Npcguy

I forgot to post my magnum opus across my blogs so here it isssss

Trying to make something different with my John doe design (AGAIN)

I love this dumb ahh meme

________

You will be remembered as a hero. ________

So glad you asked this question!!

I can’t speak for everyone in the community, but in my case, it started off as a “lol what if” crackship, and then I fell into a deep rabbit hole I haven’t crawled out of for nearly two years now.

After I started to dig deeper, rewatching the show, reading through TBOB and the wikis for THISISNOTAWEBSITE, I realized that Bill and Stan are actually incredibly similar. 

There was already a thing floating around, the same coin theory from the early days of Gravity Falls where it was believed that Stan and Bill were the same person (or something along those lines).

People already noticed that Bill and Stan are potentially meant to be narrative parallels: they both like gold, they’re conmen, they wear a suit, they have a similar (kinda inappropriate) knee slapping sense of humour, and so on. In TBOB, you can notice how Bill even twins Stanley’s outfits, which makes you wonder: is is out of spite to mock him, or because he likes them too? 

But what I like most is the energy in their dynamic that is present in the canon: Bill hates Stanley with such passion, it’s almost poetic. 

To an extent, it’s because he can see his own flaws mirrored at him through Stanley. He tries so badly to make Ford believe they are alike when in reality he is a lot more like that ‘lesser’ twin if his. But on top of that, Bill is jealous of Stan, since in the end, Stanley out-witted and out-conned him, and still had a home and a family to return to, which is arguably the one thing Bill can’t have.

Furthermore, if Bill doesn’t consider Ford a threat to his intellect, praising his scientific genius, he doesn’t feel very moved by him either. While he seemed to have something ongoing with Ford, their chemistry wasn’t strong enough to sway him in any way. 

Sure had a breakdown at O’Sadleys and manufactured a fantasy of him and Ford sharing a karaoke night, but that’s about it. Bill may be yearning for him and may wish he had something more with Ford, but he still views him as a pawn in the end. On the website especially he stays reserved when speaking about him, claiming he doesn’t care (yes you do Bill, yes you do.)

On the other hand, he can’t seem to shut up about Stanley, whom he severely underestimated and now hates with a vivid passion. 

I’m sorry, what do you mean you can barely say anything about Ford, but you know the confines of Stanley’s mind, you know what he likes, what he fears, and on top of that you wrote a whole poem about him? Even in TBOB he crashes out in the end because he assumes Stan is the reason our ‘psychic link’ with him is weakening…like GIRL, who said anything about Stanley ?!

Aside from that triangle’s delusions, it’s clear that Stan is a worthy opponent for him in a battle of wits. Stanley can read through Bill easily and he doesn’t take any of his crap—this is shown as much in show as in TBOB and even in the material that didn’t make it into the show itself. The best kind of enemy is the one that knows which buttons to push to keep it interesting, Bill and Stan would ragebait each other if put in a room together.

Their likeness of mind could easily have made them get along had they met much earlier. Under different circumstances, they really could have been good friends or partners in crime.

TL:DR: Here’s a summary in a few points why they had ship potential:

-they’re narrative parallels (lots of likeness)

-Bill is fricking obsessed with hating on Stan (and that’s kinda gay if you ask me)

-they are worthy rivals in wits 

-enemies/rivals to lovers potential

-in a different world, if they became pals, they would’ve been nearly unstoppable