i am somewhat curious about tau - what is it? where does one start?
So the first thing to know is that it's an au of gravity falls, although the au itself spans a very very long period of time (like. Millennia) so for a lot of it you can get by with pretty minimal knowledge. You should still watch gravity falls if you haven't though, because it's good lol
After that, the main hub for the au is @transcendence-au and they have a pinned post with a little setting primer!
The gist of it is that at some point there's a Climactic Final Battle (the au became popular well before the end of the show, so how closely that adheres to gf's actual Climactic Final Battle varies widely lol) and at some point during that, Bill Cipher (demon) is dying and tries to possess Dipper Pines (human boy), and somehow they merge so that Bill is dead but dipper is now a demon with his own mind but a lot of new vicious instincts. This also causes the bubble that kept all the weirdness confined to gravity falls to burst, and suddenly the whole world is aware of magic and monsters. This event is known as the Transcendence and it reshapes history forever.
He sticks close to his twin sister Mabel as she grows up, meets a guy, and has kids, and then as those kids grow up and have their own adventures, but as a demon he's now immortal and they are not. Eventually all his loved ones die, and all he can do is watch over their souls as they reincarnate and try to hold onto humanity and not lose himself in his demonic side.
Because of his unusual origins, he is very unusually powerful, and basically doesn't have any upper limit for how strong he can get. He also has more of a connection to the physical realm than most demons.
Stories in the au follow him through a range of time periods, starting at the transcendence while mabel is still alive and following him meeting new people, watching his friends and family reincarnate, occasionally dimension hopping, and eventually becoming a god watching the heat death of the universe and ushering in a new one where he can be a simple soul once more. It can get very heavy but it's also so fun.
Oh also Dipper's demon alias is Alcor and Mabel's alias as his twin is Mizar, after the twin stars in the big dipper. The Mizar name follows her soul through reincarnations.
For fics, my quick recommendations are:
- everything by @seiya234 ; these mainly focus on mabel and dipper growing up, and Mabel's spouse and kids who I adore
- everything by @marypsue, especially Return, Rewind, Rewrite and the Reincarnation Blues series; these focus on dipper meeting reincarnations of mabel in different future time periods
- So You Want To Be A Demonologist by @flying-guinea-pig / dementor-ssc on ao3; really fun fic series where dipper pretends to be a college student and makes friends
- Portal Fantasy by @biplet ; 1500 year old demon Alcor gets bodyswapped with an alternate dimension's normal human 12 year old Dipper and has to figure out what's going on and how to get him home
There are a ton more that I love but it's 4am and my hand is tired of typing on my phone lol. Those should be enough to get you started
I hope you enjoy checking it out :D
romaincrisis
stormborns
blakekathryn
gracieabrams
titsay
jimmyeatworldofficial
