GravityFallsChristmas

"I wanna see what's in the box," says Mabel. She rips open the wrapping with aplomb.\n\n"What'd you get, Mabel?" asks Dipper.\n\n"It's a matching Christmas sweater set for all of us!" Mabel says. She hands a reindeer sweater to Dipper and a **something** sweater to Stan.[//I had a hard time thinking up a good Christmas sweater for Stan, for some reason. I guess I thought it had to be "fit" Stan perfectly? Anyway if I were writing this now I'd use a burning Yule log, probably.//] As for Mabel herself, she gets a Christmas tree sweater with //real// light-up lights. \n\n"These are all so cool," says Mabel.\n\n"I can't help thinking that the other presents might have been more interesting, though," says Dipper as he puts on his sweater.\n\n"Well, there's no way [[we can do //that//|Begin]]," says Stan.\n\n"Ah, there's no point in griping, guys," says Mabel. "It's Christmas! Christmas in Junely! Let's go watch some holiday specials before the Shack opens." And so they did.\n\n''THE END''\n\n[//And there we have it! The only ending I bothered to write, and it's a boring ol' "end the adventure early" end. What a rip-off! You can tell I had a lot of trouble thinking up plots for this thing.\n\nThere's not much else to say about this node, so let me go into a little about why this ending is so crap. I honestly do think there's a place for "quit the adventure" ends like this. It can be, and usually is, a tedious filler ending, but it can also serve to increase the tension, to give the player a chance to turm away from something distateful (as in last year's controversial game [[Taghairm|http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=he48oknsigqu6xk2]] (CW: animal cruelty)), or even just a vector for jokes (as in the excellent [[You Will Select a Decision|http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=5u4tg8c3n8wh590o]]). But it only really works if the player// knows //that they're making a choice not to continue the story. The mystery meat selection of objects that starts this game just doesn't give you enough information about what's going to be a dead end or not. Choices like "which do you pick, the left path or the right" are usually pretty bad to begin with, but stuff like this makes them even worse. Just don't do it, kids.//]

"This'll be our biggest con-slash-//sales event// yet!" says Stan Pines, as he puts up tinsel around the Mystery Shack. "Dipper, you got the fossilized Christmas tree?"\n\n"Coat rack dipped in peanut brittle, check!" says Dipper.\n\n"Mabel, the follized Christmas presents?"\n\n"Stuffed animals dipped in peanut brittle, check!" says Mabel.\n\n"Alright!" says Stan. "Let the //'Christmas in June-ly'// festivities begin!"\n\n"Hooray!" cries Mabel. "Which Junely present should we open first?"\n\n"Hey, you can't have those!" Stan says. "They're for the suckers-- I mean, customers."\n\n"Ah, c'mon! Where's your Christmas in Junely spirit?" asks Mabel.\n\n"Oh, fine," says Stan. "I guess it's okay if you have one. But only one!" [//I thought I had a line here about Stan saying that Christmas in Junely was just some holiday he made up to scam costumers, but it turns out I placed that later on in the game.//]\n\n"Thank you!" says Mabel. "Now which one do we open..."\n\nWill it be the [[red and gold Christmas popper|Pop]]? Or perhaps the [[cookie tin decorated with white and blue snowflakes|Cookie]]? Or maybe [[the box in the "Joy to the World" wrapping paper|Box]]?\n\n[//Okay so... <<replace "(major spoilers follow)">>Originally I had Stan's name down as "Stanford Pines" in the first paragraph. Pretty understandable mistake, right? I mean, the guy was impersonating his brother, we couldn't have known his real name was "Stanley". Except no, that's a terrible excuse, why did we ever think this goober was named Stanford? Practically the whole Gravity Falls fandom knew about the "Stan Twin Theory" (as it was called back in the day), we all noticed the "STNLYMBL" license plate on Stan's car, and yet so little of us made the jump from "Stan has a twin" to "Stan has a twin, and he's stolen his identity". Why? Why didn't we realize this? Why didn't anyone notice that "Stanford" was a nerd name for nerds, or that Stan never, ever referred to himself in the third person as "Stanford"? (I don't even think he calls himself "Stanley"?) Was the ridiculous "Grunkle 4 Grandpa" theory just throwing everyone off? Anyway, a few months back I came across this again, and the Stanford thing was really bugging me, so I changed it.\n\nWhile I'm here, can I just take a moment to point out how wonderfully fitting Ford's name is? Not only is his full name a reference to a famous university, but his nickname "Ford" can be seen as a reference to a car manufacturer, a kind of transport, and also to Hollywood personalities like John Ford and Harrison Ford, whose philosophies of the loner hero are something Ford needs to let go of over the course of the series. Am I making sense? Oh well, I enjoyed talking about this anyway.<<endreplace>>//]

"Bill who??" says Stan.\n\n"Bill Cipher! He's this creepy triangle guy who keeps bugging my brother and me." [//I must have missed a "Remember him?" or something here, because otherwise the next line makes no sense.//]\n\n"I //*cough!*//can't say//*coughcough!*// that I //*cough!*//do//*cough!*//," Stan answers all innocent-like.\n\n"Well, whatever! The point is, we need to find out what that fiendish three-sided polygon is up to!"\n\n"Mabel please don't call Bill that," says Stan flatly.\n\n"Hey, I can call him whatever I-- wait, does that mean you //do// know who Bill is?"\n\n"Uh, oops!" says Stan. "I forgot to take my old man meds! I say funny things when I'm off 'em."\n\n"Sounds legit!" says Mabel. "Let's go catch that triangle! But first let's get you some lozenges." And so [[they do!|Explore]]\n\n[//Okay, so// <<replace "(major spoilers follow)">>//I must've looked this over sometime before the finale, because I remember thinking, "Wow, did I ever get this wrong. Stan would've had no idea who Bill was." But looking at it now, I think he probably did? I mean, there was his line in the finale, "Welcome to my mind. Surprised you didn't recognize it," which implied that he knew Bill was fooling around in there in// Dreamscaperers//. It's not too much of a leap from there to assume that Stan figured// something //was up with the weird yellow triangle that kept popping up on his brother's junk. With that said he still probably shouldn't be as familiar with the guy as he seems to be here.//<<endreplace>>]

A(n Unfinished) Gravity Falls Joint

[//This is the charred remains of something I tried to write for Yuletide 2014, a Secret Santa-esque fanfic exchange. Other than throwing in all these italicized notes, I haven't changed a thing about it. Well, actually, I did change //one// thing, but we'll get to that when we get to that.\n\nLooking back, I think the biggest reason I didn't finish this was that I felt paralyzed writing fanfic for Gravity Falls. It's got a big mystery element, and I didn't want to write anything that later contradicted with canon. Originally I wrote a static fanfic for the exchange based on a then-popular fan theory, but the pressure of writing something that wouldn't get jossed got me bad, so I quickly stalled on it. I came up with this CYOA idea as a stop-gap, but it just wasn't enough. I had to default on my assignment (a fancy phrase meaning "give up"), and then tried to turn this half-baked garbage into a "treat", or extra fanfic gift, for my former recipient. Unfortunately, poor planning on my part meant that I couldn't finish it in time. Anyway, early this year the series ended, and like a month after I got on the Gravity Falls fanfic train and kept writing. Now that Journal 3 is on the horizon, I'm starting to get these jitters again. Why, oh why, did I choose to write a big fic about the one thing we knew would come up in the Journal? Oh well.//]\n\nGreetings, reader! This is a story about Gravity Falls! Specifically it is a story about Mabel, and Stan, and maybe some of those other guys, too. If you want to know more about Gravity Falls, [[click here!|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Falls]] [//Mabel and her Grunkle (short for "Great Uncle") Stan are two of the three main characters on Gravity Falls. (Mabel's twin brother Dipper is the third.) For this exchange, my recipient had requested a fanfic specifically about those two. It... caused more problems than it should have. More later. And don't click that link if you haven't watched the show; the article contains some major spoilers now. I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum in these notes, but sometimes I'll need to refer to late series reveals to make a point. In those cases, I'll use a spoilerpop, colored purple: <<replace "(like so)">>It was his sled.<<endreplace>>//]\n\nIf you just want to get to the story proper, [[click here|Begin]].

"Alrighty then," says Mabel. "We have a time-freeze on our hands and we have to catch the jerk who caused it. But where do we look first?"\n\n"Well, we can't start up the car in this situation," says Stan. "Let's try somewhere nearby first. We can easily reach [[that old gas station from here|Gas Station]]. Or maybe [[the woods would be better|Woods]]. Your pick."\n\n[//Aaand that's it, that's all she wrote. Looking back, I gotta wonder if part of my problem with this game is that I sorta hobbled myself by sticking strictly to the Mabel and Stan relationship. Don't get me wrong, the bond between the two is absolutely beautiful, and Stan's like my first or second favorite character and Mabel's tied with Dipper for third, most days. And looking back on this, their banter was obviously a lot of fun to write.\n\nBut dang it man, Dipper is just such a key part of this trio. He's not a larger-than-life figure like Stan or Mabel, but he's still pretty weird in his own quiet, paranoid way, and he's essential for the vibe Gravity Falls gives off. You could say Dipper acts as a sort of John Entwistle for the Pines family, grounding them and keeping them from flying off into space, much like the famed bassist did for The Who during their old touring days.\n\nPlus, part of the reason to read/write fanfiction is to explore stuff that canon doesn't get into much, right? And we got plenty of the Mabel & Stan dynamic. Even before this was written, we had a whole bunch of cute moments between the two, like when Mabel helped Grunkle Stan get a date, or when she helped him get over his fear of heights, or when Mabel took over the Mystery Shack and gained a new appreciation for Stan, or when Stan punched out a pterodactyl to save Mabel's pig, or or or <<replace "(spoiler-y season 2 examples)">>when Stan and Mabel and Dipper sang karaoke to defeat a zombie uprising, or when Stan broke into a mini-golf course to help Mabel score a win against her rival, or when Stan told a story about Mabel and her pet pig that was kinda about his issues with his brother, or when Mabel trusted Stan, or when Mabel and Stan teamed up to rescue their twin brothers from an evil wizard, or when Mabel knit an "Our Hero" sash for Stan, or when Stan gave Mabel a pep talk when she was sad about leaving Gravity Falls, or when Stan gave up his mind/life to save Mabel and Dipper from Bill, or when Mabel helped regain his memories with her scrapbook, or when Stan wore Mabel's "Goodbye Stan" sweater, or when he threatened a bus driver to let her pet pig ride the bus home<<endreplace>>.\n\nThe point is, we got plenty of Stan and Mabel bonding in the show, and while their relationship is still very precious to me, I'm more interested in exploring the other relationships of the show, like Dipper and Mabel, or <<replace "(crud more spoilers)">>Stan and Ford<<endreplace>>. Heck, I would love to see Stan teach Dipper how to steal something that isn't a woman's heart. Perhaps that will be an upcoming project of mine.//]

"Let's try the cookie tin!" says Mabel. She squeezes her fingers underneath the lid and //lifts!// "Ugh, it's such a pain to get these open," she says. Again she strains to //lift!// and open the lid.\n\n"You want me to help, kid?" asks Stan.\n\n[//Aaaand that's it, that's all she wrote. Man, I don't even remember what was going to be in here. Mutant cookies that ate people? Probably not, that idea is just way too cool for me to come up with on short notice.\n\nLooking back, wow was this game ever a victim of poor planning. One path is a dead end, another has too much branching, it should be no surprise I gave up on the third. I think for a naive [[time cave|https://heterogenoustasks.wordpress.com/2015/01/26/standard-patterns-in-choice-based-games/]] like this you can get away with six or seven nodes without planning them out beforehand. Any more than that and it just gets to be a headache writing all the branches. Don't be like me, kids, plot out your IF games on paper before you code them.//]

"I pick this one!" says Mabel, pointing to the Christmas popper.\n\n"Ooh, nice choice!" says Stan. "Mind if I help you open that?"\n\nMabel and Stan take both ends of the popper and //pull// until it opens with a //*pop!*//\n\n"Let's check and see what was inside," says Mabel. But all they can find is a slip of paper. On it are the words //Gotcha!!//\n\n"What? Oh, come on! There was supposed to be some kind of toy, or snack, or //something// in there." Stan looks under a table topped with merchandise.\n\n"Hey, why isn't Dipper moving?" asks Mabel. "In fact, why isn't that clock moving? Or that table? It always jiggles when you bump into it."\n\n"Uh, I'm not sure, Mabel." Stan waves his hand in front of Dipper's eyes. No response.\n\n"Stan! Let's check on Soos!" They rush to the foyer. When they get there, they find Soos, frozen while eating a Nougatty, Peanutty GoodEnough Bar(tm)!\n\nOmigosh! That popper Mabel and Stan [//Oops, I accidentally a word here.//] completely froze time in Gravity Falls! What a [[predicament!|Trouble]]\n\n"You know I was just gonna steal whatever was in that thing," says Stan. [//ahaha holy crap I forgot I ever wrote this, ''solid gold'', man//]

Christmas in Junely

"Ugh, I //hope// it's not Gideon," says Mabel. "I really don't wanna think about that creep, especially not so close to Christmas."\n\n"Uh, Mabel, you do realize it's not actually Christmas, right? Christmas in July's just some dumb event I made up to boost sales." [//God I love this jerk.//]\n\n"Hey, it can be two things!" Mabel crosses her arms and pouts.\n\n"Look, forget about Christmas. The point is we need to find Gideon and stop his time-freeze caper."\n\n"Yeah! Now that's more like it!" shouts Mabel. "Team pose, everyone!"\n\n"Mabel, I don't really want to..."\n\nMabel makes the saddest puppy-eye face.\n\n"Okay, fine." Stan and Mabel join together and strike a cool team pose! [[Then they head out.|Explore]]\n\n[//Gideon's a major season one villain that gets downgraded to minor in season two. He's not really my favorite character, but I've had a fondness for him ever since I saw that short with the commercial for his prison show. I'm glad we got some closure with him in the end.//]

Healy

"Ewgh," says Mabel, looking at Soos's nougatty-peanutty-chocolate encrusted face. "I never knew how gross eating one of those GoodEnough bars was until now." [//Y'know, I really should've done more with Soos. He is such a good character.//]\n\n"Who coulda done this?" Stan says. He scratches his head and thinks. "Could it have been [[Gideon Gleeful|Gideon]]?"\n\n"I think there's only one thing in Gravity Falls with this kind of power," says Mabel, "and that's [[Bill Cipher|Bill]]!"\n\n[//I can't remember if the story would have branched here depending on which villain you picked, or if it would go the same way regardless. Possibly I wasn't sure even then, which is really sad.//]

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