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pokelolmc · 6 years

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Gravity Falls: A Hypothetical “Journal 4″?

Okay, so Ford is one of my favourite secondary characters in Gravity Falls, but he’s one of my most nitpicky at the same time. I know that I probably shouldn’t be looking too far into it, but I seriously can’t stop thinking about this, I’m a nitpicker and I have way too much time on my hands. (Plus, the fandom is a collective conspiracy nut that thrives on theories and over-analysis). Oh, Stanford fucking Filbrick Pines, do I have some nits to pick with you!

I’ll probably post some other ones later, but this one is really long – a nitpick that turned into a speculative headcanon, so I posted it on its own (but, knowing this overanalysing fandom, I probably came pretty late to the table with this one. I have no idea if anyone’s talked much about this kind of theory/headcanon/concept. If you want to take a look, at my specific “evidence” and discussion anyway, take a look.)

THE COAT POCKET

Okay, in a moment of very belated Fridge Logic, I noticed something from his second ever appearance in the series (counting his “Time Traveller’s Pig” cameo), from the cliffhanger of Not What He Seems:

Why does he have this pocket for his Journals in the side of his coat?

I know that it’s supposed to be for the moment where we see his six-fingered hand match up with the one on the Journals for a dramatic reveal, but…really? Why?

Obviously, it was made to hold the Journals (at least, his most current one), and it even has a quill for writing, but he wouldn’t even have need for it in this coat in the first place (especially with a quill, which seems very impractical for someone like Ford when he’s written with pen and pencil so much before then, as seen in A Tale of Two Stans in his flashback of his college studies…unless he intends to only write his entries in invisible ink from then on).

Need I remind you that Ford never, as far as we know, had this coat during his time spent conducting his research in Gravity Falls (confirmed to be from 1975-1982 in Journal 3). We don’t see his full wardrobe or anything like that in his 30-years-ago flashbacks, but we don’t need to in order to know that he couldn’t have really had it:

When Ford gets sucked into the Portal, he’s not wearing this black outfit at all.

He got sucked into the Portal with absolutely nothing but the (different) clothes on his back and whatever was in his pockets…so, unless he’s secretly The Doctor and he stashes entire emergency outfits in his bigger-on-the-inside pockets, that black outfit was never something from his home dimension and he never had it before he got sucked into the Portal.

So, if he never had this black outfit before he got sucked into the Portal, why does he need to have any sort of empty Journal pocket sewed into it?

After all, by the time Ford got pushed into the Portal, he was no longer using the Journals. He called Stan to his lab, his fight with whom was the sole reason he was sucked into the Portal in the first place, solely to ask Stan to take his only Journal left and hide it as far away as possible.

(“Remember our plans to sail around the world on a boat? Take this book, get on a boat and sail as far away as you can! To the end of the earth!”)

By the time Ford fell into the Portal, his Second and Third Journals were hidden, his first was with Stan, and he wanted so little to do with his Journals that he never wanted to see them again, let alone carry them anymore. Then, after going through the Portal, he spent 30 whole years on the other side with no access to them (when he, obviously, acquired his black outfit). There was obviously no need for him to sew that Journal pocket into his outfit. You could say that maybe Ford decided he needed his Journals again for his old information on Bill, and sewed it in anticipation just in case he ever made it home. However, having only one pocket doesn't make sense because all his information on Bill is across both Journals 2 and 3. Not to mention, according to the real Journal 3 (post-Not What He Seems), Ford said that he never expected he would make it home, and he was already in the middle of fighting Bill and his goons in the Nightmare Realm with the finished Quantum Destabiliser when Stan opened the Portal and brought him back out, so needing his old Journals again wasn't really necessary. So, does this pocket have a point…?

Maybe, during his time on the other side of the Portal, he decided to write another Journal about some of his interdimensional adventures (either a new volume in the existing series or the start of a new series separate from his Portal-superweapon-recipe first three volumes). However, when he emerges from his time on the other side of the Portal in Not What He Seems, the pocket is empty (allowing him to place Journal 1 inside). This means that he could have, perhaps, written a new journal, but lost it at some point during his travels, whether intentionally or accidentally. This would also explain the quill in the pocket; he obviously used it to write in some book he kept in the pocket during his travels throughout the multiverse, and the only time he ever – apparently – uses a quill to write is when using the invisible black-light ink (referring to the pictures of his invisible ink well and quill on the page of the Third Journal where he writes that he will start using invisible ink. Also, we only ever see him write his normal Journal entries with pens in the Journal-writing flashbacks in A Tale of Two Stans).

We don’t see any sort of ink container in his Journal-shaped pocket, but if he did have a pot of invisible ink on his person at some point during his travels, it would make sense; if Ford were to keep a journal about his multiverse adventures so he could go back over things like notes for the Quantum Destabiliser, he would probably put them all in code or invisible ink to hide from dangerous “prying eyes”. (Though, with the apparent advancement of other dimensions in Gravity Falls – after all, the Quantum Destabiliser’s complex parts exist only in other dimensions and the Infinity Sided Die is known, and outlawed, in 9000 dimensions – putting it in code or invisible ink would seem a bit crude, since it could probably be uncovered by advanced technology if his new journal was ever confiscated.)

However, there isn’t much solid evidence to back it up – although there is still also some (weak, but still potential) evidence from the real-life copy of Journal 3 (which, need I remind you, is canon), that could potentially back it up (or just as easily go against it).

In the third section of Journal 3 (when Ford starts to write in Journal 3 again after he gets it back after AToTS, continuing after Dipper’s entries about the summer) he writes at the end of his entry on Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons:

“I told Dipper about the rift. But when he asked me where I’ve been for the last 30 years, I had no idea how to begin or what to reveal. I’ve been trying not to think about it, but perhaps writing about some of it here will help me get my thoughts in order.”

He also writes, on the page “My Travels” (about his interdimensional travels – the page with his infamous “Rick was here” wanted poster) he writes, “To fully chronical my adventures would take 10 volumes, but here’s a catalogue of some of the most outlandish dimensions I saw…”

The fact that he had no idea where to start when explaining his adventures in the multiverse to Dipper might potentially suggest that he has no idea where to start because he didn’t pay attention, or remember, all of it in enough detail (suggesting he may not have recorded a lot of it down for the sake of memory). Or, it could suggest that, since he never wrote much of it down/put it into words (let alone in a continuous journal), he doesn’t know how to put it into words when explaining some of it to Dipper. In fact, if Ford had written a whole other Journal about his journey on the other side of the Portal, you think he could’ve just gone “Actually, I wrote a whole other volume on that stuff. Here, Dipper, Journal number 4 – knock yourself out!” However, when you look at this a little further, it could actually – instead – work in favour of Ford having an “extra journal”.

After all, if he did write in this hypothetical “Journal 4” (or whatever it was), he was writing it for himself, with little censoring of some of the, undoubtedly, extremely bizarre (or possibly traumatising) things he saw. If he ever wanted to share this with Dipper, and he did have a journal covering his interdimensional travels, he would likely not share it as Dipper is only twelve, and he wouldn’t want to outright traumatise him. Dipper may have seen some scary stuff thanks to Journal 3, but anything outside of their home dimension could be potentially far worse. This could be supported by Ford claiming that he doesn’t know “what to reveal”, indicating there was indeed some very sensitive or dangerous content in his travels that he doesn’t want to hand over uncensored records of for Dipper to read indiscriminately. Besides, if we remember the fact that the pocket was empty at the end of Not What He Seems – possibly meaning he lost the new journal somewhere in the multiverse, as mentioned earlier – then he couldn’t hypothetically show it to Dipper anyway, in that case. So, as much as not telling Dipper about his “new journal” (when it would have been easier than explaining to him) could refute the existence of another journal, there are still plenty of reasons Ford could have (or have had) one, but not shown Dipper. In fact, Ford specifically writing “perhaps writing about some of it here [referring to Journal 3]” could indicate that he had also written about his journey through the multiverse somewhere else, and writing it in Journal 3 could help him recover memories of what he wrote or experienced.

The quote that “it would take 10 volumes” to write about all of his interdimensional adventures is a bit vaguer. On one hand, you could take it literally (which most people probably wouldn’t), or you could say that he was making a hyperbole (like people say “I’ve been waiting for a million years”) or an educated guess (since he had three Journals covering six years, having ten to fifteen volumes covering 30 years isn’t a totally random guess). That it’s because he actually wrote his travels down and it actually took that many volumes is probably less likely. The “would take”, to me at least, suggests expectation, like he is assuming that writing everything out in full would take that long, either because he wrote some of it down in a journal, but not all of his travels in full, or he didn’t keep a journal of any of it at all. Either way, according to this quote, he likely doesn’t know for certain how many volumes it would take to write it down in full. Because of this, it could potentially indicate his recording in another journal – just as much as it could refute it.

Bottom line: Did I just overthink a Disney cartoon? Yes. Was this evidence pretty shaky? Yes. Was this really, really long? Yes. Is this more just speculation or an interesting headcanon than a theory? Definitely. Has someone already thought of something like this? …Knowing the Gravity Falls fandom, most probably yes.

However, at the same time I think Ford having written (and possibly lost) another journal about his travels in the multiverse could make for an interesting concept…especially if it comes back to bite him in the ass later.

#gravity falls #stanford pines #gravity falls headcanon #the author of the journals #heacanon #kind of a theory #but not quite #gravity falls theory #grunkle ford #nitpick

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