Farewell to the Falls: Gravity Falls and the Beauty of a Completed Story

I was both excited and sad to tune into the hour-long finale episode of Disney’s Gravity Falls. It seems like forever since I reviewed Season 1, and while it was great, Season 2 was on a whole different level. The stakes were higher, the spooky stuff was much more terrifying, and while I sometimes worried about the messages the show sent, I was gratified by the finale in more ways than one. Spoilers after the jump.

Fanfiction Fridays: Zen and the Art of Infinite Pizza Maintenance by gyzym

Okay, so here’s the thing: it’s not like Dipper means for it to be a dastardly master plan or anything. It’s not like Dipper means to screw over his sister. It’s just that he’s the one there, at dinner with their parents, when the hospital calls, because it’s a Friday night and Mabel’s always out with her friends on Friday nights, and most of Dipper’s friends are not exactly Friday night people. Dipper tends to gravitate toward the Tuesday afternooners of the world, or sometimes the Eating Cheese And Posting Things To Messageboards On Sunday At 6:45 PM While Listening To Conspiracy Podcasts crowd. They’re more his speed. Friday night people have this uncomfortable tendency to stare at him for a long time after he says anything and then, slowly, say, “Dude… what?”

Anyway. Dipper isn’t a Friday night person, so Dipper is there, that Friday night, when the hospital calls to say that Grunkle Stan fell in the shower. And so it’s Dipper who hears it, when his parents start to hiss things about “hospice” and “never agree to it” and “how many nurses” and “how can we afford” and it’s not like he plans for things to go the way they do. It just — happens. Yeah. That’s it. It just… happens.

“Me and Mabel could go to Gravity Falls!” Dipper says. And then, when both of his parents stare at him: “For the summer, I mean. To — take care of Grunkle Stan! Finals are next week and then, I mean, we don’t have anything to do until school starts, right?”

I’mma be real with you: it took me hours to decide on a fanfic to rec for this week’s post. I read story after story that were good but just didn’t do it for me enough that I wanted to spend time writing about them. Then I remembered this fic exists.

Sexualized Saturdays: Challenging Inappropriate Affection

I have very little tolerance for relationship drama in TV shows. Ninety percent of characters’ problems stem from a lack of communication, and my humble opinion about love triangles is that the answer is always polyamory. One of the things that makes me most uncomfortable, though, when it comes to fictional relationship drama, is inappropriate displays of affection.

What do I mean by inappropriate affection? I’m referring to a situation between two friends or colleagues where one has an unrequited crush on the other, and said crush-er constantly attempts to win the affections of the crush-ee, despite the latter being uninterested/much older/unavailable. It’s not quite a friendzone situation, but it’s based in similar ideas—essentially, the person with the crush believes that they are such a good catch that any of the aforementioned objections should be moot. In constantly forcing their affections on the other person, they’re actually being selfish and disregarding any feelings or opinions the object of said affections might have about the situation. It’s important that shows that engage in this sort of characterization portray it as it is—inappropriate—but unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

Gravity Falls Season One

After a really really long and drawn-out run, Gravity Falls has finally concluded its first season, and so I finally feel like I can talk about the show as a unit.

Without further ado, the logo.

Guys, Gravity Falls is awesome. It’s the best and arguably the only good show coming out of the Disney Channel these days. It’s funny, it’s smart, and it’s spooky in a campy, goofy way. It also quite handily takes apart problematic concepts like consent, the need for stereotypical masculinity, and the friendzone at a simple, kid-friendly, and witty level. When I first listened to Welcome to Night Vale, I described it to my roommate as a grown-up Gravity Falls, if that gives you some sense of what it’s like. You should really watch it.