June 18, 2013



It’s our second summer here in Gravity Falls, and so far it has been VERY different from our first summer here. No big conspiracies nor mysteries popping up, no ominous hints of things to come, no great divides between family and friends. Everything has been … normal. Typical Gravity Falls weirdness, yes, but … normal. Uneventful, in the grand scheme of things. Safe.

I guess it’s to be expected - everyone’s a year older and an apocalypse wiser. Facing your fears - literally - gives you a different perspective on life.

Ford and I have gone on mystery hunts and scientific expeditions together - but more often than not, Mabel and Stan tag along too. Mabel is still just as boy-crazy as she was last summer (don’t even get me STARTED on the antics she got up to when that theatre troupe visited town last week - UGH) but … she keeps me in the loop now. She actually TURNED DOWN A DATE because ‘Friday night is family movie night, no exceptions.’ I actually checked her with one of Ford’s scanners to see if she’d been replaced by an alien. She laughed and called me an overreacting bean, whatever that means (the test came back negative, by the way).

Stan is still Stan. He makes fun of my ‘nerdiness’ a lot, just like last summer, and he still makes me do any of the difficult or dangerous chores around the Shack (Soos took two months of honeymoon leave for the summer. The wedding was the second day we got here). He’s still the same old miserly, con-artist Mr. Mystery. But … he’s closed the Shack TWICE in the three weeks since we got here. Both on Saturday! And all to have a ‘Family Bonding’ day. The four of us went fishing and hunting for lake monsters the first Saturday. The second Saturday we went berry-picking up in the mountains for strawberries. Ford and I catalogued six different winged cryptids on the hike. Stan started a ‘who can pick the most strawberries’ contest and Mabel almost fell off a cliff trying to reach as many as she could (she won, by the way). And Stan says it’s Family Bonding again this Sunday.

Ford brings his research upstairs pretty often now. Stan yells at him to “get that science junk off of my kitchen table, WE EAT FOOD THERE POINDEXTER” pretty often, but he never chases Ford back to the basement like he would have last summer. There’s no heat in the arguments any more. I think that the trip to the Arctic was a good thing for BOTH of them. They’re finally acting like - like siblings again. Like me and Mabel. And Ford is different too. He doesn’t jump every time someone sneaks up on him anymore. Whenever we go on mystery hunts or expeditions, FORD is the one to invite the others to come along. It’s fun to go on expeditions with just me and Ford, but … it’s nice to be a family.

Soos and Melody have the whole main floor to themselves (along with Abuelita) so Ford’s secret study has been repurposed as his bedroom and Stan kept his room on the second floor. Soos assured me and Mabel that we can stay in the attic “As long as you want. You dudes could move in here with me and Melody and Abuelita and the Mr. Pineses when you get old enough! If you still wanna live in Gravity Falls, that is. Ha ha!” I don’t know about Mabel, but I am seriously considering the offer.

Everything is different now, but everything is the same. I’ve done a bit of growing up this year (I know I say that every year, but it’s really true!) and I’ve realised some very important things.

About last summer.

About family.

About life.

It’s the normal, everyday things that matter most. It’s saying good morning to your sister when she jumps on your bed to wake you up. It’s getting to drink coffee with your Great-Uncle while you work on a map of the forest together. It’s earning a pat on the head from your other Great-Uncle when you split an entire cord of wood in a day. It’s you and your sister feeding her pet pig all your vegetables when no one is looking and laughing with her when you don’t get caught. It’s watching the people you helped save go to the grocery store, play in the park, eat a picnic, fly a kite, laugh with their family, go to the pool, save a kitten, fall in love.

It’s life, with all its normal joys.

Don’t get me wrong. I will never stop loving the strange, the weird, the unknown. Dipper Pines will hunt monsters and mysteries and ghosts his whole life! That is a promise! But I will appreciate the normal. I will embrace the everyday. I will cherish the known. Because life isn’t just one or the other.

It’s both.

I’ve made friends with creatures most people don’t believe in and most will never see. And I’ve seen that it’s the same for them. Behind the strangeness and differences are creatures that live lives just like us. They eat. They breath. They play. They cry. They laugh. They love. They live. All of the little things that I am learning to appreciate in my life, they appreciate in their own weird way.

There is a lot that I don’t know, and there is a lot I still have to learn. But I have people I can trust by my side. I have a place full of adventure I can always come back to. I have a lifetime ahead of me to appreciate, to learn, to grow. I have time on my side and my family at my back.

So I forge ahead with confidence into the great unknown of life. “Ad Astra Per Aspera!” as my Grunkle Ford likes to say.

(He also says that space travel in this dimension is extremely primitive and he won’t be caught dead being launched in an Earth spaceship, but we’re fixing up the UFO from last summer, so space exploration won’t be a problem soon.)

Anyway, that’s all for today’s entry. Mabel’s cooking dinner and I heard something about “experimental glitter chicken” so I should probably go do damage control. Stan doesn’t usually care as long as she doesn’t set the house on fire, and Ford will eat ANYTHING. I for one don’t want glitter coating my insides for the rest of eternity. But I’ll let Mabel eat her wacky concoctions. They haven’t killed anyone yet and they make her happy, so live and let live I guess. And as usual,

STAY WEIRD.

-Dipper Pines

P.S. I hear the smoke alarm going off now. This will be fun.



Dipper Pines reminds me a lot of myself when I was becoming a teenager. I shared many of his doubts and fears - trust no one and if I’m not the smart guy, then who am I? chief among them. But I also learned, like he did, that you don’t have to grow up so quickly to be smart and liked. That you can trust people, and things will still turn out okay. To love and appreciate the people you have while you have them. That there is so much more to each of us than a single defining feature. That you can be a child while you are a child, and being silly and having fun is not childish. It is living.

This little excerpt is what I imagine Dipper’s own journal entries to be like. I drew inspiration from the introduction and conclusion to the series that Dipper himself narrated, as well as the snippet of his writing that we got to hear at the end of the first episode. I always imagined that the entire series was being narrated by Dipper either to potential readers in his own journal or to his classmates in his “Summer Report” for school.

As always, stay lovely my dears.

-Nana