this in the importance he places on the college he hopes to attend and the anger and panic he feels when that dream is taken away from him because of what is perceived as his failure, which then becomes Stanley's failure (and is therefore a lot easier for him to digest). The idea that he, Ford, could possibly mess up is abhorrent to him. He constructed around himself a narrative of the lone martyr hero. I mean martyr literally, as well: Ford has shown that he's willing to die for a cause and considers himself disposable in cases of 'for the greater good' canonically, and I don't think it's unreasonable to say he tends to take on very dangerous work as a Dreamer for the same reason. He's very hard to kill but ultimately his own wellbeing doesn't matter much to him. He can come across as arrogant but deep down his sense of self worth is in the toilet, and if you look close you can tell.
Ford is more or less convinced at this point that he can't form strong emotional relationships. He has coworkers and acquaintances and that's as far as it goes. He doesn't feel like he 'belongs' with other people; he's abnormal and not good at social scripts and he feels that every time he does get close to someone it goes sour eventually. He has an intense fear of rejection, but you can't get rejected if you never give anyone the chance to do it!
He also has that classic 'it's in the past so it doesn't matter' old man take on the things he's been through. He doesn't have to think about them or acknowledge them or unpack them because they already happened, and that means they're over and done with, and he's fine. He's perfectly content how he is (citation needed). He is pretty much your classic case of 'needs to be taught the power of friendship', and having to do it in a situation where he doesn't have the bonds of family to give him a leg up is going to be extra tricky.
Luckily he's not all bad. There's good there if you look past the posturing. Despite his flaws, Ford is a delightfully strange old man. He's a certifiable genius with twelve PhDs who speaks thirteen languages fluently and is incredibly curious about the world around him (especially the Dream Sphere). He has a thirst for discovery and knowledge that can sometimes lead him into trouble, but that's never stopped him wanting to learn more. He can get obnoxious about it sometimes (most of the time), but he genuinely loves to tell people about his many many special interests and is always excited to find someone who likes the same things he does. He has a soft spot for other 'weirdos' like himself, and even collects specifically malformed reject Jellybeans because they remind him of himself.
The thing to remember about Ford Pines is that there isn't a truly mean bone in his body, just a lot of stupid ones. He is just incredibly short-sighted when it comes to things outside of himself or whatever he's focused on, and despite what he likes to think, his actions are most often dictated by his emotions rather than pure logic. Sure, he can voluntarily shut down his fear responses, but he'll often lash out in anger when it's not warranted or get utterly caught up in childish glee even when it's not productive. In a lot of ways he stopped emotionally maturing as a teenager when he lost his brother; he's kind of a seventy year old sixteen year old. My biggest goal for him in BD is to mature a little!
Other AU Changes: Nothing I can think of!
Dreamer Info
Dreamer Title: Dreamer Icarus
Appearance: I'm going for a whole Icarus + Mothman theme (what is sun if not biggest lamp). Color scheme is mostly soft browns and grays with shimmer that makes them look gold/silver, with pops of red, notably his glasses and the tips of his cape 'wings'. Because of where he is in his character development and time as a Dreamer, instead of getting a fancier outfit, my plan is for his outfit to get more saturated and colorful as he unfucks himself. If anything it might get simpler visually if he manages to break out of his dumb martyr hero mindset.
I got rid of the picture that was here because I am redoing it shhhh
Archetype: Striker
Power Considerations:
1. Flight
Between the various inspirations, this one kind of speaks for itself. At D rank it will more be 'falling with style'; his cape will act as wings that can be used to slow falls, glide short distances, and maneuver a little more freely while in the air. Any height he wants to get he has to gain in other ways, like already being on top of a building or doing a Big Dreamer Jump (tm). This is less flying for flying's sake and more a way to expand his movement options even further than a regular Dreamer.
2. Just Fucking Become A Cloud Of Moths
This is a thing the canon Gravity Falls Mothman can do and I just think it would be really fucking funny. Imagine you go to hit a guy and he just turns into a ton of moths made out of glitter and light and then reforms two feet to the left and punches you in the snout. At D rank it would really only be able to be that kind of momentary thing, a sort of failsafe 'dodge' for if his normal big human body can't get out of the way fast enough. It doesn't last long enough to be used to fly or fit through otherwise impassable tight passages or anything like that. At higher levels he could go further, though the moths would still have to cover the distance physically (no teleporting).
Signature Power: 🌠Dream Starfall Barrage ðŸŒ
Did you know the golden laurels aren't justa visual demonstration of Ford's ego meant to imitate moth antennae? Surprise! They also have a practical purpose and it's this. He takes off the laurel crown, tosses it up in the air, and the leaves break off and become golden shooting stars that hit the target until they stop being a problem. Obviously the simplest way to purify something is through heavenly light and also just hitting it very a lot.
Something something Icarus, falling, falling stars, you get it. You see the vision.
RP Sample: I'm bringing back coffee crimes it was good
Other Notes:
Name & Pronouns: Ink | he/him/his
Age: 30
Contact Details: PM through this journal;
Canon Info
Canon Name: Stanford Filbrick Pines
Canon Age: Late 60s/early 70s
Canon: Gravity Falls
Character Summary: Ford was raised poor and Jewish in Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey. His parents were distant emotionally and he was bullied relentlessly both for being a huge nerd and for his two extra fingers. This combined to instill in him a deep sense of Not Being Good Enough. His only companion and defender was his twin brother Stanley and the two were basically inseparable... until Ford got the chance to interview for a spot at a prestigious west coast technical college. He was all set to show off his perpetual motion machine he'd built, but Stanley (accidentally!) broke it, ruining his interview. Ford assumed Stan had done it on purpose because he couldn't deal with Ford going off and doing something without him, and Stan was thrown out of the house by their father for costing their family potential millions. This is a great illustration of Filbrick's parenting style and of the root of a lot of Ford's issues: Filbrick saw his sons as potential meal tickets, and praise was based wholly on how well they were performing and their potential for making him money.
Ford wound up going to a much less prestigious college, Backupsmore, which he saw as a reason to work extra hard to rise above the other students around him and show he was essentially meant for better things. He had one (1) friend during this time, his roommate Fiddleford McGucket, and otherwise basically spent all his time working. He went through to PhD 'four years ahead of schedule' and got a big ol' grant to study essentially whatever he wanted. Having always been interested in the strange and supernatural due to his extra fingers, he chose to study anomalies and for that purpose he moved to Gravity Falls, Oregon. This at the time was the concentration of more strange goings-on than anywhere else in the US, so he figured he'd start there. He began to work on a 'theory of weirdness', an explanation for where these anomalies came from -- perhaps another universe was leaking weirdness into ours? But Stanford Pines is better at soft sciences than hard sciences, and eventually he hit a wall.
So, he made a Faustian pact with a demon! No really. He found information on a 'being with answers', read a mystical incantation, and that's how he met his 'Muse' Bill Cipher. They made a deal that Bill would help Ford create a doorway through to the 'weirdness dimension', while Ford would allow Bill to possess his body. Bill complimented him and talked up how great he was and how this would show everyone who'd been cruel to him, and that pretty much got Ford wrapped around his finger. Eventually Ford recruited his old college roommate Fiddleford, an accomplished engineer, to help with the construction of the portal. This is where things started to go sour. Fiddleford suspected something was up with the mysterious other person Ford was working with that Ford wouldn't tell him about, and after an accident while testing the portal revealed to Fiddleford Bill's true form he quit the project entirely. Ford was now completely alone, having for the second time in his life lost his one (1) close emotional relationship because he chose the pursuit of knowledge and his own desire to prove himself over them. Then he lost another one right after, because this was enough to finally make him catch on that Bill was playing him.
What followed was a period of pretty intense physical and psychological torture, because it turns out when you let a demon into your head they don't stop being able to get in there just because you decide you don't like them anymore. Their relationship was not textually romantic, but it reads very much like an abusive partnership. He was already prone to paranoia and this made it far, far worse, especially because he was putting himself through intense sleep deprivation because Bill could only enter his body when he was asleep. Eventually, feeling as though he was out of options, he contacted the one person in the world he thought he might be able to trust: Stanley. Stan was expecting a tearful reunion, but what he got instead was his brother telling him to take a portion of his research and get as far away from Gravity Falls as possible. Ford was still holding a grudge over not getting into his 'dream school', because when Ford Pines gets upset about something he'll brood about it for basically ever. They got into a physical fight and in the struggle Ford was knocked into his own portal.
He wound up in the Nightmare Realm, a place ruled by Bill Cipher, and quickly fell in with a group of aliens taking refuge from Bill. He resolved to make his mission in life to kill Bill Cipher, and essentially the next thirty years of his life were dedicated to that. He became wanted across multiple dimensions not just because Bill had a bounty on him but because he did a lot of stealing to build the Quantum Destabilizer, a weapon he hoped would be strong enough to do Bill in. He writes about this time in the Journal and, notably, makes almost no mention of any close relationships. In thirty years all he did was stew on revenge, travel the multiverse, get eleven more PhDs, and get really good at combat. His mantra through this time was 'trust no one' and he believes it pretty strongly. If you get close to someone it just hurts worse when they leave you or betray you. So, don't get close to people. Life hack.
Thirty years later in 2012 his brother finally managed to fix the portal and pull Ford back into their dimension. He was able to meet his great-niece Mabel and great-nephew Dipper, but his relationship with his brother was still in the shitter and he spent most of his time down in his basement lab instead of socializing. This only changed when he realized Dipper was 'like him': smart, strange, bullied for being different. In the meantime Bill was working on a way to break into their dimension, and near the end of the Summer he finally managed it. During the initial chaos Ford was captured and turned into a golden statue. Dipper, Mabel, Stan and several other residents of Gravity Falls came to try and stop Bill, and eventually it came down to Ford and Stan trapped together in a cell with nothing to do but talk. Ultimately Stanley decided to let Bill into his mind so that his mind could then be erased, therefore erasing Bill as well. This works, and the day is saved! Stan regains his memories due to the power of friendship, and he and Ford finally start to really reform their relationship. Stan's sacrifice basically shattered Ford's personal lone wolf martyr narrative for himself, and he stopped seeing himself as a lone hero and rather as 'just a hero's brother'. He learned that being emotionally vulnerable was scary, yes, but important, and that closing himself off from other people only hurt him in the long run. He also learned that trust is something you should give people a chance to earn.
I'm taking him from literally before all of that character development! Oh no!
AU Info
AU Name: Stanford Filbrick Pines
Age: 70-ish
Suitability: n/a he old
AU History: The beginning is pretty much exactly the same: Ford was raised poor and Jewish in Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey. He was bullied relentlessly for his extra finger and treated like a meal ticket by his father, and his only close friend was his twin brother. Here, too, Stanley accidentally sabotaged Ford's chances at getting into a prestigious school and was kicked out, while Ford went to a school that was more budget-friendly. The biggest difference is that, instead of taking his grant money and going to study the supernatural, Ford took his grant money to study the phenomena of Dreamers. This would have been in the late seventies and early eighties when Dreamers were not yet widely known about, still considered by some to be a hoax, and Ford was determined to prove it was real and to be the first person to study it.
So he packed up and went to Gravity Falls, which had been having more than usual amounts of runoff from Nightmares and Torments that weren't being dealt with. While there he met Bill Cipher, a recently-awakened Dreamer who agreed to help with Ford's research. The two struck up a research relationship and then a romantic one. This turned sour after Ford's best friend lost all his memories to a Nightmare and Ford found out Bill actually had no intention at all of using his powers to protect people. The reason Gravity Falls was so beset was because Bill let the dream monsters do as they liked: his ultimate goal was to find a way to merge the dream world and the waking world, which would allow him to have his Dreamer powers while awake and thus give him the ability to do all kinds of criminal bullshit.
Unsurprisingly this led to a very messy breakup. Ford had a house and a half finished thesis in Gravity Falls so he stubbornly didn't want to leave, but the thing about Bill Cipher is breaking up with him doesn't make him go away. For the next several months Ford was pretty much a prisoner in his own house. His mental state got worse and worse due to stress and lack of sleep until he wound up having to face his own Nightmare, which caused him to awaken as a Dreamer. This helped his research along tremendously but it didn't really fix his Bill problem, until one day it just sort of... stopped. Ford doesn't know why, but the reality is that Bill was swallowed by the Dream world and is presumably still stuck out there somewhere in the same way he was trapped in the Nightmare Realm in canon.
When the Dreamer Union formed, Ford already had plenty of preliminary research to hand over to them. He saw it as a way to prove his merit, to be Useful and therefore Worthy Of Praise, and the additional bonus of moving away from all the bad memories in Gravity Falls was a welcome addition. He's been living in Japan since then, primarily focused on research but also doing odd jobs in and around the Union because if he keeps himself moving and occupied at all times he doesn't have to do any sort of self-reflection. He went back to school multiple times and is now the holder of twelve PhDs; how did he have time to do this while also being a magical fighter? The man doesn't sleep and he lives on coffee and spite. He also works in sort of an advisory position at Promised Morning, primarily auditing classes, helping develop lesson plans and doing tutoring. In what subject? All of them, he has twelve PhDs.
His primary work is still fighting in the Dream Sphere, however. He is one of the oldest active Dreamers and he shows no signs of slowing down. His combo of being particularly difficult to kill coupled with his natural curiosity make him a great asset when it comes to researching the further parts of the Dream Sphere, and he will often stay in there for much longer than another Dreamer might, just gathering information or seeing what he can find if he goes far enough. This has given him more than likely a reputation of being somewhat aloof and most definitely has got him labelled as a risk-taker. While he's by no means famous it's likely that within the DU he's one of the Dreamers who is known to be unpredictable but good enough at their job that it's worth keeping them around.
His main goal is pretty much to keep fighting Nightmares until he literally drops dead. He has not, at this point in time, made up with Stanley or met any of the rest of his family. He pretty much disappeared off their radar entirely when he left the US and he likes it that way. I also don't want to railroad potential canonmates by dictating how the ending of the show went in this AU, so I figured it was better to leave that out and set him before that development.
AU Personality: Speaking of! Boy howdy. Ford is both better and worse in this AU than in canon.
Perhaps the most important influence on Ford's personality has been his family, and luckily that part is basically the same as it is in canon. Growing up with a twin brother who he was almost never apart from and on whom he depended for both protection and emotional stability left Ford with a difficulty reaching out and connecting with other people. This was only compounded by the bullying he endured at the hands of his peers and the emotional distance between him and his father. All of this was the perfect mix to result in a man who has trouble thinking outside of himself, who has difficulty imagining different points of view and different experiences. He knows they exist, it's just that to him his are more important. This can make him come across as callous and thoughtless, and also cause him to make decisions that impact other people negatively -- he just won't think about those consequences. They aren't on his radar.
That's the thing about Ford Pines. Growing up in Filbrick Pines' household and being labelled 'the smart one' from a young age instilled within him a deep need to excel and impress. He began to equate his genius with his self-worth, something that would last with him all his life, as well as an ingrained craving for validation and a feeling of importance. Indeed, we see this in the importance he places on the college he hopes to attend and the anger and panic he feels when that dream is taken away from him because of what is perceived as his failure, which then becomes Stanley's failure (and is therefore a lot easier for him to digest). The idea that he, Ford, could possibly mess up is abhorrent to him. He constructed around himself a narrative of the lone martyr hero. I mean martyr literally, as well: Ford has shown that he's willing to die for a cause and considers himself disposable in cases of 'for the greater good' canonically, and I don't think it's unreasonable to say he tends to take on very dangerous work as a Dreamer for the same reason. He's very hard to kill but ultimately his own wellbeing doesn't matter much to him. He can come across as arrogant but deep down his sense of self worth is in the toilet, and if you look close you can tell.
Ford is more or less convinced at this point that he can't form strong emotional relationships. He has coworkers and acquaintances and that's as far as it goes. He doesn't feel like he 'belongs' with other people; he's abnormal and not good at social scripts and he feels that every time he does get close to someone it goes sour eventually. He has an intense fear of rejection, but you can't get rejected if you never give anyone the chance to do it!
He also has that classic 'it's in the past so it doesn't matter' old man take on the things he's been through. He doesn't have to think about them or acknowledge them or unpack them because they already happened, and that means they're over and done with, and he's fine. He's perfectly content how he is (citation needed). He is pretty much your classic case of 'needs to be taught the power of friendship', and having to do it in a situation where he doesn't have the bonds of family to give him a leg up is going to be extra tricky.
Luckily he's not all bad. There's good there if you look past the posturing. Despite his flaws, Ford is a delightfully strange old man. He's a certifiable genius with twelve PhDs who speaks thirteen languages fluently and is incredibly curious about the world around him (especially the Dream Sphere). He has a thirst for discovery and knowledge that can sometimes lead him into trouble, but that's never stopped him wanting to learn more. He can get obnoxious about it sometimes (most of the time), but he genuinely loves to tell people about his many many special interests and is always excited to find someone who likes the same things he does. He has a soft spot for other 'weirdos' like himself, and even collects specifically malformed reject Jellybeans because they remind him of himself.
The thing to remember about Ford Pines is that there isn't a truly mean bone in his body, just a lot of stupid ones. He is just incredibly short-sighted when it comes to things outside of himself or whatever he's focused on, and despite what he likes to think, his actions are most often dictated by his emotions rather than pure logic. Sure, he can voluntarily shut down his fear responses, but he'll often lash out in anger when it's not warranted or get utterly caught up in childish glee even when it's not productive. In a lot of ways he stopped emotionally maturing as a teenager when he lost his brother; he's kind of a seventy year old sixteen year old. My biggest goal for him in BD is to mature a little!
Other AU Changes: Nothing I can think of!
Dreamer Info
Dreamer Title: Dreamer Icarus
Appearance: I'm going for a whole Icarus + Mothman theme (what is sun if not biggest lamp). Color scheme is mostly soft browns and grays with shimmer that makes them look gold/silver, with pops of red, notably his glasses and the tips of his cape 'wings'. Because of where he is in his character development and time as a Dreamer, instead of getting a fancier outfit, my plan is for his outfit to get more saturated and colorful as he unfucks himself. If anything it might get simpler visually if he manages to break out of his dumb martyr hero mindset.
Archetype: Striker
Power Considerations:
1. Flight
Between the various inspirations, this one kind of speaks for itself. At D rank it will more be 'falling with style'; his cape will act as wings that can be used to slow falls, glide short distances, and maneuver a little more freely while in the air. Any height he wants to get he has to gain in other ways, like already being on top of a building or doing a Big Dreamer Jump (tm). This is less flying for flying's sake and more a way to expand his movement options even further than a regular Dreamer.
2. Just Fucking Become A Cloud Of Moths
This is a thing the canon Gravity Falls Mothman can do and I just think it would be really fucking funny. Imagine you go to hit a guy and he just turns into a ton of moths made out of glitter and light and then reforms two feet to the left and punches you in the snout. At D rank it would really only be able to be that kind of momentary thing, a sort of failsafe 'dodge' for if his normal big human body can't get out of the way fast enough. It doesn't last long enough to be used to fly or fit through otherwise impassable tight passages or anything like that. At higher levels he could go further, though the moths would still have to cover the distance physically (no teleporting).
Signature Power: 🌠Dream Starfall Barrage ðŸŒ
Did you know the golden laurels aren't just
Something something Icarus, falling, falling stars, you get it. You see the vision.
RP Sample: I'm bringing back coffee crimes it was good
Other Notes: