#gfalls

He's not the only one! GFalls occassionally pokes fun at people that are "too weird" or exaggerate weirdness in antagonistic characters. See: the androgynous person Soos is confused by when trying to find a date. Or Gabe, a character who's already understood to not be worth consideration due to his pretentious attitude, leaving the episode by kissing his puppets. As if that somehow drives home the point.

Let me get back to the triangle though. While I'm here to compare him to the Pines as a whole, I will mainly use Ford specifically for a point of comparison, since it feels like his similarities with Bill are especially strong.

Let's start with this: Ford and Bill both have troubling relationships with their families. The Book of Bill even confirms that both of them were subjected to medical abuse or dehumanization because of their mutations, which their parents are to some degree responsible for.

Now, GFalls being a series about family and reconciliation, chooses to resolve this by having Ford reconcile and connect with parts of his family, and realizing there is acceptance to be found.

I have to wonder where this leaves Bill. Someone who, as far as we're made to understand, never would've found this acceptance from his parents. You could argue that Ford still cut off his parents in the end, but he still has options, whereas Bill's parents are the only family of him we ever hear of.

(There's also the question of how we as the audience are supposed to percieve the elder Pines parents, but that's a tangent where I'd rather point you to this wonderful analysis for.)

It also makes me think of some of the additional Journal 3 pages from tBoB - the ones where Ford complains about Stan and Bill talks about going "no contact" with his dimension.

If one of the things that sets the Pines and Bill apart as the heroes and the villain respectively within the themes of the series, is that one side is able to reconcile with their family and this is good and healing, whereas the other side is never able to and continues to be haunted by being permanently cut off from their family, what could this say about people like Bill, who could've never realistically reconciled with their family and end up going "no contact" with them?

Another thing I think about is how differently the Pines' vs Bill's mentality are put into perception.

It's not uncommon to headcanon the Pines as different kinds of neurodivergent, and it certainly makes sense. There is barely anything explicit about it in canon, but it is in line with parts of the family being treated as academic failures or social outcasts.

While we already knew Ford specifically struggles with paranoia just based on the show, Journal 3 offers even more. It's strongly implied he experiences delusions or hallucinations of some sort after Bill's betrayal (though they aren't described as such) and, seeing how he clocks Bill as a potential figment of his imagination despite having encountered paranomal beings before, I think this could be support for Ford having pre-existing conditions.

And yet, I feel the Pines' mental conditions are never as emphasized as Bill's, much less painted in the same light.

The show isn't too heavy on this, largely just having Bill revel in being considered "insane", but the Book of Bill, a much more recent piece of canon, really goes all out. The contents of the book are being descibed as "psychotic", Bill describes his thought process as "voices in his head" that are depicted as many different Bill's working in his mind, ect.

It's all just. very jarring to think about. This all serves the purpose of somehow making Bill more "scary" and "incomprehensible" to us, the Normal Human Audience.

Wasn't this series supposed to be about empowering the weird and strange? I guess it's okay to be weird and you deserve empowerment as an outcast, unless you choose to cut off your family or are too obvious about your mental illnesses.

I'm being very blunt here. I don't think Gravity Falls is a terrible series, or that it was bad for Ford to reconcile with Stan, or anything. I understand the themes the series aims to bring across, and it's mostly competent in doing so.