Stanley Pines (
charlastan) wrote2024-09-07 07:04 pm
Entry tags:
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PLAYER INFO
Name: Billie Sue
Pronouns: She/Her
Contact:
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goodhotcocoa
Permissions: Here
CHARACTER INFO
Name: Stanley Pines
Canon: Gravity Falls
Canon Point: Post-Canon (CRAU: Deer Country)
Age: Old. Probably late 60s by now but all this world-hopping makes it hard to count. Same age as Ford, if he winds up apping!
Species: Human...ish. Human originally, then Deer Country messed around with that and now he's closer to a human-shaped squid person with fun blood powers. In Deer Country they're called "Sleepers" and kind of like Demi-Gods!
History: Wiki Link and as a bonus, a bullet point list of important events from the last place (middle of the app, under "Additional Adjustments to include").
Personality:
✽ What is your character's main motivation? What drives them and keeps them going?
✽ What is their biggest regret? Why?
✽ What is their worst fear? Their greatest comfort?
✽ Top three strengths?
✽ Top three weaknesses?
✽ What was their last lie?
Inventory:
Abilities:
CANON:
CRAU:
Sample: TDM top level! | PSL with Dipper!
Name: Billie Sue
Pronouns: She/Her
Contact:
Permissions: Here
CHARACTER INFO
Name: Stanley Pines
Canon: Gravity Falls
Canon Point: Post-Canon (CRAU: Deer Country)
Age: Old. Probably late 60s by now but all this world-hopping makes it hard to count. Same age as Ford, if he winds up apping!
Species: Human...ish. Human originally, then Deer Country messed around with that and now he's closer to a human-shaped squid person with fun blood powers. In Deer Country they're called "Sleepers" and kind of like Demi-Gods!
History: Wiki Link and as a bonus, a bullet point list of important events from the last place (middle of the app, under "Additional Adjustments to include").
Personality:
✽ What is your character's main motivation? What drives them and keeps them going?
- "Everything I've worked for, everything I care about, it's all for this family!"
- The thing Stan cares most about in this and every life is his family. Usually this is blood relation, but sometimes this means getting added to the no-fly list to try and get your Son-ployee's birthday removed from the calendar. He would do anything, literally anything for his family, no matter how much he tries to insist otherwise.
✽ What is their biggest regret? Why?
- The biggest regret is probably still breaking Ford's science fair project when they were 17. An argument could be made for that time he knocked Ford into a dimensional portal for 30 years, and it isn't that he doesn't regret that, but he eventually brought Ford home whereas he can't unbreak Ford's project 50 years later. Stan's response to screwing up big-time tends to be attempting to fix things as best as he can. With the science fair project, Stan attempted to quickly fix it and failed. Then, when the problem became that Ford was mad about it he tried to find a silver lining and cheer him up, but it backfired bigtime and made it seem like he did it on purpose so Ford would go sailing with him like they dreamed about. Then, when the problem became that their father kicked him out until he could make a fortune to replace the money Ford would have earned from his invention, he did literally everything he could to try and make that fortune so he could go back home. In short, almost all of his other life regrets are related to this one screw-up that he can't ever really do anything about. Everything boils down to the perpetual motion machine.
✽ What is their worst fear? Their greatest comfort?
- WORST FEAR: Recently we were given a canon answer to this! However, given the pattern of how Stan tends to lie and joke around, the three separate bullet points about his "smaller than average fingerprints" and losing at poker to Dipper are probably fake to distract from the real fears. The IRS finding out about him committing identity fraud for 30+ years would essentially end his life - not in a death penalty way, but it would effectively put an end to just about everything that matters to him in his life. Even post-canon, it would cut his happily ever after with his brother short, and we can't have that! Soos finding his body is also probably more about the fact that Soos sees him as a father figure and he already lost the first one, and can reasonably be expanded to assume he wouldn't want anyone he cares about to find him permanently dead somewhere.
- GREATEST COMFORT: I'm going to sound like a broken record, but - his family! Nothing is more comforting to Stan than sitting around a TV with everyone he loves curled up around him. He spent a lot of his life alone and likes to act like he doesn't need anybody, but the truth is that Stan really needs people. It's only somewhat recently that he's regained familial love that isn't conditional to some degree, and he's needed that for his whole life.
✽ Top three strengths?
- HIS CRUNCHY BURNT GOOEY MASHMALLOW HEART: For all that Stan insists that he's a rude jerk who doesn't care about anyone, he cares so much about the people he does care about. It's this quality that makes him the kind of person who will gladly throw himself in harm's way if his family is in danger, or sacrifice his memories to save them from a horrible triangle demon.
- PUNCHING!: Stan spent his childhood taking boxing lessons and his young adulthood using those boxing lessons to get himself in and out of trouble. He still has an excellent amount of upper body strength and a mean left hook and is just generally strong for his age no matter how much he whines about getting old and being out of shape. Look at this man holding himself up by his chicken legs on scaffolding while he punches eagles!
- CREATIVITY (FOR BETTER OR WORSE): Ford was always the smart twin but Stan has a lot of artistic talent, even if it often comes out in odd ways. According to the Lost Legends graphic novel he wanted to be a comic book artist when he was a kid and worked on one in secret, only to get rejected. He was always treated as dumber than Ford because no one in his life considered creativity a worthwhile, marketable talent (except maybe his mom, who always called him her little free spirit). After he got kicked out, he didn't have a high school diploma or money, so he tried selling all sorts of products that were based more around catchy puns than whether or not they actually worked. And of course, once he got to Gravity Falls and had to pose as Ford, he turned Ford's house into a tourist trap full of taxidermy abominations that he made himself! He considers the last few more scamming than art, but there's no denying that it takes actual skill to craft these things and come up with material to use on tourists. Eventually he took this up again in Trench, even though he didn't need to do that kind of work anymore! Ford is book smart and science smart, sure, but if you need a creative solution to something Stan is your man.
✽ Top three weaknesses?
- KLEPTOMANIA AND COMPULSIVE LYING: These get to be listed together because they sort of stem from the same place. Stan doesn't just steal and lie. Stan steals and lies even when he doesn't need to, just for fun. There have been times when he needed to lie, cheat, and steal to survive in the world of course (and that's given him a fourth strength - the ability to read people pretty well and not get fooled by con artists). Since Ford got a lot of attention for his academic strengths, Stan tended to get his attention in more...negative ways, for negative reasons. Word of God says that Stan picked his first pocket when he was four, and what could a four year old need so badly that he had to pick a pocket for it? He was good at it though, and good at compulsively lying like his mother and finding creative ways around the rules, but all these things he's good at are "bad" and "wrong" so he got a reputation for being a liar and a cheat and just riding on Ford's coattails. At this point in his life though, Stan's accepted this about himself - even if occasionally it leads to him getting cursed by a witch to lose his hands.
- LOW SELF ESTEEM: Stan's been told he was good for nothing his entire life, and when that kind of talk is standard in your house you start to believe it after a while - especially when you start fucking up your life and the lives of everyone around you. He cares a lot about what his family thinks of him, and he has a lot of unresolved father issues because Filbrick Pines died before Stan could ever make that fortune and earn his love and respect. Sometimes this issue yo-yos in the opposite direction though, of Stan being too prideful because something in him is yelling that he's the only one who will ever stick up for him. Even Ford hated him for a while! They've only somewhat recently patched things up and they still run into issues sometimes where Stan will be a little too self-deprecating with his jokes, or hide how he's really feeling because he doesn't fully trust his loved ones with his heart. This is something getting better with time though, especially now that Ford is committed to sailing with Stan and spending the rest of their lives making up for lost time. Another thing to note is that this is also the source of the biggest blind spot in his ability to spot a scam - if a pretty woman has nice things to say to him, he is going to wind up married in Vegas or in a literal spiderwoman's den. Finally, this has led to a tendency for Stan to hide his efforts at things unless he's proven it was successful, because he doesn't want to hear what he assumes everyone thinks - "Of course he failed, it's Stan! What were you expecting?"
- LOW-KEY ADDICTIVE PERSONALITY: This is complicated because he's from a children's show, but Stan can go overboard in a number of ways. We see him on-screen have a wild night in Vegas to the point that he has to hitch-hike back to Gravity Falls with his goldminer statue wife and it's canonically not the first time he's had a bad night in Vegas. Sometimes his fondness for stealing is truly a compulsion that gets him in trouble. He quit cigars before the kids got to Gravity Falls, and there's something about "stripping for edible flour" and accidentally inhaling enough taxidermy glue to get high, rob himself, and black out in the newest thisisnotawebsite updates, plus a couple of times on screen where he's shown drinking through difficult situations he thought were hopeless. He once lost $100,000 by going double or nothing on a game show once, and another time we see him desperately trying to win a scratch ticket even though he's living out of his car with presumably very little to his name. The impression I get personally from this is that Stan can white knuckle his way to stopping a lot of things if he has to (since in all of the drinking examples he comes up with a solution VERY shortly after this is shown, and he does quit smoking cigars and switch to soda for the summer), but there have been points where he's gotten miserable enough to lean into short term relief. I'd say the major exception is that gambling is always going to tempt him a little more than it should.
✽ What was their last lie?
- According to the actual canon source material, his last lie of the series is "Kids, you knuckleheads were nothin' but a nuisance and I'm glad to be rid of ya." This is said while crying, hugging the children tight, and wearing a pink sweater Mabel made him that says "Goodbye Stan" in 80 degree weather. This isn't an estimation; immediately before this lie he lies and says he had to wear the sweater because it's cold and Soos points out that it's 80 degrees and Stan tells him to can it.
- If we count the new thisisnotawebsite content though, it's probably this extremely good doodle that speaks for itself really.
Inventory:
- THE RED HERRING: It's a red cane with a bird skull for a handle, but with a flick of a wrist it reveals a concealed gun. Was part of his tourist trap costume, but would also carry it around as a hidden weapon. Made by Ruby from RWBY.
- TRENCH CLOTHES: The vibe was Victorian gothic, but pirate was more his speed (art by Jami).
- CIGAR BOX WITH ~15 PHOTOS FROM HOME: Functions as an emergency memory loss kit - does not work on event-specific or setting specific causes of amnesia (in other words, if Stan has a memory lapse related to his canon memory loss it will help with that, but if idk some monster bite makes you forget who you are it won't work. It's functionally more of a comfort item.)
- LEATHER BRACELET: Gift from Ford, made of leather straps and cords, silver latches, moonstone beads, and unicorn hair. "The bracelet will allow Stan to summon a single photograph from the box of them he keeps at home. The photograph is chosen randomly; only photos stored in the box can be summoned; and the bracelet only carries one charge, which will be replenished on the next full, new, or half moon." Almost never takes it off.
- COIN PURSE FULL OF...SHINY ROCKS, SEASHELLS, AND LITTLE BONES?: The City of Trench had a barter economy, so this is effectively his wallet. He'll probably try bartering with it again, but the exchange rate probably isn't the same. The bones would have been worth the most in Trench, due to their association with protection magic.
- POLLUX: Will explain more under abilities, but all Sleepers have Omens that protect them - Stan's is a seagull.
Abilities:
CANON:
- A normal human with normal human levels of ability, but I'm going to note that Stan is an incredible lucid dreamer. He has an immense amount of control in what his canon calls the "mindscape", to the point where he was able to consolidate every inch of his subconscious into one room to fool an intruder. This isn't considered a "power" in Gravity Falls canon, but a skill that could be potentially learned by anyone. There are spells that could make someone enter another person's mind, but Stan has never used them and thus doesn't have the ability to dreamwalk. It only affects his own mind, and it isn't foolproof (he can still have nightmares, for example), but it will be a fun surprise if anyone can dreamwalk or if any relevant events come up. A skilled dreamwalker could potentially run circles around him, but before he and Dipper were split up he was actually giving Dipper a place to practice dreamwalking!
CRAU:
- SLEEPER PHYSIOLOGY: Like Dipper (who I'm hoping has desensitized everyone to this CRAU), Stan is part squid these days. The world of Deer Country changed him on a physical level, but if he is ever really severely hurt or killed, he reverts back to squid form! Eventually he will resume a human form and be a little disoriented for 24-48 hours, but otherwise be fine. In the context of this game, I think this would mean reviving in the garden as a squid, and then handling the price to return once he has human limbs again, but definitely let me know if that clashes with anything. Sleepers in general are a little more durable than a standard human and can heal from mundane injuries more quickly.
- BLOOD MAGIC (COLDBLOOD PHYSIOLOGY): Becoming a Sleeper gave Stan blood magic as well, but his works a little differently than Dipper's! He's a coldblood, which ironically deals with anything that can burn you (extreme cold, extreme heat). Stan is physically very cold to the touch and runs a little pale, though not abnormally so unless you get him blushing for some reason. His blood is blue, but when he bleeds his blood actually immediately freezes. Stan is also now immune to both extreme heat and extreme cold because of his new blood type.
- BLOOD MAGIC (COLDBLOOD FLAMES): There are many ways coldblood magic can present itself, but for Stan it presents exclusively as electric blue flames. It likely stems from one of two things - the association with Bill Cipher's flame magic, or the association with the blue flames of the memory gun that still burn in parts of his memory that he doesn't have photographs or video of (in other words, his damaged memory presenting as a strength). He probably could use it for fighting if he absolutely had to, but ultimately he's still more comfortable with normal weapons (though being able to flame punch stuff is pretty great). More often than not he uses his flame powers in much more mundane ways, like treating himself like a human welding torch, lighting a campfire with his bare hands, keeping drinks warm, or even making the family "Staninis" by grilling sandwiches between his palms. He adapted to his skillset quicker than the rest of his family did theirs because it's a very physical skillset and Stan has high bodily-kinesthetic intelligence in general, so a lot of how his powers work feels intuitive. He's also capable of some creative pyrotechnics (since he ran another tourist trap in Trench), but the bigger the flame the more exhausted he is after he casts it.
- OMEN (POLLUX - SEAGULL): All Sleepers have an Omen inside of them - a smoky animal that represents who they are as a person, sort of like a daemon in the Golden Compass series. Unless summoned they tend to remain inside the Sleeper's chest and they serve as a sort of guardian. They're able to protect the Sleeper to a degree in that they can sense danger, send messages, or reflect their Sleeper's internal state. Stan will sometimes send Pollux to scout for him, aka let her fly around and see if she spots any immediate danger
or Dipper getting up to something he shouldn't be getting up to. - CORRUPTION/BEASTHOOD: The tradeoff for getting cool new blood powers is that Stan is always at risk of corrupting if he doesn't keep his mental health in check. His presents differently than Dipper's because it's something that is unique to each Sleeper's problems, and Stan's are heavily based around his burning memory.
Sample: TDM top level! | PSL with Dipper!

CLUE
At some point as he adjusts to his time here, Stan may find himself walking by the river. Old bones, scales and medallions glitter in the shoreline, and the solitary apple tree is inviting- it was a gift from a local demigod, after all. As he reaches to take an apple, something hanging in the trees catches his eye- an old pendant on a leather cord. It looks like a beautiful golden sun with a single citrine in the center. When he grabs it, a brief memory flashes through his mind-
Do you know why we shine, Brother? So that we may guide those who need us to the light and provide warmth. Why have you forgotten that? ... Please--
...
It feels warm in his hand, but the more he holds onto it, the heavier a lonely melancholy feels.