Return to the Falls

Stanford Pines pulled off his goggles and mask with one hand but didn’t look up as he kept messing with his remote.  “I’m well aware of the gravity of our situation, Naomi,” he said.  “And if you’d let me have a moment’s peace, I could be devoting my full attention to getting us out of it.”

A nearby blast sent stray debris cascading over the two.  “Sure, blame me for that.”  Naomi rolled her eyes.  “Whatever you’re plotting, just make it quick.”

“Patience is a virtue,” Ford said absentmindedly.

“Well you and I ain’t exactly the virtuous types,” Naomi said.  “So gimme a better excuse.”

“How’s this for an excuse?”  With a dramatic flourish, he pressed a final button.

A series of distant pops rang out, culminating in one massive explosion of light and sound.  Ford confidently stepped out from cover, and when he wasn’t immediately gunned down, Naomi followed.

Indeed, the guards were now too occupied to give a second thought to the former targets of their pursuit.  Towering flames consumed the building on the hill and the guards swarmed around it in panic and confusion.

Naomi nodded in satisfaction as she surveyed the damage.  “That’s one way to get the job done.”

“Had a feeling we’d need to cover our tracks in a hurry,” Ford said.  “So I planted some charges while we were sneaking around.  Just needed the chance to sync them up.”

Naomi clapped him on the back.  “Those poor saps wish they had a partner half as cool as mine.”

Ford raised an eyebrow.  “Cool?  You sure you don’t mean lame?  Or nerdy? Or embarrassing?  That’s more what I’m used to.”

Naomi laughed.  “I don’t believe you were ever any of those things, Pines.  And even if you were, you definitely aren’t now.” She wrapped her arm around his shoulder and gestured toward the chaos atop the hill.  “We’ve both got a knack for getting into and out of trouble.  A swashbuckling duo like us could make a real name for ourselves in the world!”

Ford couldn’t help giving a wistful smile. “Sounds like someone I used to know.” His expression clouded and the smile vanished.  “Now since they’ve got their hands full, we can make a clean getaway.”

“We could,” Naomi said.  She unholstered a blaster from her hip and twirled it playfully. “Or we could take the chance to nab ourselves a bit of vengeance.”

Ford frowned.  “That’s hardly the most logical course of action.”

“Logic shmogic,” Naomi said, waving a hand dismissively.  “Let yourself be petty for a change.”

Ford hesitated, his attention returning to the device still in his hand for a moment, and he released a long, slow exhalation.  “You know what, a bit of mindless mischief may be just what the doctor ordered.”

“Now we’re talkin’!” Naomi said, pumping her fist. “Firebrand Ford is runnin’ wild again!”

Without another word, she charged back into the open and toward the hill, hooting gleefully and firing her blaster ahead. Ford chuckled and started to follow, but paused and glanced at his communicator again.  He tapped a button and the tiny screen flashed on to show his homebrewed calendar application – his only means of keeping track of Earth time as he hopped across dimensions.  Bold font spelled out the date on the screen:  June 15th.

He rummaged in his pocket and produced a crumpled photo, which he carefully straightened out, revealing a photograph of a much younger version of himself, shirtless aboard the rotting frame of a beached ship, smiling proudly alongside a nearly identical boy.

Sighing, he flipped the picture over and scratched a tally mark on the back – one of many.

“Hurry up, slowpoke!” Naomi’s voice called back to him.  “I ain’t afraid to hog all the action for myself!”

IQ-tie

The working title for this chapter was “Mabel and the Smarty Pines”, which never quite sat right with me, but I had a hard time thinking of something better.  What would become the titular pun was originally on Mabel’s sweater, which said “IQ and QT”.  But then when I was trying to think of a better title, @immaplatypus told me the similar pun – that Mabel was an IQ-tie – and it immediately stood out to both of us that it would be a much better title.

Is Trivi-o’s a lame name for a cereal?  I debated about it and decided yes, it is, and that is good.  A lame name for a lame cereal.

I did a lot of second-guessing myself about the logistics of the Sfinx and her very existence, but I’m glad in the end I didn’t let myself overthink it too much.  I’m really happy with how she turned out.

Much like the previous chapter, I wasn’t totally sure of how the heroes were going to turn the tables at the climax, and then when I separately thought up Carla’s “It’s for … arson” line in reference to her lighter, then I decided that’d be a good ole Chekov’s gun to bail them out.  But there was an early draft in which Carla piloted McGucket’s sphinx robot like an anime mech to beat the crap out of the Sfinx herself, so that’s fun to think about.

Challenge of the Hunt

The theme of the chapter always centered around the idea that there are more ways to win a challenge than simply playing along, but the finer details of the plot went through some major changes.  In one particularly bleak version, the Hunt was the ghost of a child who was abandoned in the woods and was misguidedly trying to protect Dipper and Mabel from their Grunkles, but that never felt quite right to me.

Skull Kid from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask was a major visual and behavioral inspiration for the Hunt, though they ended up being very different in the end.  My original sketches of the Hunt even included a very Majora-esque mask.

Originally instead of having a pet wolf, the Hunt was going to transform into a giant wolf-like beast themself during their chase.  I later decided that having a pet wolf to help would add to the huntsman theme, plus it just didn’t feel like a very sporting ability for the Hunt to have themself.

On a related note, if the joke wasn’t obvious, the Hunt’s wolf is named Virginia as a pun on the author, Virginia Woolf.

Originally instead of taking trophies from the losers of their game, the Hunt was going to just straight-up murder them, with it being implied that the Manotaur from the beginning was killed, but that was darker than I wanted and made it feel harder to let them off scot-free at the end, so I’m glad I had the trophy idea instead.  Plus that led to some fun Stan dialogue, so it’s a win-win!

The chapter didn’t originally feature Candy and Grenda but I was really itching to write for them and already had other side characters to focus on in upcoming chapters, so I threw them in here.  I’m really glad too, got some great material out of their inclusion.

Grenda’s middle name being “Papercut” is, of all things, a Kick Buttowski reference, where Carl Faruolo, Grenda’s voice actor, voices a former wrestler named Papercut Peterson.

The original version of the “Grenda tramples the Hunt” scene instead had her and Dipper being ambushed by the Hunt and her instinctive response being to pick up the Hunt and throw them like a shot put.  I really wish I’d found a way to incorporate that because it’s such a hilarious image to me.

The whole bit of dialogue in the pit with Stan rambling about digging out was graciously provided by @immaplatypus

I had various different ideas for the Hunt’s “trophy room”. The first was going to be something Dipper and the others stumble on while fleeing that really gets them freaked out about what the Hunt can do, but I struggled to organically fit it in and thought things were getting kind of long anyway, so instead I made it the sight of the climactic showdown with the Hunt.

For anyone not catching the joke, Stan calling the Hunt “Helen” is a reference to actress Helen Hunt.

The Carla and Soos subplot was born from this being one of my oldest chapter ideas, at a point in which I hadn’t even added Carla to the story yet, so I realized much later on that I just completely forgot to ever add her to this chapter.  And since Soos wasn’t a part of the family camping trip, then that all worked out perfectly to pair him up with Carla.  And I’m really glad it did, because their scenes were some of my favorites I’ve written so far.

Scrapped line from Soos, reassuring Carla about her place in the Shack: “Rudeness is polite in this house!  It’s just like Mr. Pines always says: get off the premises or I’ll shoot!”

There’s not really any significance to the Hunt being a deer-fox.  I wasn’t drawing from any particular inspiration, it was just two animals associated with hunting that I thought made a good aesthetic, and I think I’d been watching Hilda (which also features a deerfox) around the time I was initially sketching them.

Some other possibilities I considered for the ending cryptogram:

YOU JUST LOST THE GAME – if you get this, you’re liable for a senior’s discount

IT REMINDS ME OF THE HUNT – an obscure Fairly OddParents quote I think of daily

THE HUNT HUNTER HAS BECOME THE HUNT HUNTED – the word “hunt” really just gets used a lot in this chapter

The Sorceford’s Apprentice

Once again, Robbie’s song was spur-of-the-moment spit out by Jessica. Everyone go love up on her and her extraordinary talents.

Instead of a possum king, Dipper and Gideon were originally going to deal with a squirrel king that is defeated because Gideon is a true southern gentleman and always carries cashews in his pockets.

Supernatural Speakeasy

Here’s one passage from the town meeting that I had to cut for pacing but nevertheless love a lot:  “I’m still temporarily deprived of my wealth,” Preston Northwest said.  “And my pyramid scheme – I mean perfectly legitimate business – needs buyers. And I’ve already ripped off – I mean marketed to – almost everyone in town.”  He leaned over to the Pizza Guy sitting beside him.  “Hey, chum, have you heard of essential oils?”

Demusa is 100% voiced by Susan Egan.  She’s gotta be dripping with sultry like Meg from Hercules.

Pacifica was going to be obnoxious BFFs with C-Beth but then I had the idea for Gideon and C-Beth’s interaction and the concept of Demusa came to me.

A scrapped subplot would have had Mabel claim to be over the dating game, but Dipper is afraid she’ll fall back into old habits, so he tries to make her oblivious to any “dateable” creatures, which is difficult since there are now swarms of them in the Shack, and he doesn’t want another Norman situation.  I got rid of it because it just wasn’t working out smoothly and was just enjoying all the other minor conversations, but it persisted slightly in the existence of the Wolf Boy.

There are a few vague allusions here to a scrapped chapter that would have focused on Multi-Bear and his backstory.  It never worked out great and it felt shoehorned in as a continuation of old plots (namely that of Dipper vs. Manliness), so I never did much with it.  It would have involved a Russian ringmaster creating a circus of freaks and capturing the Manotaurs, forcing Leaderaur to team up with Multi-Bear and Dipper to save them.  I don’t remember my exact backstory for Multi-Bear but it was going to involve Mayor Befuftlefumpter of all people being the adoptive brother of Multi-Bear, and Leaderaur as a childhood friend of both.  It was all really weird and it’s good that it was thrown out on the curb where it belongs.

The ending cryptogram is a reference to a quote from Sgt. Frog Abridged on Youtube.