#miamaroo

I think the top three things that I like most about this story are the following:

The Mystery. There’s the mystery of Dipper’s murder. Even though it’s the catalyst for the entire plot it’s delved into surprisingly rarely. It gets treated more like a B-plot next to Mabel trying to socialize and the character development for the OCs, but every time it does come up it’s nothing short of interesting and is really set to remind you of why certain things just are that way. Even after 22 Chapters of this story I feel no closer to having even an inkling to who might be responsible for Dipper’s murder and as of now I cannot tell the direction this story will take with any of its other subplots either. That is a good sign, I love when a story can leave me on the edge of my seat with legit anticipation of what’s going to happen next.

The Flavor/the Codes. They go hand in hand with the mystery up above. I do love the codes that are splattered throughout the story and that you’re easily capable of actually deciphering them. They have just the right flavor of spiking your interest when you do get around to decipher them, but are not as important to the story in a way that they would distract from what is going on. I’ve been reading the story on my e-book, so while I’m on that I don’t have access to the decoder website; hence my first experiences with every code popping up had me going ‘goshdarnit’ because I had no option to decode them right away; but I came to realize that it did no harm to do it later as well. The truetext itself is written in a way that just drips with the flavor of the codes that you find within the series and the Nonstop Guide. They are short and cryptic and do a very big portion of making this fanfic feel like a story from “Gravity Falls”, even with all the ‘changes’ that had to be made in favor of this AU.

Bill. It’s really ironic because this Bill embodies and defies all the things that I do not like about his representation in the fandom at the same time. The story is marked as “Billdip” – again, I don’t ship Billdip, but I find myself positively surprised in that for the most part their relationship is being handled more like a “platonic!ally” kind of deal than actual downright romantic (except for one very short sequence in a later chapter, but even that, without spoiling much, has its own reasoning to it) Bill is a human (or stuck in one such body to be precise). Human!Bill is one of my greatest petpeeves in the entire fandom, but this story treats it as something Bill didn’t choose for himself, in fact it’s a situation that is effecting him in a manner that is anything but positive, leaving him weak, crippled and in pain. It’s a prison. And I find that very refreshing from the constant pretty-boy-costume he’s putting on basically any other fan-media for the sake of, eh... wooing. Despite this, Bill doesn’t whine. He doesn’t actively try to find a way to get rid of the body as getting vengeance for Dipper is more important. Even in this situation Bill is chaotic, a trickster, doing his little demon-shenanigans. Among so many of the fics I’ve read by now it’s only the second fic where I feel legitimate interest for his side of the story and actually manage to take a liking to his character/interpretation.  

There’s plenty of more interesting concepts in this to touch upon, but the above simply stands out to me the most.

Cons? Well, there are a few typos and word repetitions here and there that at times disrupt the flow of the story, but ultimately don't really deter from the plot and aside from that I don’t really think there’s much to complain about. While it’s not something that I feel really increases or decreases the quality of a story though, this is still tumblr, so some of you folks might enjoy that it attempts to add a little more diversity to the cast (There are plenty POC OCs included).