Mabel from the intro song, wearing a sweater that lights up as long as she plugs it in. It also has a switch. This indicates thats she's using simple LED lights and circuit board, tho it wouldn't be surprising if she's using an arduino kit too.

The boom box sweater from s2x01 Scary-oke is the most impressive. Not only does it light up when touched, it also plays a sound! It reminds me of those greeting cards that play a song when you push into it. However, Mabel's is way more complicated coz of the LED lights + mini speaker. This also has batteries. It's an improvement to the sweater that needed to be plugged in.

The lightbulb sweater in s2x02 Into The Bunker is a variation of the BoomBox sweater. It also lights up when pressed and runs on batteries.

And ofc, how could we forget the impressive Sock Opera from s2x04. It's a whole complicated puppet production with music, lights, special effects.

.....

I imagine that aside from knitting and art supplies, Mabel also brought a whole ass electronics kit (with arduino boards and many LED lights) from California to play with.

Knitting different sweaters everyday was already impressive enough (knitting also involves quite a lot of math and 3d visualization); adding electronics features and making them interactive is just a whole upper level of ability. I won't even be surprised if she's etching the circuit boards in the bathtub (coz i dont think she'd be content if the final product was on a breadboard). It's easy to imagine Mabel soldering the components on the dining tabe and doing some programming to get the LEDs and amplifiers/speakers to light up and sound in any way she wanted, all the while Dipper is busy with perusing the journals or practicing some advance math..

Most futurefics put her in Arts and Design careers but heck, Mabel will actually do pretty damn well in STEM if she wants to. She has already got the technical and applied experience from making her electronic sweaters.

Stan sees a lot of himself in Mabel and Dipper. He sees the positive in Mabel and some negatives in Dipper. Stan misguidedly tries to correct those aspects he sees. He also worries about the Ford-like similarities in Dipper too.

Unintentionally, Stan's teasing pushes Dipper away but manages to pull him back in enough to reassure Dipper that Stan loves him unconditionally. He was misguided in correcting parts of Dipper that Stan saw in himself and hated. It was the method, not the intent that was wrong.

Ford saw 100% of himself in Dipper. In the show, the focus was on Dipper and Ford, because Ford could not separate the Stan v. Ford dynamic in his mind when it came to Mabel and Dipper. He loves Mabel. He finds her charmingly delightful, but he also projects his feelings of Stan onto Mabel. She is Dipper's Stan, therefore she's holding Dipper back from his true potential.

We know that's not true. Stan knows that's not true. It takes Stan "dying" for Ford to get this. It takes him losing his brother to open his mind to the idea that he and Mabel also have similarities. In the ARG, he realizes Mabel is as curious and weird as he is, and he effortlessly finds their similarities when he lets go of that Stan-projection and humbles himself.

Just goes to show that despite Mabel and Dipper's parents having their marital troubles, they've created a healthy home for their children where they can have their own separate identities. That's a major factor into Stan and Ford's issues is the treatment they received in their childhood. They were a single unit, not individuals.

While Stan was codependent on that dynamic, Ford felt suffocated. It's why he wanted to branch out so badly.

It's still interesting that TBoB called more attention to Stan's control over his mindscape (And if you go with the interpretation that the lost pages are partial truths that are heavily influenced by Bill, then he's the one insisting that only someone with training should be able to have that much control over the mind.)

Meanwhile we have a memory!Stan. Someone who apparently knows too much and is rather aware for being a simple memory.

Their relationship, whether you think it's platonic or there was something of deeper feelings (one sided or mutual), it was unequivocally abusive in nature and incredibly intense because of how intertwined they were on a mental and physical level, considering bill could possess him. There is no doubt going to affect Ford in future relationships because he suffered literal torture and was basically held hostage by Bill, in a way, so for me it is something I really want to consider when it comes to writing Ford and a potential obstacle for him in getting into relationships of any kind in the future. I think sometimes we don't talk enough about how much abuse Ford went through and how emotionally manipulative and coercive ford and bill's relationship was, knowing what we know now for definite now we have tbob and this is not a website information.

In my mind Bill was essentially a narcissistic abuser (as much as that label can fit an interdimensional nightmare triangle being), such kind of abuse can take quite a while to process and work through, you can end up weirdly missing the person on one hand and on the other feel no ties to them at all when their gone on the other. We've already read that Ford has some apprehension/anxiety over bill's statue, which Mabel has comforted him over to give him some closure. The big thing about Ford is that post weirdmageddon, he no longer has a 'mission' and can set aside his feelings and has to confront his growth to complete his character arc, because he's no longer able to run from it. This means that post weirdmageddon he has to confront and then process all that happened to him with bill, fully, with no distractions or need for revenge against him. Ford is going to be affected by healing all of this, so I feel in general, it would affect his relationships. I think once he's able to make a connection with someone it won't take him too long to know it's not in any way a similar situation as the one he had with bill, but he still has residual nightmares (from ptsd) and it has been a big chunk of his life, so it's something that he can't really conceal but also something he wants to protect you from, he doesn't want it to be your burden when he gets into a romantic relationship. He has the support of his family though, who will always offer their words of advice. He's also confident in that he doesn't want to be with someone romantically without being fully honest with them, either, it just takes him a little while to open up. Meeting him with patience and understanding will help to ease his worries.