The Theory to Shatter Everyone: Confabulation

You guys want pain? Fine. You asked for it. DO NOT LOOK UNDER THE CUT IF YOU DONT WANT SPOILS FOR THE PROMO. If you’ve seen it and you are prepared to be shattered, go ahead. Click the Read More. I’ll just be sobbing in the corner for coming up with this shit.



So Guys I have a terrible, horrible idea:



What If Stan Made Up Carla “HotPants” McCorkle?

Or, Alternatively: Stan created a confabulation surrounding a girl named Carla who may or may not have existed, whom he may not have actually had a relationship with but perhaps deeply desired one.

I had a hard time figuring out where to start this theory, but I suppose it can start with the reason I thought about this at all; the promo for “A Tale of Two Stans”. Some things felt off to me. I won’t go into detail here, but I know Gravity Falls would never retcon and would never backpedal if they didn’t need to. But man, some of those images were sketchy and stuff doesn’t add up.

The Discrepancy of Stan Talking About his Youth vs. the Audience Actually SEEING his Youth.

Talking about:

“I was the biggest wimp on the playground! So one summer, my pop signs up me for boxing lessons. It was even worse than the school yard! Y'know, that time I thought my pop was trying to torture me. But wouldn’t you know it? The old man was doin’ me favor all along!”

Vs. Actually Seeing:

- Told: Nerd -> Boxing lessons -> Nerd who knows residual boxing. Real: Rough and rowdy kid -> Rough and rowdy trouble teenager/senior in HS who clearly boxes and picks fights.



- Told: “Dad was doing me a favor”; gets girl. Real: Dad and son had serious issues, Stan was a problem child; Stan got kicked out; “Daddy Issues”



- Told: glasses on. Real: glasses off.



- Told: Dating is in the mid-to-late 50s Stan may be young teen; 13-14. Real: 1965 El Diablo is on the curb next to Stan. He’s Senior in HS; 17-18.



“Word to the wise; you’re in the mind! You can do whatever you want in here.”

Here’s where the theory really starts. It’s clear from the promo that Stan gets kicked out of his house/family situation, is alone (sitting on the swings, no one to back him up), and had no where to turn to. For him, this was probably a traumatic experience, and may have been the first time he was separated from his family/twin. It probably led him to lead a life he didn’t want (of crime) and estranged him from everyone he ever knew and loved.

It’s possible that, to help forget his past, Stan lied about it, forged new memories to forget the old ones, and did it for so long, he believed most of them because they were better than the truth. It’s less painful to be loved by someone than to remember that everyone you loves hates you.



This is actually a thing people do, for multiple reasons, and the condition is called Confabulation. Some choice excerpts include:

Confabulation is a memory disturbance, defined as the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive.

“Confabulation is distinguished from lying as there is no intent to deceive and the person is unaware the information is false” “Individuals who confabulate present incorrect memories ranging from “subtle alterations to bizarre fabrications” and are generally very confident about their recollections, despite contradictory evidence.“ “Some argue confabulations have a self-serving, emotional component in those with memory deficits that aids to maintain a coherent self-concept.[7] In other words, individuals who confabulate are motivated to do so, because they have gaps in their memory that they want to fill in and cover up.”



Bizarre fabrications? Seemingly not lying? Misinterpreted memories? Confidence in them? Wow that sounds like deep shit, and the problem is, we’ve seen something like this before:



The Carla Story.

Carla’s hotpants turned into bellbottoms before I even knew what happened. My memories get a little hallucination-y at the end, but you get the gist.



Stan has already shown fabricated memories that he totes as real. He doesn’t look like he’s lying, he doesn’t look like he’s TRYING to lie, he acts as if he genuinely believes every ounce of story he just told Dipper. He loved a girl, she loved someone else, and suddenly he’s driving a van off of a ravine.



Interestingly, Stan states this happened in the 70s. If so (and if, judging by the date of his car, he was 18 in 1965), he was between 24 and and 34 during the 70s. However, Stan was a busy guy in the 70s. He was busy:

Being Steve Pinington, among others



Heisting and Getting caught and jailed.

Coming out of jail (another shot of stanmobile, also looks to be in the middle of the US West)



Finding out he’s banned in multiple states

Find a place to hide…

Accidentally catch up with long lost bro-bro (who is going crazy) …

But that happened in the 1980s, I’m getting ahead of myself.



Either way, it’s almost as if the Hot Pants story doesn’t fit in with the timeline… at all. It appears as if Stan really fucked his life up majorly; he was in jail for years, was jailed for being caught conning the masses on television, and spent most of his 70s incarcerated.

Another worrisome feature is that other Carla-like figures that Stan has looked to have been in his mind,

or associated around stories,

or possibly projected onto other women.

What else do we know about Carla?

Someone always loved her, but never had the guts to say it.



*mic drop*

