#summerween 2021

Happy Summerween! The Jack-o-Melons are being lit, children. Time to trick or treat…OR DIE!

HAPPY SUMMERWEEN!  (click to embiggen)

This year the theme is “Tall Tales and Legends”, and so, we have:

Dipper as Pecos Bill.  One of the tales involves Pecos Bill using a rattlesnake as a lasso (the snake's name is Shake, which leads me to believe the snake is kind of okay with this? In this case, Mabel created a plush version for Dipper to carry.)

Mabel is Annie Oakley, who was a real person, but around whom legends have grown.  Famous as a sharpshooter, nicknamed “Little Sure-Shot”, I figured Mabel would be into that connection.  Plus her outfit is awesome (that skirt with the rose applique is one that we have photos of Oakley wearing).

Stan is dressed as Captain Alfred Bulltop Stormalong, a legendary giant sailor from New England, who is mostly remembered today as the subject of sea shanties (and also the name of a hard cidery here in Massachusetts).  Stormalong was the sea-going Paul Bunyan -- 30 feet tall, his ship was so big its mast had to be hinged to let the sun and the moon pass by.  Stormalong had a lifelong rival with the Kraken... and so one of the young Pacific tree octopuses (from 2020′s Stan Twins Birthday pic) is hitching along as a guest star in the role.

Speaking of giants... Ford, of course, is Paul Bunyan, with Waddles obviously done up by Mabel to play the part of Babe the Blue Ox.  I’d like to think that Ford develops the same kind of fondness that Stan has for Paul Bunyan, who after all, with the statue in town, is a Gravity Falls fixture.

Finally, Fiddleford is Johnny Appleseed -- another real person around whom legends grew. John Chapman really did go from state to territory to state in the early 19th c., introducing apple trees to parts of the upper midwest.  (And speaking of hard cider -- I read an interesting theory that most of the varieties that John Chapman planted were not really good eating apples, but would have been more valuable for hard cider-making, which was a staple at the time.)  Anyway, Fiddleford was halfway to the look already.

I have made it my mission to get as many people to celebrate Summerween as possible this year. I and many others LOVE Halloween and had to have our festivities canceled this October thanks to the global plague, well I say we deserve a do over. I say that on June 26th 2021 we deserve Summerween!