divorcedfiddleford

[divorcedfiddleford]

i love information i need more

#ford

[divorcedfiddleford]

Time to settle this

#all paul from psychonauts rhombus of ruin erasure #actually wait does 2winz² as portrayed by bdg count #HE WAS TALKING ABOUT A DIFFERENT DALE <3

[divorcedfiddleford]

#psychonauts

[divorcedfiddleford]

You made a post saying “it has been zero days since our last alex hirsch hates ford so much bullshit” and i know it was mostly hyperbole, but you have some really good takes that I would love to be elaborated on in terms of how ford is written

it really wasn't hyperbolic. over the years he's just really shown a lot of hatred towards this one character.

content warning: discussion of abuse

i want to start with this clip from the commentary which i think of as a microcosm for how the writers and especially alex think about ford.

transcript:

rob renzetti: i mean he [mcgucket] should've basically knocked ford out, and... and destroyed the... you know, tied him up, and, destroyed... and... alex hirsch, speaking over him: yeah he should've beat ford with a wrench and taken this thing apart piece by piece! he's the one who understood how to built [sic] it, but...

... so that seems like a pretty violent course of action. shall we unpack that?

ford is a character who's pretty explicitly written as a victim of abuse, and who now has c-ptsd as a direct result of the abuse he experienced. alex hirsch believes that ford deserved everything bad that happened to him, that it's ford's own fault, and that he also deserved worse things to happen to him. this is why, given every narrative chance, alex hirsch has piled more suffering onto ford's plate. the biggest example of this i can think of is in the journal, when he wrote that fiddleford was actively erasing ford's memory (despite this being a massive timeline contradiction which i still refuse to accept). because god forbid ford even have one remotely healthy relationship with somebody. that would be too good for him. ford was manipulated and lied to by bill, but alex repeatedly compares him to icarus, a teenager whose demise was the result of his own ignorance. this comparison is still so fucking offensive to me. the sun did not lie to icarus, did not guarantee icarus all of the happiness and success and sense of belonging which he had been denied all his life, did not actively shut out the voices of those around him who would try to help him.

alex in general has a very strange relationship with abuse. he seems to get really upset when people read his characters as victims of abuse. the strongest instance of this is actually not with ford, it's with pacifica - especially in the nwmm episode commentary. the episode says "pacifica's parents have conditioned her to respond to a bell" and alex says people got "the wrong idea" about it. like. dude. what the fuck. you wrote abuse. even if you didn't mean to, that's what you wrote. you can't say people got "the wrong idea" just because you didn't think about the subtext of what you were writing. anyway, back to ford: i believe this extends to him as well. alex wanted to write a character who's a foil to stan and who was a selfish unlikable victim of his own arrogance. however that's not what he wrote. he somehow seemingly accidentally wrote a really compelling and relatable awesome autistic guy who had to fight for every good thing he he ever had in his life only for it to be taken from him every single time. but alex can't let go of seeing ford as just "the opposite of stan". when he talks about "how someone as smart as ford could fall for bill's tricks", he refuses to realize he wrote a situation in which a man was being psychologically manipulated and tortured.

it goes back further, too. people repeatedly theorized that filbrick was... not a very good father, to say the least. on top of the very explicit and canon fact that he threw one of his children out on the street (seriously, there is no defense for this), people pointed out that stan would flinch at filbrick, that ford seemed upset by things filbrick said but dared not talk back, that filbrick was mad at stan not for hurting his brother, but for "costing the family potential millions". but alex can't have people seeing ford as sympathetic. ford can't have it bad like stan did. ford had to have everything and he lost it all because he sucks so much. so he wrote the graphic novel story where ford is filbrick's favorite child and filbrick also is not even a bad parent you guys he's just stoic. ignore the whole thing in dreamscaperers where stan perpetuates the abuse that filbrick did to him. ignore the fact that ford was shouting at stan and then completely shut up as soon as filbrick entered the room and did not say another word for the rest of the night. ignore all that because i just made up this story where he cries at a present from stan. filbrick loved his boys for sure you guys!!!

i'm not even touching on how alex repeatedly villainizes traits commonly associated with mental illness and neurodivergence. ford's hypervigilance becomes arrogance. his passion for knowledge means he's a know-it-all. his difficulty socializing and making friends means he's a misanthrope. his lingering resentment for the way he was raised means he hates his brother and is the worst human being to ever have lived. i could go on, go even further into how the finale reaffirms this, but i feel weird talking about this too much.

#help you unclogged the dam and it all came rushing out #it's been years #didn't know i still had all this in me #apologies for the lack of sources. i reference a lot of old interviews and tweets from 2016-2017 #i know insider was one of them but a lot of it was questions he'd be asked at convention panels and off-handed comments from the dvds #seconds before the clip i included alex says ford's great flaw is pride #as though it was his pride that led to the world ending #and not a millenium-old plan by a monster using advanced manipulation tactics supplemented with literal mind control #tales of the wild zeep #1009

[divorcedfiddleford]

Alex Hirsch: -makes everything and everyone Stanford Pines has ever placed his trust in betray him-

Also Alex: why does ford not trust ppl? His ego? His scienceness? time for a Life Lesson™ Fordo

#this is still one of my favorite posts to pull out

[divorcedfiddleford]

Skeletor has forever destroyed our ability to come up with voices for skeleton characters.

#help

[divorcedfiddleford]

strong contender for the best picture of ford

#goofy sci fi/fantasy boyyyy i love youuuuuu bleh #tales of the wild zeep #my favorite is probably him doing the raptor hands in tlm #yet this is the image i have saved to my desktop #maybe it has something to do with the guy i cropped out. idk

[divorcedfiddleford]

really? another album? didn't she just make one??

[divorcedfiddleford]

#first draft group chants for the society

[divorcedfiddleford]

who is the first david you think of when you hear the name david

#i think of mister waters-waters #chris fleming

[divorcedfiddleford]

#if nobody got me during a 'who the fuck knows which disorder is making my brain bad rn' episode #i know fiddleford got me during a 'who the fuck knows which disorder is making my brain bad rn' episode #can i get a [MEMORY REDACTED]

[divorcedfiddleford]

#really feeling this rn

[divorcedfiddleford]

adderall is so funny

#tales of the wild zeep #me‚ a person with adhd who historically gets severe depressive bouts in school: i should go back to school

[divorcedfiddleford]

i’m smiling and nodding but i’m not listening to what you’re saying i’m thinking about the tony domenico interview

#dont mind me casually rbing this #ok shutting up for real now

[divorcedfiddleford]

ok last thing about that interview before i shut up forever - one author saying outside of the text of a work that a character is or might be gay is not representation. we established this all the way back when people still gave fuckin row.ling the time of day. "word of god" confirmation, especially when it comes to something like a tv show which had multiple writers, is not the same as actually including something in the work itself

#tales of the wild zeep #tldr if people could stop posting 'FORD IS GAY CONFIRMED!!!' id appreciate it. we all knew he was gay for years #getting hirsch to say 'maybe' in the most condescending way possible while also saying the character sucks is not good representation #this also applies to the stuff he's said about wendy in the past #since people still love to say 'SHE'S CANONICALLY BI!!!!!' guys vague tweets DON'T COUNT. PLEASE GET STANDARDS

[divorcedfiddleford]

#spiderman

[divorcedfiddleford]

had a dream last night that jerma became like a mainstream celebrity by pioneering a new type of stream where he would play a game like normal but every once in a while he would let chat "peep the horror" and put this like red and black pulsating mass on screen (it kinda looked like an ai generated image) and the whole deal was that everyone who saw it thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen but every time he'd show it one viewer who saw it would die

#jerma #unreality #i guess? idk