▶ PLAYER
HANDLE: Ink
CONTACT: mister_inkwell
OVER 18? Sure am.
CHARACTERS IN-GAME: N/A

▶ CHARACTER
NAME: Stanford Pines
CANON: Gravity Falls
CANON POINT: Post-canon
AGE: 69
BACKGROUND: Wiki here! I apologize that like many fan-edited wikis it's not the most polished. If you need clarification on any point or a more concise summary please let me know.

PERSONALITY: Ford Pines is, to put it simply, weird. He's lived a very long life that has from the very moment of his birth been jam-packed with strangeness, and it's deeply influenced how he thinks and interacts with the world around him.

Perhaps the most important influence on Ford's personality has been his family. 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.

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 and it's the same intense need to be Right that drives him to make deals with demons and nearly the doom the entire world over a grammatical error. That is often how he phrases things when he talks about Bill, as well: he talks about his regret that he was tricked, that he could be so stupid, much more than he talks about his regret about what Bill has done to others. He sees the main conflict of the story as a mistake of his own that he must correct, as a personal failing with himself, and that is why he is so incredibly dedicated to taking down Bill and putting things right. For thirty years of his life after he fell into the portal he lived in a transient state, never making friends, focused only on survival and revenge. He constructed around himself a narrative of the lone martyr hero (and really was doing so even as a much younger man, to a lesser degree). 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'. His original plan to take down Bill was a suicide mission. When he's captured by an alien prison droid he immediately gives himself up for dead and tells Dipper to run. He was prepared to let Bill torture him to death rather than reveal a way out of Gravity Falls. This ties back into his inherent issues with self-worth. If he fucks up, then he will go to any length-- any length-- to fix it. For a long time it was getting him to admit he fucked up that was the issue.

Luckily by the end of canon and particularly the point I'm taking him from, Ford has grown. And, again, all of this is thanks to his family. After being brought back to his native universe Ford reconnects with his brother and meets his grand-niece and grand-nephew, and the three have a profound impact on him. In Dipper and Mabel he sees himself and Stanley, and this leads to him clumsily attempting to connect with Dipper and instead projecting his own issues so hard onto him he could probably be his own drive-in movie theater. The two of them share many talents and hobbies and so Ford finds Dipper to be the easiest to reach out to, and yet he still has trouble realizing that Dipper's experiences are not his own, likely because of the similarities he sees between them. He is less close to Mabel, but he does warm up to her very quickly thanks to her own brand of Weird, something he admires in her even if he doesn't quite always understand it. He cares for them both but he assumes he knows what they want and need better than they do because he assumes his way of thinking is always right.

And then there's Stan. Stan, who Ford nursed a grudge against for forty years over a misunderstanding and then a cruel accident (this is a habit of Ford's; he can hold a grudge like you wouldn't believe). It isn't until the kids are in terrible danger and him and Stan are literally locked in a box together that they manage to work their differences out. Here it's a case of too little too late; Stan's sacrifice of his entire self to save the rest of the world smacks Ford across the face with the realization that his brother is the hero, not him, and that his grandiose ideas of his own self-importance mean absolutely nothing if his bonds with his family are broken. Up to this point he's been living in a sort of half-fantasy where he's lone (emphasis on lone) hero of his own story, and his family have been slowly whittling that away; this is what undoes it for good. Ford probably says it best in the closing statements of his journal: 'You hold a record of one man's folly and the kindness of a family who saved him from himself'. Now, post-canon, his intent is to move forward and try to learn to be better, moving from a viewpoint of trusting no one but yourself to a more mature understanding that trust is something worth giving when it's earned. All of his bad qualities are still there, but now he's done the difficult thing of acknowledging them and can attempt to work around them.

There's good there too. Despite his flaws, Ford is a delightfully strange old man. He's a certifiable genius with twelve PhDs who is incredibly curious about the world around him and all of the other worlds beyond that. 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. On top of that he's creative; he is an accomplished artist and inventor, with an incredible array of devices under his belt including a mind-control tie and a lightbulb that makes your skin softer. His labor of love is his devotion to the weirdness all around him, and he is pretty dang weird himself to match. He loves a good game of Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons, and has a sweet tooth for jelly beans (specifically the malformed ones). In essence, Ford Pines may think he's the badass hero of a scifi novel but in actuality he's a doofy nerd who in some ways never really grew up. He has a tattoo that says HEY NOW, I'M AN ALL STAR for goodness' sake.

The thing to remember about Ford Pines is that, for all the hurt he can cause and the bad things his choices have put into motion, there isn't a truly mean bone in his body. He is just incredibly short-sighted when it comes to things outside of himself or his mission, 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. He's a good man, really, he's just an idiot. With twelve PhDs.

POWERS/ABILITIES: Ford has no superhuman powers or abilities. He's a standard human, he just works out.

INVENTORY: 1 set of electrified gloves, 1 ray gun, 1 journal, 1 photo of him with Stanley and the twins, 1 bottle of cosmic sand, 1 canteen half-full of whiskey.

MOONBLESSING: Cordis

▶ SAMPLES

TDM Toplevel with multiple threads!