Alex Hirsch Interview Transcript

Watch Hana Hyperfixates' half of the interview

Watch ThatGFFan's half of the interview

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, conciseness and grammar, but left mostly intact and applicable to the entire 3-hour interview. (Interview transcribed by Hana Hyperfixates. Please consider donating with the button above to help support the work that goes into making this project as accessible as possible.)

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Hana: I’m Hana, I have the YouTube channel Hana Hyperfixates, which so far just has YouTube video essays about Gravity Falls. 

GF Fan: And I’m HK, and I run the ThatGFFan YouTube channel, which I’ve been running since like 2017. I recently got into more essay-type videos, but I’ve been around for a while. 

Hana (joking), to Alex Hirsch: And who are you?

Alex: I’m Soos, I’m the new manager of the Mystery Shack, I’m engaged to Melody, Abuelita blessed the union, so we’re looking forward to a wedding in August. Nice to meet both of you!

[Laughter]

Hana: Thank you for bearing with our fan-gushing from both of us, we’ll keep it to a minimum.

Alex: I’ve experienced so much fan-gushing, I understand the fan-gushing, I’ve been the giver of fan-gushing, where I’m a fan. No, I’m you, we’re the same, no barrier here.

Hana: Alright awesome, thank you so much. I'm gonna dive in with the first question. I, of course, have tons of Gravity Falls-related questions but this one is not quite Gravity Falls related. You are a vocal supporter of the SAG AFTRA union and strikes. Because you have an audience, and lots of fans watching this who might not understand what is going on, did you have some messaging for them on what the strikes are all about? [Editor's note: This interview was conducted the day after the SAG-AFTRA strike of 2023 began. The strike started on July 14, 2023, ended on Nov. 9, 2023.]

Alex: As a disclaimer, I went to cartoon college. I'm not the perfect spokesman for complex economic-socio-political shifting factors in the industry, but I am IN the industry so I have one guy's opinion and perspective on it. I think this complicated thing can be boiled down to a simple thing, which is: it's very expensive to live in Los Angeles. The prices of all things all over the country are going up. The price of living, the price of affording medicine and healthcare and to just live, to just be a living person in this damn world, is expensive. And while prices are going up and profits are going up and executive bonuses are going up, wages are stagnating and not just not only are the wages not rising to meet the cost of living, but they’re actually lowering because streaming is taking over the residuals that used to be such an important part of an actor's life.

My grandmother, Faith Geer, was an actress, and she didn't get a lot of work, which meant that when she did get a job in a commercial or a movie, those residuals, every time it aired, are how she could afford to be alive. 

And I see a lot of people online saying “Why is Tom Cruise striking?” The celebrities you know the name of? The strike is not for them. If you know their name, 9/10 times, if they’re a big A-lister celebrity, they got theirs. They’re fine. I saw someone say it perfectly today on Twitter: When you see Tom Hanks at a bar in a movie, the bartender who gives them a drink is an actor. The person he’s talking to is an actor, the 50 people behind him in a scene, they're all actors. And they are able to have a life and afford food because of what they’re paid, and I think streaming has been extremely extremely disruptive to the industry in ways that have created opportunity and are good, but all those opportunities are controlled by a small cartel of producers called the the AMPTP, who make the rules. For actors and writers, it’s not about getting rich. It's about staying afloat. And rich people refuse to toss them a life preserver.

It's only going to get worse with AI, so this is an existential threat moment. And I think the writers got it, the actors got it and I'm hoping to see more. Everyone whose contract is up within our industry: I hope they all strike, I hope everybody stands up and says “Pencils down, cameras off until this gets corrected.” 

This is a turning point. This is like the back to the future “Biff gets the Almanac” moment, if we don't stop this, we’re entering a very bad future for art, for artists, and ultimately for the audience, too, because work comes from human beings. Human beings need to eat. So that’s my general perception of the situation.

Hana: The second half of that question is: How can fans support the cause, if at all?

Alex: Awareness, it’s: tweet, retweet, um, get out there. The media tries to create a narrative of “Oh these -these fancy greedy dilatant artists who just spend all day catching butterflies and writing poems and singing songs to each other, they want more delicious creams and absinthe!” 

No. Literally, working class people want to live, and billionaires are trying to drink their blood. It's actually very simple and I’m just making sure people understand that, you know?

Hana: Alright! Thank you. Now it's time for the Gravity Falls questions (laughs).

GFFAN: I'll start with my first question here. Last year, you were at a convention in Mexico. During an interview there, you said some recently-revealed clips were part of a “Next Time On” trailer (made alongside the Gravity Falls pilot) that was never made public. By any chance will that Next Time On reel for Gravity Falls be made public, or do you have access to it? And if not, if it can’t be released, do you think you could tell us more about what else was on that reel that we so far haven’t yet seen? For example, is there a pilot Soos?

Alex: I can give you a little context for that. Back then, I was working at Cartoon Network on a cartoon called “Flapjack” and I was approached directly by an executive at Disney Television. They were looking to change their brand, new executives, and they liked my work and they asked if I would work in development with them. My dream was to have a television show and I thought this would be a faster way to get to that dream, so I said “goodbye” to my friends at Flapjack, I moved into a new office at Disney, 

I was very young, I didn’t know anything, I had no idea what I was doing. There was sort of a deal made where they said “If you help us develop one of our shows, we’ll help you develop one of your shows.” 

So they said “If you help us come up with characters for the Fish High School show [Fish Hooks], we will consider a pitch for a show about you and your sister and your grandpa.”

I was really trying to figure out how to sell this show, and I remembered that in the TV show Arrested Development, there was this running gag where they would always say “Next time on Arrested Development” and then they would show clips that never were in the next episode. It was a trick that the creator of Arrested Development, Mitch Hurwitz, had come up with to get his own show greenlit. He thought, “If I show them a 'Next Time On’ sequence it will make their lizard brains think the show already exists, right?” So when I boarded the Gravity Falls pilot, it had a “Next time on Gravity Falls-” and it had all these fake scenes. There was a proto version of Gideon looking angry, and a Dipper looking wistfully at a proto version of Wendy, and there was just lots of quick cuts of a UFO crashing, and an alien monster biting someone’s head off, and spooky Other Twins and it there was no real meaning behind it. I was thinking of it like the Ducktales intro like, “Cars, lasers, aeroplanes, look at all the stuff that’s gonna be in the project!” 

And it was so effective, and so successful at getting the show picked up, that after Gravity Falls got greenlit, they made every other show in development create “Next Time On” 

GF Fan: Oh, wow!

Hana: Wow!

Alex: So Owl House had to make a Next Time on, and Amphibia had to make a Next Time On and Ducktales had to make a Next Time On. They literally built it into their pipeline!

Hana: You changed the style guide!

Alex: Yeah, I did! I ripped off Mitch Hurwitz and everyone ripped off Gravity Falls ripping off Mitch Hurwitz. So that was essentially an internal sales tool, and the reason they were never intended to be released is they were internal sales documents, which meant they weren’t legally cleared for air. They have sounds and music and textures we grabbed off the internet without paying, so legally it cannot be shown anywhere. And so the plan was to never release it anywhere. 

Then, when we did the Cipher Hunt, I was running out of rewards and treasures to give the audience because I’d already bled Gravity Falls dry of every drop of content that was inside of it, so I said, “Aw, fuck it, here, have the Gravity Falls pilot.” 

So the Next Time On, I actually honestly don’t know where that would be. There may be some thumb drive or server in my garage in a box under a bunch of pieces of paper that may have it. Someone who worked on it may have it, but I don’t have a copy. It’s lost in the ether, you know, but it may pop up some day, somebody who worked on it may have a copy.

GF Fan: Alright, yeah that makes sense. But - final question on that, was there a pilot Soos in there?

Alex: No! There wasn’t actually. Soos was not in the pilot. Because the pilot was an 11-minute version of Tourist Trapped, with Mabel and the gnomes, but it was condensed. And there was no pilot Soos. 

Soos was in the series bible, and it’s one of those things where, again, I can’t over-emphasize how little experience we had when we were doing this, and how sort of in the dark we were, sort of building the car while we were driving the car. 

Soos had one single tiny little paragraph and one drawing in the Gravity Falls bible. One of the first people I hired on the show was Mike Rianda who also had 0 experience making anything, but his student films were funny at CalArts and we got along. I remember asking him, “Hey, Mike, you read the bible, right? What do you think about this Jesús character? Do you think it’s working? Do you think people will get it?” 

And he said, “Oh, dude, you HAVE to have that character, you NEED that character.” None of the others understood it. 

In my mind I thought, “Oh, a character who is so aggressive and forceful and selfish like Grunkle Stan needs a counter-balance of someone who is chill and sweet and selfless and empathetic.” Rianda got it, and he just started riffing as the character, he really understood the tone.

There’s a parallel universe where Mike went, “Fuckin’ Soos? Get him the fuck out of here.” You know what I mean? I was very receptive to what people were saying at the time, so I’m glad Soos survived.

Hana, joking: Famously, people named “Jesús” in the Bible resonate. 

Alex: That’s what I’m saying! Yeah, they made us change his name from Jesús and we said, “Okay, make it just Sus, S-U-S,” which now would be read as “sus”.

Disney found it to be very “sus” and said, “No you have to change it.”

We couldn’t do S-E-U-S-S, because that would be legally Dr. Seuss, and we couldn’t say Jesús because that looked like Jesus, and “sus” had a problem, so we just kept randomly changing it until it was S-O-O-S, and that’s how we ended up with such a strange spelling. 

Hana: That’s so interesting. I always thought that the Double-O was because round shapes, psychologically, are seen as friendly, and I thought you chose that to make it look friendlier. It’s funny that it was just, “Well! None of the other spellings fuckin’ worked! We had to go with something!” That’s so interesting!

Alex:  And that’s part of the challenge of sometimes having these types of conversations, as a fan.

I was obsessed with Nintendo growing up, and I had Pokemon, and I was obsessed with MissingNo., the glitch character, where if you acquire Mew through trade it would create a glitch. I have an Etsy pillow of MissingNo. that I ordered because I love MissingNo. so much. 

I finally had the opportunity a few years back to go to Japan and go to Game Freak and meet the creators of Pokemon Red and Blue, Ken Sugimori who designed Pikachu, and the guy who made the game [Satoshi Tajiri] and composed the music [Junichi Masuda], and I was able to ask him through a translator, “So MissingNo.! What’s the deal with that? What’s the secret, what does it mean?” 

Hana: And he was like “Oh. We messed up?”

Alex: He looked at the other guy, and got stony and went, “I don’t know what that is, I don’t know what you’re referring to.” 

And I recognized in that moment, that, like, he’s still embarrassed that they had a glitch. Instead of embracing that this is a part of lore that fans love. People have drawn a Sexy MissingNo. and created a MissingNo. pillow! 

In his mind, he, as a serious video game programmer, made a mistake, and is ashamed of the mistake, and doesn’t want to acknowledge it, doesn’t want to encourage other people to corrupt their own game, so he said ‘there’s no such thing as MissingNo.” 

And now, people will come to me and be like “What is the secret meaning behind this thing,” and I’m like, “I dunno, I was just fucking around.”   

I don’t want to demystify things sometimes. Sometimes no answer is better than a boring answer.

Hana: I have a lot of questions like that, and I’m sorry in advance. 

Hana: Most of my questions are going to be about Journal 3, because I, uh, have a problem [laughing]. And I know that Rob Renzetti worked on a lot of it with you, so let me know if there is something he might know an answer to. An easy one off the bat: Were there any Journal 3 excerpts or cryptid entries that you wanted to include but ultimately couldn’t?

Alex: That’s a good question. I know that we did cut like 12 pages from the journal, just due to length. 

Alex: Rob and I decided to collaborate on this book, and Rob is great. When he and I are together, we’re very much like Grunkle Stan and Ford, and he is Ford and I am Stan. 

We were both kind of writing our sections separately and then he would give me his sections and I would do my Gravity Falls flavor pass where I would try to sort of pull it towards making sure it feels in character. But because we were writing separately, I think we both sort of took a pass at certain scenes that were redundant and publishing came back and said there were 7 spreads or there were 8 spreads and said “You have to choose, you have to kill some.”

A lot of it was just unused episode ideas.There are lots of episode ideas. In the [writers’] room we would have a wall that was cards of genres and areas we wanted to tackle. “Oh we wanna do an episode that’s kind of, like, The Thing. We wanna do a time travel episode.”

And then on the other wall there would just be, like, character beats. “Wouldn’t it be cool if Grunkle Stan’s old pal came to town? Would it be interesting if Dipper had a fan for once?” 

And we would try to take one from one wall and one from the other wall and try to mesh them into one cohesive whole but often they wouldn’t click, so you’d have a fun monster, but no emotional story to attach it to. Or a fun emotional story but no monster to attach it to. And so we had lots of scraps on the cutting room floor. 

So when you’re writing something like Journal 3 or Lost Legends a lot of it is just sort of “Oh, this is an idea that didn’t have enough legs for an episode, but fits as a fun little chapter.” Rob did one where it was like Dipper and Mabel were going door-to-door selling Grunkle Stan’s bobbleheads. He was sending it around town, like “[Stan voice] You gotta move this merch, no one’s buying it.” and somehow there was some old lady in Gravity Falls, an old doll collector, who trapped Dipper and Mabel in her doll collection in the boxes that American Girl dolls are in.

I remember that story made it in. There’s a lot of little things like that where they were like “Are You Afraid Of The Dark”-like spooky vignette moments. I don’t recall any dramatic meaningful canon that was cut out of the book. We tried to keep the stuff that was most relevant to the series, and anything that seemed a little extraneous were things that got the chop first if I remember correctly.

Hana: Do you still have those pages?

Alex: I mean, Rob does, I’m sure! I’m sure Rob has some of those pages left. 

I’ll just say, what you were saying about you being the Stan, and Rob being the Ford, I’ve talked about this with my friends. I’ve listened to those DVD commentaries a lot, because I make stupidly-long two-hour in-depth video essays about Gravity Falls, and I’ve retained a lot of it, and I’ve listened to them again and again, and when Rob talks about Stanford Pines, I think, “This man gets it! He understands Ford the same way I do!” There was this one instance in the DVD commentary, where you’re talking about the infinity sided die, and how Ford puts it in this cheap plastic case, and you go, “I’m not so sure about that joke. It feels- you know, he’s more practical than this, like, he wouldn’t just put it in a cheap plastic case, he’s really responsible!” and then Rob’s like, “No, he absolutely would, it’s great character building!” and I‘m like, “Yeah, he would!” 

Alex [laughing]: What’s fascinating is seeing your perception of this. I understand this because I’m a fan too, as a fan of media, I connect with the media, I have a personal connection with the media, and it’s so personal that I’m like, “this character is sort of like me and I have a wavelength about this character in my head, and therefore, I when I hear a false note, when someone says something about this character that doesn’t sound right to me, it’s like, it’s like  I’m getting insulted, like ‘how dare you?’” 

The funny thing is, from within the world of this creation, it’s so improvisational when we’re creating. We’re riffing on each other and discovering. So in our world we still recall the invention of this thing. You’ve only experienced the final version, you know? I still recall when Ford had a long beard and was a hippie. There’s a version of Ford that was completely different, and I recall Ford when we wanted to get Jeff Bridges to do the voice, we couldn’t get Jeff Bridges, we were thinking it’d be kind of more like a zen kind of guy because Grunkle Stan was more agro.

I remember talking about, maybe, J.K. Simmons and then thinking “Gosh, you know, he’s got a very familiar voice, is he gonna feel too overexposed.” And then “Jeez, I’m 27 doing Grunkle Stan, and J.K. Simmons is his own age, are these voices even gonna be believable as brothers?” So we’re putting this character together, we’re putting blocks together, we’re moving blocks and putting them up, and it's only at the last second that a Ford is revealed that we’re like “I guess we did it?”

Once we have that, then we’re like okay  “Oh, let’s sand out the edges, let’s figure it out, let’s move that around, maybe he looks like this, maybe his hair looks like that, let’s make his sweater red so it evokes the Journal. How do we make him look like Stan, but not like Stan? Oh jeez, our original versions of him from a flashback don't match - doesn’t matter, we’re gonna change that because we like this one better,” So we’re figuring all that stuff out, right?

Here’s the thing. When I think about what you just said about me and Rob, it’s so funny because what to you comes across as “Oh, Rob understands Ford’s ridiculous recklessness,” to me comes across as “Rob IS Ford and Ford does rationalize.” That’s what he does. One of Ford’s greatest powers is rationalizing. So you’re seeing Rob as Ford rationalizing Ford’s bad decisions. 

In that moment, I think what’s being revealed is less Ford’s recklessness, and more Ford’s ability to justify anything. 

Hana: I get it, yeah. It’s like in the journal when he says, “Yeah, I’m stealing government waste, but I’m doing a public service! It’s fine!” 

GF Fan: Here’s another question. It’s about the past production of the show. In past interviews, you’ve said that you wouldn’t have made Gravity Falls if you couldn’t have gotten Kristen Schaal to voice Mabel. Also, Jason Ritter in the past has mentioned that he almost didn’t do Dipper’s voice because he had commitments to another show at the time. How true is the assertion that you wouldn’t have made Gravity Falls without Kristen, and were there any other voice acting options you had at the time during that period where you didn’t think that Jason was gonna be the voice of Dipper? 

Alex: Disney has a really robust casting and music department. You know, whenever I criticize Disney, it goes viral, and whenever I compliment Disney, it gets two likes and everyone misses it [laughing]. I wanna counter-balance it by saying that at least when I was working there,  their casting and music department were amazing, and they were the best in the business. They were really supportive and really patient with our process because I wanted to make something I really love, and I said, “It has to be Kristen Schaal, the character was written for Kristen Schaal, I don’t even know who this character is without Kristen Schaal,” and they said, “I don’t know if we could get her, so we wanna do a proper audition process and a proper casting call.”

We probably got 20 auditions sent to me on a CD, maybe 30 auditions, and there was no second choice. Maybe some of them, with direction, could have found the character, but there’s a- there’s just a uniqueness to what Kristen does. There’s a sincerity. Kristen’s never winking when she’s doing a performance. When she does Mabel, and she is in LOVE with the latest guy who walked in her field of view, she really is in love. She’s not making fun of her own character. She believes what her own character believes, and she embodies the character.

So many so many of the people who came in were like, “Oh I’m playing a wacky, obnoxious, girl [high-pitched voice] I’m gonna be CRAZY!” and they would just be so over-the-top, and I don’t necessarily blame them for that, because I think a lot of the roles they were auditioning for would be like, you know, “Kid whose head transforms into a CG watermelon in a Gushers commercial” and they’re supposed to be like “WAAH”, but I just didn't believe it, and Kristen Schaal’s performance I believed.We did a lot of auditions, but if Kristen couldn’t do it, I didn’t have a plan B. I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I couldn’t figure out what my solution was. 

In terms of Jason, you know, we had hired him, we had hired both of them for the pilot, and they both did a great job. When his agent started to say, “This might not be possible because of previous commitments,” we did start looking around for “Oh crap, who’s the right guy for this?”

You know what I said a second ago about Mabel, like Kristen IS Mabel? Jason is Dipper. I can’t over-emphasize how much he was a fan of the show. 

There are paparazzi photos of him in airports just wearing the Dipper hat because he relates to the character so much. He’s such a big heart, and I think the biggest contribution to the character was that heart. 

I originally, in my mind, imagined Dipper so self-serious, and Jason has such a sweetness about him that we started writing to that sweetness. He gave Dipper some blind spots. Like we imagined Dipper as SO smart, and Jason would make Dipper a little bit more naïve. And that was more relatable and grounded. And so I’m grateful to him for bringing that to the character. And I’m so glad that he didn’t leave, because the other thing was: Gravity Falls was not an easy show to make. And we were frequently adjusting and updating the script late in the process because we would write a new episode and say “Oh! We need to shift this canon!” And that wasn’t normal for Disney. 

A different actor who may have been less of a fan of the show might have said, “Screw you! I’m not coming in to do a third retake of a line just because you guys changed a lore concept!” But Jason was like, you pick up the phone and he was already in the booth before you called! He’s like, “I can’t wait to see the new pages! What’s gonna happen?” He literally was like Dipper.

Hana: I would love to hear, like, different line readings of episodes that were scrapped, I feel like it would be so cool. Kristen and Jason really are the heart and soul of it. Regarding Kristen, I’ll just say this; sometimes I look back at Gravity Falls and it was a show made in 2012, and, you know…there are times when the writing with the female characters could be stronger. You could like, you could have given Wendy more to do. But with Mabel, I am always like, “they never made fun of Mabel.” You know? Like, I feel like a lot of shows would. And I think that’s Kristen. I absolutely love that quality in her voice, and the earnestness and sincerity. 

Alex: The earnestness, that’s the thing! I think, to Mabel, covering her face in gems and making this crazy puppet show? To Mabel those things are really, really cool. But also, to me they’re really really cool. [Laughs] Me and my sister were very very creative, playful kids growing up, and we would put on plays and shows and we would record little videos and we would dress up in crazy costumes, and so Dipper is always kind of torn between rolling his eyes at Mabel’s antics and laughing despite himself because he loves her and cares about her. 

We loved Mabel. And Kristen loved Mabel. You know what I mean? I always knew what felt on-voice for that character in terms of writing, in terms of acting, You’re absolutely right that there wasn’t a super robust cast in terms of women. Wendy was a character who started out as “Dipper’s got a crush on the babysitter and he needs to go through the tunnel of puberty and have some painful experiences as part of his growing up process.” 

But when we started the show, we didn’t know who Ford was, we didn’t know who Wendy was, or if Bill was gonna be a character. We were really building the thing on the fly. 

In some parallel universe where I could go back in time and start the show from scratch and have everything solved and just be able to build on it, it would be great to find great stories for Wendy and have a more robust cast. I’m honestly always terrified to look back at the show, to think, “Oh gosh, in what way were we tone-deaf to something that has changed culturally?” and I’m mostly relieved when I watch it to see that like...there was so much love, like we really loved and cared about everything we were doing, that for the most part I feel like, you know, despite a few false notes and missteps, that people can feel that we’re really coming from a sincere place of trying to make something that has a good heart.

Hana: That actually is one of my questions, if there is anything that, you know, you think hasn’t aged particularly well–um, that you might go back and change if you were making it again today.

Alex: Here’s the thing. Me and the crew that I work with, we really care about what we make. And so we’re all perfectionists. The hour after I locked picture on any episode, I would’ve said, “Oh, shit, there’s things I wanna go back and change.” [Laughs] You know, I was dissatisfied with it as I was making it, let alone ten years later. 

It’s impossible as a viewer to understand the difference between content and intent, because you’re only receiving content. 

Hana: I will say, I’m surprised that the answer that I didn’t immediately get was Grenda. I feel like Grenda–

Alex: Oh!

Hana: Like, at least among my friends–I mean, there’s a lot of love for Grenda, obviously, like we all love her, we understand that it was intended more as a commentary on puberty [as you’ve said in past statements]. But like–most of my friends are trans. [laughs] And, like–the joke about her voice changing–

Alex: Super, yeah. 

Hana: But it can come across as a transphobic joke.

Alex: I think that’s–that’s a perfect example of what I was saying about content–intent and content, right? 

The origin of Grenda was: we were writing Double Dipper, and we realized, “Oh, it would be cool if Mabel made some friends in town.”

I had worked with two actors Carl Faruolo and Niki Yang, who shared a cubicle outside my office, who were always arguing about things because they just had such different personalities. Carl had such a big personality and Niki was–she was very sly.

The idea was, ”What if Mabel’s friends are just Niki and Carl? Because they have a fun rapport.” So it was like–”Great! There’s a friend-shaped hole in the script, Niki and Carl are Mabel’s friends!” 

You know, that decision is sort of made in haste as sort of, “Oh! We love these two and we know that they are funny and fun.” You’re one hundred percent right to watch that and say, “This is not on the level with the conversation about gender.” A hundred percent, yes, it was a blind spot. You’re absolutely right. I love Carl but, if I was inventing Gravity Falls from scratch now, in a million years I wouldn’t have cast Carl in that role. It’s one of those things where, I believe that when it comes to media, the customer is always right. So, when, you, the customer says, “This, this was experienced by me as something that was insensitive or hurtful,” I’m like, “You’re right.” Like, we fucked up. 

Hana: I’ll also say, just because I’m not every trans person, I know personally trans women who love Grenda, and you know, really resonate with the character, but I also know trans women who  watch it and feel [hisses] like, a lot of discomfort with it. So, you know, the trans community is not a monolith. But, yeah, I know when I was watching, I was like …[noise of discomfort]. 

Alex: I’m sorry you experienced it that way. I’m sorry we failed you as an audience. I’m glad we were able to deliver in so many ways, but you know, that was a - as the chef serving the meal you come back and say, “what the hell is this in there and-” you’re right!

Hana, jokingly: There’s some transphobia in this salad!

Alex [laughing]: There’s ignorance- there’s a little bit of ignorance inside my soup! I’m like, “Oh, you’re absolutely right, I’m so sorry. I wish I could go back to the kitchen and get you a soup that’s different.” I can guarantee you that you wouldn’t see that from me ever in anything I’m making again. 

GFFan: While we’re on the subject of [criticism], I guess I’ll rip this bandage off right now. This is a question I asked Serina Hernandez, who was one of the artists on Lost legends, the fan artist you hired for that. I interviewed her about her work on Don't Dimension It. As much as I love Don’t Dimension It as a story, I kind of felt like the treatment that it was put towards Mabel was kind of a bit unusual. Like how Dipper names that fault line after her the start of the the book, Mabel’s Fault, it kind of made it look like that she herself was being blamed for Weirdmageddon, like downplaying Ford, Dipper and Stan’s contributions, and Bill’s contributions to Weirdmaggedon. You may notice, because you're in the fandom quite a lot, but it's no secret that Mabel's been a bit of a controversial character in the Gravity Falls fandom at large and there's been various discussions and backlash toward Mabel over the years. My question to you is: Why did you write Don’t Dimension It the way you did and what was your rationale for having it be a sort of Mabel redemption story? Did the fandom’s perception of Mabel over the years play a factor in that?

Alex: I keep an eye on all things in the fan reality of the show. I want to make something that people enjoy and respond to but I also know these characters in my heart, so I'm always sort of balancing the climate of what I'm hearing with what I know and what I intend.

 For Lost Legends it, it basically came from Disney saying “Hey would you like to make a comic?” and I was like “Oh I’ve never done that before!” There was a comic store in my hometown when I was a kid, and I would look at all the comics on the walls and think, “Wow, wouldn't it be cool if I had a comic up there one day?” This was my shot, so my thought was, similar to Gravity Falls Journal 3, “Oh! What are, what are some cutting room floor stories? What are some stories that we had and when we were working on the show that we never were able to make it into the series?” 

Like I said, the Gravity Falls process is: you take a magic and you take a character thing and you stick them together and you try to make them cohesive. 

It's so interesting when you look at fan conversations, because they they often imagine that, like, the writers each have a character that they are rooting for, or a relationship that they’re rooting for, and that we're fighting to advocate for a particular character, and that that is what's happening behind the scenes, and it's so not that way at all. We’re fighting to advocate for something that is compelling and interesting and surprising and satisfying that feels like it's tonally right, and whatever accomplishes that is something that we are going to try. 

With Lost Legends, there were 10 things that I'd remembered of things that were on the cutting room floor. We had briefly explored, “What if in the second season, what if the family gets trapped inside the portal, what would that look like, you know? They discover the portal, what if they get sucked in? What could happen?” And we thought of some very fun stories, and we thought of a story of Stan and Ford in the multiverse, and we thought of a story of- we had done clones with Dipper, and we thought “oh, wouldn't be funny to have a million Mabels, wouldn’t that be interesting?” Once the portal was introduced to the show, we only had 10 episodes left until the series was over, and we didn’t have the narrative bandwidth to go to the furthest reaches of the multiverse in the middle of the show. We’re moving the chess pieces around, we're saying “that's gonna disrupt the flow of the show” and also it felt like it would make Weirdmaggedon feel less impactful, that they'd already gone through a tear in the multiverse. 

But in our back pocket, we had a story about a bunch of Mabels. When you do a clone story, the point of a clone story, in my mind, is a character seeing themselves in a different light, right? 

In Double Dipper, Dipper got a look at himself and said, “oh my God, look at me overplanning and over-preparing, and getting in my own way!” So when we had thought about a story with a bunch of Mabels, we thought “What if Mabel is feeling some of the frustrations with herself that Dipper sometimes feels?” Where it's like, “Oh this character is so joyful and passionate and running all over the place and I'm trying to get them to focus on something”, the way that Dipper experienced Mabel in Sock Opera, where he’s like, “we’ve gotta get the code!” and Mabel’s like “I’ve gotta get my play!” What if Mabel had 10 Mabels that were all putting on their own play, and needed help with her play, right? 

So it's like we had that idea from back when we were working on season two. We had always had an idea about a face-stealing monster. We thought it would be a really fun, weird, scary visual to have one of our characters have a missing face and a really high stakes story. Um, in terms of the comics story, if I was doing a comic, I needed to do one about comics.

And then we have Little Stan and Ford, you know, the Stan brothers as kids on the dock. When we did A Tale of Two Stans, it was really hard to write that episode, because we just wanted to write a million adventures of those two. It seemed so fun and so funny, and that was so easy to write, like I sat down and that just came out of my fingertips, because I know those guys so well, and I know I have a lot of thoughts about what Glass Shard Beach is like, and other characters that weren't there, that I've always wanted to see.  So that one was really really a piece of cake. 

Just to address your question, there was not really an intention writing any of these stories to address a fan complaint of the week. That's just not the way we think about stories. The way we think about stories is: we're looking for stakes, we're looking for a combination of a monster and emotion, we're looking for a turn, and we're always looking to do a new arc, if we can.

One of the things I love in the Don’t Dimension It story is Stan and Ford getting into an argument about which one of them is the better caretaker. And we learn by the end that they're both terrible caretakers in their own way. 

I thought that would be a really sweet. I thought “What would be a sweet argument between Stan and Ford?” They've gotten over their main issues but they're always going to be bickering forever, and what are, what are, like, what are versions of their bickering that are coming from a place of love? 

The idea that Stan might hear that Ford has learned Dipper’s real name before he has – because of course he’s not gonna tell Stan – that might make Stan a little insecure, and then try to over parent in a really dumb way. We’re always looking for stories create a little turn, and create a little twist, and then they enter the hive mind, and the hive mind has its own sort of popular narratives, and then fuses these things to those narratives, and says “Is this arguing in support of my narrative, is this arguing against my narrative?” The truth is: we’re always trying to create our own narrative! 

GF Fan: Makes sense, yeah.

Alex: In my mind, all of these characters are sweet, funny, flawed characters doing their best. There isn't, “one character’s the good character, one character’s the bad character.” They’re all wonderful, wonderful dumbasses, all of them.

[Triumphant yelling of agreement from Hana]

Alex: I genuinely believe that in terms of intelligence, Dipper, Mabel, Stan and Ford are basically equal, they have different types of intelligence.  In terms of moral alignment, Dipper, Mabel, Stan and Ford, for the most part, are relatively equal, though I would say that of that group, Mabel is absolutely the purest of heart. 

She has the least to learn, because her way of looking at life, with love and sincerity and with an unashamed fearlessness about who she is, is probably the most right, and that's why we beat her up the least, because there’s not a lot that she needs to change. So, when we try to look for a Mabel story, we are looking for: what’s a way in which that good intention goes awry? She loves her boy band so much she doesn’t want them to leave, or, in the case of Don’t Dimension It, all of the Mabels are so creative and passionate that when they have to band together, it might be difficult to corral them all together.

Every story starts with a character making a mistake, then has the character dig deeper in their mistake, then has the character change and unkink that kink, and sometimes people will say, “Hey, did you notice in Act 2, this character was making a mistake?” And it’s like, “Yes! Yeah, that’s act 2!”

Hana, joking: Irredeemable. 

Alex: The Mabels of Don't Dimension It are at first all caught up in their own creative projects, and then when Mabel makes a heartfelt plea of them that their projects are wonderful but she needs their help, they all say, “Oh! Yeah! Let's go fuck the evil Mabel up!” 

Mabel, in the finale, is so hurt by the fear of growing up that she wants to hide, and then when she sees what reality is, she says, “Okay, let's go do it, Let's go take Bill down.” The impulse to zoom in on a moment while a character is on the way to an arc  and create a folk narrative version of that character is - I get it, it's like, I'm a fan too, I create folk narratives around the media I consume. But I try not to get too drawn into the folk narrative, because I’m crafting narratives, you know? With narratives, you're always making new stuff, and getting stuck in a loop doesn't seem super interesting to me.

GF Fan: Right, yeah, like, when I was a bit younger in the fandom, like, that was something I was kind of sucked into, and there's still a lot of people who still engage way too much into that type of topic, but I've kind of stepped back from it now, because I’ve just accepted, there's going to be people who have these perceptions of these characters, which, like, what’re you gonna do?

Hana, jokingly: Yeah, people are allowed to hate Ford. They’re wrong, but they’re allowed! 

Alex: I mean, that’s the thing! Like I said, I believe the customer is always right, like, every person’s experience is true. I can never argue with someone and tell them their experience is wrong. If they say, “I experienced this character in a way that I didn't like them,” like, you're right! Everyone's experience is their own, I'm not going to invalidate it, but in my role as a creator, I sort of try to invite people into the creative space, and sort of say, like, “This is what it's like on the other side.” You know? It's a totally different matrix that we're working with, when we’re talking about that.

GF Fan: One more, uh, Lost Legends related question. What other stories did you have that were planned to be in Lost Legends that didn't make it in, like, I know you mentioned those 10 stories. Also, when Lost Legends was being advertised back in 2018 I remember it being advertised as like, the first Gravity Falls graphic novel rather than as the Gravity Falls graphic novel, and I think you also mentioned in a tweet once that if the book sold well there could be a chance for more graphic novels or something, so were there ever plans for more graphic novels for Gravity Falls and like, if not, what stories would you have personally told if you were given the chance to write another one?

Alex: Lost Legends sold well, it was a bestseller, but Journal 3 is a publishing juggernaut. It continues to be a bestseller 10 years after the show is over. It's a monster manual, a companion piece to a television show that's not even on the air anymore, and it continues to sell, sell, sell, sell, and I think in comparison to Journal 3, Lost Legends did well, but it didn't do astronomically well like [Journal 3]. Disney didn't reach out to me and ask for more. I think I could have pushed for more, and said “Oh, we gotta do more”, but making a comic was very challenging. The art  takes so much time. Having worked in storyboarding, and animation, and writing books, and making comics, comics are uniquely challenging, and not respected nearly enough, because they are really, really hard to do. 

So it was a combination of it being very challenging, and Disney not really pushing for it. There isn't currently a plan to do more. 

In terms of stories that I didn't do, I always start with a brainstorm, and I brainstormed a lot of stories. There were a lot of cutting room floor stories.

There was a story about Mabel getting a sweater from a swap meet that was haunted by the ghost of the grandma who died in that sweater, sort of like this scary Poltergeist story inside the shack, like a bottle episode. That one that one didn't quite come together, we didn't really have a strong arc for Mabel. There were some funny jokes, and some funny puns, but it didn't necessarily give Mabel like, an emotional change or experience. 

I came up with like five stories, what could have been a whole separate book of Stan and Ford adventures at sea. I had some great ones for that that I'm not going to say because if I choose to make a book one day I don’t want to spoil them.

[sounds of anguish from Hana]

Hana: That’s good, though! Thank you!

Alex: Those characters at sea- it was so rich. They're really really funny, because they both have major major blind spots. -I can kinda write stories about them as a duo forever, because you can always excuse them both getting hyped on a bad idea for their own reasons, and then you can always come up with a reason for them to disagree about it, and it's always sweet to see them come together again, because they're so full of themselves, but they are also both so damaged they desperately need each other. 

When you sit down to write, you discover where the story is. It’s sort of like you’ve got a dowsing rod, and you're like, oh there's water over here, and you don't always know, and you just kind of let the story tell you what it is. And, you know, on the open sea, Stan and Ford always have a lot to do, but it was so much that I was like, “I should save this. If I'm gonna do something with this, I should save it for something more robust.” 

I was trying to come up with a proper Pacifica story, like a real, like a real emotional arc for her. I came up with some really fun set pieces and some really great scenes, but couldn't quite crack an arc, so we went with a much simpler arc, just Pacifica trying to realize that beauty is within.

We’re trying to get these pieces aligned, and until it is, there's lots of pieces that we love, but they're not a story yet, if that makes sense.

Hana: So, I’m going to go back to Journal 3. I’ve always told myself that the one question I would ask you if I ever met you- 

Alex: Here we are!

Hana: Here we are! I’m losing my mind, honestly! Oh my God, this is so fucking surreal. So, there was a line change in Journal 3. Between the first print that had a handful of typos and stuff, around the time of the blacklight edition, there was a change in one line, like completely different. The first version of the line - and this is on the page where Ford and Fiddleford are camping out and they’re talking about their dreams and aspirations, and Fiddleford’s like “Why don’t you settle down?”

And Ford says “It hasn’t been an easy path, but I prefer the road less traveled anyway. (Although I confided in F that I was grateful to no longer be traveling alone.)” That line was changed to, “I am grateful to be traveling it with a friend.” Like, specifically “with a friend.” Many in the fandom saw this as an attempt by Disney Publishing to emphasize Ford and Fiddleford's relationship as like, strictly platonic and remove any room for queer interpretation.

Alex: One second, I’m pulling it up. [Alex grabs a copy of Journal 3]

Alex, [reading]: Yeah, I mean, I’ll be 100% transparent about this. I was not even aware of this.

Hana: Yeah! I tweeted you and Rob Renzetti about it like two years ago and  Rob said “I didn’t know about this and I doubt Alex did, either.” But I guess my question is, you know, one, was this a line change you knew about, which you just answered, and two: do you have any thoughts on why this change took place? And the fandom response?

Alex: My guess is… Disney never tries to sneak stuff by me. Like, they know that I am a detail-oriented bastard, and the sneaking-stuff-by pipeline only goes one way, and it’s not executive-to-me, you know what I mean? So like, my only guess would be that we change lots of stuff at every stage, for every reason constantly. This book had lots and lots of drafts, and things were constantly moving around just for flow, for grammar, for paragraphs, or we added an illustration and now there’s less room. So everything was always changing, and it was always very organic, and I sincerely believe in this instance that it probably was one of those changes that did not have any authorial intent behind it, was just part of lots of stuff shifting, and for whatever reason that was one that made a difference between multiple- were you saying, was there an edition of Journal 3 with that change in it?

Hana: Like, if you buy Journal 3- this was the edition that you preordered. I preordered it months in advance like everyone else, so this was the first version. It’s the one with the shitty binding, um, you know, they changed the binding- they fixed a bunch of typos- 

Alex: So in that version they had that line in it, and in subsequent versions it was different?

Hana: Yeah, in subsequent versions it is different. This was the one that - [Hana pulls out a newer copy of Journal 3 that has many post-its sticking out between the pages] -sorry about all the post-its- 

Alex: Oh, yeah.

Hana: It says, “I confided in F that I was grateful to be traveling it with a friend.” It’s the only line, by the way, aside from typos, that has any difference. It is the only line that is changed.

Alex: …Are you sure about that?

Hana, nodding: I am! I hate to be like “I am soo positive,” but - you don’t understand, I went through line-by-line-

Alex: I saw all the sticky notes so if anyone would be sure, it would be you. I mean, like, honestly, like, 100%, like, hand-on-my heart, hand-to-god, I’ve never heard of that. I’ve never even been aware of it, and my assumption, based on my experience with the company, is. …  they’re not detail oriented. Like, like, they’re not like us. Like, there was a Gravity Falls book released where they literally had, like

GF Fan: Yeah. 

Alex: Quicktime player bar!

Hana, laughing: We know, yeah.

Alex: What I’m saying is, instead of being a lot of hyper-concerned, detail-oriented people with an agenda, that are focusing, and trying to change stuff with an intent, they tend to be overworked, distracted, and focusing on Marvel. 

I truly believe that that change was probably one of like, a hundred changes between different variations. 

So I guess what I’m saying is, like, I believe, I truly believe, hearing that, that this was a random mistake that happened to accidentally exist on a fault line of looking like it has intent about these characters. 

Hana: Oh, it does look like it.

Alex: Yeah! I mean, that’s the thing. You know, like, the more time you spend in Dipper headspace, like- the more it’s like- oh, there’s one green sock here, there’s one green sock here, they must be a pair, you know? It’s fair to say that “Oh okay, well, we know that Disney has been very censorous, of gay stuff, and this looks like it could be a censoring of gay stuff, so maybe that’s what it is!” 

I’m straight up about every time they’ve given me shit, like you know that I don’t hold back about Disney stuff, so like, I truly believe that this was a mistake, because - this was the other thing - not only are they not detail oriented, but they don’t understand the characters, and they don’t care. I don’t think it would occur to them! 

Hana: I will say, like even the initial interpretation of it, the “I’m happy to no longer be traveling this path alone” isn’t inherently queer, but by censoring it, if it was censorship, they’ve immediately called attention to it-

Alex: Totally!

Hana -and it made everyone go, “Wait - were they gay?” And it’s like the Streisand effect in a way.

GF Fan: Exactly! Textbook Barbara Streisand.

Alex: If I had to guess, because when you’re editing, when you’re writing, and then you reread your writing and you edit it, and then you reread your writing and you edit it, there’s a very subconscious process of streamlining, literally making paragraphs look nice - it’s entirely possible that me or Rob made that change out of one of a million changes specifically because we knew that psychologically that Ford is not travelling this path alone, he’s traveling it with his muse who he has a very complex and fucked-up relationship with, and even in Ford’s private thoughts, he would not say “I’m alone,” he would say “Oh, I have a very important relationship in my life with Bill, but I don’t have a friend. That is a difference!” 

Ford is not alone in his mind, even though he is extraordinarily alone. I feel like that may have been the intent, if there was an intent. 

Hana: So, many who purchased the blacklight edition, including myself- or, actually, I had a friend buy it for me, because it was $150 because it was too expensive - but many who have the blacklight edition thought it would be more likely to contain like, dark and grim material related to ford’s psychological breakdown, or at least more mature compared to the journal’s intended 7+ age audience. In a way, that $150 price tag is almost like a childblock if you think about it; parents probably aren't gonna buy a $150 book for their kids.

Were there any bits of info or material that you wanted to incorporate into the blacklight layout that you were barred from including? Was there ever an intention to include more grim material in the blacklight edition?

Alex: Not really. 

Consumer products asked us if we had any interest in making Gravity Falls stuff, and we said, when we were working on the show “yeah, Journal 3, and it should have blacklights and all the things,” and they said “no we’re never gonna do that.” 

And then just as the show was starting to end and they were realizing how popular it was, they said “We wanna do a Journal 3,” and I was like “Oh great, can I have blacklights, can I have all these messages?” and they said, “nah, we’re not going to be able to afford that.” 

And then finally when Journal 3 was a bestseller, they said, “you know what -” 

Hana: “You could do what you want?”

Alex: “-How about doing a blacklight edition?” And I said “Oh, finally! Here’s my dream then, I want it to have the monocle, and I want it to have a more realistic robust cover, and you should be able to remove the things that are taped in, and there should be writing behind them, and all the blacklight messages should be in it, and I want blacklight on every single page,” and they said “Yeah, we could afford to have like 40 blacklight pages, um, the paste is very expensive.”

But my intent was that this would now be the Journal 3, like, I wasn't trying to create a targeted special edition, I was trying to create the director’s cut, and I wanted this to be the book everywhere, and I had no idea it was gonna be so damn expensive until after the book was [finished]!

I was creating it for the same audience. I wasn't intending it for older people or collectors or anything. I imagined in my mind, like, parents and kids, like turning out the lights and making it glow to turn it on, like a cool memory in the kids’ minds. I remember having like glow in the dark toys as a kid and running out, holding them to the lamp, and running back into the closet and closing the lights and then “Oh wow that looks so cool!”

And so it wasn’t until we had made all the material, that Disney came back and said “Okay! Great! It’s $150, and we’re only making 5,000 copies –it was originally going to be 5,000– they said “we’re only making 5,000 copies of it and it’s $150” and I was really bummed out. I said “Well first of all, that’s way too expensive, I now feel terrible that we’re charging so much for a product,” and I felt so bad about it, that I was like, “How do I make this thing more valuable?” even though it’s all too late, I’ve already written it. I was like “I’ll sign every single one, because maybe that'll make it feel more valuable.” 

I felt bad for charging so much, and then, when they learned I would sign every single one, they’re like, “you know, we’ll do 10,000. Will you sign 10,000?” and I had already agreed so, I had 3 days in a row where it was me, and headphones, and bottled water, and people just passing me, and me signing, and passing, and me signing, and my hand got cramped up! 

But there was never an intent for that version to be the age locked version, it was supposed to be for everyone, and then it just turned out, it was too pricey.  

Hana: Fascinating. I ask because Ford only started using blacklight ink while he was in the throes of his paranoia, so a lot of people thought, “oh we’re gonna get the really fucked up stuff! Let’s go!” 

[Alex laughing]

And then the Blacklight Edition was like, “Oh! How to get the skin off the plaidypus!” I’m not mad at it, it’s a great page, but it’s like... alright I guess that’s what he thinks about when he’s sleep deprived! It was very fun, though. I loved it.

Alex: Here’s what I would refer to in my mind as “expanded narrative”, which is things that exist orbiting the series as a canon, but expanding and hopefully enriching and giving new little bits of spice to that canon. 

Gravity Falls is one of those rare shows cut in its prime that was cut down by the creator and not the by the company, which means that Disney is always hungry for more Gravity Falls stuff, which means that when I am looking at creating expansions of the narrative, I always have to keep an eye on if I ever wanted to so something with this show more, in an animated context, I wanna make sure that I am keeping certain material for that. 

So for example, in Lost Legends, if I am going to do some adventures with Stan and Ford, either they need their own book or their own mini-series. And I could probably talk Disney into a mini-series if I was out of my Netflix deal and I really wanted to, and so there are sometimes things where you’re sort of intentionally kneecapping some of the narrative conversation of some of these things, you’re not expanding it too far of what’s known, because that might be juicy fuel for stuff that could happen in the future. So like, there are certain things like that where it’s like, “would this be better served in a different format, might I hold onto it.” That’s sometimes in the back of my mind. I know that's frustrating because if you’re a fan you’re saying, “well, make the miniseries!” 

Hana: YEAH! I get it though.

GF Fan: Okay, this is another Journal 3 question. I’ve wanted to ask you this since like 2020. Around November of 2021, I was made aware by someone who was a friend of mine that there was this new Journal 3 version on Barnes and Noble and - I have it right here- and it was listed as Journal 3 Signed Edition, and inside of it is your signature right here, and so basically like, obviously I know it's actually from you because, like Barnes and Noble sold it, and of course why would they make a fake one, but basically I wanted to ask you in regards to- what's the story behind the Barnes and Noble Signed Edition, because like, also like, I’m pretty sure you didn't sign 10,000 of these, so like, how rare is it, compared to Journal 3 Special Edition?

Alex: Gosh, It was sometime before the pandemic, I think, that publishing was just impressed with the continued sales of Journal 3 and wanted to kind of just juice those sales and just sort of remind audiences that it was out there. Gravity Falls was now on Disney+, and Disney+ was being discovered by more people, and there was a thought of like, “Can we keep this going?” 

And publishing asked if I would sign a big stack of stickers, and they brought them over to my house, and I made little dents in it, and eventually gave it to them, but honestly- I genuinely can't recall how many there were, I don't remember exactly when it happened. 

You know the thing about working with a big company is it’s like working with a friend who swaps their head with a different head every couple of years. Completely different people are running the company from year to year, so one person will have a strategy and then they’ll move to another department so like at some point, someone was in a position to ask me to sign more stuff.

I can't remember who it was or exactly what the thought process was, but I don't even know how many there were. I know it wasnt 10,000, because it wasn't as nightmarish as the previous experience.

GF Fan: Alright, this one is another quick question. This one is also related to the special edition. A year ago or something, I was made aware from someone who asked me like a random question, because they think I’m the guy who knows Gravity Falls things other than Alex Hirsch- 

Alex [laughing]: People think I'm the guy who knows some of this stuff, but there is no answer.

GF Fan: So basically they told me about an eBay listing about Journal 3 Special Edition, and it was a different type of like, Journal Special Edition, it was not one of the 10k that has “this number out of 10,000”, and the seller was claiming that it was an advance copy that had no number on it. It's an off-the-grid kind of Journal 3.

Alex: Cool. Rad.

GF Fan: He said there were like 50 of them that were in existence, and they knew about like, a couple of them. Given that we only know about the prototype Journal that you gave away during a livestream a couple years ago, do you have any idea if there were other advance Journal 3 Special Editions that were made that have no numbers to them?

Alex: If there’s a journal on eBay that says it doesn’t have a number, and that it came from early on in the publishing and testing process, I fully believe them.

I never got my hands on one of those, but here’s the thing: when you have a fandom as passionate Gravity Falls does, it takes the company by surprise.

It doesn’t happen all the time that you get that level of passion and attention, so it doesn’t even occur to them to safeguard certain things.

I remember people would take tours of the Gravity Falls office and then they would root through the trash. And then they would take photos of like, casting audition dialogue, and they’d post it online and be like, “Look, look this might be from an upcoming episode,” and it had never occurred to Disney to put, you know, a bear proof lid on their trash, because they never had anyone passionate enough about the animated Hercules show to do that.

And so I think similarly, publishing probably had their own internal copies of “Oh, we’re testing the ink and stuff” and it didn’t occur to them that someone would hold on to one of those and sell them on eBay one day.

So they weren't, like, keeping an eye on trapping it all or hoarding it all, so I totally believe that those things must exist, but they’re probably at a factory somewhere. 

I'm so far removed from that part of it, you know what I mean? I'm writing sentences in Microsoft Word and then looking at drawings, and then one day there's a book in my hand, and it’s kind of magic to me, how that happens.

Hana [holding up Journal 3]: Alright so, This is a question that I need to ask, because I - you saw my post-its, you know I have a problem.

Alex: Oh the post-its, yes, yes.

Hana: So I have taken close-up photos of those instances of the red rectangles on the outskirts of the pages and I’ve compared them, and I've looked at them, and I know some sequences repeat, and some don't quite repeat, and you could tell it's the same rectangles because the line width is the same on some of these but not on the other ones -  and I've shown them to a friend of mine who's a linguist, like, they majored in linguistics, and I was like “Does this look like like it could be a code or something,” and they're like “It kinda looks like it echoes patterns of language? It could, I don't know, I’m not a Gravity Falls fan, I don't know what this means?” 

[Hana starts to falter as Alex looks very much like he has bad news to share] 

And if- it's okay if it doesn't mean anything, but before I spend more years of my life looking into this, please tell me - you don't even have to tell me what they mean! But do the rectangles mean anything?

Alex: Let me ask you a question. Do you actually wanna know?

Hana: [Incredulous pause] … YEAH I WANNA KNOW, ALEX!

I want to know if they mean somethi- aw, man, does that mean they don't? [Noise of anguish]

Alex: [Holds up MissingNo. plush] Do you know what this is?

Hana: [More noises of anguish]

Alex: This is MissingNo. right here.

Hana: … I do wanna know though, because I- I look at these rectangles pretty often, and I’ve sunk a lot of time into it and I-  I’ll do it off the record if you don't want it to be public knowledge.

GF Fan: Yeah we can let the fandom theorize for the rest of their lives.

Alex: Sometimes the mystery is more interesting than the truth. You know?

Hana: …Aw, goddammit.

Alex: To my knowledge, to my knowledge- I gave you an opportunity to keep the mystery with you forever though!

Hana: It’s fine. It’s fine. [They do not sound fine.]

Alex: But uh, you chose not to keep the mystery so-

GF Fan: You have chosen. 

Alex: To my knowledge, our illustrator Andy, who created those, to my knowledge … they’re just symbols. They're just squares.

Hana [deadpan]: I love that. Okay.

Alex: Here’s the thing. Andy is one clever guy, and there’s a chance that he’s hidden a code in there that I've never seen. Uh, one of our artists, in Soos and the Real Girl, Paul Robertson, who did the sprite art, he hid a binary code in that episode that I didn't even know about. He hid the words “Space Jam 2” on one of the laptops in the background, accidentally manifesting Space Jam 2 into reality 10 years later.

I literally didn't even know about that, that's something that an artist snuck in. So if there were secrets in the squares, they would be secrets known only to Andy. But, uh, I don’t think he would have done that, just because he never has before.

Occasionally there will be a gag in one of those journals in the symbols or something that Andy did put in that's just like a goofy joke where people are like “this joke doesn't seem in character” and I’m like “ah, Andy.” (laughs) 

Here's the thing: I wish [the squares were meaningful], you know? Like, with that I'm like “oh that would be so cool!” Because when we did the Cipher Hunt, we tried to make the final code as hard as we could, and Ian, our art director, he did the final code of the Cipher Hunt, which was like, I don't even understand how it worked, where there were these trees with branches, and branches that had a knot, and a branch on the left side equaled certain letters … there was a way to extract an alphabet from these branches that I genuinely didn't understand. You can hide something completely pictorially in a way that does not reveal that it has a rosetta stone to it. So it is possible to make something that um, is that complex.

That's what's so frustrating about these types of conversations!

Hana: It’s okay. Like, I’m okay. I’m glad I know, to be honest.

Alex: I’m an entertainer, and I wanna give value. And it’s a bummer to say like, “there is no value there.” I wish there was, you know?

Hana: [Jokingly] While you’re crushing my dreams–(that’s a joke, I really am happy to know)–So, there’s the portal schematics page- [Holds up journal]

By the way, I know there’s a lot of fake blood on this page, that’s for one of my YouTube videos, ignore that. 

So, you have this half-circle here, right, with all these symbols, and there’s 13 of them, which means that if it was a full circle, it would be 26 [the number of letters in the alphabet], and I just want to confirm that that is also an accident, and not meaningful. …Unless it is.

Alex: Yeah, those weren’t part of our journal codes, so that’s something created by Andy, and if it has meaning, I don’t know the meaning.

Hana: Okay, good to know. I’ll bother Andy about it later. 

Oh! Well you have said though, in interviews, that there are parts of Journal 3 that have not yet been solved by fans. If there’s something you’re thinking of, can you give any hint as to what that is?

Alex: When the journal came out, I would pop into Tumblr occasionally, and often people would do like a masterpost of “here’s every code,” and I saw a couple of masterposts that were missing some. Um, I don’t remember off the top of my head what they may have been.

I don’t think they were anything particularly dark or meaningful, I think they were probably just  more color and texture and jokes and stuff, but I do recall seeing masterposts that were incomplete. 

But, looking at your journal, I doubt there’s anything in there that you haven’t found. Because if you’ve moved on to the squares, you’ve probably found every single thing that’s in there.

Hana: Okay. Yeah. Alright. Thank you very much. I- I will say it’s been a lot of effort, but I am glad to know, so I could have more hobbies.

GF Fan, joking: Put that story to rest.

Hana: And I will say, with that half circle, I tweeted Rob about it, and I was like, “does this mean anything?” and he said, “it could be!” and I was like, “is that Rob being coy? Does he know something?” He was like “who’s to say?” and I’m like, “you wrote the thing, Rob, you’re to say!” (laughs)

Alex: I think that’s just Rob imagining himself as an audience, and saying, “Would I rather hear that this is random and meaningless, or would I rather believe it was a horizon to strive for out of curiosity?” That’s the trouble of a puzzle box, is it’s like, there’s two flavors of it, there’s a question with a satisfying answer, and then there’s a question that is sort of an open-ended invitation to a kind of, uh, you know, group improvisational session. We’ve created a prompt for fans to “yes and” their own story out of it, and the sense that there might be something in there creates a sense of excitement along with it. 

The best version of mystery is something where we actually have intended that, have put it in, the fans get to interpret it, and then at some point we drop the reveal, and we designed a number of those. But people have mostly extracted all of those nutrients, you know, so I wish there was more. 

GF Fan: Okay! I think as we're at the halfway point so far of this interview, I think it's time I asked you the big question. I think Hana already knows this one.

Hana: Go for it (Laughs)

GF Fan: Alright, Shermie Pines. 

Hana: The baby!

GF Fan: In "A Tale of Two Stans" we see a baby that many to this day believe is Shermie Pines. However, it's also been widely accepted that perhaps the baby is too young to be Shermie, given the way the timeline is and everything. And I think Jeff Rowe also mentioned in a tweet that he once redacted that basically said it was the baby, but then redacted that tweet when someone asked if it was Shermie. And you were asked once at a convention -like it's a well known video- that you were at a con, and someone asked you who the baby was, and you were- uh, like, "the baby was off limits” and you can't reveal anything. This was back in like, 2015, so the show was still airing. So now that the show has been over for a long time, can you tell us if the baby is Shermie or not, and if not, do you have anything you can tell us about Shermie Pines? Be it like, official plans or like, headcanons? 

Alex: Sure! I said earlier in this interview that Rob is the guy who focuses on like, timelines and logic, and I'm the guy who focuses on like, emotions and themes. So when it comes to the sort of hereditary bloodline of the Pines, and who's related to who, and how it all connects, like, I was always really interested in Dipper's and Mabel's relationship with Grunkle Stan and each other, and eventually their relationship with Ford and how that affected their relationship with each other and their relationship with Grunkle Stan. The show has a big theme of found family. 

The Mystery Shack is a bucket full of misshapen, lost, odd oddities, and these characters are a bucket full of misshapen lost odd oddities, and like the idea of them all having a place where they fit in, and- and loving each other as a family, was very important to me. 

When it was time for us to … come up with Ford and how he related to the show, there was a question of "oh well is- somebody has to be a grandfather to these kids, just logically", you know um, “there must be a grandfather somewhere in there.” So, we've got three options. Either Grunkle Stan is their grandfather, Ford is their grandfather, or there is a grandfather somewhere else. Um, and so, I look at this always through the lens of character and I asked myself, "what would it mean if Ford was their grandfather?" and I thought, "well it would mean that Ford, you know, had children,” and if Ford had children and abandoned them, then he's a much harder to redeem character.

GF Fan: Right.

Alex: In the drama of Stan's brother- I'm interested in Ford's relationship with Stan, not Ford's relationship with some hypothetical abandoned family. That didn't serve Ford to me and in fact it made me like him less and it made me understand the show less. 

And then the other option was "oh then is Stan the grandfather?" and I said, "Oh absolutely not! Absolutely not! The whole show is about Stan, like, loving these kids. Stan is a very lonely, very starved for genuine human connection character, who's always putting on a performance, but is deeply alone. That's why by episode 2, he's begging the kids to go fishing with him. 

He would not abandon grandkids, or he would not abandon a son, or a daughter, or- or you know. And so I was just like, the point is these lost characters finding family, not characters who had family- uh- that, to me, was not right for these characters at all.

So, in my mind the only answer was, "oh, there just must be some off-screen grandfather." And I personally, again, had no interest in meeting this character, because I didn't think that that character had anything interesting to bring out in Dipper or Mabel. I thought, “I'm really interested in Stan and Ford and Dipper and Mabel. I'm not interested in a grandfather.” 

So the joke around the office was, "oh yeah, grandpa Shermie". You know, and it's like your girlfriend in Canada, like, we're never gonna meet this character.

I remember, Rob was the guy who was sort of keeping track of timelines and logic and all that stuff, and there must have been some conversation about, you know, "oh, what is... Where would Shermie be, then? From chronologically- uh, age-wise?” We say it's broadly in the 60's, but the show in my mind does not take place on a particular date. The show in my mind takes place in a kind of emotional summer that sort of feels like my childhood, and my childhood was in the early 90's, but the show was released in 2012, and like, I always regretted that um, that boys, that the boys in "Boys Crazy" said "2013" because, then it suggested that the show had a canon date. In my mind the show had an emotional date. 

Um, but again, we wanted to have a mystery, so we wanted to say that there was a particular date in the, you know, the 80's when Ford went missing, so it was always this sort of tug-of-war between, there's an emotional intent but in order for the mystery to work it would be helpful to have a date.

In terms of Shermie, I remember asking Rob or somebody at some point, like, "Would Shermie be here, logically? Do we have to see him?" I don't really wanna see him. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in Stan and Ford being, sort of having only each other and then losing each other because of their different life paths.

I think the suggestion was, "Maybe Shermie would be a baby. Maybe that would happen." And being like, "okay sure." And I just sort of took at the word of what was said to me in a meeting like, “oh there's a baby, great, fine, whatever.”

GF Fan and Hana: (Laughter)

Alex: I remember the episode coming out, and people saying, "Oof, well, we've done the math, and if that's Shermie, that means that Dipper and Mabel's parents may have had children at a concerningly young age, and is this show's intent to say that it's okay for those relationships to exist?

I'm like, I'm in the story mines, like I'm in a boiler room with the pipes, where I’m like, “Oh no! Fords not likable, okay we need to add this. Oh shit, Dipper's making a choice that's out of character!" and then someone is telling me there's a timeline that needs to be fixed!

Often when you're in production and you're problem solving you can solve one problem with another problem. There was a situation where we had an arc for Weirdmageddon that was supposed to happen in Episode 1 [of the three-part finale] that we realized we needed to save for Episode 3 and now Weirdmageddon didn't have an arc.

So, then we had to come up with a new arc on the fly but that actually gave us more time with Dipper and Wendy, which gave us a chance to have Dipper talk about what Mabel meant to him. Losing one thing provided an answer to another thing which actually made the show better. So, this happened all the time where a crisis would turn into an opportunity, narratively. So, the thought was okay, we've got a, I guess there's a mistake, the timeline here doesn't work and the question was, is there something better? Is there something we can do with this? Is there something creative? Can the baby serve the story? Is there something that we can come up with yet? And so when people asked about it, I would say I can't answer the question because there was a chance that we might think of something useful.

We kicked it around, and never thought of anything useful. It was like, no, I guess the timeline doesn't work. We should've done something else. 

You can't change the episode once it's locked and mixed and gone to air, even if you think of a new great idea.

Hana: In the vein of this and this conversation about Shermie, I do these video essays and I had a video essay on Shermie that was “Everything we know about Shermie,” every mention of him, which is like three things. He appears once in the game, once (kind of) in the comics in code on Shmebulock’s cork board, once in the journal when Ford's like "these are Sherman’s grandkids,” and of course, in a "Tale of Two Stans". And a lot of the comments were, "I didn't even know there was a baby, I didn't notice that baby." Which was funny.

Alex: (Laughs)

Hana: Earlier in this interview, I showed the fake blood. That was part of a YouTube video called "Figuring out the Gravity Falls Timeline", or something, where the whole bit of the video is that I'm making a conspiracy board and I'm going further and further into insanity.

GF Fan: Full Dipper-mode.

Alex: (Laughs)

Hana: And by the end of it I make a deal with Bill so he can tell me the secrets. And, I don't know how to tell you this, but you accidentally made the timeline work in a few places.

Alex: (Heavy laughter)

Hana: and I could tell it was an accident! It was stuff like, “Ah, man, they use a Sharpie over here, well Sharpies were invented in 1964.”

Alex: Oh wow, you went deep, you went really deep

Hana: You know, I just keep looking at the camera and being like "I'm sure they thought really in depth about when Sharpies were invented".

(Laughter)

Hana: And in the Journal, there's a line where Dipper mentions that he saw Stan at his Bar Mitzvah at age 12, and usually Bar Mitzvahs are at age 13. But occasionally they're at 12 if your birthday on the Hebrew calendar comes before your birthday on the Gregorian calendar, which isn't very common - it usually comes after your birthday on the Gregorian calendar. So, given that they were, like, between 8 and 13 in 1960-something, [and born on June 15]. There is only one year that works out, where they could have had their Bar Mitzvah at 12 and its 1951, and it works because it means they would be finishing high school when Nixon was president.

(Laughter)

Hana: And it also works because it means that they would be, like, around 10- 11- 12 when they discovered the "Stan-o-War" which is 1964 and they would have the sharpie. And it does work because, like, a million things that just happen to fall into place! I spend the whole time thinking "I'm fixing his fucking timeline for him. You're welcome!" It was a great video, I had fun making it.

Hirsch: It sounds like a great video. It sounds like you were able to extract so much content from something that was so free from content. You found new content hidden in between the letters, you saw all the content in there.

Hana: It is interesting that you say that the show isn't canonically set in 2013, because the "Northwest Ghost" died in the great flood of 1863 and came back 150 years later. So it's like well, that does establish that it's in 2013 and I know that it's a nebulous vague summer, but it's 2013.

(Laughter)

Hana: For the purpose of people like me who think way too far about this!

Alex: It- it sounds like an entertaining video. It sounds like you did your diligence!

GF Fan: Oh, it was a lot of fun to watch.

Alex: I think it's cool! First of all, it sounds like, funny and engaging and it sounds like you had a good time making it!

Hana: I did, it was so cool and I loved it.

Alex: We want the show to be an invitation to other people to create, right? It’s interesting because it's like- it sounds like, in the process of trying to sort of decode what was in the text you discovered sometimes things that we did intend and put together, but also discovered the degree to which like, um…-

Hana: It's an accident!

GF Fan: (Laughter) 

Alex: There was that famous case, you sound like you might know about this, where somebody had said that they had proven that like, ah, that like, Lewis Carol was Jack the Ripper based on "Alice in Wonderland"

Hana: Yeah!

Alex: Then somebody else pointed out like, I can circle sentences in the Bible that prove that God is Jack the Ripper, I can circle sentences in, you know, "Oh the Places You'll Go" that prove that Dr. Seuss was Jack the Ripper or whatever. The text is sharpshooter fallacy of like, the human mind is a pattern seeking machine, right.

We're so good at seeking patterns we will see God's face in the random shape of the clouds and and and then we'll paint a beautiful painting and now the painting is real so like, the interpretation is real, the art is real. But it’s a fascinating thing making "Gravity Falls" where we hid a couple of mysteries and we worked hard on, and we were proud of them, but we invited people to keep looking, and people would find stuff that would be extraordinary and would be so much smarter than anything we ever thought of, um, and it would fit. [Laughter]

Hana: You know, it is fun. I did have a friend tell me "are you having fun doing this?" and, and for me, for my brain, yes! I do love over-analyzing things like that and I have YouTube comments all the time that are like "you're over analyzing a kids show" and I'm like "I know buddy, that's my hobby"

Alex: Yeah!

Hana: Yeah, it is what it says on the tin. I now have a bunch of people on Tumblr who are sending me the "Eurythmics" memes because one of the things that holds the timeline together is that the portal incident had to be in 1983, and we know this because Ford mentions the "Eurythmics" on a page and the song "Sweet Dreams are Made of This" came out in early 1983, so this is the final piece of the puzzle. There's a part of the timeline video where I'm like, "Ah man, maybe I was overthinking things unless it makes sense. I have no proof it happened in 1983" and then I remember the Eurythmics and say something like, "There go my Sweet Dreams of figuring out the timeline... WAIT!"

Alex: This sounds like a very high production video!

Hana [sheepishly]: It, it was.

Alex: No, but I respect that about what you're saying! We made Journal 3 thinking, we're gonna make a monster manual, essentially, like a D&D monster manual. It's 300 pages of "look at this monster.” There was a question of like, how do I make a monster manual fun, but how do I make it worth reading? Like, can I string narrative through the monster manual and it sounds like you've done all this like, research [in your video] and you're like "I wanna create a piece of art about this but how do I make this a story" and so, like, in the same way that we were stringing narrative through our monster manual you were stringing narrative into your own descent into madness, making yourself a character in the story which sounds great! It's a smart way to do it.

Hana: Hence the fake blood. It was, it was great. 

Alex, joking: What you're saying is that if I ever make another journal or Gravity Falls thing I need to put five intentionally completely wrong things in the timeline just to give you something to go crazy about.

Hana: Don't do that!

Alex: Just to torture you.

Hana: There's a joke in there that you did it specifically to torture me. So, it works.

Alex: Now that we've met, you won't know that I did or didn't.

Hana: Thanks Alex [Laughter].

Something of note though and this is, this is just something that's interesting to me, probably and no one else, is that the Eurythmics are one of the only like actual IPs [intellectual properties] that are mentioned in the journal, it's like the only instance. I was wondering if like, you needed to get a go ahead to do that or if Disney just didn't catch that, because I know IP's aren't allowed.

Alex: Publishing was way more permissive about that stuff, like we say tons of things in the journal that we never could have gotten away with, you know, I-I think we say "damn", I think we say "hell" maybe, um yeah.

Regarding the Eurythmics, that was literally just like, I was writing that page thinking oh yeah, Ford's out of touch. Um, and he's like [impression of Ford], "Ah, I can't, I can't wait to see the latest chart topper from..." and then my, I was just like, what's the worst thing that might come to mind as a group that did not have a lot of chart toppers and that was the first thing that popped into my head. As I was writing it I was like "oh, sweet dreams, dreams, Bill exists in dreams that's pretty weird.”

And so that was one of those things where if publishing had come back and said "oh, we don't want you to mention the actual band name" then I would've had to change it but they just, I guess they were a lot more permissive.

It's very possible that, that Ford, you know, very possible that Ford [bursts into a fit of Laughter]- 

It's funny to imagine 'cause I don't imagine Ford like, you know, bumping top 40 hits in the lab while him and Mcgucket are making the portal. I can imagine that earworm somehow getting to him while he's in the car or something and it getting, in spite of himself, stuck in his head.

Hana: I got the Eurythmics vinyl and I have a plan, down the line, to do an in-character review of every song on the sweet dreams album! I don't know if it's gonna come out because my album skips a lot 'cause it's from 1983, um, but, the concept was funny and I'm glad I have a copy of it now. 

It's so interesting that it was the Eurythmics because I had a completely different video essay, my first one was about "Queer Coding in Gravity Falls" and the concept is unintentional things that gay audiences would latch onto and I was like, "Why the Eurythmics?" Like, with Annie Lennox? This band was popular in gay discos and night clubs! This resonated with a queer audience in 1983! Like, “Alex, are you doing this on purpose?” I know that it's not but there's so many bits in the video where I'm like, “Alex? Are you saying something?” That's why, like, down the line in the second video I do, which is the timeline video, when I'm like "Wait, did he do the Eurythmics on purpose?!" So it comes back full circle.

Alex: I was raised in a one parent household it was just me, my Mom, and my twin sister. What pop culture was, was whatever I got through "Nintendo Power" and whatever came through my Mom and sister. You know, my Mom loved Annie Lennox and I'm sure I heard that song a million times. So a lot of these types of references to things that kind of had a particular audience at a particular era came from "What did my Mom and sister like" that got to my brain at that age. I feel like that's probably the origin.

GF Fan: Okay, this is a bit of an interesting one. Um, in "Irrational Treasure" when Blubs and Durland are going after Dipper and Mabel, like, to stop them from figuring out who, who founded Gravity Falls, they're in touch with a mysterious dispatcher who tells them to not let the twins find out about the Northwest cover-up and stuff. And after that episode he's never seen or heard from again and basically the question is were there ever any plans for that character to have a bigger role in the show or was it just like a one-off character.

Alex: It does feel like a missed opportunity, you know, I think we didn't know. In season 1 we didn't know that there were gonna be government agents showing up in season 2. 

I was working from a very specific tonal palette in my own mind, where it was kind of like 90's conspiracies. So, that's like "Weekly World News" and, and the "X-Files" and, and sort of "Men in Black" and then like I was thinking you know, sort of like "Roadside Americana" was one of the palettes.

There's all these sort of particular touchstones in my head of what like, makes this feel like the flavor of the show. Like the X-Files or the sort of the brief craze in America where everybody was like copying the "Da Vinci Code," and you have like "National Treasure" which is just like this  cheap knock-off of the Da Vinci Code.

What I'm trying to say is, like, with each one of our episodes we were sort of trying to hit a note on that like, keyboard of like palette, and that was like our conspiracy episode. So, we're like, "oh yeah, of course there's, of course you gotta have some government agent who knows about the Trembley Coverup". 

But then when we got to season 2, we realized that we needed a bigger presence, and we needed a bigger threat, and we needed the government.

It was one of those things where we hadn't, we hadn't planned it properly. We talked about, “Is there a way for this government agent who knows about Trembley to be connected to the government agents who picked up this disturbance?” We weren't really able to find a way to make them connect in a satisfying way, so, I wish we had done more with it. 

Hana: What contributed to the story decision in the journal to have Fiddleford create the memory gun after a gremloblin attack, instead of after the portal incident? Because a lot of people were surprised by that. It seemed almost like a retcon, but not quite, like it barely fits, but it very much implies, like, when he’s doing like, “test number one, Fiddleford,” and you see the chart behind him, of the um, of the probability of failure in the series, that he started making the memory gun after the portal incident. But in the series, he’s already made it, and he’s used it several times before the portal incident.

Alex: [Looking at Journal 3 with confusion] Um, yeah, sorry, it- I think- you definitely have a much, uh, greater handle on the timeline of the book than I do. When in the book? [Flipping pages]

Hana: He invents it after the gremloblin incident. After the gremloblin incident he has horrible anxiety, and then he’s down for the count, and then he comes back the next day, when Ford’s like, “hey, you know, we solve problems with our intellect,” and McGucket’s like, “I have an idea: memory gun!” And he shows up with the memory gun and Ford’s like-

Alex: Alright, yes.

Hana: - “this is an awful idea, what the fuck!” [Laughs] 

Alex: …yes, that’s right, okay, yeah, I mean I think, um, and it’s been a minute… I- forgive me, you’re so steeped in the timeline, and- and it’s- as you know, having investigated it, it’s clearly not something we put our greatest focus on.

My hunch is that the thought there was … my hunch is that the thought there was that in- in our- in our canon, Ford and McGucket had a huge falling out, after the portal test. That was the bridge too far, that’s what broke their friendship, and [Fiddleford] walked out that door and he did not come back. 

The things that Ford said as McGucket left weren’t “I value you and I’m sorry we have a difference of opinion,” it was [impression of Ford] “get the hell out of here you hillbilly, you don’t understand science!”

You know, he was really cruel to McGucket. He was cold to him, and they did not talk for thirty more years after that. 

I think the thought was that we were interested in the psychology that resulted in McGucket creating the memory gun, but we knew that if McGucket created the memory gun after their [air-quotes] “break up,” there could be no explanation of it in the journal, because McGucket wouldn’t be around, and Ford wouldn’t know. 

So, the feeling was, the only way that we can learn about this is if it’s invented before then. That way we can see McGucket’s kind of innocent naive thought.

McGucket is increasingly having anxiety problems, as he was before, and these anxiety problems are actually not problems, they are him being right about what they’re doing. [Laughs]

And he so wants to please Ford. I think McGucket sees his own value as “I’m the guy who builds stuff, and you’re the idea guy, and I’m the guy who builds stuff, and I’m valuable to you when I’m building stuff, and when I have a problem I can build a solution, and any time there’s an emotional issue, you build your way out.” 

And so I thought, oh, we can show that intuition here in the journal. And that felt more rich and revealing than to not reference the memory gun. 

So the canon became that McGucket proposed such a thing early on, and then was told you shouldn’t do that, and then like an addict, like an alcoholic who has a little sip and notices it takes the edge off, privately, he can’t bear to say it to Ford. He’s keeping a lot from Ford, he’s keeping just how scared he is of what they’re doing, he’s keeping just how concerned he is. 

McGucket doesn’t really know what’s going on, but he’s internalizing and thinking, “I just need to be a better partner. If I have anxiety, I’m gonna pop anxiety pills, and I’m gonna get through this.” So there’s an opportunity to see that in McGucket. 

I think that was the intention of putting that there. 

I think you’re right, this is one of those things where I say, like, I focus on writing emotionally more than I focus on it logically, in terms of timelines. I’m more interested in getting a chance to see the emotional rationale of [Fiddleford]’s invention of the memory gun than I am in maintaining the integrity of the timeline at the expense of getting to learn that about McGucket. So like, that sort of explains the thought process behind these things, if that makes sense.

Hana: Okay. In the same vein of McGucket, was there ever another version of the Fiddleford and Ford reunion, ‘cause they had their reunion in Weirdmageddon, was there ever another version of that, like, planned, or on the cutting room floor, um, aside from that one? Like, did you ever consider maybe them meeting up before the finale?

Alex: Um, I mean, it was just one of those things where… you know, we threw a bunch of balls up into the air, and then we had to catch them all at the very end.

Hana: I see.

Alex: And we knew we couldn’t catch all of them, and so we had to pick and choose, and we had to say okay, I really wanna see- I really wanna see Dipper, Mabel, Stan, Ford, and- and even Soos kind of have a- sort of an ending, um, and, you know, other characters whose sort of, um, dimension began to reveal itself in the writing process, characters like, uh, Pacifica, or McGucket, who started out completely as one-note characters, and then we started finding interesting things to do with them. 

By the time we were sort of finding that with them, the deadline was over, the show was done. So there wasn’t an opportunity, we didn’t write one out, because we had our hands full with a lot of other stuff to figure out, making the finale kinda work, um, but, that- that was part of what was so fun about journal 3, was that like, we were like, “oh! Ford and McGucket obviously had this giant falling out, I wanna see a reunion.” So, like, the journal created an opportunity to see a reunion. And- and it’s-

GF Fan: Yeah, it was a beautiful one.

Alex: It’s very sad, um, but it’s like, I think, in a very subtle way, you know… Ford has so much shame for his mistakes!

Part of his arrogance is that he’s been running from confronting that shame. It’s like, he has to always have a mission in front of him, because if he doesn’t have a mission in front of him, he’s thinking “how have I treated people in my life?” [Laughs] 

Right, so it’s like, only at the end of the journal, after, you know, like, the threat has been neutralized, and he has been humbled for the first time in his entire life, is he capable of swallowing his pride and going in and talking to McGucket, and he is so floored by McGucket’s forgiveness and grace and humility, because McGucket always was a sweet soul, and like, it shows a better way to be a person, that like, he just is like, sort of… sitting in awe of that, and grateful for it, and grateful for the forgiveness which he doesn’t think he deserves!

It felt nice to be able to have a moment of that. You know, there wasn’t room for a lot of it, but I- I was glad that the journal afforded us the opportunity to- to show Ford humbled, and to show McGucket. It’s like… Ford didn’t realize the value of the people around him until way later in the show. So that got into that.

GF Fan: This one is probably a quick answer. Back in 2021, you revealed that you were working with Darkhorse on a Gravity Falls art book, before Disney scrapped it, and that really broke my heart! I have the Over the Garden Wall art book, and the Ducktales art book, and they’re just some of the most beautiful books that I’ve ever owned. 

I can just imagine what a Gravity Falls art book would’ve been like, and what we could’ve seen in it. What details can you share about that art book? We don’t have to make this public or anything, but like, what details about the art book can you share that were planned? Given that the Ducktales artbook has been released, have there ever been any talks about revisiting the concept, and if not, what are the chances of it being revived?

Alex: Yeah, I mean, you know, as a- as a fan you know this better than anybody, like, me and my crew, we care so much about delivering something that people will love, and we- we really, really try to go above and beyond.

It’s not enough to make the show, it also has to have secrets and codes, and it also has to have jokes and it also has to have a journal and it also has to have a treasure hunt, and the treasure hunt has to have a treasure,

When we did the DVD, we knew it has to have commentary on every single track, it has to have hidden commentary, it has to have deleted scenes! We put more material in it than any DVD that that company had ever made before. Any time we get a shot, we really really try to do right by the fans.

So in terms of an art book, we wanted to make the best damn art book of all time! I mean, we were gonna include the very first drawings of every single character, we were going to include scrapped storyboards, we were going to include development art before we’d figured out the style of the show, we were gonna include background paintings, and color keys, and just, every single thing that we had! 

We were going to fit as much of it in the book as we could, and we were going to have, um, uh, we were going to have the editor interview a bunch of the artists, so we were telling the story of the origin of the show, the challenges, the triumphs, as well as going through all the art, seeing paths we didn’t take, seeing cut material, seeing script pages.

We wanted to make it like, “what if you could be, you know, on the ground floor experiencing it.”

And mainly, we just had tons of wonderful material. Um, you know, our artists are so incredible, and I have boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff- I never threw a single thing away, I’m a pack rat. I have it all. 

The thing is, it never got off the ground. Like, we never started. Like, I gathered the material, and then they just ghosted us. And years went by before I made that tweet where I was like, yeah, we just literally got ghosted for no rhyme or reason. We never got an answer to it.

It’s a shame. Uh, you know, maybe one day. I- I’ve said to them, I have a standing offer. I say, I’ve got all the material, if you ever wanna make the book, I’ll- I’ll play ball. I’ll play along, I’ll make it happen. 

But, again, the people calling these shots, every two years they get fired and replaced with somebody else, so there’s no consistency. So one day, they might wanna do it.

Hana: Have you considered making it Barfing Gnome themed? Because then they might sell it. [Laughs]

Alex: [Laughs] If it was 2012, they would absolutely be game.

Hana: Um, I’m having so much trouble picking a last question. I guess I gotta go with my gut here. So, I- I know it can be really- I’ve seen a lot of, like, panel videos where people go up to like, content creators or an artist, and they go “is this character gay?” and it can be really uncomfortable, because artists don’t want to disappoint anyone, and also sometimes they’re not able to say it. 

But I wanna say that, with Ford in particular, with all of the content in the journal about him feeling “strange, on the outskirts of society, not understood,” it resonates so much with LGBTQ+ fans. 

Everyone I know who’s a big Ford fan is from some part of the LGBTQ+ community. There’s lines in there about romance baffling him, and stuff like that, where we’re like, we get it, we understand it, it makes sense, it resonates. Regardless of whether or not this was intentionally planned when you wrote it, how do you feel about Ford being interpreted as a bit of a queer icon for so many in the fandom?

Alex: To me, the greatest compliment that I can receive as a creator is somebody saying “This resonated with me.” 

Our goal is to make characters that have a human truth in them, and that other people, when they see the character, they say “that’s me.” 

When somebody says to me, you know, uh, “I watched this character, and to me it spoke to my life experience so much, can you confirm or disconfirm my interpretation of the character,” my feeling is that the customer is always right. Like, if the character is gay to you, they’re gay. You know?

Hana: [Laughs] You hear that guys? “Ford gay” confirmed. [/sarcastic]

Alex: [Laughs] ‘Cause that’s sort of the magic of fiction. When you read a book that takes place in a kitchen at home, you remember the smell of your own parents’ cooking in that kitchen.

That’s the hope. My feeling is that if we do our job, people feel a truth and they connect to it. 

You know, in terms of like, our sort of intention with these characters, it’s like, Dipper was very much inspired by me growing up in the ‘90s. I was certainly a late bloomer, and I was very cerebral, and I was very shy, and, you know, the messages in the media about about gender and sexuality and stuff felt very alien and frightening and intimidating to me, and I wasn’t very particularly connected to any sort of masculine archetypes in my life, because I was not raised with a father in the household.

So I came into the world with the influence of my mom and sister. 

When it comes to a character like Ford, like… Ford was a very challenging character to conceive, because he was a main member of the cast that had to enter the show right before it ended, and he had to feel like he fit, and we had spent so much time developing Dipper and Mabel and Stan and Soos, and then we just had to create Ford in the middle of season 2, and that was very difficult, and like I said, it went through a lot of iterations trying to figure out, “who is this guy, who is this guy?” 

And we knew his job narratively was to give Stan the biggest chip on his shoulder that we could think of. So we’re like, he has to be smarter than Stan. He has to be… like, fitter, and better at fighting than Stan too, like, not, like, he’s not gonna be some little shrinking nerd, like, it would be a pretty fair fight between him and Stan, because Stan fights dirty but Ford is smarter- but I believe that- but I believe that sober Ford would always win in a fight between them. I think drunk Stan might win.

Hana: [Laughs] Oh my god.

Alex: I think [Stan] wants it more, and I think if Ford was a little bit off his focus, Stan could get it. But you know. Ford has the formal training, you know what I mean, and Stan just has, like, the madness. 

Ford was very much us building backwards. The same way you know a black hole is there by the light warped around it, it’s like, you know the damage someone’s family has done to them by all of their weird tics and behaviors. So who is the character who would result in Stan being this hurt and needy and mad and also longing? 

and so we came up with this guy who kinda seemed too perfect. And is distant. He’s aloof, and distant, and he’s too perfect. And it’s like, “oh! I think he’s also aloof and distant from himself.”

I think he is, uh, deeply deeply hiding from his real feelings about things, because at some point early on, he decided that he could run from hurt by achievement and by creation, and has dug that hole so deep that he has no relationships. He doesn’t have friendships, he doesn’t have romantic relationships, he is someone trapped in a tower of his own mind and estranged.

Stan shows that he has romantic interests, Mabel shows that she has romantic interests, Dipper shows that he has romantic interests, Ford shows none of that. He has sublimated himself romantically so, so deeply. 

I think, for people on all sides of the gender and sexuality equation, the idea of, “I can’t- I’m not sure what this part of myself is, so I’m going to fixate on something I can understand. I am going to become the guiness world record holder on making lego re-creations, of this, and I’m gonna get better at it than anything, and if- as long as I’m doing this, um, then I don’t have to focus on that.” 

People speculate about Nikola Tesla’s sexuality, it’s like, there’s a lot of people - some people say- ‘cause Tesla was hot, and he was lyrical and poetic and mysterious, and women–they say–were very drawn to Tesla. And Tesla doesn’t talk about women. In Tesla’s autobiography, he talks about how, like, women’s earrings freak him out, and he hears clanging train whistles in his head when he sees an exposed ankle. He was so off in his own plane!

I really thought of Ford kind of like Tesla in that realm. He is distant. So it doesn’t at all surprise me that people found their own experience reflected through Ford in that way. 

But it was, you know, when we were doing Gravity Falls, like, gay marriage had only like, just been legalized!

Hana: Right before the finale, yeah.

GF Fan: Right.

Alex: Yeah, so it was like, literally like, while we were writing the show, you couldn’t even get married and be gay in this country. Like, the culture has changed so much in such a short amount of time that it’s almost- hard to remember just how different it was back then. 

GF Fan: Alright. Let’s do the quick-fire round, and then we can- we can finish.

Hana: So this is your headcanons, um, we know that the show is over, so, this is all headcanons, I wanna say that, because there are people that have written fanfiction that are like ‘I know what the canon is,’ and they’ll be mad if you say something that contradicts it, so this is all just your headcanons.

Alex: You get it!

GF Fan: Okay, um, question 1. Um, what did Grunkle Stan do in Columbia that got him arrested?

Alex: [Laughs] Oh, Gosh. Um. Hmm. My headcanon would be that… oh, that’s so interesting. Grunkle Stan can’t walk three blocks without doing something that violates some kind of criminal statute. [Laughs] So, it’s like, it doesn’t require a lot of imagination to imagine what could have caused that to happen. I don’t think Stan was pulling off a brilliant heist, I think Stan- Stan did something very small, and stupid, um, not understanding, uh, the- the laws of the country that he was in, that landed him in this situation. And I think… you know what, he probably- he probably… mis-executed a bribe. [Laughs]

Alex: I think- I think he did something small, tried to bribe his way out of it, and made it ten times worse, is my hunch.

Hana: Okay, um, did Ford ever use the cloning copy machine, or was that something that was brought into the Mystery Shack after he left?

Alex: That’s a great question. I think… gosh, I mean, the thing is, you’re the person to ask for questions like that, to say like, that model of Xerox machine, would that have logically existed in the ‘80s, if not, that would mean that-

Hana: It would have. [Laughs] I’m letting you know, I did look into it-

Alex: Okay.

Hana: And it would have, if- but it also could’ve been just bought by Stan, like the wax statues.

Alex: Sure, I mean, my- I don’t- I don’t have a strong intuition on that, other than to say that like, Gravity Falls has a- has a natural law of weirdness magnetism, it brings… it- it attracts weird things. So like, it- it’s not hard for- for things to wind up in Stan’s hands that have real magical properties, because, like, the town is doing that. So that’s how it- more on like- Stan can wind up with real things- some of which are even more impressive than the things that Ford found, which is kind of funny, that Ford is like, Indiana Jonesing his way across the world, trying to find ancient artifacts, and Stan could just be buying them at garage sales because Gravity Falls wants them, whether- whether you’re trying or not.

Hana: Okay.

GF Fan: Alright. Okay, um, when you- it’s less well-known, like, the- the scrapped Labyrinth episode plan that you mentioned on a podcast with JG Quintel, um, what more details can you tell us about like, the quick ones, and also was there ever a plan to get David Bowie to voice- to be a guest star on the show before he passed away?

Alex: Yeah, so, I mean the- I know this is the lightning round so I’ll try to talk quickly. I mean, I- the… I think a lot of times, people imagine that the creative process is this very linear thing, where we’ve got one big plan, and then you do it or don’t. 

And it’s- well as I’ve said before, it’s- you’re- you’re exploring, you’re improvising the whole way through, so when I’ll- you know, in a podcast or something, casually mention an idea we’ll have, people will say, “oh, originally they were going to do this, but then they couldn’t.” And it’s like, it’s not originally, it’s like, we’ve got five ideas on the wall, and we’re trying to decide which one works!

So with the idea that there could be a Labyrinth episode, it was literally just a card that said “Labyrinth episode, question mark?” And then I casually pitched it over lunch to one of the executives, and she was like, “that’s a very- that’s a very specific reference, I don’t think you can get a whole episode out of that,” and I was like, “oh, maybe you’re right.” 

But in my head, I knew what the sort of set-up was in my head, which is that it was movie night, and that Grunkle Stan, Dipper, and Mabel were all going to the VHS store, because Netflix hadn’t yet taken over the world yet, and and they would try to decide what movie to watch. And Mabel really wanted to watch this Labyrinth parody. Mabel wanted to watch The Labyrinth, Dipper didn’t, Dipper convinced the family to watch something else, Mabel was so mad that she wished the Goblin King would come take Dipper away, and then- and then he does, and she has to go in and rescue Dipper from this movie, and you learn that the reason Dipper didn’t like the movie was that he always had a fear of puppets, and they scare him, and he has to get over his fear of puppets. 

And then Mabel- [laughs] instead of trying to rescue Dipper, is really just flirting with the Goblin King, um, and the Goblin King is so weirded out by it, like, we didn’t fully arc it out, but we were like, those were the sort-of pieces that were involved. Um, I think even if the executive hadn’t stopped us, we would’ve quickly been like, “I’m not sure there’s enough of an arc, this is maybe too fantastical,” ‘cause we were still figuring out what the rules were of our reality. But I have so much love for that genre, I would’ve loved to explore the tone of that. Even if we weren’t quite able to figure out a story behind it. People imagine like, “we wrote the whole thing and we animated it and then at the last second we kept it from you,” and people are always saying “release this,” and I’m like, “there’s nothing to release, you know what I mean?”

GF Fan: Got it.

Hana: All we have is a sticky note, yeah.

Alex: Yeah.

Hana, [jokingly]: Release the sticky note!

Hana: Okay, so we know that Bill could possess Ford while he was asleep, until he got the metal plate in his head, right? Was Bill still possessing Ford in the time between him falling through the portal and him getting the metal plate put in his head in Dimension 52 years later, or did he not know where Ford was so it didn’t work? Did you have an idea for it?

Alex: Emotionally, in my understanding the story, the way I imagine the story, whatever connection that Bill was able to create with Ford, where he was able to, you know, ring him up at a moment’s notice, pop up in his dream, pop up in his thoughts, offer to possess him, to take over his body to do work, that whatever that connection was, was somehow severed or nullified, by Ford’s falling into the nightmare realm and getting lost. 

That, whether it was because of the properties of the magic, or whether it was because Ford was physically making his way through the multiverse, Bill was not keeping tabs.

I think that Bill was trying to find Ford, but I think- I always think of Bill as like, this guy who has, like - you know, he’s stirring the pot of soup that is the Ford plan, and he’s got like 900 pots of soup across the universe of different things he’s working on, and at any given moment, he’s so cocksure that it’s all gonna work his way eventually.

Bill’s a trillion years old, so it’s like, Ford disappearing for thirty years is like- [snaps fingers] is like somebody saying they’re ghosting you and then texting you the next weekend, you know what I mean? He’s like- he’s like [handwave] “Ford’s gonna- Ford’s gonna be back. Ohh, [air quotes] we had such a big fight, Ford’s sooo mad at me,” oh, you know, “our will-they-won’t-they-take-over-the-universe relationship, like, he’s gonna- he’s gonna march off in a huff, and he’ll be back, ‘cause we’re- is Ford gonna find anyone else in the multiverse that strokes his ego as well as me?” Is there anybody else in the universe that’s gonna make Ford feel as important as Bill? No, of course not, Ford needs validation, and so Bill knows Ford’s gonna be back eventually. 

Hana [laughing]: I love that.

GF Fan: That was amazing.

Alex: I don’t think that hunt was too aggressive, um, between Bill and Ford. Okay, and then, did you have one final question?

GF Fan: Okay yeah, sure, I guess we can ask like one final question. This is a quick one. Back in 2013, when you went on that roadtrip between season 1 and 2 called Mystery Tour, you left a bunch of Bill Cipher drawings around the Pacific Northwest.

I’ve talked to some of the people who went out and found those Bills after you’d mentioned that you were gonna give a mystery prize to them, and there are a couple of fans who I contacted who said like they are kinda still waiting for, uh-

Alex: And they still haven’t gotten their mystery prize. Oh shit, well you know what, that’s uh- that’s amazing that you hunted them down, uh, we were- that was a very disorganized project, it was our first experiment with seeing like, can we make treasure hunts?

GF Fan: First ARG.

Alex: Um, yeah, first- baby’s first ARG. Um, I think, uh, um- yeah, how about- how about I send you, like, like, some signed sketches or something, um, like, uh, and- and you give- you distribute those to them, is that okay? Would you be comfortable with that?

GF Fan: Uh, sure! Yeah, okay!

GF Fan: Right, for sure. I’ll message them again and let them know, and we can work that out. That sounds awesome.

Hana: Alright, we’re gonna try to be respectful of your time, it’s 12:07! [The interview was supposed to be over at 12]

GF Fan: Yeah

Hana: We’re sorry for going over.

GF Fan: Sorry about that.

Alex: No no no, it’s fine, I- like I said, I’m- I’m a- I’m a fan, so when I interact with fans, I- I’m like, that’s me, I get it. Um, like, thank you for this, this was a lot of fun. It- it means a lot that you care so much that you found these things, I mean, you know, something that I haven’t thought about in years, it’s really interesting to- to sort of hear about it again, you know, and it’s particularly rewarding- again, I mean, I just can’t believe that, you know, ten years after, um, you know, releasing, uh, Tourist Trapped, that anybody even remembers it. 

You know, like, I think that is one of the sort of- sometimes disconnects between me and the fan community, is everyone’s like, “well of course it’s worthy of this level of care,” and it’s like, I only know that because you have revealed that to me. So like, we know that we tried our best, but we had no thought that anyone was going to care. [Laughs] So, all the passion is just like, to me it’s a gift. Like, I don’t take any of it for granted, I’m, you know, I’m- I’m grateful for it. 

I’m not really as engaged in the fan world as I used to be, um, A. because there isn’t new Gravity Falls, um, and also B. because I’ve watched the modern fandom culture, in my lifetime, go from barely existent, to only being a thing about uh, Joss Whedon message boards, to literally taking over all of media consumption, to being taken as a given that there’s certain things that come with making a show. 

It’s like, the shows I was watching growing up were, like, Doug and Rugrats, and there were no holy wars about whether Chucky Finster, uh, should be interpreted this way or that way. We had no idea the world that was coming into consciousness as we were making this thing. 

Alex: Tthis was a lot of fun, I hope that these answers were satisfying.

Hana: They were great.

GF Fan: Yeah, they were amazing, like, thank you so much Alex, this- it means a lot.

Alex: Nice to meet you both, uh, thank you for being fans and for keeping the torch alive.