I’m So Normal Abt Loz I Promise

PANEL REDRAW 'cause I loved it so much I've been thinking about it all day

North West basement 4

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How sometimes you'll sit down next to a npc and they'll start chatting you up. The ancient writings on the wall of a child wishing their father a good day at work. The few times Fi has told me that I must hurry or that what I'm doing has a 0% chance of being useful

Time: has a treehouse in the middle of a dark oak forest somewhere. no type of pathing whatsover but somehow always finds his way home w no issue. is fully decked out in diamond enchanted armor but spends most of his time collecting different plants for his garden. loves the lush caves it’s the only reason he goes mining and he somehow always lucks out w finding ores. has every mob head and wears them all the time. keeps an allay as a pet that follows him everywhere

Wars: spends most of his time fighting mobs, has every type of armor and weapon, all fully enchanted (though not very good enchantments), hates going mining cuz he always gets lost, but he loves finding spawners. depends on trading to get most of his items. house is made completely of stone, he’s trying to upgrade it into a castle but he’s on thin ice w his stone brick dealer (legend) bc he called him a hoarder. gets trolled constantly

Legend: has been to every single biome and has hella resources from each one, def wanna stay in his good graces cuz if you need something, he’s got like fifty stacks of it. his chest and map room are truly something legendary. pretty fair w trading unless ravios online, he will hijack the exchange and somehow leave you with nothing. has the best luck with enchanting and a personal vendetta against chickens. is trying to get all the achievements done but keeps getting dragged into shenanigans

Wild: no one wants his ass anywhere near their base he is a creeper MAGNET and he sucks at killing them. also doesn’t help that he prioritizes making tnt over everything. he won’t blow people’s stuff up on purpose but everyone is still wary. lives in a beautifully built home, like he genuinely put a ridiculous amount of effort into it but then he’ll try to do something stupid like make a lava trash can and winds up either burning down all his stuff or accidentally falling into it. always has food on him and shares it liberally. will fight mobs w anything but a sword and is always getting lost

Twilight: finds the most beautiful location to build with mountains and trees all around him. his house is small but he has a huge farm w so many crops. name tags every animal he sees but lets them roam free, the others keep finding them all over the map. has a horse stable and welcomes people to borrow them but will hold a grudge if one dies. has several wolves guarding his nether portal and has banned wild from using it bc he’s always bringing in mobs.

Four: sets up camp in the first village he sees, has all the villagers trade levels unlocked and has built a whole wall around to protect them. prefers to strip mine over going to caves cuz he just finds it relaxing. he has plenty of diamonds but prefers to use iron tools. usually the one to be called when someone dies and loses their stuff. really good with red stone, he has an automatic farm for everything

Wind: built a pirate ship in the ocean and uses it as his home. has raided all the shipwrecks and ocean monuments. has a pet pig he keeps in front of the ‘steering wheel’ of the ship. finds the stronghold completely accident and is determined to kill the ender dragon w no help. will eventually succeed. always has a boat on him. gets really excited about treasure maps, will tag along if someone else finds one.

Sky: built his home in the sky and is always falling off the side. is the first to find an elytra for this reason and is really good at flying. he uses one diamond sword that he keeps mending over and over again. has several pet parrots and they always startle him but he refuses to leave his home w out one. feels really bad about killing any animals and will apologize to them every time he does.

incorrect response: write the rest of the story to be as twisty, shocking and counter to expectations as possible, regardless of whether this is a logical or satisfying way for the plot to go

correct response:

(you’re not stupid. I posted this thinking it would amuse a handful of mutuals who all knew the context and that would be about it, so I didn’t think about providing any other explanation. I had no idea it would spread this far.)

I’ll start from the very beginning just to be thorough. so this is Alex Hirsch, creator and head writer of Gravity Falls, a show which had a big focus on mystery, conspiracies, codes and ciphers, etc. the whole plot is kicked off by one of the main characters finding a mysterious old journal in the woods, which detailed all kinds of weird and supernatural things, but then ended abruptly with the author saying they had to hide the journal because they were being watched. the central driving mystery of the show, therefore, was the question of who wrote the journal and what happened to them.

now, the thing about Gravity Falls is that, while it must be said that the writers weren’t always quite as sure of their plans as we tend to like to think they are, it is very much a fair play mystery, with legitimate clues to what was going on. but the writers were caught off guard by how quickly the show attracted a dedicated audience, including a lot of people outside the primary presumed demographic, who started solving the clues faster than expected. so some of the fans were able to correctly guess who the author was before it was revealed in the show, and the theory started spreading. this put the writers in something of a panic, because this was THE mystery that the whole story revolved around, with ¾ of the show building up to the dramatic reveal in the middle of season 2. they wanted it to be a mystery that could be figured out, sure, but they weren’t prepared for people to solve it so far in advance of when it was planned to be revealed, which would have really taken away from the big moment. they weren’t going to change the main story itself, but having been caught unaware by how much attention the fans were paying, they wanted to up the ante and make the mystery more complex to solve going forward–but first they needed to buy some time and throw the fandom off the scent for a little longer.

hence, Alex’s plan as described above. they whipped up a fake shot that appears to give away the identity of the author as being another character in the show, put it on a screen in the studio as if it was a real animation frame, took a picture of it, and ‘leaked’ it online. it was initially decided to be a hoax (albeit, I think, presumed to be a hoax originating from outside the production team), until Alex posted this tweet:

…before quickly deleting it (though not so quickly that it didn’t get seen, of course).

it worked well enough to distract most people for a while, and wasn’t revealed as a hoax until a year later, when an episode aired that definitively proved that the supposed screenshot could never have happened, at which point Alex owned up to the whole thing as seen in the tweet above. by then the episode with the real reveal wasn’t far off, and while people did still work it out ahead of time, it was more of an “OH MY GOD I KNEW IT!” moment than a “booooooring, we’ve known that for ages” moment, which of course was what the writers wanted all along.

personally I find this a fascinating approach to dealing with the problem of spoilers, because it doesn’t affect the story itself at all; if you watch Gravity Falls today–or if you were watching it when it aired without any significant contact with the fandom–you’d never know about it. ultimately, the problem the writers were facing wasn’t that some people might guess the answer to the mystery–they never wanted to make it completely impossible to predict–so much as it was that they hadn’t designed the story to stand up to so many people working on the puzzle together, which resulted in a sort of total output of puzzle-solving ability that far outstripped the capability of any one solo human being. so their solution is something that’s very much targeted toward delaying that group problem-solving, without actually affecting the experience of any individual person watching the show.

plus, it’s very in keeping with the overall tone of the show.

don’t:

change the ending

do:

direct orders of "you really really need to kill this guy" ignored: 1