Neil Rush CMT Blog- December 15, 2015- My Interest Identity Crisis

December 15, 2015

Hello, blog readers, it's Neil. Since the end of my senior year of high school/beginning of the summer of 2015, I have been going to a variety of wikis on Wikia, a hub for making wikis on literally any subject and posting blog posts on those wikis about my opinions on those topics. Obviously, it's not every wiki in existence, just the ones for things I like- in particular, the ones for my favorite shows on Disney XD, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Comedy Central, Fox, FX, and Netflix; my favorite comic book companies, characters, and comic book-based media; my favorite books from my youth; my favorite Lego themes; my favorite YouTube channels, personalities, and Let's Players; my favorite film franchises and animation studios; and my favorite video game franchises. I wish it were a lot more simple than it is.
For starters, I never expected it to take as long as it is taking. I intended to be finished by the end of the summer, but by the end of July, I realized that the pattern I made to decide what I would focus on doing that day, with different ways of doing this being some of the options, wasn't enough to get all of the blogs done by the end of the summer. I tried doing them whenever I wasn't doing something else or had another obligation, which my parents don't entirely understand. Because they are not me, they cannot understand how important it is to me that I put as much else on hold as I can to finish these wiki-blogs. As of this writing, I have thirteen left, and a few more than that to simply post minor information about myself on in case I don't have a strong enough opinion about whatever the wiki's topic is to write my heart out about it. Over the past few months, I've done a little over a hundred posts, one on each wiki that has a community blog. Not all of them have one, which makes things both easier and harder in different ways. Due to some people thinking that Wikia is only in it for the money and doesn't care about the fans, they made an offshoot called the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance, which is made for mostly Nintendo wikis and has a handful of non-Nintendo wikis partnered with them as well, such as a Digimon wiki, a Halo wiki, and even a Simpsons wiki. While disagreeing with the idea that Wikia wants to NEGATIVELY exploit fandom for profit (though I do think that some of their ideas, like trying to get every fandom with a wiki on it to make their own meals themed to whatever the meal's creator is a fan of, border on the saccharine in terms of internet fangirl gushing, though probably not as bad as fangirls on Tumblr), I still intend to use Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance in conjunction with Wikia because of how their wikis on Nintendo games are more fleshed out than Wikia's wikis on Nintendo games. There are many wikis I'm considering more strongly than others for a variety of reasons.
Some I'm considering because they're underdeveloped and are in need of much more information on their given subjects. An underdeveloped wiki would be easier to climb up the social ladder on than a more developed one and be easier to gain an administrator title on. One wiki that falls into this category is the Adult Swim wiki, the wiki for the programming brand occupying Cartoon Network during nighttime hours known for its off-color and experimental adult-oriented animated programming, which is severely lacking for information on its newer shows, such as Rick and Morty, its most popular show these days and considered by many to be the best show ever produced for the network. Another is the wiki for BoJack Horseman, the iconic Netflix animated dark comedy about the sad life of an anthropomorphic horse that used to be famous and his attempts and failures at getting back into the limelight and feeling cared for by others again. The next one is for Clone High, a short-lived animated series from the early 2000s that was created by two content creators I like, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, that has gained a cult following since its premature cancellation, about a high school in an underground government base full of teenage clones of historical figures, such as Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, and JFK, all of which are either nothing like the people they're clones of or exemplify nothing but their worst qualities. The one after that is the Cow And Chicken Wiki, a wiki for a Cartoon Network show from the 90s about, well, a cartoon cow and chicken. There are also ones for Dark Horse Comics, the third largest comic book publisher in America, and one for film adaptations of its original works. Then there's the one for Disney XD, the more animation-friendly-nowadays spinoff of Disney Channel, which is severely lacking for information on shows like Gravity Falls, Star Vs. The Forces Of Evil, Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero, Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, and Wander Over Yonder, five of the best family-oriented animated programs currently on TV (in the case of Gravity Falls and Star Vs. The Forces Of Evil, I use the term "family" loosely). Then comes the Fox Animation Wiki, a wiki about the Fox network's Sunday night lineup, which isn't very active anymore due to Animation Domination somewhat falling apart in the past few years, with The Cleveland Show being cancelled, American Dad moving to TBS, and live-action shows thrown into the mix. In spite of the wiki's general irrelevance, I think that information on all of the animated sitcoms ever produced by 20th Century Fox is still worth sharing on that wiki. I may also consider circulating the wiki for Johnny Bravo, the classic Cartoon Network show about a woman-crazy blonde Elvis. Then there is the wiki for Universal Parks And Resorts and their chain of parks, which I would want to share information on. Then there's one for The Mighty B, a late-2000s Nick cartoon co-created by Amy Poehler, who I've gained more faith in after hearing her voice Joy in Disney/Pixar's Inside Out. I didn't like the show for a little while, but I decided to give it another chance recently thanks to her involvement. Another is the wiki for Nickelodeon, the kids' network and brand with which I have a varied but mostly positive history with the programming of. Many of the wikis for its shows on its "Category:Shows with wikis" page have gone mysteriously missing, and I hope to fix this.
Then there are the wikis that people have actually responded to me on. These would be prime candidates for spending time on because I know that these wikis have active users willing to give me feedback. I deliberately make it hard to respond because of how I disable comments on most of my posts out of fear of generating controversy and being flamed. It's good to know that there are at least a few people willing to help me out on the wikis. People on the Ben 10 wikis have responded positively to things I have had to say, and liked my idea for original stories based on the show centered around one alien from each of the ten original alien species from the first incarnation of the franchise fighting various villains outside of the town of Bellwood, the primary setting of the three sequel series. People on the BoJack Horseman Wiki have responded to my blog post there, saying that they are working on my primary complaint, that the wiki is underdeveloped, and trying to make the wiki more complete. I also received a response on my blog post on The Boondocks Wiki, the wiki for the very-off-color comedy show on Adult Swim based on the comic strip of the same name that was one of the hardest inside looks at African-American culture ever created, centered around ten-year-old nationalist Huey Freeman, his impressionable eight-year-old younger brother Riley Freeman, and their legal guardian grandfather, or "granddad" and former civil rights activist (sort of) Robert Freeman. It advised that I try to shorten the blog post, which I would if I were to choose that as my main wiki. It was fairly long  because of how it was a large ramble about how the racial themes of the show and how they affect me both positively and negatively, as someone who benefits from white privilege immensely living in a culture that makes it more of a negative stigma every day. I also received a response on the Dragon Ball Wiki, the wiki for the iconic anime series about Goku and the Z-Fighters, also recommending spacing paragraphs, which I think may have been done for me, given that when something is posted to the community blog on one of these wikis, it becomes anyone's to edit. I also received one on the fanon (meaning for fan-made spinoff stories) wiki for DreamWorks Animation, the popular Hollywood animation studio that made Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, How To Train Your Dragon, and many other animated film franchises, though I don't remember what it was about in particular. Then there was the one for The Lego Movie, which called into question my claim that the movie was not all in the kids' imagination, but it was still good to hear. A variety of people responded to my post on The Mighty B wiki, implying that it may not be as desolate as once believed. People also responded to my blog post on the 6teen wiki, a Canadian animated teen sitcom about teens at a mall, something of a deconstructive parody of the teen dramedy genre. The people on the wiki were happy to see another fan, and they should be. I also received a response to my post on the Sonic The Hedgehog Wiki, liking the story of my history with the Sonic video game franchise but expressing confusion at the reference to one of the many Sonic theme songs at the beginning of the post, thinking it was supposed to mean more than just a joke. There were also a few on the South Park Fanon Wiki, praising my idea for a dramedy reimagining of the life of the New Kid from the show's Stick Of Truth video game, even though it had been done before in many other fan fiction formats, but the difference with this one is its more deconstructive take. There was also a response I received on the Image Comics Wiki, the wiki for the fourth largest comic publisher in America, responding to my lament that not many works of their's were being adapted into other media outside of The Walking Dead, and saying that more adaptations can and should be expected in the near-future. Then there was one on the SpongeBob wiki, which didn't say much, though it seemed to express mild awkwardness at how I felt about the current direction of the cartoon. There was also one on the fanon wiki for Cartoon Network's Steven Universe, their most popular and critically-acclaimed show as of right now, centered around an optimistic and fairly effeminate twelve-year-old boy, his single dad, and the three alien women that live with them, who use pseudo-magical powers to fight various evils. It seemed to praise my ideas of a prequel centered around Ruby and Sapphire, the two Gems that make up the character Garnet (the Gem characters can fuse into larger, more powerful Gem characters, and Garnet is a character that spends more time as a fusion than as two separate Gems), one about a teenage Steven traveling through space with the Gems, and one about them chasing Uncle Grandpa, a character from another Cartoon Network show, through the multiverse and trying to stop his plans to ruin the lives of other Cartoon Network characters as a response to the slightly-controversial crossover between the two shows, given the VASTLY different audiences and story purposes between the two shows. They did think that I shouldn't try too hard to build the wiki's content up, seeing as how a smaller wiki is easier to manage, and the very large and busy canon wiki for Steven Universe can get hectic at times. My point exactly for trying to find an underdeveloped wiki to work on. There was also a message I received on the Toonami wiki, the block that used to be on Cartoon Network for airing shows for a teenage audience (never stopped me from watching it well before I could handle most of its shows) until its end in 2008 and revival in 2012 on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block on Saturday nights, where it now airs uncut anime and revivals of action-oriented Cartoon Network shows from the past that have gained pretty decent adult cult followings, such as Samurai Jack. Someone said something about the reason why I disabled comments was because I was new, but it was really because I went on a rant about old Cartoon Network vs. new Cartoon Network and didn't want to get flamed... because I was new. I also wrote one on the TV Hub, the section of Wikia that its most popular TV show-themed wikis are showcased on, and people found humor in my comical post on comparing different kinds of television programming to different food groups. Then there was one on the wiki for We Bare Bears, my favorite Cartoon Network show currently airing. It's a lighthearted and generally feel-good show about three cartoon bears- a grizzly bear, a panda bear, and a polar bear- living in San Francisco and trying to make human friends. It was the only wiki that I noticed that had a direct link to the section of its forum for new users to introduce themselves, and while it didn't happen right away, I was welcomed on that wiki in a very open fashion. The last one is a wiki that is not on Wikia, but I included anyway- the big one, Wikipedia. I liked the way they welcome new users, which is why I included it on the list of wikis I consider using regularly more than all of the rest.
Then there are the wikis I included because of the decision-making pattern I use for decisions like this that only makes sense to me. The first one that was selected as a result of that formula is Kim Possible, the mid-2000s Disney cartoon about a secret agent teenage girl, her clumsy best-friend-that-eventually-becomes-her-boyfriend, and his pet naked mole rat. Then the pattern chose Adventure Time, Cartoon Network's modern classic about a preteen boy and his elastic talking dog living in a trippy, post-apocalyptic fantasy land. The next fandom of mine that the pattern chose was Kirby, Nintendo's video game series about a pink puffball creature with a vacuum-mouth that uses the abilities of anything and anyone he eats to save his home of Dream Land from the corrupt rule of King Dedede, an obese penguin king with similar abilities to Kirby and a part-wood-part-metal drill hammer. Then there was the wiki for American Dragon: Jake Long, a mid-2000s Disney cartoon about a New York City teen with the ability to turn into a dragon. Then there was the wiki for the Lego brand, which I have a strong history with. After that came the wiki for Animorphs, the book series about five teenagers given the ability to turn into any animal they touch by a dying alien war prince to fight a secret invasion by parasitic alien slugs wanting to take over the brains of all sentient creatures in the known universe. Many gray areas are created by the fact that the alien slugs need to live in a host body to survive, and questions about the ethics of war and the definitions of "good guy" and "bad guy" are deliberately distorted. I also included the Lifestyle Hub on that pattern-made list, the hub wiki gathering all of the wikis without a book series, comic series, movie series, TV series, video game series, or music artist at their center. Then I included the one for Archer, FX's animated action-black-comedy about a narcissistic and airheaded James Bond-style "secret" agent and those he works with. Then there's the one for Making Fiends, a cartoon series about a gleefully-ignorant blue girl under the belief that a misanthropic green girl that makes monsters called "fiends" that she uses to keep the people of the town the show is set in under a constant feeling of terror is her best friend, completely unaware of how much the green girl detests her and often narrowly avoiding serious bodily harm from the fiends. I then managed to select the wiki for Attack On Titan, the popular anime about the military force in a post-apocalyptic society protecting the remnants of humanity from a race of giants called Titans. The pattern then selected the wiki for Marvel Movies, which collects information on all films based on Marvel Comics, and now collects information on TV series based on them due to their rise in popularity and relation to Marvel's movies. Then came the wiki for Batman: The Brave And The Bold, a Silver Age Of Comics-inspired late 2000s-early 2010s show about Batman teaming up with various other DC Comics superheroes. The wikis for The Mighty B and Ben 10 were included in this pattern. Then the wiki for Mortal Kombat, the iconic fighting video game series, was included in the pattern. The last wiki was the Blue Sky Studios Wiki, the wiki for the animation studio that made Ice Age, Rio, and the recent Peanuts movie.
I am also planning on including wikis for things that have shared fandoms with Kim Possible in the final list that will decide what wiki(s) I'm going to focus on the most and what thing I'll center my pop culture life around for the foreseeable future. Thanks to Disney Channel's Lilo And Stitch: The Series, the TV series spinoff of the Disney movie about a Hawaiian eight-year-old girl and her pet alien, having crossovers with multiple other Disney animated TV series, namely Kim Possible, American Dragon: Jake Long, The Proud Family, and Recess, Kim Possible is indirectly connected to all of them, so that's why I decided to make them all major contenders. The creators of Kim Possible, Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle, have worked on many of Disney's straight-to-video-and-DVD movies in the 90s, so I decided to tie that back to the main Disney wiki and include that under the umbrella as well. They worked on Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command, an animated TV series spinoff of Disney/Pixar's Toy Story movies centered around the fictional character Buzz Lightyear and his travels in space rather than Andy's action figure of him that comes to life along with all of the other toys when humans aren't around, so I'll include that show as well. A few years after Kim Possible ended, that duo went to work on Nickelodeon's TV spinoff of DreamWorks' Monsters Vs. Aliens, so the wiki for that will be included as well. The director of Kim Possible's second and third seasons, Steve Loter, is widely considered to have defined the show's tone at its best, so other things he's worked on will have their wikis laid out as options on my final list as well. Those shows include, in addition to many of the things already listed, Brandy And Mr. Whiskers, a mid-2000s Disney cartoon about a socialite dog and an ex-con rabbit that get stranded together in the Amazon rainforest; Ren And Stimpy, the Nickelodeon cartoon about the Odd Couple style relationship between a short-tempered chihuahua and a simple-minded fat cat; Duckman, a USA animated series from the 90s about a cynical businessman duck; and Kevin Smith's Clerks: The Animated Series, a very short-lived animated spinoff of Kevin Smith's 90s comedy film Clerks.
I also felt like throwing in Gravity Falls, the critically-acclaimed Disney animated series about two twin siblings discovering supernatural occurrences in a small Oregon town during the summer before they turn thirteen. It is the show I think about the most for fan fiction nowadays, most likely because of similarities between the protagonist Dipper Pines and myself I notice, the in-depth storyline leaving much open to fan interpretation, and, probably the main draw for me to write fan fiction about it, the show is set over the course of the summer of 2012, yet didn't stop airing after that summer ended. It has sporadically aired episodes since then, and the series finale is due out on Martin Luther King Day 2016, President's Day 2016, or the first day of spring 2016, with a book meant to contain all of the loose ends due out summer 2016 and a revival/sequel project expected to be released sometime in 2017. I selected one of the real-life days on which one of the episodes aired (the one that aired on August 24, 2015) and decided to make that the starting point of my series. Dipper Pines and his twin sister, best friend, and platonic love interest Mabel Pines are sixteen in my series rather than twelve/thirteen like they are in the actual show. In this series of mine, the twins have been living in Gravity Falls ever since they moved back there to spend their teen years there as their parents' thirteenth birthday present for them and as a reward for saving the world from Bill Cipher and Weirdmageddon at the end of the summer of 2012. Now that knowledge of the supernatural has spread around the world in my series, the twins, their great-uncles Stan and Ford, their man-child friend Soos Ramirez, their now-a-high-school-senior friend and Dipper's first pubescent crush but now just a close friend Wendy Corduroy, and enemies-turned-friends Robbie Valentino, Pacifica Northwest, Gideon Gleeful, and Toby Determined are all regarded as heroes due to their involvement in saving the world, and now fight supernatural evil together. The characters each go through new arcs. Dipper struggles with feeling like the only sane one among his new group of friends meant to be a boy mirror to Mabel and her friends Candy and Grenda and with his crushes on his six closest female friends outside of Mabel that all like him back as well, making it hard for Dipper to ask one out without hurting someone else's feelings, as he cares a little too much about not hurting people's feelings even when it's unavoidable- Pacifica, Candy, Lindy, who is a younger cousin of Wendy's that I made up, and Emma Sue, Nichole, and Kari, the names I gave to three girls that Dipper met on a road trip in the summer of 2012 but he had spurned due to an awkward situation on that road trip, who have now all moved to Gravity Falls and have come to an understanding with Dipper over that awkward situation and really like Dipper now. Mabel takes a hard look at whether or not she's good enough of a sister to Dipper, fears that the fact that things have always come easier for her than Dipper has resulted in Dipper having low self-worth, and wonders how she can keep him close without feeling overly dependent on him. Stan and Ford deal with getting old and deal with having the darker elements of their past come back to haunt them. Soos is now a married man and loving dad, but is forced to question his worth as a parent when his deadbeat dad comes back into his life. Wendy struggles with potentially being attracted to Dipper now that he's older and whether or not such an attraction is healthy. Robbie weighs his distaste for authority and desire to dismantle most of the government against the safety and trust of Wendy and his girlfriend Tambry, the only two people he truly cares about. Pacifica tries to be a better person than the rest of the Northwest family but is afraid she's doomed to just become, to quote the show, "another link in the world's worst chain." Gideon goes through a similar struggle, and starts a new job as a psychic debunker, the exact opposite of what he was in the actual show. Toby tries to use his fame to become cooler than he ever was before. Even Bill Cipher goes through his own dramatic arc, and struggles with both family issues and his desire to bring a new Weirdmageddon to another dimension that may be held back by his potential addiction to Dimension 46'\, the setting of Gravity Falls. And in my series, Dipper and Mabel's parents are based off of Alex Hirsch, the creator of Gravity Falls, and Rebecca Sugar, the creator of Steven Universe, which shares many fans with Gravity Falls due to similar people working on them and similar characters. Basing their parents off of real people is my way of adding deconstructive satire on what a creator will do to keep their creations from falling victim to bad fan ideas, leading to a war between fictionalized versions of people that work on Gravity Falls and the shows it shares many fans with and fans that want the right to interpret the things they like as they choose, with the Gravity Falls characters caught in the middle. This big fan fiction idea, coupled with the fact that I shared my opinions on the show ending just as I was getting into it on a fan discussion on the Gravity Falls Wiki, all contribute to why I will make Gravity Falls part of my final decision-making list.
There are still more wikis I may make a part of my list, and depending on the final amount of wikis on the list, I may add a wiki if it ends up being an odd number not ending in 5 or is the number 83, because I use the number 498 to make decisions in this area, and 83 is a factor of 498. Even numbers, numbers ending in 5, and numbers that are factors of your choice number are much easier to manage than plain old odd numbers. The wiki that I chose for such a situation is the Rick And Morty Wiki, the wiki for the critically-acclaimed Adult Swim show about a grandfather/grandson duo traveling through time, space, and the multiverse in hilariously horrifying adventures. I chose this wiki because of how it's my favorite of the few wikis on Wikia to not have a Community Blog, making me feel as if it wasn't given a fair chance for another user to respond to my presence on it. None of the wikis on Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance have Community Blogs, but I'm OK with that because of the different website. Rick And Morty is my favorite of the blog-free Wikia wikis for things I like because of how series co-creator Dan Harmon has Asperger's Syndrome and I feel that both of the title characters are supposed to have it as well, along with the fact that it's the first Adult Swim show to provide a large amount of emotional depth alongside surreal and discomforting humor the half-network is known for. And Mr. Meeseeks. Definitely another reason to include the show on my Top Wikis List if I get an odd number that is difficult to work with.
Yes, this is beyond complicated on purpose. I do this because I don't want to leave anything up to chance or appear to be a bandwagon fan of anything. It would be much easier if I simply looked at everything, picked something, and said "I like this", but that doesn't feel entirely fulfilling to me. People like me like things that keep you thinking in patterns almost forever. Fortunately, this can't last much longer. I only have a few more wikis to post blog posts on, and a few more than that to post basic information to, followed by one final post on the main Wikia hub wiki, and then I'll make my final pattern to decide what will be my main fandom, which is the fandom I'll use the wiki for and talk with people about on TV Tropes, a casual wiki for analyzing character and story tropes within various media formats (character archetypes, common plot devices, etc.), make the favorite thing of the character most directly based off of myself in my original series that is a speculative fiction/dramedy reimagining of certain aspects of my life, and focus my post-Christmas shirt budget on, as I have held off putting anything on my Christmas list besides money this year in order to work this out easier. Thanks to the concept of "friendly fandoms" introduced to me on TV Tropes, which is a term used for fans of one thing that often get along with fans of another thing for some reason or are fans of both of those things, I'll also try to engage in the online wiki fan communities of at least some of the friendly fandoms of whatever my main fandom is. At this point, this quest has not benefited anyone but me, and "benefit" may be something of a stretch as well, given that I've limited interaction with my friends in order to get this done. But once it's all done, it will benefit others, such as the internet friends I may make through this endeavor (hoping they're not catfish, a term used for people who use fake personas on the internet or aren't even real people at all and are just computer viruses). Fandom is a cruel mistress that will make you do things you otherwise never would, but it is a unifying force that keeps me happy in a world so cold, which is my main motivation for finding the perfect one in such a complicated manner, and I'm positive that I'll be at a better place once it's all done. Thank you for reading, and see you next blog post.

Neil Rush CMT Blog- December 8, 2015- Gravity Falls "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape From Reality" Review, Analysis, and Speculation

December 8, 2015

Hello, blogosphere, this is Neil. After a little more than a month, I can finally write my review of "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape From Reality", the penultimate episode of Gravity Falls Season 2, and to an extent, the series as a whole, because after this, one last hour-long (44-minute-long) special will conclude the series when it airs in either the end of December or in early 2016. There are multiple good and bad things about this. On one hand, it's disappointing to see the show end just as I'm getting into it. On another, it makes sense, seeing as how the show has reached its natural end. It's the end of the summer, end of the world, end of Dipper and Mabel's childhood, and aliens have been introduced into the plot, which Alex Hirsch once compared to talking to God (allegedly), so I don't think that they can go any higher without going into really contrived territory. Some ideas that fans have considered were making the show about traveling through time, space, or the multiverse to try to stop Bill's plans before they can happen; and another was about Dipper and Ford studying new paranormal, supernatural, and pseudoscientific things together, almost like a slightly more family-friendly version of Rick and Morty, the show made by Alex's friend Justin Roiland and that he may do more for after the end of Gravity Falls. However, I think that no matter how spectacular an idea for Season 3 may sound on paper, it won't be a good idea in practice. The story has reached its natural end, and attempting to drag the story out and make it do more than it was meant to could ruin its good name. Alex Hirsch knows what's best for his show, and even if it means disappointing his fans, they'd be more disappointed if he looked like a sellout. As long as they can tie up as many loose ends as forty-four minutes will allow while also providing a satisfying, emotional, and optimistic conclusion, I'll be happy with the end. Gravity Falls had a good run, but its end is for the best. Now, without further delay, I shall review Gravity Falls Episode 219 "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape From Reality."
Despite how it was advertised, Bill was not in this episode much. His only two scenes can be described as one, that's how little he appeared. Bill prepares to spread Weirdmageddon past Gravity Falls, only to learn that Weirdmageddon is confined to Gravity Falls by a mystical dome surrounding the town. This is one of the few times we see Bill mad, leading him to say this meme-starter- "Can anyone please tell me why in spite of our INFINITE POWER, we can't get past the borders of this STUPID HICK TOWN?!?!?!?!?!" Bill thinks that Ford may have something to do with it, and considers removing him from the statue-backscratcher state Bill put him in. It's not nearly enough Bill as expected, but at least the main story makes up for it.
Dipper, Soos, and Wendy go into Mabel's prison bubble and find a bizarre world full of things Mabel liked from throughout the series called "Mabelland". They think Mabel is being held against her will there and find her at the top of the tallest tower, only to learn that she has made herself the mayor of Mabelland and loves it there, as it is a perfect place in which nothing bad happens to her and she can have whatever she wants. Still feeling angry at Dipper for expressing a consideration to leave her and become Ford's apprentice, she tells everyone that she made "a backup Dipper with a more supportive attitude"- an idealized clone of Dipper stylized after Kid Vid from the late-80s-early-90s Saturday morning Burger King Kids Club commercials named Dippy-Fresh. He speaks in stereotypical 90s skater talk, and his favorite things are skateboarding, supporting Mabel, and giving high-fives after anything he says. Dipper hates Dippy-Fresh upon seeing him (and how could he not? How would you feel if your sister not only replaced you because she's too emotionally immature to handle when you disagree with her and when you want to follow your dreams that just happen to be away from her, but this replacement of you is a total choad?) and even says "You're dead to me, Soos." when Soos's always-positive attitude makes him too dumb-nice to know better than to high-five Dippy-Fresh. Dipper, Soos, and Wendy try to convince Mabel to come back to reality, but Mabel gives Wendy and Soos fantasies to make them happy and forget their problems- a monster truck with Wendy's friends in it wanting to duct-tape the high school's principal to the high school's ceiling, and an idealized imagining of Soos's dad that looks like a luchador willing to play catch with Soos (given how the story of Soos and his dad is that of an absentee-deadbeat-dad story, I found this to be almost cruel of the writers). Mabel says that it shouldn't matter if it's not real as long as her friends and family are happy, but Dipper doesn't want to fall for Bill's tricks and refuses to look when Mabel tries to conjure up a happy fantasy for him. Dipper sits by a baby-giggling lake and a singing stuffed animal tree in Mabelland, disgusted with the horror-show outside the bubble and the fake, girly happiness inside it, until Wendy comes up to him, seemingly bored with hanging out with her friends. Wendy tells Dipper that he's so much smarter than everyone else in town, and that if he were fifteen, he'd be the perfect boyfriend for her. She says that in this bubble world, you can have anything you want, including being any age you want, and outstretches her hand, offering Dipper the ability to turn fifteen. Dipper almost happily accepts, having wanted a decent way to date Wendy ever since the beginning of summer (or at least since E105 "The Inconveniencing"), but seeing Wendy wink like the shapeshifter in the form of Wendy at it did in E202 "Into The Bunker" reminds Dipper that this is not the real Wendy, which she most certainly isn't. She's a creation of Bill's and the bubble world's, and falls apart as soon as Dipper rejects her. The stuffed animal tree's face briefly turns demonic and says "You shouldn't have done that, Dipper..!" before going back to its normal cheery state. Dipper now decides that he needs to try even harder than before to bring Mabel back to the real world. Upon hearing the real world be mentioned, the citizens of Mabelland all freak out upon hearing the one rule of the place be broken- mentioning reality. Mabel is so infuriated that she takes hers and Dipper's argument to court in Mabelland. The judge is Judge Kitty-Kitty-Meow-Meow-Face-Schwartzstein, an anthropomorphic pink cat guest-voiced by Jon Stewart, Alex Hirsch's comedic idol, doing his Southern judge voice. He gets distracted by yarn and has a tendency to hairball, but he doesn't let that get in the way of his job. The case is that of Fantasy V. Reality. If Dipper, representing Reality, wins, Mabel will return to the real world with him. If Mabel, representing Fantasy, wins, Dipper will be removed from Mabelland and replaced permanently with "town darling" Dippy-Fresh. Xyler and Craz (voiced by John Roberts, known for voicing Linda on Bob's Burgers, another show Kristen Schaal is on, and Greg Cipes, the voice of Beast Boy on Teen Titans, Kevin E. Levin on Ben 10: Alien Force, Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, and Ben 10: Omniverse, and Michelangelo on the current Nickelodeon incarnation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), two guys inspired by 80s Saturday morning cartoon characters that were two dream guys Mabel thought of in E119 "Dreamscapers", are the prosecution in the case. They share with the court audience how reality has wronged their client Mabel and the defense Dipper in the past, citing an event from second grade picture day in which one of the other kids at their school stuck gum in Mabel's hair before she could take her picture and humiliated her, and an event from fourth grade Valentine's Day in which Dipper didn't get any valentines because of his dorky status among most of the other students. Dipper, in the present, says that those two events were in the past and shouldn't matter anymore, but Xyler and Craz tell Dipper that it's not any better now, with the heartbreak experienced by Wendy officially friend-zoning him at the end of E202 "Into The Bunker", the apocalyptic disaster of the previous episode, and the promise he broke at the end of E217 "Dipper And Mabel Vs. The Future", all serving as reasons why they think that Dipper should either give in and embrace fantasy or leave Mabelland without further offense. In spite of Xyler and Craz's confidence in their case, Dipper is allowed to present his case because Judge Kitty (I'll just call him that for brevity's sake) is curious to what he has to say, as "us cats are known for being particularly curious". Dipper says that even though life is hard, you can't ignore the real world just because of some bad things, and that there's still good in the world as well. Those bad situations from Dipper and Mabel's childhood mentioned earlier were made better by Dipper and Mabel's sibling love for one another. The bad picture day was made better by Dipper giving Mabel a razor to shave the part of her hair that had gum stuck in it, and the bad Valentine's Day was made better by Mabel taking all of the valentines she received, gluing them all together into one big one that reads "For My Favorite Brother", and sliding it under the door to the janitor's closet where Dipper was sitting and crying. Dipper reminds Mabel that they've been there for each other through everything, and the book of memories that showed the bad memories now showed the good memories from throughout the show, such as when Dipper put a band-aid on Mabel's scratched elbow in E112 "Summerween", their sock-puppet-fist-bump at the end of E204 "Sock Opera", and Dipper and Mabel saving one another from Gideon back when he was still the main villain and certain death at the end of E120 "Gideon Rises", not to mention the countless other times they show how much they love each other. Dipper admits that he's been living a fantasy for the past few days as well, thinking he'd want to spend his teenage years in a stuffy underground lab with Ford, and that he will never abandon Mabel for anything and is proud to return back to California at the end of the summer with her. Dipper offers Mabel one of their trademark "awkward sibling hugs", and Mabel instead asks for a "sincere sibling hug". The sibling hug breaks the spell of delirium the bubble world has over Mabel, and all of the cute characters of Mabelland turn into creepy monsters, including Judge Kitty. As they say, curiosity killed the cat. Dipper, Soos, Wendy, and Mabel escape Mabelland as it crumbles around them on Giant Waddles, and once they've made it to the edge of the town, Mabel takes a spare giant knitting needle and pops the bubble, returning them to Weirdmageddon-scarred Gravity Falls, and shrinking Waddles back down to normal size (Waddles somehow got into the bubble with Mabel and was grown to giant size, and he doesn't turn into one of Bill's monsters from inside Mabelland? Whatever.). Mabel says that she's no longer unable to emotionally handle Dipper being away from her, and that if he really wants to, he can stay in Gravity Falls as Ford's apprentice, but Dipper says that he won't want to miss out on Mabel's awkward teen years. The four of them return to the Mystery Shack and prepare to fight something inside, but instead come across Grunkle Stan, Celestebellebethebelle the unicorn from E215 "The Last Mabelcorn", the gnomes, the Manotaurs and the Multi-Bear from E106 "Dipper Vs. Manliness", the gnomes, Candy and Grenda in warpaint, Pacifica, Old Man McGucket, and Sheriff Blubs, who have all banded together as the last remaining Gravity Falls citizens and fantasy creatures besides Dipper, Mabel, Soos, and Wendy that haven't been turned into statues by Bill's eye-bats and made a part of Bill's giant throne, and possibly preparing for a last stand against him. In the credits scene, Xyler and Craz, because they're a little more than products of the bubble and have existed in the Mindscape before as well, escape the remains of the bubble and witness the destruction of Weirdmageddon firsthand. They even quote Jean-Paul Sartre without knowing the emotions behind the quote- "Jean-Paul Sartre postulated that every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance." "Totally righteous, bro!" "I know!" One of the end-of-episode codes says that Xyler and Craz went on to run the legal department at a major children's television network, probably the Gravity Falls in-universe parody of Disney XD. Too bad they couldn't go further and actually show the two of them at the network, but they probably couldn't directly make fun of Disney XD, even if it's not necessarily a biting-the-hand-that-feeds-them critique.
The involvement of Jon Stewart is an interesting bit of Alex Hirsch trivia. Hirsch has been quoted as saying that Stewart is his hero and has been the voice of reason in his head since his teens. Stewart in return has praised Gravity Falls on The Daily Show back during the mid-2010s, saying he enjoys the show's mystery element, sharp, multi-layered humor that is both silly enough for kids and intelligent enough for adults, and genuine heart, exemplified by its progressive depiction of sibling relationships as not bad just for the sake of it, equal appeal to boys and girls, and its stressing the importance of family and its broad definition. E208 "Blendin's Game" must've struck a nerve with him in particular because of its revelation that Soos had an absentee deadbeat father, a situation somewhat similar to Stewart's strained relationship with his father. Stewart has mentioned enjoying watching the show with his kids and imitating Grunkle Stan in a humorous fashion for them (Stewart and Stan's similar square heads and large chins help with this effect). He even named their most recent family dog "Dipper" after Gravity Falls's protagonist. Jon has often jokingly pestered Kirsten Schaal, one of his contributors and the voice of Mabel, for secrets about the show back when they were still working on The Daily Show together, but, of course, she's bound by oath to not reveal anything other than "Reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold, bye!" In September 2013, shortly after Season 1 of Gravity Falls had ended, and Jon Stewart had come back from being away from The Daily Show for three months to direct his first film, Rosewater, and correspondent John Oliver had taken over hosting duties for the summer of 2013, paving the way for his HBO show Last Week Tonight, which is basically The Daily Show on steroids, Alex Hirsch was in the studio audience of an episode of The Daily Show, and after the filming had ended, one of the ushers pulled Alex aside to meet Jon. They then had a fifteen-minute conversation involving them gushing over each others' shows. If some of the more trolling-prone Gravity Falls fans were there, they'd probably try to measure whether Jon was Alex's hero or man-crush. Alex wanted nothing more than for Jon to guest-star on Gravity Falls at some point, more than any of the show's other guest-stars, and he said that he chose the role of Judge Kitty for him because as the voice of reason for so long in his head, Alex said that he should be the voice of reason in Mabel's head as well. Except he's not. Judge Kitty is a representation of Mabel's emotional baggage keeping her from growing up, the farthest thing possible from a voice of reason, and while he was a funny character, I don't think that the intentions in Alex's head matched what actually happened in the show. And to me, Jon Stewart isn't so much a voice of reason so much as he is "a voice occasionally worth considering", but that's something to go further into somewhere else.
This episode was pretty good. I wish there would've been more Bill, but that may have taken away from the desired emotional aspect of this episode. Dippy-Fresh was one of the funniest characters of Season 2 for all of the wrong reasons. I was admittedly pretty freaked out when Wendy seemingly was going to allow Dipper to become a teenager so that they could date without age difference, and still wonder if Dipper would've done it had either the creature pretending to be Wendy not winked and gave away her disguise or if there was some way not involving the bubble and involving the real Wendy in a way she would actually want for Dipper to be aged up and become her boyfriend. It was actually pretty sweet to see moments from Dipper and Mabel's childhood involving them making things better for one another. I do somewhat think that Dipper and Mabel's end-of-episode reconciliation was somewhat unearned, feeling that there should've been more tension as a result of Dipper learning that Mabel gave Bill the bubble he needed to cause Weirdmageddon. With the show nearly over, I feel that it wouldn't kill Alex to try to have Mabel realize that her need for comfort in life is bad and genuinely overcome it, rather than just teaching her how to reaccept reality. And yet, I think that they may have done this because the show could come off as too cynical if the writers try too hard to make Mabel feel guilty and ashamed of herself. That hasn't stopped them from doing it with Dipper, however, so it is a tricky situation.
Even with only one forty-four minute special left, there are still many questions to be asked. How will it all end? Will Ford be unfrozen? Will the town turn out OK? Will a major character death occur with genuine emotional weight, and not just the death of the mayor? Will Disney XD allow said death to happen to an under-18 character? Does Gompers the goat play into things at all? Will Dipper and Pacifica fall in love, or will that ship finally sink? Who's more evil, Bill or Time Baby? Will Dipper and Mabel ever return to Gravity Falls? And what is Alex Hirsch, exactly? Is he an idealist in cynic's clothing, a cynic in idealist's clothing, or is he a fourth dimensional being using Disney Television Animation to force his twisted will on humanity? OK, that last Alex Hirsch question is not a legitimate one, but all of the others are. I think the most important question, however, is did Gravity Falls leave a lasting impact? Um, yes. Isn't the proof obvious? I'm making a blog for a technical school almost entirely centered around it. It is one of the most popular shows ever produced at Disney Television Animation, generating an audience of kids, teens, adults, and internet dwellers, many who use their own love of the show to become internet celebrities themselves, such as YouTube channel makers Vailskbaum94 and Douglas Mackrel, who hosts a web series called The Royal Order Of The Holy Mackerel, both a pun on his last name and a reference to a secret society that Stan is often implied to be a part of in the show. It uses near-perfect storytelling to effectively blend humor, adventure, weirdness, a little creepiness (which becomes A LOT in Season 2), and genuine heart. It also shows probably the most empowering depiction of a brother-sister relationship and proves that brothers and sisters can be the best of friends. While not the most fun show currently being made at Disney Television Animation (that title I give to Star Vs. The Forces Of Evil), I definitely find it to be the smartest, creepiest in an innovative way, and most mature. It will be sad to see it go, but all good things must come to an end at some point. And Alex Hirsch has implied that he may do some form of revival of the program in 2017 at the earliest. Whether this will be through an hour-long special, a miniseries, or an actual Legend-Of-Korra-style sequel series remains to be seen, but we have not yet seen the last of the Pines family, the town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, or any of the creepy, mysterious, and cool things Dimension 46'\ has to offer.
While not as good as it possibly could've been for my personal views of the cast's characterization, this was still a very good clip show-esque episode to air before the original series of Gravity Falls gives its final bow on either Martin Luther King Day 2016, President's Day 2016, or the first day of spring 2016. I give this episode an 8/10. Thanks for reading, and see you next week with something that will more than likely not be a Gravity Falls review.

Neil Rush CMT Blog- November 17, 2015- Spectre Review

November 17, 2015

Hello blog readers, it's Neil. My next review is of the most recent James Bond film, Spectre. My dad is a pretty big Bond fan. I understand why, but I think that there's something of a generation gap between older and younger people when it comes to Bond. Most of his actions, particularly what he does with the women of the Bond movies, come off as more like the actions of a creepy man with a rock in his chin rather than a suave action hero. That's not to say the movies are poorly made, it's just that they may be past their time.
The movie opens with a long-panning shot of Bond (played reluctantly by Daniel Craig, most likely for the last time) in a costume of a skeleton in a tuxedo during Day of the Dead festivities in Mexico City, using the costume to sneak through the masses, then take it off once he's reached a high-up hotel room, walk out on the ledge of the room's balcony, and travel across the rooftops to find and kill two people that were trying to blow up a stadium that the previous M (played by Judi Dench) wanted him to kill as a last request before her death at the end of Skyfall, the previous Bond film. This is just the first step in a global search to find and take down the shadowy global criminal organization known as Spectre, hence the film's title. Spectre has not been in the Bond movies since the early 1970s, and has returned in a more modern and menacing fashion. Their name stands for Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion, a name that might not work now like it did in the 1960s, but whatever. The group is led by Franz Oberhauser (played by Christoph Waltz), who almost feels like a Saturday morning cartoon villain in his maniacal delight in being evil. Meanwhile, the current M (played by Ralph Fiennes) deals with a would-be colleague codenamed C (played by Andrew Scott) that plans to overhaul MI6 with a new surveillance program, making field agents obsolete.
The production values are great, especially in that opening scene. Unfortunately, none of the other aspects of the movie are as good. Craig seems to be phoning it in with his performance as Bond because of how tired he's grown of playing him. Everyone else still makes the best of the script's painfully-average material, which actually does come with some good lines that I would appreciate more if they weren't in a Bond movie. The movie often tries to be self-referential about most Bond tropes, which works sometimes, but not every time. One of the good ones was how during his trademark scene of saying "Shaken, not stirred" when ordering a martini was turned on its head when the person serving drinks said that he was at a clinic that didn't serve alcohol. It shouldn't matter anyway, because in spite of his frequent drinking of fancy liquor, he still acts sober. The very idea of a "Bond Girl" is more disturbing than it should be. The idea of any women being able to fall in love with him, even the widow of a man he killed and the daughter of an old enemy with plenty of reason to mistrust him, may have been a charming fantasy in the Golden Age of James Bond, but now comes off as extremely disturbing. I only saw it because it was a big blockbuster that my dad wanted to see with me, and I didn't expect too much, but then I was reminded just how discomforting it can be to watch James Bond around women, and while I don't usually judge movies for reasons like this, you can't really not judge James Bond movies on that aspect. At least for me personally, I give Spectre a 4/10. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next week with a review of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 2.

Neil Rush CMT Blog- The Peanuts Movie Review

November 10, 2015

Hello, blog readers, this is Neil again. There will be no new Gravity Falls until November 23, so the next time I'll review it will be for the blog post on December 1. So for now, I'll review a movie that I saw this weekend- The Peanuts Movie.
It was a risky move- bringing the classic and beloved comic strip back to theaters in an animation style that mixes modern CGI with the 2D of the old strips and cartoons. Most attempts to please older fans had the potential to alienate younger fans, and vice versa. The humor of Charles Schulz's comics may have been too dry for today's kids, and the focus on failure might be too cynical for a child audience. Fortunately, thanks to the involvement of the Schulz family, who has owned the rights to the characters ever since Charles Schulz's death on February 12, 2000, it manages to reflect the slightly-melancholy tone of the old strips and specials while also being appropriately uplifting for modern audiences.
Everyone is the same as they were before. Charlie Brown is still a good soul with the worst luck possible for any human. Linus is still the thumb-sucking, blanket-clinging wise sage. Sally is still the immature little sister that stalks Linus, her "sweet baboo". Lucy is still the cruel girl that stalks Schroeder, tries to say that she's prettier than any other girl in school, pulls the football away from Charlie Brown, works as a five-cent psychiatrist that has no idea what she's talking about, and wants to slug every other boy or dog in town. Schroeder still practically worships Beethoven and is tormented by Lucy's obsessive crush on him. Pig-Pen is still constantly dirty and unrecognizable without his dirt cloud (which has made him something of a girl magnet among some girls). Peppermint Patty is still the aggressive tomboy with the crush on Charlie Brown, or "Chuck" as she calls him. Marcie is still Peppermint Patty's quiet sidekick that calls her "Sir" and also has a crush on Charlie Brown, or "Charles" as she calls him, albeit a much more understated one. All the adults still speak in trombone sounds and are always offscreen. Snoopy is still an author, a World War I flying ace, and Joe Cool. Woodstock is still Snoopy's sidekick bird. The only major difference is that it's in a 2.5D traditional animation/CGI hybrid. The plot isn't too out of the ordinary for Peanuts stories. A new girl simply referred to as "The Little Red-Haired Girl" comes to town, and Charlie Brown is instantly smitten with her, but lacks the courage to talk to her. He tries many times to talk to her or appear more confident to impress her, and Snoopy often acts as a wingman of sorts, but none of his attempts at success last until the very end, when The Little Red-Haired Girl says that she likes him anyway because of his genuine and kind soul. Meanwhile, Snoopy writes a story about himself as the pilot of the Sopwith Camel (but, even in his fantasy sequences, flying his doghouse like a plane) rescuing his love interest meant as a response to The Little Red-Haired Girl, a girl-dog named Fifi (voiced by the only major star in the cast, Kristin Chenoweth, and even then she's not so much voiced, per se, so much as she simply makes more feminine versions of Snoopy's sounds) from his mortal enemy, the Red Baron.
The animation was some of the best animation I've seen in an animated movie so far this year, and quite the step up from the generic CGI from most of Blue Sky Studios' productions. The storyline isn't overly risk-taking, aside from Charlie Brown actually getting a happy ending for once, but works as a semi-modern Peanuts story nonetheless. The writing has humor that represents all of the traits of the characters present. One of the best quotes is when Sally is happy to be at the end of the school year, thinking that after the end of this day, she'll never have to go back to school ever again, but Charlie Brown reminds her that they still have six more years of grammar school, then four more years of high school, then four more years of college (even though there are younger and older siblings, everyone's in the same grade for simplicity's sake). Because of Sally's poor math skills, after adding all of those up, she says, "Oh no! That's thirty-seven more years of school!" Technically, she's close to right, seeing as how the Peanuts gang never ages in their official media, so therefore, they'll be in elementary school forever. The music, while it may have been oversaturated with pop music that seems out-of-place for Peanuts, and by Meghan Trainor, no less, whose musical style in most of her music that's not in this movie is more than a little annoying, still sounds much better than some may have thought, and actually works well alongside Vince Guaraldi's classic jazz soundtrack from the old specials.
While I doubt it will receive the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, which will probably go to Disney/Pixar's Inside Out (if you've seen Inside Out, you'd know why it will win that award), at least from a perspective of personal enjoyment and nostalgia, it was my favorite movie of the year, animated or otherwise, and shows that, when the right people are working on their movies, Blue Sky Studios can reach similar levels of storytelling quality to Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and DreamWorks Animation. So what's next for the Peanuts gang? Will Blue Sky make more movies about them? Will they work on any future TV specials for the characters? Only time will tell, but for now, it's good to have the characters back in a major capacity such as this. 9.7/10. Thanks for reading this blog, and I'll be back next week with probably a review of Spectre, the newest James Bond film.

Neil Rush CMT Blog- November 3, 2015- Gravity Falls Reviews, Speculation, and Analysis- "Weirdmageddon Part 1"

November 3, 2015

Hello blog readers, it's Neil. This is a review that I've been waiting to do for quite a while now- Part 1 of the Weirdmageddon trilogy, the three-part Season 2 and/or series finale to Gravity Falls, the Disney Channel/Disney XD cartoon that has, in only a few months, gone from, in my mind, "that Disney show with an oxymoron for a title and allegedly Slenderman in the background" to "one of the most creative and addictive stories ever put to animation and my seventeenth favorite TV show of all time." This episode has completely changed what episodes are on my list of favorite episodes of the show, pushing everything up one on the list from the previous installment except for "Fight Fighters" and removing "Not What He Seems" from the list. This episode is my new favorite episode of Gravity Falls, as it is with many other fans, and because I usually like to make multi-parters count as one episode, I believe that I will add the next two parts to the title of my favorite episode of the show as well.
This episode begins where "Dipper And Mabel Vs. The Future" left off. After Mabel gave Bill, who was possessing Blendin, the interdimensional rift, he used it to unleash "Weirdmageddon", Alex Hirsch's idea for an apocalypse not based in the Book of Revelations, but rather on his own warped imagination, on the world. Now, as Weirdmageddon begins, and Bill enters the physical world, he gives himself layers of skin made of flesh and metal as his physical form, and brings his "friends", an assortment of various random monsters, such as 8-Ball, a Creature-From-The-Black-Lagoon-type monster with magic 8-balls for eyes, Teeth, an anthropomorphic pair of dentures, a Cthulu-type monster, The Horrifying Sweaty One-Armed Monstrosity (guest voiced by Louis C. K.), a giant disembodied head with an arm on top of it that is constantly crawling around trying to eat people and actually gets really sad when people are afraid of him (who else but Louis C. K. would make a carnivorous monster sad and pitiful?), eye-bats that turn people into statues, and many others, to Gravity Falls, along with creating a giant black pyramid called the Fearamid in the sky above the town. The townspeople demand that Bill and his friends leave, though Preston Northwest (voiced by Nathan Fillion), Pacifica's dad and the stereotypical evil rich man of the show, offers to be one of his horsemen of the apocalypse and give him shelter in the Northwest Mansion in exchange for freedom from harm at the hands of Bill's monsters. Now that Pacifica is one of the "good guys", and may have a deeper connection to the overall mythos of the show than simply the "mean-girl-turned-nice", Pacifica yells at her dad for being so willing to sell out the townspeople in exchange for not getting harm inflicted on him, though I have a feeling that she might do this even without having turned good. Bill pretends to consider it, but because he wants to show that he is not so easily bought, he responds by doing possibly the grossest thing done to anyone on the show so far, and probably would've made the show TV-PG or higher if there was blood involved (or if Disney XD's Standards and Practices actually watched the shows being put on their network)- Bill rearranges the orifices on Preston's face, replacing his eyes with ears, nose with a mouth, mouth with a giant eyeball, and ears with nostrils. Preston may not be likable, but he didn't deserve that! After declaring that "time is dead and meaning has no meaning!" and trapping Mabel in a bubble with her symbol on the Bill Cipher Wheel, a shooting star, on it, Bill gets Weirdmageddon into full swing. After a twisted reimagining of the Gravity Falls intro, with Bill's friends replacing various characters, Bill whispering "I'm watching you, nerds!" backwards at the end, and saying that the show was created by Bill Cipher rather than Alex Hirsch, Bill sends a "weirdness wave" onto the town, bringing various things to life, turning Soos' grandma into a chair, and making Gompers the Goat giant and leading him to destroy the town. Dipper and Ford have one shot to stop Bill- literally, as Ford has made a cannon that, if shot at Bill, will send him back to the Nightmare Realm. Unfortunately, the bell of the church steeple that Ford was perched at for his shot at Bill came to life just as he had the shot, causing the cannon blast to miss and go through Bill's hat, which is revealed to be part of his body. After the hat regenerates, Bill comes up to the two at the church before Ford can tell Dipper Bill's other weakness and takes Ford prisoner, sarcastically thanking him for making Weirdmageddon possible because of how he was the one who built the original portal. If you are of the camp that actually believes that the apocalypse is Ford's fault for either that reason above or because you believe he tried to take Dipper away from Mabel with his offer of apprenticeship and that it sent Mabel over the despair event horizon, this may be satisfying in a cathartic sense. I, for one, am not of that mindset, and think that no one is entirely wrong or right in the case of the problems with the Pines family, I'm just throwing it out there because of the large amount of Gravity Falls fans that are. Bill even allows Ford to join his army, saying that with his six fingers, he'd fit right in among his freaks, but Ford says he'd die before ever joining Bill and still knows his weaknesses. Bill responds by subtly tricking Ford into holding his hands up like claws, then freezing him into a statue, saying that he needed a new backscratcher. Furious and horrified that his great-uncle is being used like a toy for his arch-enemy, Dipper attempts to take Bill on single-handedly. In a jump-scare moment, Bill responds by, when far away, saying, "Well, isn't this-" then turning into a giant and taking only one second to fly up into Dipper's face screaming, in a demonic voice- "INTERESTING!" Dipper tries to find something in the journals to help him defeat Bill in physical form, but Bill mocks Dipper's stammering and sarcastically tells him to show off a skill before he gets bored and leaves. Dipper tries to jump forward and punch Bill in the eye, but Bill shoots a laser from that eye of his that sends Dipper flying into a tree, and even burns the three journals, telling Dipper not to be a hero, and that what Bill did to Ford is what happens to heroes in Bill's world. Not much hope seems left without the journals, though some may think that it's OK because of the belief held by a portion of the fandom that, in a metaphysical sense, the journals were the real villains of the show, as Journal 1 caused a rift between Stan and Ford, Journal 2 caused a rift between Gideon and his dad, and Journal 3 caused a rift between Dipper and Mabel. Bill rewards 8-Ball and Teeth for their service to him by telling them that they can have Dipper for a snack, and saying that they should come to the Fearamid for a party he's throwing there later. Bill turns a nearby car into a demonically-pimped-out ride to drive up to the Fearamid in with the other monsters. Dipper manages to escape 8-Ball and Teeth and avoid capture by the eye-bats for three days (wait, isn't time supposed to have stopped? Eh, it's Bill, and nothing makes sense with him. Also, I feel that the only way Dipper managed to survive that long is because Bill needs him alive for his plans later on down the road, so Bill is letting Dipper live.). Dipper has constantly been contacting Mabel over those three days to no avail, unaware that she's in a state of stasis. He seeks out help in the Gravity Falls Mall, narrowly avoiding being asked politely by The Horrifying Sweaty One-Armed Monstrosity to get in its mouth, and falls for a nacho-based booby trap. Because of an Internet meme associating Bill with nachos as a result of the triangular shape that they share, I thought that would be a trap set by Bill. Of course, Bill doesn't use such primitive traps. It was one set by Wendy, who reveals herself by coming out of a bush, shares that she and her family always prepared for the apocalypse each year rather than celebrate Christmas, and gets Dipper down from the trap. Dipper and Wendy hug, happy to have someone else to count on after three days alone in the end of the world, and a reminder that, while not romantically as Dipper once wanted, Wendy does love Dipper, but more like a little brother/really good friend, and now Dipper is OK with loving Wendy as just a big sister/really good friend/first crush that you naturally move on from but never truly outgrow. Meanwhile, Bill and his monster friends are throwing a demonic rave in the Fearamid, where Bill says that Phase 2 of Weirdmageddon will begin after the party, only for the party to be crashed by the arrival of the Time Police. Bill tells the other monsters "Play it cool, guys. I'll do the talking. Hide the Time Punch!", which seems to be a hint at an origin story for Bill to be revealed in the next few episodes that as messed up as Bill is, mentally, he's not much more than an angsty teenager that doesn't want to live by anyone's rules other than himself, a message that Alex Hirsch talked about in an interview meant to be a first look at the Weirdmageddon saga and how one of the messages that may be conveyed through these next few episodes is how absolute chaos is not good for anyone (something that seems to be in direct contrast with his promotion of relative morality, which, unfortunately, is something that, if you have enough success and, by natural extension, an ego, you might end up using something like the "morality is relative" argument to justify your own bad behavior while having your own ideas of morality and not even considering that you might be in the wrong. Hey, nobody's perfect, even when they make good TV). The Time Police say that Bill is under arrest for crimes against space-time and possessing the body of a Time Anomaly Removal Crew agent. Blendin says "My body is a temple! How dare you!" The Time Baby, the most powerful member of the Time Police, and a super-being with a very deep voice and physical resemblance to a giant baby, tells Bill that if his rift in this dimension continues, it will destroy the fabric of existence, then says "Surrender now or face my tantrum!" Bill is old enemies with Time Baby, and thinks he's a pushover, so he sarcastically says "Oh no, a tantrum! Whatever shall I do about that- HOW ABOUT THIS!" and shoots a disintegration beam out of his finger, killing Time Baby and all of the Time Police agents in one fail swoop. Even though Time Baby isn't actually a baby, this shows that Bill has no limits. He just killed a baby in cold blood. Even creepier, his eye briefly turns into a mouth to blow smoke off of his finger. Once the monsters go back to partying, Blendin, who miraculously avoided the disintegration beam, teleports to an unknown period in time, which will be revealed in the next episode (at the soonest, because this show can drag certain things out at times). Back with the good guys, Dipper, Wendy, and Toby Determined (voiced by Gregg Turkington), the wet-blanket journalist from earlier episodes that became Wendy's traveling partner (not by her choice, as she and pretty much everyone else in town finds him to be very, very lame), are hiding out in the store Edgy On Purpose, the show's parody of emo-goth-vamp-otaku-teen geek clothing stores like Hot Topic and Spencer's Gifts, which Wendy has converted into a shelter of sorts against the demons. Wendy shares how she, Robbie, Tambry, Lee, Nate, and Thompson were in the cemetery playing Truth-Or-Dare when Weirdmageddon began, and how all of them were kidnapped except for Wendy (Robbie almost got away but just had to take a selfie with the giant cross in the sky). Dipper, on the verge of tears, says that he and Mabel were in a fight over whether or not Dipper should stay behind and be Ford's apprentice at the end of the summer or go back home with Mabel when it began, and that Mabel wouldn't even look him in the eye when she ran out. Dipper is clearly unaware that Mabel caused Weirdmageddon by giving Bill the rift and must believe that it just broke in his backpack as she ran out with it. Dipper and Wendy go outside for some air, and Dipper expresses hopelessness about the situation, with the journals destroyed, Ford as Bill's backscratcher, and Stan nowhere to be found. Wendy restores Dipper's hope by saying that they go find Mabel, because the twins can do anything, even beat Bill, if they do it together. Dipper and Wendy see a giant bubble in the distance with Mabel's shooting star, the symbol that represents her on the Bill Cipher Wheel, and have intuition that Mabel is inside, so they go to a nearby abandoned car dealership to drive over there. The car dealership turns out to be a trap laid by Gideon and his prison friends, all driving Mad Max-style armored cars. Toby is knocked out with blowdarts, but Wendy doesn't seem to care much, even accidentally calling him "Tony". Gideon says that he's been assigned the task of keeping anyone from getting into Mabel's bubble, and has the mystical key to open it. Gideon boasts "Bill explained it to me nice and simple: she was always destined to be mine! And now that I have her in a cage, she'll learn to love me! I have an eternity to wait!" When Ghost-Eyes, Gideon's right-hand man in his gang, a large bearded man lacking irises, hence his nickname, picks Dipper and Wendy up, Wendy threatens Gideon by saying "After I break Ghost-Eyes' arm and steal that key from your neck, I'm going to wear your butt on my foot like a rhinestone slipper!" "And what makes you think you can do that?" Gideon arrogantly responds." Wendy simply says "BECAUSE I'M A FLIPPIN' CORDUROY!", (the minced-oath-to-disturbing-image ratio in this show is pretty bizarre), dislocates Ghost-Eyes' arm, takes Mabel's prison-key, grabs Gideon, drop-kicks him into the other prisoners, and steals one of the cars from the junkyard. Dipper, once more reminded of why he had (and still has, but has accepted that it won't work out in real life) his crush on Wendy by her epic takedown of Gideon and his gang, says, in a slightly quivering voice because of just how enamored he is "Wendy, you are the coolest person I know." "I know, dude. Tell me about it later," she responds. Gideon and his gang give chase in their cars, and Ghost-Eyes asks Gideon why he's keeping his girlfriend is a prison bubble, feeling that, having been oppressed by prison before, they shouldn't be imprisoning anyone else. Gideon, being very insecure about this sort of thing, says "SHE LOVES ME! She just doesn't know it yet". Dipper, Wendy, Gideon, and the prison gang come across a field of "weirdness bubbles", which, as it turns out, don't do you harm when you go through them, they just put you in different animation styles. Dipper and Wendy are briefly turned into birds, anime characters, living meat, and live-action versions of themselves (played by their voice actors, Jason Ritter and Linda Cardellini, in costume as Dipper and Wendy), and Gideon and Ghost-Eyes are turned into CGI block characters, women, and 1920s Steamboat Willie-style cartoons, and when they pass through that bubble, rather than scream, they simply sit in their car with their mouths open as if they were screaming, followed by a black text image that reads "Aaauuuggghhh!!!" Dipper and Wendy crash-land on the other side of the cliff that separates them from Mabel's bubble, and as they get out, almost where they need to be, they are approached by a mysterious person in a cloak. If you were younger, you might be lead into thinking that this was another potential enemy, but most of us could tell that because of the round shape of the man in the cloak and how he reaches out a hand to help Dipper up off the ground, this was none other than Soos, who has spent the past three days as a hooded drifter helping those in need, and even off-handedly mentioning that people have written folk songs about him. Dipper, Soos, and Wendy are surrounded by Gideon and his gang shortly thereafter. Gideon boasts that he has won, that Bill's hench-bats are on their way to take the three into custody, and that Mabel is finally all his. Dipper intelligently responds "Is she? Is she really?" Gideon says "Well, yeah, I have her trapped, ergo, Mabel is MINE!" Dipper, while looking back at Wendy with regret for having done some questionable things in order to try to get her to like him the same way he liked her, and also probably remembering how he and Mabel used a love potion to make Robbie and Tambry fall in love only for that to cause some problems in "The Love God" and trying to be more confident around girls and get the e-mail addresses of a bunch of them while on a road trip only for a few of them to all show up at the same location on the road trip and think that he was trying to lead them all on in "Roadside Attraction", tells Gideon "If I've learned anything this summer, it's that you can't force someone to love you. The best you can do is strive to be someone worthy of loving." Gideon indignantly responds, "Oh, I'm worthy o' lovin! These prisoners love me!" Dipper-"But Mabel doesn't, because you're selfish (among other things, if I might add, Dipper). But you can change! Bill thinks that there's no heroes in this world, but if we work together and fight back, we can defeat him. You want to be Mabel's hero? Stand up to Bill, and let us save her!" Gideon- "That's crazy! You know what Bill would do to me if that happens?" Ghost-Eyes- "What, you're scared of Bill?" Gideon- "No, I ju... It's a complicated situation." Dipper- "Look inside, Gideon. If this is all for Mabel, then ask yourself what Mabel would want you to do." Gideon looks at an old newspaper article from the Season 1 episode "The Hand That Rocks The Mabel", when Mabel dated Gideon just to keep the town happy even though she was disgusted by him, and the pictures in the newspaper article show Gideon looking very happy but Mabel looking beyond uncomfortable, and asks Dipper to tell Mabel what he did, which Dipper says he'll definitely do. Gideon and his prison gang drive off to fight Bill, and Dipper, Soos, and Wendy take the key, unlock the prison bubble, and unite for Mabel. Dipper takes Soos and Wendy's hands and walks with them into the prison bubble, leading the screen to fade to white with a "To Be Continued..." at the bottom. The scene that plays during the credits is of The Horrifyingly Sweaty One-Armed Monstrosity trying to get more people to be his food, but when everyone runs away, he becomes resigned to a fate of starvation and tries to call his mother, crawling off-screen sadly.
Like I said, this episode was probably the best of the series so far. It had creative ways of playing with the animation, Louis C. K. guest-starring as a character tailor-made for him, and some of the best character and story developments to happen in the story yet. No one knows what will happen in the next episode, "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape From Reality", scheduled to air Monday, November 23 at 8pm on Disney XD, though that won't stop anyone from guessing. The basic synopsis says that Dipper, Soos, and Wendy travel through a bizarre alternate universe to get Mabel back while Bill prepares Phase 2 of Weirdmageddon. So what is in Mabel's bubble anyway? My guess is that because Mabel essentially made a deal with Bill offering the bubble in exchange for an eternal summer when Bill tricked her at the end of "Dipper And Mabel Vs. The Future", she is having the illusion of a perfect day inside the bubble, in which summer never ends and she doesn't have to grow up. In the illusion world, I think that everyone in Gravity Falls is reimagined to meet Mabel's ideals of perfection for them. Everyone would be a girlier version of themselves, Wendy and her friends would be her age, Candy would never go to music camp, Grenda would never have started dating her clingy Austrian boyfriend Marius, Gideon would never have been born (she does not yet know of his desire to perform a heroic sacrifice for her), Pacifica would be a nice girl and one of her best friends, Dipper would be unable to do or say anything she doesn't approve of, and Mabel would've never opened the portal that brought Ford into Dimension 46'\. The real Dipper, Soos, and Wendy would have to convince Mabel that none of this is real, which will be near-impossible. Dipper will also learn that Mabel gave Bill the rift so that this would be possible, which may put a greater strain on their relationship. I also feel that Phase 2 of Weirdmageddon involves Bill gathering the people that have symbols representing them on the Bill Cipher Wheel and preparing to kill them, as they are the only people that can stop him. He will try to seek out Stitched Heart, Cracked Glasses, Question Mark, Ice Bag, Mackerel Fish, Pine Tree, Cyclops Star, Six-Fingered Hand, Backwards Llama, and Shooting Star. Stitched Heart is Robbie, Question Mark is Soos, Mackerel Fish is Stan, Pine Tree is Dipper, Cyclops Star is Gideon, Six-Fingered Hand is Ford, and Shooting Star is Mabel. Cracked Glasses, Ice Bag, and Reverse Llama are still up in the air. Most people think that Old Man McGucket is Cracked Glasses, either Wendy or Blendin is Ice Bag (leaning more towards Wendy), and Pacifica is Reverse Llama. Season 2 will last anywhere from twenty to twenty-two episodes, and the rest of the episodes after the next one will probably involve a situation in which Robbie, McGucket, Soos, Wendy, Stan, Dipper, Gideon, Ford, Pacifica, and Mabel will somehow unite and prepare for a final showdown with Bill and his monster friends (final if this is the series finale). I think that the Northwest Mansion may be turned into a shelter against the destruction in the town, and that Pacifica will leave her parents to find Dipper and Mabel and see if they're safe, now valuing them as friends and possibly having a crush on Dipper. Robbie and Ford will be unfrozen from their statue forms, Stan's hiding place will be discovered, and Gideon's gang will go to fight Bill, but because Bill knows everything that's going to happen, he knows that Gideon will do this and have a trap for him. It will also be revealed where and when Blendin went. I think he traveled a thousand years in the future because it takes a thousand years for the Time Baby to regenerate, and he hopes to bring Time Baby back with him to defeat Bill, as he is one of the few beings in the Gravity Falls world that is more powerful than Bill and could defeat him with relative ease. Those are all of the things that I think will happen over the course of the next two-to-four episodes. I don't know if any of this will happen for sure, but who does? Alex Hirsch is an enigma that drinks the tears of his fans. I give Weirdmageddon Part 1 a 9.8/10. Thank you for reading, and see you next week with a post about something else, seeing as how there will be no new Gravity Falls until the end of the month. And as Bill says, "Reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold! Bye!"

Neil Rush CMT Blog- October 27, 2015 2.0- The Broken Base Trope

October 27, 2015

Hi, blogosphere, it's Neil. I posted a Top 10 list on this blog about my favorite episodes of the show I always talk about on this blog, Gravity Falls, to prepare for the three-part Season 2 and/or series finale to the show, the Weirdmageddon trilogy, but in order to more properly match the FCAs for this week's assignment, I decided to write an extra post as well. The FCAs mentioned taking a side of a debate and defending why you took the side you did. In order for it to be about media, I decided to go to the website known as TV Tropes and look up the tropes "Base Breaker" and "Broken Base". These terms are meant to describe divisions within fanbases and how people that hold different opinions on different aspects of the same thing and when it leads to people that common sense would dictate should get along fighting amongst each other for extremely petty reasons. Many things can break a base. It could be a character that is given excessive time in the story by the writers because of how much the creators or writers like them but many fans have grown to find very annoying. It could be a plot line done by a book, comic, film, TV show episode, video game, or whatever media the fandom in question is centered around that had a character do something that many fans believed was out of character, or just the very nature of the media in question leading people to like it for different reasons and believing those who do not like it for the exact same reasons as them to "not be true fans", and that's one of the nicer things said in these online debates. Because this is largely a Gravity Falls blog, I shall look into one of the base breakers for the show- the most relevant one at the current moment and who is at fault for the figurative and literal rift being opened causing the apocalypse at the end of "Dipper And Mabel Vs. The Future" that will go into "The Weirdmageddon Trilogy". Some blame Ford because of how he wouldn't tell anyone other than Dipper about the crack in the glass that held the interdimensional bubble together and for possibly trying to convince Dipper that Mabel is holding him back from his true potential, inadvertently projecting his own anger at Stan onto Dipper. Some blame Dipper because of how he didn't get Mabel's input before making a decision on whether or not he should stay behind after the end of the summer and become Ford's apprentice, a decision that would greatly impact both himself and Mabel. Some blame Mabel because she got mad at Dipper for simply exercising his right to take charge of his future and because she wants to freeze everyone in time all because she can't deal with her problems. Some even blame Stan for causing the apocalypse because of how his activating of the portal is how the rift problem got started in the first place. They ironically leave Bill out of all of this even though he's the one that caused the apocalypse on purpose. In addition, this episode got people saying that the show was better before Ford's introduction because it showed Dipper and Mabel as the ideal sibling relationship that should receive more of a focus like it did in the first season, and that the idea of Dipper leaving Mabel is awful because that was one of the main reasons why certain fans were interested at all, because it was one of the first shows to show a healthy and rarely confrontational sibling relationship without the sibling rivalry of most shows with characters that are brothers, sisters, or a brother and sister, and like many real-life sibling relationships. Those on the other side of that debate say that Dipper and Mabel's relationship has become codependent and that Mabel doesn't know how to be her own person without Dipper. She is comfortable in the idea that she's the fun one and Dipper is the smart one, and that they're an inseparable pair that compensates for each other's flaws. It's sometimes hard for twins to find self-identification because of their eternal ties to their sibling, and because of Stan and Ford's inability to to peacefully do this, their relationship as adults is heavily strained. So, what's my take on these two issues? With the first one, I think that it is Bill's fault, and that blame games do no one any good. And with the second one, I think that there can be a way for Dipper and Mabel to be close but not too close to Mabel when they're older. Maybe they try to find a balance between the amount of things they do with each other and with any new friendships and relationships they may form with other people. Designate one day a week for each other or something like that in the future? Alex Hirsch will think of something that will make sense and work for the characters, I'm sure. So when it comes to divisions in fanbases and base breakers, I only have one thing to say- can't we all just get along? We're supposed to like the same thing, so shouldn't that be all that matters, and not the little intricacies that might create rifts between fans? Let's all work together to not let petty differences in opinion and interpretations of moments in fictional works not create any more unnecessary conflicts.

Neil Rush CMT Blog- October 27, 2015- Top 10 Gravity Falls Episodes

October 27, 2015

Hello, blogosphere, this is Neil again. I did an episode review of Gravity Falls Season 2 Episode 17, "Dipper and Mabel vs. The Future", last week before learning that no blog post will be due on October 20, 2015, simply because my teacher felt like giving my CMT class a break week. The next episode, "Weirdmageddon Part 1" will have aired the night before this one is due, October 27, 2015, which I don't see as enough time for me to write a review on that one. I'll review that one for next week's post that would be due November 3, 2015, but for now, I'm going to make a Top 10 list of my personal favorite episodes.
I didn't become a Gravity Falls fan until this past spring when I began to watch more Disney XD because of my expanded interest in animation and desire to go into that field as a career, but once I was in, I was all in. Centered around twin siblings Dipper and Mabel Pines (voiced by Jason Ritter and Kristen Schaal, respectively), it follows their adventures in the town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, where they've been sent to spend the summer before they turn thirteen with their great-uncle, or "Grunkle" Stan Pines (voiced by series creator Alex Hirsch), the ex-con owner of the Mystery Shack, a tourist trap/museum/gift shop that they live above. Stan may have very gray ethics, but he is kept on the side of good by his love of his great-nephew and great-niece. Dipper discovers three journals that contain information of all of the mysteries, monsters, ghosts, and everything discovered by their author, who is eventually revealed to be Stan's estranged twin brother, also named Stan, but he goes by Ford (as in Stanley and Stanford) (voiced by J. K. Simmons) to avoid confusion. In spite of their opposing personalities, Dipper and Mabel are best friends that love each other to the end. They spend the summer learning lessons about growing up, such as Dipper learning how to overcome his awkward crush on Wendy Corduroy (voiced by Linda Cardellini), the mellow and cool teenage girl that (apathetically so) runs the cash register at the Mystery Shack, and Mabel learning how to be not as self-centered in her quest for fun and boys. In three years (ironically set all over one summer of 2012), it became the smartest, funniest, most epic, most heartwarming, saddest, darkest, scariest, most innately progressive without being excessively preachy, creative, most mature and realistic, boundary-pushing, and all-around best animated series produced at Disney Television Animation in the 2010s. These ten episodes are the ones I find to be my personal favorites.
Honorable Mentions- S1E01 "Tourist Trapped" for starting it all, S1E04 "The Hand That Rocks The Mabel" for establishing Gideon Gleeful as one of the show's main antagonists, S1E05 "The Inconveniencing" for establishing Dipper and Wendy's precocious-crush-friendship, S1E07 "Double Dipper" for establishing Candy and Grenda, Mabel's two best friends for the summer, and Pacifica Northwest, Mabel and Dipper's spoiled-rich-girl frenemy, as characters, S1E09 "The Time Traveler's Pig" for establishing Blendin Blandin and Waddles as characters, S1E15 "The Deep End" for its fun pool-related plots, S1E16 "Carpet Diem" for its humor, playing with the body-switching story trope, and providing a conflict between Dipper and Mabel that they have to settle and make up on by the end, S1E17 "Boyz Crazy" for satirizing boy bands and when girls become too obsessed with them, S2E01 "Scary-oke" for introducing Agent Powers (guest-voiced by Nick Offerman) and Agent Trigger as characters, S2E02 "Into The Bunker" for being the darkest episode yet up to that point, guest-starring Mark Hamill as the shape-shifter, and allowing Dipper an opportunity to move on from Wendy,  S2E06 "Little Gift Shop Of Horrors" for astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson guest-starring as "Smart Waddles" and showing just how creepy the show can get when it breaks the fourth wall, involving the viewer being turned into an exhibit at the Mystery Shack, S2E07 "Society of the Blind Eye" for making Old Man McGucket's involvement in the story more important and having some of the funniest (read: boundary-pushing) jokes in the entire series, S2E08 "Blendin's Game" for its realistically heartbreaking depiction of Soos having a dad that doesn't care to be involved in his life, S2E09 "The Love God" for giving Robbie character development and its parody of the Woodstock festival, S2E10 "Northwest Manor Mystery" for being one of the creepiest episodes of all and for giving Pacifica character development to turn from a stereotypical blonde mean girl to one of the good guys and a possible love interest for Dipper, and S2E16 "Roadside Attraction" for establishing Emma Sue as a playful quasi-love interest for Dipper, and she is my favorite possible love interest for Dipper, even if she's only a one-time character.
#10.) S1E10 "Fight Fighters". In this one, Robbie Valentino (voiced by T. J. Miller), Wendy's emo-goth-rocker-teenager stereotype boyfriend for the first season and Dipper's arch-rival calls Dipper out and challenges him to a fight. Keep in mind that Dipper is twelve and Robbie is either fifteen or sixteen. Most teens would laugh off a preteen that had a crush on their girlfriend, and Robbie does that as well, but he must see Dipper as a threat to his relationship with Wendy because of how Wendy, even though she obviously doesn't romantically like Dipper back, always tries to be nice to him, enjoys hanging out with him, and always stands up for him when Robbie bullies him. Because Dipper is a preteen with no muscle, he uses a special cheat code to summon a character from a game at the local arcade, Fight Fighters (an obvious parody of the video game series Street Fighter), the character being the main one, Rumble McSkirmish, to intimidate Robbie into not fighting Dipper. Rumble is a hilarious over-the-top parody of every fighting game character stereotype ever. He's hilariously overconfident, talks in a voice that mixes William Shatner syntax with old karate movie dialogue, and offers to help Dipper after he lies and says that Robbie killed Dipper's father, and thinks that himself and everyone that he allies himself with is seeking vengeance for their dead father. Dipper hopes that Rumble will intimidate Robbie into leaving him alone and possibly breaking up with Wendy, but Rumble instead proceeds to attempt to beat Robbie to death. Dipper now has to do the last thing that he'd ever want to do- save Robbie- in order to keep Wendy still liking him, as she would probably not be too happy to find out that Dipper was indirectly responsible for her boyfriend's untimely-yet-bizarrely-comical-to-the-audience death, and she even said she would hate to see her boys fight. Dipper admits to Rumble that Robbie didn't kill his father and fights Rumble in Robbie's place. He loses horribly, but Rumble's victory causes a game-over that turns him back into code. Robbie decides that it's not worth it to fight someone who's openly willing to accept a beating without fear, and they decide that, for Wendy's sake, they'll hate each other in secret, "like girls do", and pretend to laugh together when hanging out with Wendy while making angry gestures at each other when Wendy's back is turned. The video game references in this were really clever, and the absolute insanity the episode escalated to made this one of my favorite episodes.
#9.) S2E11 "Not What He Seems". This was quite the episode. Government agents come to arrest Stan under conspiracy to build a doomsday device. While they know that their great-uncle is a crook, Dipper and Mabel would never expect Stan to destroy the universe for kicks. They escape being sent to child services to sneak back into the Mystery Shack, which is now under government surveillance. Meanwhile, Stan uses the gravity anomalies caused by the portal under the Shack to escape the government agents that have arrested him and get back to the Shack in time for what he wants to be there for. Dipper, Mabel, and their friend Soos (also voiced by Alex Hirsch), the Mystery Shack's handyman and a man-child who is very close to the twins and admires Stan like a father figure due to the lack of one in his childhood, get under the Shack and find a variety of things that cause them to lose trust in Stan, such as a box full of fake IDs that he had assumed over the years and an old newspaper saying that Stan Pines had died in a car crash. They find the portal and attempt to shut it off, but Stan gets there just in time to yell for them to not touch it. The final gravity anomaly goes off before the portal does what Stan wants it to do, and everyone but Mabel gets pinned against the walls by cables. Mabel is floating on a cable in front of the switch that would turn the portal off, and while Stan tries to convince her to let it go, Dipper is positive that he's lying and begs Mabel to turn it off. Mabel looks into Stan's pleading eyes and lets the portal go. It doesn't destroy the universe (though Stan knew full well that it could, which is why throughout Season 1, he makes plenty of offhanded remarks about preparing for the apocalypse), but it brings someone into this dimension- Stan's twin brother. This was the episode that set up all of the other epic moments of Season 2, which makes it one of my favorites.
#8.) S2E12 "A Tale Of Two Stans". This was the extended flashback episode that established the character of Ford Pines. Originally believed to be nothing more than a fan theory, no one ever believed that the concept of Stan's twin brother would ever be worked into the story, let alone be made into one of the most important characters on the show. Stan and Ford had a relationship similar to Dipper and Mabel when they were kids living in a New Jersey beach town in the 1960s, but the fear of Ford leaving for a better college than him made Stan make a rash decision (ruining a project of Ford's) that cost him what little love from his parents he had and the trust of his brother, forcing him to become a conman and sending him down a path that got him banned from the entire East Coast and got him put in multiple Latin-American prisons. Meanwhile, Ford became a success regardless, and wrote the three journals that contained all of the information on the things discovered in the town. He tried building a portal to another dimension with his friend and colleague, Fiddleford McGucket, but when trying it out for the first time, Fiddleford was very clearly scarred from seeing some disturbing things on the other side, which began his descent into madness and becoming the town's crazy hillbilly Old Man McGucket. Ford calls Stan up to get rid of the journals for him, fearing what he has brought upon the world, but, furious that his brother would call him up after having not seen him for so long only to tell him to get as far away from him as possible, Stan gets in a fight with Ford and accidentally gets him sucked into the portal. Stan spent the next thirty years trying to bring Ford back and decided to live under the name of Stanford Pines (Ford's full name) rather than Stanley Pines (his real name) to avoid attracting the cops (yet still committed crimes in his brother's name), and fake a car crash to make the police believe that Stanley was dead. He converted Ford's lab into the Mystery Shack and set the events of the series in motion. Whether it's for almost destroying the universe, stealing his name and giving him a criminal record, or because of what happened between them all those years ago, Ford isn't quite ready to accept Stan back as his brother, and, out of hurt and in response, Stan tells Ford to stay away from the kids. Mabel begins to fear that hers and Dipper's relationship will "get stupid" like Stan and Ford's did, but Dipper tells her not to worry about it. This episode was one of the boldest and most dramatic episodes of the show, and I hope another one like it is done soon.
#7.) S2E13 "Dungeons, Dungeons, And More Dungeons".  This was made even funnier by how I had started playing Dungeons And Dragons with a group of friends around the time this episode first aired. In this one, Dipper gets a game of Dungeons, Dungeons, And More Dungeons, the show's in-universe parody of Dungeons And Dragons, in the mail and gets Ford to play with him after Mabel and Stan both seem to act insulted by the game's existence (there's thinking that what your brother/great-nephew likes that you don't is lame, and then there's the kinds of overreactions that Mabel and Stan do) and Soos expresses a preference for FCLORPing (Foam And Cardboard Life Operating Role-Playing), a parody of LARPing (Live-Action Role-Playing). After a brief fight over what is lamer- Dungeons, Dungeons, And More Dungeons or Duck-tective, a cartoon Mabel and Stan like about a mystery-solving duck, Ford's Infinity-Sided Die, a die he got during his travels through the multiverse that has mystical properties, hits the box and brings the game's wizard, Probabilitor The Annoying (guest voiced by comedy musical artist "Weird Al" Yankovic), to life. Probabilitor captures Dipper and Ford and attempts to eat their brains, so Mabel and Stan have to play a game of Dungeons, Dungeons, And More Dungeons against Probabilitor to save them. After Probabilitor is defeated, the gang watches Duck-tective together and learns that Duck-tective has a twin brother, agreeing that the "mysterious twin brother reveal" trope is overused. Soos even says he knew this would happen a year ago. This is a reference to how the "Stan's Twin Brother" fan theory that was eventually made canon is actually pretty old, originating shortly after the end of Season 1 in August 2013. This was one of the funniest and most meta episodes ever aired. It is probably the most accurate depiction of a tabletop RPG in mainstream media that I've seen. The episode essentially turns Duck-tective into the in-universe equivalent of the show Gravity Falls, with Stan even saying that a lot of stuff goes over kids' heads and Grenda saying that she doesn't get most of the humor but enjoys watching cute cartoon animals do human things. Not the most important episode in the swing of things, though it does hint at the eventual importance of the interdimensional rift bubble and show that as Dipper and Ford grow closer and Mabel and Stan do the same, Dipper and Mabel grow further apart. This also established that the show is set in the dimension known as Dimension 46'\ in the multiverse, which I think was an indirect shoutout to Rick and Morty, a show on Adult Swim made by Alex Hirsch's friend Justin Roiland that returned for Season 2 around the initial airing of this episode and it's implied is set in the same multiverse as Gravity Falls. Definitely try to watch it if you're a fan of tabletop RPGs.
#6.) S2E14 "The Stanchurian Candidate". Stan is going through a mid-life crisis. Not much is going his way, and Ford seems to be the preferred great-uncle with the Pines family and Mystery Shack employees. Conveniently enough for him, Mayor Befufflefumpter, the 102-year-old mayor of the town, has died of old age overnight, and an open running for mayor is going across the town. Stan decides to run to feel liked again and to keep Bud Gleeful, Gideon's dad, from becoming mayor and using his political power to get Gideon out of prison so that he can take his revenge on the Pines family and once more rule over Gravity Falls with Mabel as his queen. Dipper and Mabel know that Stan lacks a filter and has no idea how to say the things that will make people like him, so Ford gives the twins a mind-control tie to make him the perfect candidate. When Stan learns that he's been being controlled, he fires the twins as his campaign managers and tries to go it alone. Dipper and Mabel decide to make Soos their candidate to stop Bud, who is also being mind-controlled by Gideon at this point. When Gideon/Bud ties Dipper and Mabel up in a monument to the previous mayor full of explosives, Stan throws the election to save the twins, which gives him enough praise to win... until his criminal record is taken into account, and they have to elect the only person who actually filled out the mayoral paperwork- local enthusiasm enthusiast Tyler Cutebiker (voiced by Will Forte), whose catchphrase is multiple variations of the phrase, "Git'em! Giiiiiiit'em!" Meanwhile, Gideon reveals a Bill Cipher Wheel hidden under a poster in his prison cell and expresses a desire to make another deal with him. This had plenty of funny political satire, made even funnier by some blatant references to Ronald Reagan (Ford apparently used the tie to help with his campaign in the 70s and 80s, which could definitely make Ford seem like more of a villain depending on your personal beliefs on Reagan) and the fact that this was around the time Donald Trump entered the running for the 2016 presidential candidacy and was making outlandish remarks of equal and/or greater absurdity to nearly everything Stan said. It also sets up a new alliance between Gideon and Bill in the future, which now seems like will happen in the upcoming three-part Season 2 finale. Sometimes, reality is stranger than fiction.
#5.) S2E05 "Soos And The Real Girl". This was the first Gravity Falls episode I saw in its entirety, so that definitely helps it be one of my favorites. Soos needs a date to go with him to his cousin Reggie's wedding, and nearly every woman he talks to runs away from him in fear because of his immaturity and absolute inability to talk and act like an adult. He buys a dating simulator computer game, "Romance Academy 7" to use to practice, and begins to communicate with the anime-style girl in the game, .GIFfany. It is revealed, however, that .GIFfany is actually alive within the game and wants Soos to be her actual boyfriend, and becomes possessive and stalks him even outside of the game as a result. Soos initially wants to date .GIFfany because she is the only girl to ever like him back and she's predictable, but Dipper and Mabel remind Soos that he can't take a computer game as his date to  his cousin's wedding. He meets a young woman who is immature in a similar nature to himself, and kind and playful to Soos because of it, named Melody (guest voiced by comedy actress Jillian Bell), and asks her on a date to Hoot-Hoot The Owl's Pizza Place, the in-universe Chuck E. Cheese parody, which she happily accepts. Soos attempts to break up with .GIFfany, which she does not take well at all. .GIFfany follows Soos to his date with Melody and takes over the animatronics at the restaurant, forcing Soos, Dipper, Mabel, and Melody to fight the animatronics. .GIFfany tries to upload Soos's mind into a computer so that they can spend eternity together, but Soos "kills" .GIFfany by throwing the game disc for "Romance Academy 7" into the restaurant's pizza oven. Soos is afraid that Melody won't like him anymore after how bad that date went, but Melody says that she's had worse dates (and that you should never date a magician), but she has to go back up to her home in Portland. She offers to stay in touch with him over computer, and while Soos is hesitant to date a girl he can only communicate with through a computer again, he accepts her offer because while Melody is a woman-child, that's perfect for Soos, and she's not grossly possessive like .GIFfany. The references to Japanese culture were all really sharp and you'd have to be pretty well-versed in it to get them, such as when Soos says that .GIFfany's father is an octopus-man. This episode will probably always crack me up whenever I see it.
#4.) S2E15 "The Last Mabelcorn". While I don't like Mabel's story in this episode because it may have been meant as a criticism of those who don't like Mabel as much as Alex Hirsch, Dipper and Ford's story is one of the most intense plots the show has done so far. It begins with Ford having a nightmare in which Bill Cipher (voiced by Alex Hirsch), the interdimensional triangular dream demon with reality-warping abilities that plans on bringing the apocalypse upon the world just for his idea of fun, taunts Ford about his plans almost coming to fruition and says that Ford's efforts to keep Bill in the Nightmare Realm won't last forever. Ford sends Mabel to find unicorn hair, which will help them make a shield around the Shack that will keep Bill from possessing anyone inside. Dipper and Ford go to a secret room under the Shack that not even Stan knows about even after living in it for thirty years, and Ford prepares to "Bill-proof" Dipper's mind. The process is taking too long for Dipper's liking, so he tries to learn Ford's thoughts. Due to a bunch of Bill-themed tapestries in the room and Ford's foggy glasses and ominous manner of speaking, Dipper believes that Bill and Ford are in an alliance and that Ford is now a willing vessel of Bill's. Dipper takes a nearby memory-erasing gun and attempts to use it to "kill" Bill by erasing him from Ford's head. The beam ricochets off of Ford's glasses, and it's quickly revealed that Ford is only acting this way because his glasses are foggy and he's not possessed by Bill. He reveals his history with Bill and talks about how he initially believed that Bill was a benevolent spirit until his true nature was revealed and that he wants to destroy the universe. Mabel, Candy, Grenda, and Wendy return with the unicorn hair, which they use to make a shield around the Shack to protect them from being possessed by Bill. Of course, because Bill is almost always watching everything that goes on in the town from the Nightmare Realm, Bill is not phased by being shut out from the ability to possess Dipper, Mabel, Stan, or Ford, and says that if he can't possess anyone inside the Shack, he'll just have to possess someone on the outside, and his eye turns into a roulette wheel flashing images of all of the characters not in the Pines family that are available for him to turn into a pawn in his game. This episode shows just how unhinged Bill is and establishes him as one of the scariest villains in fiction today.
#3.) S2E04 "Sock Opera". Another episode to feature Bill. Dipper and Mabel are trying to crack the code to a laptop they found in the bunker two episodes earlier that is supposed to reveal many of the town's secrets, but none of the passwords that Dipper can think of are working, and Mabel won't help because she's distracted by trying to put on a sock puppet rock opera to impress her newest crush, a sock puppet enthusiast named Gabe (guest-voiced by Jorma Taccione of the comedy rap group The Lonely Island). Bill comes and offers to "help" Dipper in exchange for a "puppet", and convinces Dipper to make a deal with him by reminding him of all of the times Dipper was guilted into sacrificing his desires for Mabel and how she almost never returns the favor. The "puppet" Bill chooses, however, is Dipper's body. Dipper is now a ghost, and Bill is masochistically abusing Dipper's body now that he's in it and destroys the laptop. Dipper has to get Mabel's attention so that she can help him keep "Bipper" from getting Journal 3. Mabel almost gives Bill the journal when told that he will ruin the show, but when Bill boasts by saying "I mean, who would sacrifice everything for their dumb sibling?" Mabel responds with "Dipper would." She gets in a pretty rough fight with Bill and takes advantage of knowing all of the weak spots in Dipper's body and his apparent lack of knowledge and/or disregard for the human body's limitations. Bill can no longer remain in Dipper's fatigued body and is sent back to the Nightmare Realm, giving Dipper an opportunity to get back in his body. With the show ruined, Gabe won't speak to Mabel anymore, but after seeing Gabe make out with the puppets on his hands, Mabel decides that she probably dodged a bullet with him. Mabel may have her weirdness about her, but she's not romantically attracted to inanimate objects, and wouldn't want to date anyone that is. Mabel apologizes to Dipper for letting herself get distracted by a dumb guy "when the dumb guy I should care about is you." Dipper is appreciative of Mabel acknowledging this, but feels the need to get to a hospital immediately because of how Bill mutilated everything on his body that he possibly could when he was in control of Dipper's body. With Bill breaking into the real world through his possession tactics, the writers acknowledging that there's a little unevenness in the amount of times Dipper has had to give up his dreams for Mabel's happiness in the first season versus how many times Mabel has had to do it for Dipper and how it made many fans think that the writers were unfairly favoring Mabel with minimal justification and the writers showing that they, at least sometimes, are willing to admit that Mabel's not perfect, and some pretty funny jokes with Gabe, this is definitely one of the best episodes of the entire series.
#2.) S2E17 "Dipper And Mabel vs. The Future". This started out lighthearted, became really sad, and then became downright horrifying at the end. Dipper and Ford search for alien glue in an old UFO wreckage site and fight security drones that attempt to take Ford back to the planet of the UFO's origin. Dipper uses cleverness, resourcefulness, bravery, and his love of Ford to destroy the drones and save Ford. Ford wants Dipper to be his apprentice and stay behind while Mabel goes home at the end of the summer, which is only a week away, and while Dipper is initially hesitant to leave Mabel, Dipper decides to do so after feeling like a true hero from saving Ford (and seeing a larger reflection of himself in the destroyed drone, which can be a pretty strong confidence-builder). Meanwhile, Mabel prepares for Dipper and Mabel's thirteenth birthday party, which they'll throw on their birthday, the last day of summer, August 31. She tries to set up in the high school gym, but high school registrations keep that from happening, and Wendy telling Mabel horror-stories from high school lowers her high expectations of high school. To make matters worse, Candy and Grenda will be out of town for Dipper and Mabel's birthday weekend, preventing them from celebrating with her and from wishing her goodbye before she goes home for the summer. Stan comforts Mabel and reminds her that, unlike him, she'll always have her twin brother by her side through all of the hardships of life, which initially cheers her up, until she overhears Dipper agreeing to be Ford's apprentice over walkie-talkie. Dipper tries to tell Mabel about this best day of his life, but Mabel tells Dipper that this was the worst day of her life, and the worst part was hearing that her brother, the one person that's supposed to be there for her no matter what, is going to leave her for this, and how it comes off as a backstab. Dipper says that he'll stay in touch with Mabel and regularly visit and that things can't be the same forever, but Mabel won't hear any of it and runs into the forest crying. Mabel, while in "Sweater-Town", meaning pulling her sweater over her head, wishes that summer could last forever. Blendin Blandin (voiced by Justin Roiland, an animator and voice actor that is close personal friends and colleagues with Alex Hirsch, having worked with him on Cartoon Network's The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and Disney Channel's Fish Hooks, and who created Adult Swim's Rick and Morty, which Alex Hirsch has guest-starred on and Easter eggs referencing Gravity Falls have appeared in Rick and Morty) a time traveler that was initially an enemy to the Pines twins until S2E08 "Blendin's Game", when they spared his life, reinstated his job at the Time Anomaly Removal Crew, and got him his hair back, appears and offers to, in return for everything she and Dipper have done for him, allow summer to last as long as she wants. All he needs is the time bubble. Because Mabel accidentally took Dipper's backpack rather than her own while running out, she has the time bubble, which had not yet been sealed by Dipper and Ford's alien glue, and gives it to Blendin. Blendin begins to laugh maniacally and smashes the bubble, taking off his goggles and revealing himself to be possessed by Bill. Mabel begs "Bill-din" to stop, but he snaps his fingers to make Mabel pass out. Bill leaves Blendin's body, now that he can exist in the physical world, and flies up to the sky and proudly declares that the world is finally his and that the prophecy a billion years in the making has finally come to pass. Dipper and Ford run outside to watch in horror as "Weird-mageddon" begins. The image that appears over the credits is of an invitation to Dipper and Mabel's thirteenth birthday party laying on the ground as screams of horror and cracks of thunder are heard in the background before the invitation finally blows away in the nightmare-wind. This had some pretty funny jokes, such as a tongue-in-cheek reference to High School Musical. Wendy- High school is the worst. Classes get super-hard, your body totally turns against you, and worst of all, everybody hates you! Mabel- Really? Why aren't they singing songs about following their dreams? TV told me that high school was like some kind of musical. Wendy- TV lied, dude! Enough time has passed that Disney is willing to make fun of its most infamous asset from the mid-2000s, and most kids know now that high school isn't all "we're all in this together", so that made this exchange even better. While not exactly paralleling Stan and Ford's relationship falling apart, Mabel and Dipper's relationship falling apart also came from their own flaws and their lack of empathy for their twin sibling, both ways. And Mabel accidentally destroying the world because of her fear of change is one of the darkest emotional gut-punches the show could go for. This will definitely set up the next three episodes, the Weirdmageddon trilogy.
#1.) S1E19 "Dreamscapers" and S1E20 "Gideon Rises". These two episodes made a two-part Season 1 finale, which is why I included them together. The first part is Bill's first appearance, in which Gideon makes a deal with Bill to go into Stan's mind and look for the code to the safe with the deed to the Mystery Shack inside it in exchange for Gideon helping Bill later. We learn the extent of Bill's creepiness when he uses his powers to rip the teeth out of a deer's mouth, give them to Gideon to freak him out, and then put them back as if nothing ever happened. Dipper is feeling down about Stan always making him do the heavy lifting around the Shack, and when he, Mabel, and Soos go into Stan's Mindscape to stop Bill, with all of Stan's memories in it, and Dipper mishears a memory of Stan's saying that he just doesn't like Dipper because of his scrawniness, Dipper decides not to help anymore, but once hearing the memory in its entirety and learning that Stan is hard on Dipper because that's how Stan's father was with him and he wants to prepare him for a cold and hard world, Dipper loves Stan again and even learns that anything you imagine in the Dreamscape is possible. Because Mabel and Soos cost Bill the code and made Gideon call off the deal he made with Bill, Bill has a massive fight with the two of them, and when it seems like nothing will defeat Bill, Dipper returns and tells Mabel and Soos to just imagine themselves with any abilities of their choosing to beat Bill. They are too evenly matched, so Bill stops the fight and says "A great darkness approaches. A day will come where everything you care about will change. Until then, I'll be watching you. I'LL BE WATCHING YOU..." They wake up from Stan's Dreamscape only to learn that Gideon has the deed to the Shack, which begins Part 2. The Pines's try to expose Gideon's fraudulence and scheming, but Gideon paints the Pines's as the bad guys and makes them social pariahs in the town. They try living with Soos and his grandma, but that's not the best way for them to live, and after another fight with Gideon, Gideon takes Journal 3 from Dipper and says that he's nothing without the journal. Gideon plans on destroying the Shack and building a "Gideonland" theme park over its remains. This takes away all hope for the good guys, and the twins are sent back to California on a bus. Gideon thinks he is victorious, but learns that he has Journal 3 and not Journal 1, and, believing that Dipper has Journal 1, chases the bus that the twins are on in a giant robot he's controlling. Upon learning that Dipper doesn't have Journal 1, he tosses him aside and prepares to rule over the town with Mabel as his queen. Initially appearing to be without hope, having a bloody nose and just a kid whose sister has been taken by a psycho kid in a giant robot, Dipper walks back into the forest, appearing to be on the verge of tears... until he runs out of the forest and jumps through the eye of the robot, which is being controlled by Gideon in a motion-capture suit, and physically fights Gideon, even making Gideon punch his robot with his own fist. The robot crashes, and Mabel saves Dipper from being in a particularly bad wreck with her grappling hook. When the townspeople arrive at the area that the robot was destroyed at, Gideon tells them that Dipper and Mabel tried to kill him and demands that they be arrested, but Stan exposes Gideon by pointing out that he heard a ringing in his hearing aid, took a closer look, and learned that the pins that Gideon gave the townspeople are actually miniature video cameras that he has been using to spy on the townspeople and learn their secrets to use in his psychic acts and be like Big Brother. Gideon is arrested for conspiracy and breaking the townspeople's hearts. Stan takes the journals from the wreckage, and Dipper tries to get them back, but Mabel tells Dipper that he doesn't need them because of all of the heroic things he's done over the summer, and that he's destined for great things with or without the journals. Stan takes the journals to the basement and puts them with Journal 1, and now that he has all three, he activates a machine and says, "Here we go." When you know everything that happens after this, it doesn't have the exact same desired punch as it might've, but that doesn't make it any less well-made. These two episodes are everything the show should be- funny, epic, and heart-felt, and set up what the rest of the series has to hold.
So what happens next? The next few episodes, the Weirdmageddon trilogy, are going to be the boldest episodes of the show, as far as I can tell. Bill is bringing chaos upon the world and nothing will ever be the same. No matter what, I think that this show will be wrapped up neatly, and while I don't always like Alex Hirsch as a person, I think that he created one of the better shows out there now, and, at the very least, find it to be good material for inspiration within my own works. I may make some original stories on the Internet featuring their characters, but all slightly older, and living in the town of Gravity Falls year-round and not just in the summer. One of my original characters in my original production, "Fanz", is essentially Bill Cipher in the body of a Care Bear. Much of the humor in "Fanz" is similar to Gravity Falls, though I like to think of it as more TV-PG-LSV than the barely TV-Y7 of Gravity Falls. The show also taught me that, in the future, Disney XD may be more willing to air TV-PG-rated shows because of its increasingly more boundary-pushing content, and I would definitely like to get "Fanz" on Disney XD with a TV-PG-LSV rating, if I can. So put on a pine tree hat, bury your gold, and give praise to your cipher masters and watch Gravity Falls- on at least once a day on Disney XD at various times, or on Xfinity On Demand, iTunes, Google Play TV, or the Watch Disney XD app on iTunes and Apple TV. Thank you for reading, and see you next time with my review of "Weirdmageddon Part 1".