Absolutely Love Time Travel AUs And Think S1 Stone Would Get So Flustered At S3 (S4?) Ivo Being More

It’s Stan’s 2nd time in prison and he is bored.

The food is edible, his cellmates are quiet and polite and even the guards treat him with the bare minimum of respect.

Needless to say, Stan hates it. 

Boredom means Stan has time to think about what could’ve been if he had been smarter, better and more like Ford.

If Stan had just known how to fix Ford’s project, maybe he’d still be someone worth keeping around.

With nothing better to do, Stan one day decides to visit the prison library and finds a few boxes full of engineering textbooks abandoned in a corner.

What if Stan could’ve fixed Ford’s project. Could it even have been possible?

Stan swallows hard and picks up the first book.

Meanwhile on the other side of the continent.

“Oh no no no.”

“What is it Fiddleford?”

“I donated the wrong books! All my notes and corrections were in there…”

Stan snorts as he keeps on reading. This McGucket fellow was hilarious.

The book by itself would’ve never kept Stan’s attention, but the notes, snarky remarks, blueprints for villainous contraptions and death rays? Now that’s the stuff!

Over the next months Stan devours one book after the other and when he finally gets released he’s allowed to take the boxes with him as a thank you for fixing and improving the prison’s new experimental computer system.

***

A couple of years later Fiddleford opens the door to a little robot stomping around on the front porch. Mechanical legs on a toaster body with googly eyes that Fiddleford suspects can see more meets the eye.

He kneels down to inspect the cute little fellow when it suddenly notices him, vibrates and starts to talk.

“THANK. YOU. FOR. THE. BOOKS. NERD.”

Fiddleford has no time to figure out what that means before a book shoots out from the slot and hits him right in the head.

“HA. HA. HA.”

The little bot laughs and explodes into fireworks.

Fiddleford watches the show in amazement and inspects his present.

Beginners Guide to Mechanical Engineering

But not any guide. His guide. The one he carried with him throughout college and kept improving upon whenever he could. 

Only now there are more notes added. Corrections to his corrections, complaints about his design choices and disagreements with his theories.

Oh, it’s on!

***

It takes a few days to find the person behind the little prank, an anonymous entrepreneur who is said to be self taught and on the verge of reinventing the world of computers and robotics as they know it. 

Things that people have also been saying about Fiddleford himself.

Fiddleford laughs in delight. He always liked a friendly competition!

So he sends his new rival a little killer robot of his own as a greeting.

***

If Stanford had known what asking his old college buddy to help him out with the portal would entail he would’ve thought twice about inviting him.

It’s not like he isn’t happy for Fiddleford. He clearly found a like minded individual with the same passion for destruction as himself but would it kill them to keep it quiet for once? Stanford is doing important work here!

[Besides if Stanford wanted to he could totally build robots as well. Better ones even. Fiddleford shouldn’t spend so much of his free time fighting with his rival when his best friend was right here!]

Stanford sighs as yet another explosion causes the ground to shake and feels something push against his leg. 

It’s a little possum-like robot bringing him a bottle of water courtesy of Fiddleford’s rival.

Apparently this mystery person felt bad about destroying Stanford’s house one time too many and gifted him this little helper as an apology.

Try as he might, Stanford is unable to hate the thing and lets it climb onto his lap.

“At least you want to keep me company, hm?”

He strokes the fake fur carefully and the robot rumbles in contentment. It feels nostalgic and he knows Stanley would’ve loved it.

Maybe Ford should call him.

Oh no, he's meeting all of Eggman's standards!

A continuation to this.

timestuck au warm ups

Sentient Mystery Shack, who is really biased towards Stan, so when Ford tells Stan he has to give it back after the summer it’s on sight.

Ford keeps tripping over nothing, nothing is where it's supposed to be and somehow he keeps running into closets when he tries to go outside.

But the worst part, the WORST part is that Ford's lightbulb just won't. Work. No matter what he does it keeps flickering and exploding.

Ford is spiraling. 

There is no reason why it shoudln’t work. All his trial runs work perfectly. He’s already checked the Shacks wiring three times and relearned this dimensions science from the ground up. 

Nothing works.

The Rift? Bill? The impending apocalypse? Eating? Sleep? Who cares about that. 

WHY. WONT. THE. LIGHTBULB. WORK???

It doesn’t help that Stan keeps laughing at him.

“Then you do it!” Ford eventually snaps at Stan.

Stan shrugs and with a little song under his breath screws his own lightbulb in. It works perfectly.

Stanford screams.

Okay so I've been slowly writing down my thoughts and compiling a basic skeleton for the Twins in time, Oldies in the Eighties AU, where Old Stan and Old Ford meet up with their younger opposites in 1981 or 1982

So the duos are Old Stan and Young Ford in Gravity Falls, and Old Ford and Young Stan in wherever Stan was during his drifter days

And that's super fun and I can think about that for days, HOWEVER

They all need to meet up eventually, and I realize that when they are all still separated, I'm going to have to have Stan SERIOUSLY domestic Young Ford, and explain some shit, because otherwise Younger Ford is gonna get his teeth kicked in.

By Old Ford.

Because you cannot tell me that Old Ford wouldn't immediately jump his past self. It's on sight. That man has had his entire life to regret choices he made (choices THIS younger version of himself is making) and I fully believe that Old Ford is feral enough to swing a baseball bat at his own knees.

Young Ford like. Offhandedly says "Oh, some things never change, Stanley will always be immature." About HIS version of Stan, and Old Ford just cricks his neck around like the exorcist.

"Ford. You cannot fist fight your younger self. That's-there's so many things wrong with that."

"Let me go Stanley-Stan he's getting away! Stan! He's had it coming-let go!"

This is the same guy that posted that group selfie titled „yes, these are both my hands“

It’s always okay to laugh at two dimensional chaos demons.

I think that while it’s talked about a bit there’s so much untapped potential in fanfic writer Stan and fanfic writer and beta reader Soos.

You best believe Soos taught Stan how to navigate ao3 and post fics to The Duchess Approves fandom and beta reads all his fics which get a decent following.

I think that compared to Stan, Soos’s fics get a bit less numbers cause he usually posts in obscure fandoms or does original works but the readers he does have are extremely loyal and comment after every chapter.

Anyway Bonding ensues and Soos and Stan share fics all throughout Stan and Ford’s adventures together until they head back to gravity falls to see everyone again.

Were you ever nervous to write/post your stuff? If so, how did you get over it?

I was nervous to post the first few chapters of How to Cat Burglar a Family, because it was my first fic, then nervous to post Special Delivery because it was my first non cat related fic, but after that not overly. I know a lot of writers talk about having unfinished WIP they don't post, but I don't have anything unposted except for the next part of Gravity Falls 2012 cat shorts because I'm still deciding what I want to do about Bill.

That's because after I wrote and posted everything I got nervous about I remember that I can do whatever I want, and that if no one else likes it that's OK, because I write all of this for me. Plus the likelihood of me getting attacked or facing consequences for a bad chapter are like. Nothing. So far all that's happened is people talk to me about my own aus more, which is great, as I have no one irl to do so. The relief of finally seeing each chapter off is greater then the nerves of if people will like it.

I guess the best way to say how I got over it was that I took my nerves and crushed them to the ground. Life is what you make of it and putting yourself out there can be fun. This isn't something I recommend for everyone, as it's a skill I hardened over years of severe social anxiety and emotional control over my very bad temper. At one point I just learned how to bundle my feelings and crush them (which, again, don't recommend for everyone. It's a process learning when and where to do this)